[7] He began his somewhat remarkable business career in his native town of Scarborough, Maine, where he owned a large gambrel-roofed house, and had a store in which he traded, on Dunstan Landing Road.
Milliken was one of three who proceeded to lay out the township named "Pondicherry," now Bridgton, Me., and on presenting a plan of the same to the General Court they obtained confirmation of said grant, June 25, 1765.
He was granted a mill privilege there with timber lands adjoining, and with his wife and daughter and thirty men went down in a vessel owned by Ephraim Dyer, and built a saw-mill on a small stream that empties into Union River.
In his deposition, given in 1796, Ephraim Dyer testified that he carried down about four hundred pounds' worth of provisions and other stores; that he remained and helped the Millikens near a fortnight, during which time the men made use of his vessel to live in until they had built a house.
This "house" was but a rude camp built against a huge boulder named by an early surveyor the "Punch Bowl; " and a daughter of Benjamin Millliken, then only fourteen years of age, afterwards Mrs. Lord, cooked the first meal ever prepared by a woman European settler in the township.
As there were thirty-two workmen employed on the mill, a large quantity of food must have been consumed; and as Ephraim Dyer said two women went down from Scarborough in the vessel with the builders, it has been assumed that one of them was the mother of the maid who first put the kettle on: but the records prove that this was not the fact, for her father married Elizabeth Banks in 1754, only ten years before the mill was built, and would not have had a daughter by her fourteen years of age at that time.
[14] He first joined the British at Bagaduce,[15] on Penobscot Bay (now Castine, Maine) after his home, grist & saw mills and farm, were destroyed by rebel forces.
A group of rebels led by an officer entered the house and attempted to force their way into Milliken's wife Phebe's bedroom where the silver plate and other valuables were concealed.