Marriages in the Mortimer Household

According to the story Charles Collard Adams told in Middletown Upper Houses (1908), young William Keith was supposed to marry his mentor’s niece Martha soon after she arrived from Ireland in the early 1770s.

That mentor, Philip Mortimer, sent Keith off to Boston with a coach to pick up Martha and bring her back Middletown, Connecticut.

But things didn’t go according to Mortimer’s plans. On 10 May 1775, William Keith (c. 1749–1811) married Mary Lions Callahan (c. 1748–1820) of Cork, remembered as the niece’s maid Polly.

Other records say that on 25 June 1775 Philip Mortimer’s Irish-born niece, Ann Catharine Carnall (c. 1745–1817), married another Middletown businessman, George Starr (1740–1820).

The Keiths had their first child, named John after his paternal grandfather, who had died suddenly in February, on 4 December. That was about eight months after the marriage. In his book, Adams pushed the wedding date back to a more respectable January.

I suspect the account in Middletown Upper Houses, delicious as it is, had been massaged into more dramatic shape over the decades. It looks like Adams had the wrong name for the niece, and that woman probably arrived in New England years before the marriages, perhaps as early as 1760.

But I also suspect there’s a seed of truth in this tradition. As a teenager William joined the Mortimer household, which might already have included Ann. People might have expected the two young people to marry.

Instead, William married Polly, and a few weeks later Ann married George.

Were those couples happy? William and Polly Keith had five more children between 1777 and 1786. They remained prosperous as William opened his own ropewalk in Middletown.

George and Ann Starr had two children, Martha Mortimer (1777–1848) and Philip Mortimer (1783–1857), named after her aunt and uncle. He also remained wealthy, and he also owned a ropewalk in Middletown.

TOMORROW: Back to Prince Mortimer.

Go Together Like a Horse and Carriage

In 1773, as recounted yesterday, Philip Mortimer of Middletown, Connecticut, lost his wife Martha and both the brothers he had left behind in Boston.

Philip and Martha had had no children, but he appears to have tried to create a family through informal adoptions.

Mortimer had some business ventures with a Scottish-born merchant in Hartford named John Kieth. This man had started as a ship captain, at one point carrying British troops to the Caribbean. Like Mortimer, he was an Anglican in a Congregational colony.

Both he and his wife were born around 1700, so by midcentury it was clear they weren’t going to have any more children (if they’d had any already). Capt. Kieth adopted a boy named William, born about 1749.

According to local lore, as a teenager William Keith moved in with Philip Mortimer to learn the ropemaking business.

On 10 Feb 1775, the Connecticut Courant reported this news from Hartford:

Last Wednesday, (being Fast Day [1 February]) as Capt. JOHN KIETH of this Town, was attending Public Worship in the North Meeting-House, he was seiz’d with an apoplectic Fit, and expired in a Moment. His Remains were carried to Middletown the Friday following, and decently deposited in Capt. Mortimer’s Tomb.

Mortimer became “Acting Executor” of Kieth’s estate.

That death was no doubt shocking, but Mortimer was already augmenting his household further. Charles Collard Adams’s Middletown Upper Houses (1908) stated: “Capt. Philip Mortimer, being childless, sent to Ireland for his neice, Martha, to become his adopted daughter.”

However, other sources say Mortimer’s favored niece was named Ann Catherine Carnall, born about 1745. As quoted back here, Mortimer had worked with a ship captain named Thomas Carnall to bring Irish youth into Boston in the 1740s; perhaps that man was a brother-in-law. I’m going with the name Ann.

According to Adams, people understood that Mortimer hoped that his niece would marry his protegé, William Keith. He sent the young man “to Boston with a coach and four” to meet Ann and bring her back to Middletown, presumably proposing along the way.

But Ann had come with a maid named Polly Lions Callahan, also in her mid-twenties.

TOMORROW: Can this marriage be saved?

“Departed this life deservedly lamented”

The year 1773 must have been a hard one for Philip Mortimer of Middletown, Connecticut.

He didn’t suffer business reverses, but he lost members of his family.

First Martha Mortimer, his wife of more than thirty ears, died. The 16 March Connecticut Courant reported:

On Saturday the 27th of February last, departed this life deservedly lamented, the amiable consort of Capt. Philip Mortimer, of Middletown, and on Tuesday following was decently inter’d in Mr. Henshaw’s tomb, attended by a numerous concourse of people of all ranks, from that and the neighbouring towns.

Benjamin Henshaw (1730–1793) was another merchant who had moved from Boston to Middletown. His grave is now marked with an obelisk. It’s possible that in 1773 he owned a tomb, and Martha Mortimer’s body was laid there in the middle of winter before being moved to a grave her husband owned.

That wasn’t the only loss Philip Mortimer suffered, however. The 31 August Connecticut Courant said:

Last Tuesday se’nnight departed this life at Boston, Mr. James Mortimer, aged 69:—

On Saturday following, his Relict, Mrs. Hannah Mortimer, aged 81:—

And on Sunday, under the same roof, their Brother, Mr. Peter Mortimer, aged 58.—

They were the only surviving brothers of Capt. Philip Mortimer, of Middletown, in this Colony.——

These industrious, peaceful, happy Citizens were sober, just, religious. As they had served God faithfully in the small Circle to which Providence had appointed them, and were tenderly united in their lives, he granted them the singular Favour not to be divided in their death.

The Boston newspapers noted the three quick deaths in one household but didn’t mention any epidemic disease or other cause for the public to worry about. 

All three Mortimers had funerals in Trinity Church and were buried in the Copp’s Hill Burying Ground. The elaborate gravestone of James and Hannah Mortimer appears above.

TOMORROW: Building a new family.

Philip Mortimer, from Waterford to Boston to Middletown

The Mortimer brothers arrived in Boston from Waterford, Ireland, in the early 1700s. They appear to have come with a bit of money since they quickly set themselves up in businesses.

James Mortimer (c. 1704–1773) was a tallow chandler. On 16 Aug 1741 at King’s Chapel he married another arrival from Waterford: Hannah Alderchurch, twelve years his senior.

James Mortimer advertised “Good Dipp’d Tallow CANDLES” and “the best of IRISH BUTTER by the Firkin” from his shop near Clark’s Wharf, later Hancock’s Wharf. He prospered enough that by the 1760s he owned at least one enslaved worker, named Yarrow, and Apple Island in Boston harbor.

Peter Mortimer (c. 1715–1773) was a ship’s captain.

The middle of these three brothers, Philip Mortimer (c. 1710–1794), was a ropemaker. He married Martha Blin (1716–1773) on 14 Nov 1742, also at King’s Chapel. Though she was said to be “of Boston,” she came from a Wethersfield, Connecticut, family.

Philip Mortimer had a higher profile than his brothers. He was in Boston by 1735, when he witnessed a deed. Two years later, he was one of the founders of the Charitable Irish Society. On 17 Oct 1738 Philip Mortimer shared an advertisement with two other ropemakers, each seeking the return of a teen-aged indentured servant.

On 11 Aug 1740, the Boston Gazette carried this notice:

Just Imported and to be Sold by Edward Alderchurch and Philip Mortimer, on board the Schooner Two Friends, Thomas Carnell Master, now lying at the Long Wharfe near the upper Crane, Choice Welch Coal, a Parcel of likely Boys and Girls; good Rice, Virginia Pork, good Cordage, Cod-Lines and Twine, all at a very reasonable Rate, for ready Money.

A year later a similar ad appeared in the Boston Evening-Post, this one adding that the “likely Boys and Girls” were “fit for Town or Country; the Girls can spin fine Thread, and do any sort of Houshold Work.” They were evidently more indentured youths from Ireland.

By 1749, according to the American-Irish Historical Society’s Recorder in 1901, Philip and Martha Mortimer had moved from Boston to Middletown, Connecticut. As the name implies, that was an inland town, halfway between the towns of Hartford and Wethersfield and the Connecticut River’s mouth at Saybrook. Nonetheless, Middletown had small shipyards, and Philip Mortimer saw the potential to build a ropewalk running perpendicular off the main street.

Mortimer quickly became a big fish in that small pond: town official, militia captain, Anglican church warden, Freemason. He owned the grandest house in town, shown above.

Eventually Philip Mortimer also owned an enslaved rope spinner named Prince. If the man later known as Prince Mortimer was indeed born in 1724, as calculated from his reported age when he died, and brought to Connecticut as a child, then he was in his late twenties and had been worked in Middletown for almost two decades before Philip Mortimer arrived. On the other hand, if Prince Mortimer was born later, then he could have arrived at the ropewalk as a child or teenager, fresh from being kidnapped and transported across the Atlantic, and immediately put into training to make rope.

COMING UP: Deaths and marriages.

Walking in Prince Mortimer’s Footsteps

Last week Connecticut Public reported how Middletown, Connecticut, renamed a street after Prince Mortimer, a man enslaved in that town before and after the Revolutionary War.

Prince Mortimer Avenue was once a walkway connecting the Irish-born trader Philip Mortimer’s mansion and his ropewalk, where he assigned his bondsman Prince to work as a spinner.

In 2006, Denis R. Caron published a book about the enslaved ropemaker: A Century in Captivity: The Life and Trials of Prince Mortimer, a Connecticut Slave.

More recently, John Mills has delved into Prince Mortimer’s life, sharing his work on his nonprofit website and at Enslaved.org. Mills led the push for memorializing Prince Mortimer, as the Middletown Press reported in 2023.

In a Commonplace review, Watson Dennison complained that Caron’s book about Prince Mortimer actually had very little to say about him, and a lot more about the Connecticut prison system in which he spent the last years of his life after being convicted of attempted murder. Dennison also felt that Caron mistakenly portrayed slavery in Connecticut as “a benign institution,” based on outdated analyses.

Studying the latest scholarship is something an author can control. Having detailed sources isn’t. For example, Caron found that no record of Prince Mortimer’s criminal trial survives. So unfortunately there’s no way to recount, much less assess, the evidence in that case.

The sources we do have can also be shaky. The earliest author to write about Prince Mortimer was Richard H. Phelps, who in 1844 published the first edition of his Newgate of Connecticut. Having grown up near that notorious prison made from the Simsbury copper mine, Phelps seems to have created this book for the edification of tourists.

Apparently Phelps conversed with Prince Mortimer himself before his death in 1834. He said the aged inmate was “supposed to be 110 years old,” having been born in Guinea and kidnapped to America as a child. But of course we don’t have records to corroborate that age.

Phelps also described Prince Mortimer as an a war veteran:

He was a servant to different officers in the Revolutionary War—had been sent on errands by General [George] Washington, and said he had “straddled many a cannon when fired by the Americans at the British troops.”

Again, there’s no other record of such service. (And that’s not a safe way to fire a cannon.)

On the one hand, we want to respect the personal statements of Prince Mortimer, wrenched away from his family and terribly victimized through life. On the other hand, exaggerating one’s age, military service, and proximity to the beloved Washington were common fibs for old men in the early 1800s, white or black. Such claims might be most understandable coming from an old man forced into prison after a lifetime of slave labor who needed all the sympathy he could get. 

The earliest contemporaneous evidence about Prince Mortimer appears to be Philip Mortimer’s will, signed in 1792. That document makes clear that “my Negro Prince” was a valuable asset. While the merchant bequeathed freedom to most of the people he enslaved on his death, he wanted Prince and another man, Peter, to “be kept at spinning” in the ropewalk for the benefit of his niece’s husband, George Starr, for another three years.

It might be a mistake to accept Phelps’s 1844 statements as facts and anchor all other evidence about Prince Mortimer’s life to them. Caron and Mills describe Philip Mortimer sending his enslaved man Prince to war in 1780. Even though that man’s skills would probably have made him more valuable, to both his owner and the American cause, in the ropewalk. And even though he was, in their analysis, in his fifties and in poor health. And even though there’s no record of such an action.

At the same time, there’s solid contemporaneous evidence that Philip Mortimer enslaved Prince Mortimer in Middleton, making him work in the ropewalk. He did walk the path now known as Prince Mortimer Avenue as an enforced laborer.

TOMORROW: The Mortimers of Boston.

“The Measles coming into the Town”

In 2015 the medical journal Emerging Infectious Diseases published David M. Morens’s article “The Past Is Never Dead—Measles Epidemic, Boston, Massachusetts, 1713.”

It quoted extensively from the diary of the Rev. Dr. Cotton Mather, and I’ll quote from those extracts.

[18 Oct] …The Measles coming into the Town, it is likely to be a Time of Sickness…

[24 Oct]… [in the past week] my Son Increase fell sick…

[27 Oct] My desirable Daughter Nibby, is now lying very sick of the Measles…

[30 Oct] This day, my Consort, for whom I was in much Distress, lest she should be arrested with the Measles which have proved fatal to Women that were with child, after too diligent an Attendance on her sick Family, was… surprized with her Travail [went into labor]… [and] graciously delivered her, of both a Son and a Daughter… wherein I receive numberless Favors of God. My dear Katy, is now also down with the Measles…

[1 Nov] Lord’s Day. This Day, I baptized my new-born twins… So I called them, ELEAZAR and MARTHA….

[4 Nov] In my poor Family, now, first, my Wife has the Measles appearing on her…

My Daughter Nancy is also full of them…

My Daughter Lizzy, is likewise full of them…

My Daughter Jerusha, droops and seems to have them appearing.

My Servant-maid, lies very full and ill of them.

[5 Nov] My little son Samuel is now full of the Measles….

[7 Nov]… my Consort is in a dangerous Condition, and can gett no rest... Death… is much feared for her… So, I humbled myself before the Lord, for my own Sins... that His wrath may be turned away…

[8 Nov] …this Day we are astonished, at the surprising Symptomes of death upon [my wife]… Oh! The sad Cup, which my Father has appointed me!... God enabled her to Committ herself into the Hands of a great and good Savior; yea, and to cast her Orphans there too…

I pray’d with her many Times, and left nothing undone…

[9 Nov] between three and four in the Afternoon, my dear, dear, dear Friend expired…. [I] cried to Heaven…

[10 Nov] …I am grievously tried, with the threatening Sickness of my discreet, pious, lovely Daughter Katharin.

And a Feavour which gives a violent Shock to the very Life of my dear pretty Jerusha.

[11 Nov] This day, I interr’d the earthly part of my dear consort…

[14 Nov] This Morning… the death of my Maid-servant, whose Measles passed into a malignant Feaver…

Oh! The trial, which I am this Day called unto in… the dying Circumstances of my dear little Jerusha!

The two Newborns, are languishing in the Arms of Death…

[15 Nov] … my little Jerusha. The dear little Creature lies in dying Circumstances. Tho’ I pray and cry to the Lord… Lord she is thine! Thy will be done!...

[18 Nov] …About Midnight, little Eleazar died.

[20 Nov] Little Martha died, about ten a clock, A.M.

I begg’d, I begg’d, that such a bitter Cup, as the Death of that lovely [Jerusha], might pass from me…

[21 Nov] …Betwixt 9 h. and 10 h. at night, my lovely Jerusha Expired. She was 2 years, and about 7 months old. Just before she died, she asked me to pray with her; which I did… and I gave her up unto the Lord. [Just as she died] she said, That she would go to Jesus Christ…

[23 Nov] …My poor Family is now left without any Infant in it, or any under seven Years of Age…

In 1757 Dr. Francis Home of Edinburgh determined that measles was caused by a pathogen. Unfortunately, he did this by using blood from one person with measles to infect others. He then tried to inoculate against the disease using the same technique as with smallpox, but measles doesn’t work the same way.

Not until 1963 did scientists develop an effective measles vaccine. In the first twenty years after the U.S. government tested and licensed that technique, it was estimated to have prevented 52,000,000 cases of the disease in this country. I was among the American children to benefit from the vaccine and never catch measles.

The World Health Organization reported that between 2000 and 2022, measles vaccination averted 57,000,000 deaths worldwide. That’s a huge number of people, about the population of Italy. But through a quirk of our brains, it can be more affecting to read about the series of small deaths, one after another, in Cotton Mather’s house in 1713.

Zannieri and Martello on Paul Revere in Concord, 25 Feb.

On Tuesday, 25 February, the Concord Museum will host a lecture on “Paul Revere: The Man, the Myth, the Legacy.”

This presentation will be delivered jointly by:

• Nina Zannieri, Executive Director of the Paul Revere Memorial Association, which operates the Paul Revere House in the North End of Boston.
• Robert Martello, Professor of the History of Science and Technology at Olin College of Engineering and author of Midnight Ride, Industrial Dawn: Paul Revere and the Growth of American Enterprise.

Revere is, of course, best known for his ride on 18–19 Apr 1775, spreading word of the British army march. He did indeed do that, but his prominence in American culture derives from Henry W. Longfellow turning him into a legend in 1861. The Paul Revere House has to help visitors sort out the history from the myth.

Because the history is even more interesting, if not as poetic. Before the war Revere was a political activist, among the most prominent from the mechanics class. Afterwards, he was a leader in Massachusetts’s business community and an early factory owner, the portion of his life that Prof. Martello studies.

This situation produces a paradox: Revere deserves to be remembered and studied in American history. But he’s a household name for actions that he did only part of, and which may not have been that crucial in history.

For an example on a smaller scale, generations of American schoolchildren have heard Longfellow’s lines:

It was two by the village clock,
When he came to the bridge in Concord town.

But Revere never made it to Concord on 19 April, much less to the North Bridge. He did, however, visit the town in the preceding week, carrying news that helped James Barrett decide to move the cannon and other ordnance on his farm farther away from Boston, and that stymied the British operation.

This event is scheduled to start at 7 P.M. It is free for Concord Museum members (though those seats might be sold out) and $10 for others. But it’s free to anyone who wants to tune in online.

Believing in “No More Kings”

In September 1975, as America was celebrating its Bicentennial, ABC launched a new season of Schoolhouse Rock interstitials titled “America Rock.”

The first of those ten cartoons was “No More Kings,” featuring a song by Lynn Ahrens that moved rapidly from the Pilgrims at Plymouth to American independence.

It made enough of an impact that a 1990s pop band called itself No More Kings.

The last cartoon in that series, also with a Lynn Ahrens song, was “Three-Ring Government,” about the division between legislative, executive, and judicial branches.

Looking back, historians’ big criticism of “America Rock” was how it presented a simple narrative of constant progress, elevating the perspective of propertied white men and largely ignoring Americans who dissented or lost out.

Seeking to avoid criticism, the producers had avoided current controversies and also tamed the controversies of the past. They reflected a version of national history that the overwhelming majority of Americans in that era could agree on.

Such as “No More Kings” and “Three-Ring Government.”

“The Only Method to secure peace in the Town”?

At the end of his 23 Apr 1775 letter to George Rogers, and in a second, undated letter preserved in the same archive, Lt. John Bourmaster, R.N., turned from reporting stories he’d heard from army officers back to a topic he was experiencing first-hand: what it was like inside besieged Boston.

Bourmaster wrote:

The number of the Country People who fired on our Troops might be about 5 Thousand ranged along from Concord to Charlstown but not less than 20 Thousand were that day under Arms and on the March to join the Others. their loss we find to be nearly on a footing with our own

This count of militiamen who had turned out was reasonably accurate. However, the Crown had lost about three times as many men killed, wounded, or missing as the provincials.

three Days have now pass’d without communication with the Country; three more will reduce this Town to a most unpleasent situation; for there dependence for provision was from day to day on supply from the Country that ceasing you may conceive the consequences.

preparations are now making on both sides the Neck for attacking and defending the Hampshire and Connecticut Militia have join’d so that Rebel Army are now numerous. Collins is well and stationed between Charls Town and the end of this Town to assist in the defence. The General [Thomas Gage] and Earl Percy shall have the perusal of your Letter.

John Collins and Bourmaster had both been lieutenants on HMS Valiant years earlier. Collins had become commander of HMS Nautilus, which arrived in Boston harbor in early April.

Under the date of 20 April, Adm. Samuel Graves wrote in his Narrative:

The Captain of the Nautilus off the Magazine point, was directed to arm a flat bottomed Boat, and with the assistance of Boats from other Ships to take care that Guard should be rowed every night as high up the [Charles] River as possible.

In his later letter, Bourmaster discussed Gage’s quandary of how to deal with Boston’s civilian population. Was it safer to let them leave or to keep them in town to forestall a provincial attack, knowing most were hostile to the occupying army and had militia training?

Propositions have been made on the part of the General to the Select Men for disarming the Inhabitants but this I find they are unwilling to comply with; so that if we begin at the Lines we shall have it on both sides of our Ears they being at least 3000 strong in Town, with Arms in their possession; a pretty pass we are come to, Ah poor Old England how my heart feels for her present dishonourable situation—

Ultimately Gage and the selectmen reached a deal: once Bostonians had stored their firearms in Faneuil Hall, they could leave. Later Gage curtailed the departures, prompting complaints. Later still, Gen. George Washington grew suspicious of people leaving the town, worrying they were meant to spread smallpox or collect information.

Bourmaster shared his own idea for how to deal with this set of zealous civilians:

The following I have proposed as the Only Method to secure peace in the Town there are Churches and meetings sufficient to contain all those before mentiond, they with the Select Men, and Preachers, should be put in their at daylight in the Morning, their doors well secured, a strong guard round each, with Bagonets fixt; and then would I begine the Attack on Roxbury and Open a way again for us besieged Britons, but this is only a little presumption in an Old Valiant who becaus he has seen great things don expects to see such days again.

That plan was never implemented, of course.

Again, the surviving text of Bourmaster’s letters, as copied for the Marquess of Rockingham, was published in the William & Mary Quarterly in 1953.

“The Enthuseastic zeal with which those people have behaved”

Many British officers like Lt. John Bourmaster, R.N., shared an image of New Englanders as a bunch of religious zealots, eager to pick up Oliver Cromwell’s fight against the Crown.

I’m not saying he was all wrong in that, but it certainly tinged his reporting on the Battle of Lexington and Concord, which I’ve been quoting.

Again, Bourmaster was responsible for ferrying Lt. Col. Francis Smith’s troops across the Charles River at the start of their march but didn’t go with them. So these are stories Bourmaster had heard from army officers, not events he had personally seen:

The Enthuseastic zeal with which those people have behaved must convince every reasonable man what a difficult and unpleasent task General [Thomas] Gage has before him, even Weamin had firelocks one was seen to fire a Blunder bus between her Father, and Husband, from their Windows; there they three with an Infant Child soon suffered the fury of the day.

In another House which was long defended by 8 resolute fellows the Granadiers at last got possession when after having run their Bagonets into 7, the 8th continued to abuse them with all the moat like roge of a true Cromwellian. and but a moment before he quited this world apply’d such epethets as I must leave unmentioned

God of his Infinite mercy be pleased to restore peace and unanimity to those Countrys again for I never did nor can think that Arms will enforce obedience.

In publishing this document in the William & Mary Quarterly, J. E. Tyler guessed that “moat like roge” might mean “beast-like rage,” or be a transcription error. The sentiment seems clear.

The second anecdote looks like a description of the fight at the Jason Russell House in Arlington. The first doesn’t match any incident I can think of.

TOMORROW: Conditions inside Boston.

“The fire then commenced and fell heavy on our Troops”

The rest of Lt. John Bourmaster’s April 1775 account of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, which I started to quote yesterday, didn’t relate his personal experiences as a Royal Navy officer.

He didn’t, for example, write anything about the operation to evacuate regulars from Charlestown back to Boston on the night of 19–20 April. He didn’t mention Maj. John Pitcairn of the marines.

Instead, Bourmaster’s letter passed on what he‘d heard from British army officers. And of course the big message that those officers, up to Gen. Thomas Gage, wanted to put out was that the rebels had started it.

Bourmaster’s very first statement about the fighting was that locals shot first.

A firelock was snapt over a Wall by one of the Country people but did not go off, the next who pulld his triger wounded one of the light Infantry company of General [Studholme] Hodgsons or the Kings own.

Other sources, including Pitcairn, Ens. Jeremy Lister of the 10th, and Capt. John Barker of the 4th (King’s Own), said that a soldier in the 10th Regiment was wounded in the morning at Lexington. In this case, Bourmaster had false information.

The lieutenant never actually got around to describing the search in Concord or the shooting there. Instead, his letter continued:

the fire then commenced and fell heavy on our Troops, the Militia having posted them selves behind Walls, in houses, and Woods and had possession of almost every eminence or rising ground which Commanded the long Vale through which the King’s Troops were under the disagreeable necessity of passing in their return.

Colonel [Francis] Smith was wounded early in the Action and must have been cut Off with all those he commanded had not Earl Percy come to his relief with the first Brigade; on the Appearance of it our Almost conquer’d Granadiers and light Infantry gave three cheers and renew’d the defence with more spirits.

Lord Percys courage and good conduct on this occasion must do him immortal honour, upon taking the Command he Ordered the King’s own to flank on the right, and the 27th [actually the 47th] on the left, the R Welsh Fuseliers to defend the Rear and in this manner retreated for at least 11 Miles before he reached Charlestown—for they could not cross at Cambridge where the Bridge is, they haveing tore it Up, and fill’d the Town and houses with Arm’d Men to prevent his passage;

our loss in this small essay ammounts to 250 Kill’d wounded and Missing. and we are at present cept up in Boston they being in possession of Roxbury a little Village just befor our lines with the Royal and Rebel centinels within Musquet shot of each other. The fatigue which our people pass’d through the Day which I have described can hardly be belived, having march’d at least 45 Miles and the Light Companys perhaps 60,

In fact, even the regulars who went all the way out to James Barrett’s farm in Concord and back traveled less than forty miles that day.

Bourmaster also wrote:

A most amiable young man of General Hodgson’s fell that Day his name Knight brother to Knight of the 43 who was with us at Jamiaca.

This was Lt. Joseph Knight, killed and buried in Menotomy. Ezekiel Russell’s Salem Gazette agreed that Knight was “esteemed one of the best officers among the Kings troops.”

TOMORROW: Those crazy provincials.

“Landed them on a point of Marsh or Mudland”

Lt. John Bourmaster of the Royal Navy, introduced yesterday, played a crucial role in Gen. Thomas Gage’s expedition to Concord on 18–19 Apr 1775.

Bourmaster’s commander, Adm. Samuel Graves, wrote in his self-serving Narrative report about the navy’s role in that operation:

The Boats of the Squadron, by desire of the General were ordered to assemble along side the Boyne by 8 o’Clock in the Evening, and their Officers were instructed to follow Lieut. Bourmasters Direction. These Boats were to take in the Troops and land them in the Night at Phipps Farm; which being done they marched up the Country.

Bourmaster’s own account appears in his 23 Apr 1775 letter to George Rogers, secretary to Adm. Augustus Keppel. J. E. Tyler published the text of that letter in the William and Mary Quarterly in 1953, and I pointed out the connections to Bourmaster yesterday.

The lieutenant offered details about the first leg of the redcoats’ journey—across the Charles River:

On the 18th Instant between 11 and 12 0 Clock at Night I conducted all the Boats of the Fleet (as well Men a War as Transports) to the back part of Boston where I received the Granadiers and light Infantry amounting to 850 Officers and Men and Landed them on a point of Marsh or Mudland which is overflowed with the last quarter flood;

this Service I presume to say was performed with secrecy and quietness having Oars muffled and every necessary precaution taken, but the watchful Inhabitants whose houses are intermixed with the Soldiers Barracks heard the Troops Arms and from thence concluded that somthing was going on tho they could not conceive how or where directed

in consequence of this conception a light was shown at the top of a Church Stiple directing those in the Country to be on their guard.

The intention of this Expedition was to distroy some Guns and provision which were collected near Concord a Town 20 miles from where the Troops were landed, Colonel [Francis] Smith a Gallant Old Officer commanded this detachment and performd the above service.

Bourmaster’s contemporaries wrote of him as not having wealth or genteel education when he joined the navy. That’s reflected in his writing, which has non-standard spellings (“Men a War,” “Stiple”) and punctuation. To be sure, we’ve got a copy of the original, if not a copy of the copy.

Bourmaster’s account confirms the struggle between the British military and the Boston Patriots over control of information. Just as the lieutenant’s sailors rowed with “Oars muffled,” so did the two men conveying Paul Revere across the same river a little downstream. British officers recognized how the lights from the Christ Church steeple signaled the countryside. They didn’t know the man cued to ride by that signal would play little or no part in raising the alarm.

It’s not clear if Bourmaster knew the objective of the regulars’ march on 18 April or heard about it later, but this is yet another British source saying that goal was the “Guns and provision” in Concord and not Patriot leaders in Lexington.

TOMORROW: Who was to blame.

Who Wrote the “Account of Lexington”?

In 1953 J. E. Tyler published an article in the William and Mary Quarterly titled “An Account of Lexington in the Rockingham Mss. at Sheffield.” 

This account appeared in two letters, the first dated 23 Apr 1775 and the second written a short time later. They were addressed to a friend named “Rogers,” with whom the writer had served “at Jamaica,” and offered news and good wishes for “the Admiral.”

That appears to have been Adm. Augustus Keppel (1725–1786, shown here), who brought the letters (or copies of them) to the Marquess of Rockingham’s cottage in Wimbledon. Ultimately the marchioness filed those copies or further copies.

Tyler wrote: “it is the more unfortunate that the signatures, though copied along with the main text of the letters, have been heavily cancelled, since it is now virtually impossible to establish the identity of the writer.” The clues that remain show that that person:

• wrote from “Empress of Russia Boston April 23th.”
• signed “what appears to be the initial letter ‘J’” at the start of his name.
• described himself as “an Old Valiant.”
• planned also to write “to my precious Girls.”
• promised to show Rogers’s letter to “The General [Thomas Gage] and Earl Percy.”

Tyler then hazards a guess that the letter writer was the master of the troop transport Empress of Russia, listed in an Admiralty Office record from 1776 as John Crozier.

However, as reported yesterday, Crozier died in November 1774. He had been in command of the Empress of Russia, and his name might have lingered in some naval records, but he didn’t see the start of the war.

Documents in Gage’s papers confirm that the Empress of Russia was in Boston harbor from April 1775 to the end of the year, when it sailed to the Caribbean for supplies. The commander of the vessel in those months was Lt. John Bourmaster (1736–1807), agent for all the transports to Boston and thus a liaison between navy and army.

Bourmaster was a merchant seaman for most of the 1750s, passing the exam to become a Royal Navy lieutenant in late 1759. His first assignment was H.M.S. Valiant, commanded by Adm. Keppel from 1759 to 1764. Starting in late 1762, Keppel was in command of the Jamaica station. Keppel’s secretary was George Rogers, who would be on the Admiralty Board by the end of the war.

After a slow start, Bourmaster’s Royal Navy career also took off. He became a captain in 1777, a rear admiral in 1794, and a full admiral in 1804. The year 1797 saw the marriage of “Harriet, youngest daughter of Admiral John Bourmaster, of Titchfield”—meaning he had more than one daughter.

Thus, all the clues in those letters are consistent with the writer being Lt. John Bourmaster. 

The Barber and the Ship Captain

As I said yesterday, I searched for more information from American sources about the conflict between a New York barber and a British ship captain reported and illustrated in Britain in early 1775.

I couldn’t find any mention of that dispute in the New York press. I spotted no trace in American newspapers of a captain named “Crozer.” 

The British newspaper article claimed that “the worthy sons of liberty in solemn Congress assembled…voted and unanimously” to praise the barber. There was no New York Provincial Congress yet, so that could only mean the Continental Congress, which did no such thing.

For a while I wondered if this anecdote was completely fictional, made up to make the Americans look petty and hateful but then assumed to be true by some British readers. Slowly, however, I was able to nail down some surrounding details.

The barber in the print did exist. On 9 Feb 1769 “Jacob Vredenburgh, Peruke-maker,” was registered as a freeman of the city of New York.

Later that year, on 23 October, the banns were published for “Jacob Vredenburg” to marry Jannetje Brouwer at the Reformed Dutch Church. There were no surviving children from that marriage.

Vredenburgh shows up in records related to his wife’s family: at the baptism of a niece in 1771, as a co-executor with John Brower in November 1798, and in his own will proved in September 1800, with his wife (now called Jane) and John Brower among the executors.

There’s also a 1788 will of “John Vredenburgh, hairdresser, of New York City,” that names one heir as that man’s brother “Jacob Vredenburgh, of Elizabethtown, New Jersey, hairdresser,” so he may have moved out of the state for a while.

Furthermore, the captain in the print did exist. Or rather, had existed.

On 30 June 1774, the Massachusetts Spy printed this item:

Last Saturday arrived at Marblehead, the Schooner Dove, Ebenezer Parker from Newfoundland, who spoke with the ship Empress of Russia, John Crosier master, from Ireland, out six weeks bound to Boston with the 38th regiment on board.

The next day, that regiment arrived, along with the 5th and Adm. Samuel Graves’s flagship.

After the “Powder Alarm” on 2 September, Gen. Thomas Gage began moving all his troops in New York City up to Boston, too. The Empress of Russia might well have been part of that operation, putting Capt. John Crozier in New York in late September or early October, when he reportedly had his dispute with Vredenburgh. But then he would have headed back to Boston.

The Boston Evening-Post for 21 Nov 1774 listed among the people who had died in town:

Capt. Crozier, Commander of the Empress of Russia Transport Ship.

The records of King’s Chapel include the burial on 19 November of:

John Crozier / Captain of the King of Prussia Transport / [age] 51

(Empress of Russia—King of Prussia—all the same, right?)

Thus, less than two months after Jacob Vredenburgh allegedly kicked John Crozier out of his barber shop in New York, the captain died in Boston. By the time a satirical print was made to illustrate that story, he had been dead for nearly three months.

TOMORROW: A letter from a dead man?