Sir William Pepperrell, 1st Baronet (27 June 1696 – 6 July 1759) was a merchant and soldier in colonial Massachusetts. He is widely remembered for organizing, financing, and leading the 1745 expedition that captured the French fortress of Louisbourg during King George's War. Early life William Pepperrell was born in Kittery, Maine, then a part of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, and lived there all his life. He was the son of William Pepperrell, a Massachusetts settler of Welsh descent, and Margery Bray, the daughter of a well-to-do Kittery merchant. Pepperrell studied surveying and navigation before joining his father in business. William Pepperrell senior had begun his career as a fisherman's apprentice but was by that time a shipbuilder and fishing boat owner. He owned a number of enslaved African-Americans and had erected a mansion in 1682 which still stands near Pepperrell Cove near Kittery Point. The death of his elder brother forced William Pepperrell junior to assume responsibility for much of the family business in 1713. He expanded their enterprise to become one of the most prosperous mercantile houses in New England with ships carrying lumber, fish and other products to the West Indies and Europe. Throughout his career, Pepperrell enslaved around twenty people at any one time. Career Pepperrell served in the Massachusetts militia, becoming a captain in 1717, then major, lieutenant-colonel, and in 1726 colonel. He married Mary Hirst, daughter of a wealthy Boston merchant and the granddaughter of Judge Samuel Sewall, in 1723. Together, they had four children, two of which died in infancy. Pepperrell served in the Massachusetts General Court, the provincial legislature, from 1726 to 1727, and was in the Governor's Council from 1727 to 1759, serving eighteen years as its president. Although not a trained lawyer, he was chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas from 1730 until his death. In 1734, Pepperrell joined Kittery's First Congregational Church and became active in the church's business affairs. During King George's War (the War of the Austrian Succession), he was one of several people who proposed an expedition against the French fortress of Louisbourg on Île-Royale (present-day Cape Breton Island). He gathered volunteers, financed and trained the land forces in that campaign. When they sailed in April 1745, he was commander-in-chief, supported by a Royal Navy] naval squadron under Captain Peter Warren, appointed Commodore on a temporary basis. They besieged Louisbourg, then the strongest