[3] The Plymouth County battalion, commanded by Col. Theophilus Cotton marched to Marshfield to attack a garrison of British troops there.

Wadsworth, frustrated with the delay, advanced his company to within firing range of the British encampment, nearly instigating combat.

[4] Wadsworth served as aide to Gen. Artemas Ward in March 1776, and as an engineer under Gen. John Thomas in 1776, assisting in laying out the defenses of Roxbury, Massachusetts.

In the summer of 1779 he served as second in command to General Solomon Lovell over the land forces sent to make a combined arms attack on Fort George at Castine, in the so-called Penobscot Expedition.

While General Lovell remained aboard the Commodore's vessel, Wadsworth and Revere landed with the infantry and artillery and laid siege to the fort for about two weeks.

Wadsworth, still with the forces on shore, organized and led a successful overland retreat through the Maine frontier.

He headed the committee that organized the first convention to discuss independence for Maine from Massachusetts, held in January 1786.

The house at Portland was gifted to the Maine Historical Society by his granddaughter Anne Longfellow Pierce upon her death in 1901.