Colburn House State Historic Site

What the State of Maine says about our ancestral home.

Description: No, George Washington never slept here but he knew the owner. Two other people who figured prominently in the American Revolution did sleep in this house - Benedict Arnold and Aaron Burr. Built in 1765, this colonial Federal-style house was home to several generations of the prominent Colburn family.

In September 1775, Colonel Benedict Arnold led an expedition of more than 1,000 colonial soldiers up the Kennebec River to attack the British stronghold of Quebec City. The men came to the Kennebec from Massachusetts on board eleven ships which
disembarked here at the home of Reuben Colburn, a member of the Maine Committee of Safety.

Colburn had help spawn the idea of attacking British Quebec by way of the Maine wilderness and had supplied critical information to General Washington. On Arnold's arrival, Colburn had 200 wooden boats called bateaux waiting and the expedition used
them to carry its provisions and military stores upstream toward Canada. This house was Arnold's headquarters and the launching point for his famous expedition against Quebec.


Colburn had also assembled a crew and built the boats within two weeks of General Washington's request to do so, but without enough seasoned lumber for the sizable task, the builders had to use green wood which was more prone to fail in the water.Twenty of these craftsmen, including Colburn himself, then accompanied the expedition to Canada, carrying supplies and repairing the boats as they traveled.

Location: Located along the Kennebec River in Pittston, Maine, just south of Gardiner on Route 27.




Operation Dates: Open weekends in July and August.

Telephone: Historic Site Specialist
Bureau of Parks and Lands
22 State House Station
Augusta, Maine 04333-0022

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