Sir Ferdinando Gorges, an early English colonial…

Sir Ferdinando Gorges, an early English colonial entrepreneur in North America who himself will never set foot in the New World, had helped sponsor the expedition of George Weymouth to the mouth of the Kennebec River along the coast of the present day state of Maine in the United States.

As a shareholder in the Plymouth Company, he had in 1607 helped fund the failed Popham Colony, near present-day Phippsburg, Maine.

At Gorges's behest, Dr. Richard Vines, passes the winter of 1616—17 at Biddeford, Maine, at the mouth of the Saco River, that he calls Winter Harbor.

This is the site of the earliest permanent settlement in Maine of which there is a conclusive record.

Maine is to become an important refuge for religious dissenters persecuted by the Puritans.