Andrew Alger

Born about 1610 near Yealmpton, Devonshire, England. He died about October 10, 1675.

A Fisherman on Richmond Island

Andrew Alger was born around 1610 near Yealmpton, Devonshire, England, and by the winter of 1632–1633 was one of three men left to hold Richmond Island, off the Maine coast, for the English merchant John Winter. He worked as a fisherman and, with his brother Arthur, purchased land from the Indigenous Sokokis people of Owascoag at Blue Point, naming the new settlement Dunstan after their home parish in Devonshire. Andrew went on to serve Scarborough, Maine, as constable, selectman, and surveyor, and sat on trial and grand juries in Saco and Casco through the 1640s, '60s, and into the 1670s.

A War-Torn Estate

In his March 1670 will, Andrew left his entire estate to his wife Agnes so long as she did not remarry, with his land at Black Point Neck reserved for his son John and small sums for his other children; if Agnes remarried, the estate was to be divided among his children instead. Andrew died around October 1675, in the opening months of King Philip's War, and his surviving estate was appraised the following year at less than nine pounds — his cattle and much of his land, including a house worth thirty pounds, having been abandoned in the fighting.