“The autumn hit-and-run raids and the colonists’ attempts to retaliate ended with the early onset of especially heavy snowfalls that year. Over the next few months, the Massachusetts government dispatched to Maine companies of “country soldiers” to augment the inadequate regional militia forces. The troops, however, proved a mixed blessing to local residents and stimulated great controversy, especially in Black Point. There taxpayers later complained bitterly that they had not asked for the soldiers and had derived little benefit from their presence, yet they had nevertheless been required to pay the soldiers’ expenses. Even more galling, they explained, was the fact that the local commander, Joshua Scottow, who had moved to Maine from Boston a few years earlier, had used the men for his own personal gain, employing them to pave his yard, move his barn, and build a palisade for his property.”