A very interesting account is given in Dwight's Travels of the capture and escape of General Wadsworth. He had been for many years a member of Congress--and was sent by the legislature of Massachusetts to command in the District of Maine. In February, 1781, he dismissed his troops, and made preparations for his return to Boston. His wife and her friend Miss Fenno, who had accompanied him, shared in the peril, when, by order of the commander of the British fort, an attack was made on the house where the General lodged. It was near midnight, the weather being severely cold, and the ground covered with snow, when the enemy came suddenly upon the sentinel, and forced an entrance into the guard-room. Another party of them at the same instant fired through the windows of Mrs. Wadsworth's apartment; a third forcing their way through the windows into Miss Fenno's room. The two terrified women had only time to dress hastily, when the intruders assailed the barred door of the General's chamber. He made a brave defence, but at length, being wounded in the arm, was compelled to surrender.
With the most admirable self-command, Mrs. Wadsworth and her friend gave no expression to their own agitated feelings, intent only on relieving those of the wounded prisoner. The wife wrapped a blanket round him, and Miss Fenno tied a handkerchief round his arm, to check the effusion of blood. In this condition, his strength almost exhausted, he was carried off and the ladies were left behind in their desolated house. Not a window had escaped destruction; the doors were broken down, two of the rooms set on Fire, the floors drenched with blood; and an old soldier, desperately wounded, was begging for death, that he might be released from his sufferings. The neighboring inhabitants, who came to see what had happened, spared no labor--so that the next day they could be more comfortable; but the anxiety endured on the General's account could not be relieved by any kind attentions to themselves.
In about two months, Mrs. Wadsworth and her friend obtained permission to visit the prisoner, in the gloomy solitude of his quarters at Bagaduce. Parting from him at the end of ten days, Miss Fenno contrived to give him an intimation of the knowledge she had gained that he was not to be exchanged, by saying in a significant manner, "General Wadsworth--take care of yourself." The General soon understood this caution, learning that he was regarded as a prisoner of too much consequence to be trusted with his liberty. The account of his imprisonment, his remarkable escape, and his adventures wandering through the wilderness, before reaching the settlements on the river St. George, where he found friends--has all the interest of the wildest romance, but would here be out of place. His wife and Miss Fenno had sailed for Boston before his arrival at Portland. They were overtaken by a violent storm, and barely escaped shipwreck--being obliged to land at Portsmouth. There they had a new source of anxiety. The wife had left all her specie with her captive husband, and the continental bills had lost their currency. Without money, and without friends, after meditating on various expedients, she at last remembered that she had one acquaintance in the place. To him the wanderers applied--receiving assistance which enabled them to return to Boston, where a happy reunion terminated the distresses of the family. It may be added that General Wadsworth was an ancestor of the distinguished American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.