“Arnold’s Defeat or Ultimate Victory?” Conference at Fort Ti, 9–10 Oct.

On 9–10 Oct 2026, Fort Tionderoga will host a Special 250th Conference on “Arnold’s Defeat or Ultimate Victory?: Perspectives on the 1776 Campaign,” covering the Battle of Valcour Island and surrounding events.

The venue explains:

The failure of the British to seize Ticonderoga in the fall of 1776 was a critical, vital victory for the Americans in the early years of the Revolutionary War—acknowledged even at the time. But who gets the credit for the year’s victory? Benedict Arnold and his lake fleet? Horatio Gates and the defenses of Ticonderoga and Mount Independence? Sharing new perspectives and new research from a variety of disciplines, our panelists will detail, and debate, the critical actions of the campaign to better understand the impact of October 1776.

The event starts with optional programs on Friday:

• 11 A.M.: Tour of Liberty Hill and the Outer Defenses of Fort Ticonderoga with Stuart Lilie, Vice President of Public History.
• 1:15 P.M.: Crewing a Bateau—Join the fort’s Maritime Trades staff, take an oar, and head out on Lake Champlain in a bateau.
• 3 P.M.: Ticonderoga’s Treasures: The 1776 Campaign on Lake Champlain with Dr. Matthew Keagle, Curator.

These programs have limited space and additional fees ranging from $35 to $50.

Here are the conference presentations scheduled for the Saturday conference:

• “Carleton’s Race to Ticonderoga: His Opponents and Why He Lost” by Don Hagist, editor of the Journal of the American Revolution.
• “Crafting Independence: The Work Behind the Battle of Valcour Island” by Kenneth Cohen, Chair of the Division of Military & Society at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.
• “‘To prevent Shipping coming past’: Ticonderoga’s Amphibious Fortifications” by Stuart Lilie, Vice President of Public History at Fort Ticonderoga.
• “The day must shortly come when these facts will be known to the World” by Eric Schnitzer, ranger and military historian at Saratoga National Historical Park.
• “‘An Active Part in Our Favour’: The Stockbridge Mohican Indians” by Mark R. Anderson, author of Down the Warpath to the Cedars.
• “The Archaeology of ‘Destruction Bay’ and the Events of October 13, 1776” by Christopher Sabick, executive director of the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum.

The sessions will end with a panel discussion collecting all the speakers and moderator Dr. Matthew Keagle, Curator of Fort Ticonderoga.

The fort also organized a Sunday cruise on Lake Champlain, following the maritime action, but that’s already sold out.

The presentations will be livestreamed so people can register to listen online. For more information, including cost, meals, and schedule, visit the conference webpage.

And while you’re there, also check out Fort Ti’s annual conference on the American Revolution, scheduled 26–27 September.

Identifying a Revolutionary Unknown Soldier at Camden

Last month the Independent newspaper reported on the identification of remains from the Revolutionary War using a relatively new method.

The story started on the battlefield at Camden, where on 16 Aug 1780 Gen. Cornwallis’s redcoats decisively defeated a Continental force under Gen. Horatio Gates.

The article says:

Archaeologists surveying the area in 2020 came across human bones protruding from the ground. Eventually, 14 sets of remains were identified — 12 of them Continental soldiers. The others were determined to be connected to the British side and were reburied at the battlefield.

The Richland County Coroner’s Office had worked with Texas-based FHD Forensics on modern-day cases and asked for their help.

The head of that organization is Allison Peacock. She and her associates use the immense databases of genetic code that have built up in recent decades to find unknown biological relatives for a range of reasons.

One of the American corpses was labeled “Camden 9B” as the second body retrieved from the ninth excavated burial.

The 12 Continentals were later reinterred [in 2023] with full military honors. Camden 9B’s headstone read: “UNKNOWN. REV WAR. BATTLE OF CAMDEN. AUG 16 1780.”

Meanwhile, samples from two of the soldiers were sent to Astrea Forensics in California for DNA extraction and sequencing. . . .

From a petrous portion of the temporal bone, a delicate structure behind the ear at the base of the skull, they successfully extracted DNA that generated [Camden 9B]’s entire genome. Peacock’s team then uploaded the data to FamilyTreeDNA and GEDmatch to trace three types of DNA matches: autosomal, X chromosome and Y chromosome.

“We got 20,000 matches to work with,” she said. “So, it was a lot to kind of comb through.”

Another clue was that when Camden 9B died, “the growth plates around his knees had not yet fully closed,” meaning he was still young.

The genetic markers found a match on the maternal line with Russ Hudson, a “retired federal agent in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.” He offered to join the search in archival sources.

Ultimately, the team found records of a Continental Army private from Anne Arundel County, Maryland, named John Pumphrey. He was in the right age range and had a family connection to Hudson.

Pumphrey’s exact birthdate is unknown, but those growth plates suggest he was between thirteen and fifteen years old when he enlisted in the 7th Maryland Regiment on 6 Jan 1777. He could sign his name only with an X.

As Historic Camden relates, Pumphrey’s regiment served at Brandywine, Germantown, Valley Forge, and Monmouth. He reenlisted on 28 Feb 1779, as shown in the paperwork above. The regiment spent the brutally cold winter of 1780 at Morristown.

In April 1780, the Maryland Line was sent south. The last part of their travels was a brutal trek from Cox’s Mill, North Carolina, to Camden, South Carolina—a difficult route with little food available along the way. Then came the battle for one of the British army’s main inland garrisons.

The skeleton doesn’t preserve clues to how Pvt. Pumphrey died. However, his brigade was part of an especially brutal fight with the 71st Highlanders, and the bodies were found in that part of the field.

Research continues on another of the bodies from the Camden field that had surviving D.N.A.,  now known only as 11A.

New Website Sharing a Lifelong Interest

A new online resource of information about the start of the Revolutionary War launched last month: J. Bohy Historical Consulting.

This is the website of Joel Bohy, expert on military artifacts and battlefield relics, local speaker and televised antiques expert, participant in both living history and archeological studies.

Because Joel Bohy grew up in Concord and still lives in Massachusetts, he has a particular interest in the opening months of the Revolutionary War. Which is, of course, the most interesting part.

I especially appreciate the Publications section of the site, with P.D.F. files of many articles (and links to a few behind publishers’ paywalls). These range from grunt-level recountings of the Battle of Lexington and Concord for general readers to technical analyses of bullet strikes and metal detecting on battlefields.

I particularly recommend “Warlike Preparations of Every Sort: Stores in Concord, Massachusetts, on the Eve of the Revolution,” published in Man at Arms for the Gun and Sword Collector in October 2025.

There’s also a Media Appearances section of recorded lectures, podcast episodes, and news stories. With, no doubt, more to come.

Notices of The Road to Concord, Old and New

Back in 2017, the Writer’s Bone website featured a very complimentary review of The Road to Concord by site co-founder Daniel Ford.

I thought I’d boasted about that, but I must have been more modest than usual. So I’m going to resurrect it now:

Daniel: J.L. Bell is a Massachusetts writer who runs the terrific history blog, “Boston 1775.” His book, The Road to Concord: How Four Stolen Cannon Ignited the Revolutionary War, features everything that makes Bell’s site great: accessible writing style, innovative historical storytelling, and a fresh perspective on events that occurred nearly two-and-a-half centuries ago.

The Road to Concord focuses on how four stolen cannons (that British general Thomas Gage was desperately, and perhaps foolishly, trying to recover) may have helped spark the American Revolution. The narrative features colonial hijinks, high political drama, and Revolutionary War heroes not often discussed alongside Washington, Adams, and Jefferson. The Road to Concord is refreshingly original and structured like a thriller. Learning about what led the British and the colonies to war has never been this much fun.

Since Ford is a fiction writer, I was especially pleased by hius remarks on the book’s narrative structure.

In addition, folks have been emailing me that an episode of History’s Greatest Mysteries released this month on the History Channel discusses The Road to Concord. I’m too confused by the state of television today to find the full episode, though.

The Return of Benjamin Davis

In late 1783, Benjamin Davis, Sr., and Benjamin Davis, Jr., sailed out of New York harbor, their second evacuation to Canada in the course of the American Revolution.

Father and son bought a land grant in Nova Scotia from Samuel Barnard and helped to establish the new town of Shelburne, continuing to work as merchants. Benjamin, Jr., went to London the next year, presumably to make contacts.

In the fall of 1786, Benjamin, Sr., was appointed a judge of the court of oyer and terminer in Nova Scotia. During the British Empire’s wars with Napoleonic France, Davis administered prize money from privateers; the signature above comes from one of those documents.

I’ve been frustrated in my efforts to learn more about the enslaved man captured and held with the Davises in 1776–77. Canadian records show Benjamin Davis continued to be a slave owner. In October 1789, he sold the Rev. John Agnew claim to “four negroes named Prince, and Bella his wife, and two children named Peter and William.”

At some point the Davises quietly moved back to Boston, where their family roots were, even though in 1778 Massachusetts had banished the older man by name and prepared to confiscate his property.

Boston newspapers reported that Benjamin Davis, Sr., died on 14 Sept 1805. Probate judge Thomas Dawes, Jr., appointed an administrator for his estate, which was found to consist entirely of household furniture worth just $101.

Benjamin, Jr., sold the Shelburne land in 1809. On 31 Dec 1836, the Boston Courier and Columbian Centinel reported the death three days before of “Benjamin Davis, Esq., aged 81.” The newspapers stated:

he was the last male descendant (of the name) in Boston of Capt. William Davis, an early settler, and well known character in the colony history.

I hadn’t planned to spend two weeks on Benjamin Davis, but the remarks from 1776 about him and gingerbread piqued my curiosity, and then there were more threads to pull.

Benjamin Davis, Baker?

The record of Benjamin Davis, Sr.’s appearance before the Loyalists Commission in Canada states of his time in New York:

He was then a Baker in Govert. Service.

That detail has gone into every profile of Davis written from that source. Articles have discussed Davis as an example of the baking profession.

That puzzles me because nothing in Davis’s past shows any connection to baking. (Gingerbread, yes. Running a bakery, no.)

In Boston, Davis was a general import merchant, usually dealing in dry goods. He also invested in distilling, whaling, and other enterprises. Whigs denigrated him as a “Huckster,” not a baker. The goods he lost at Boston included “Iron, Tea, Liquor, Stockings, Haberdashery…”

Later the same Loyalists Commission document quoted Davis as saying that when he was captured on his voyage to New York in 1776 “He was then going into Trade on advice of Sir W. How.” The term “Trade” meant general mercantile trading. The cargo Davis was bringing to the city? Wine, not flour or bread.

An advertisement in the 13 Dec 1777 Royal Gazette shows that Benjamin Davis had opened a store in New York “in Queen-Street, the corner of King-Street.” He offered Madeira wine, tea, candles, sugar, cloth, clothing, blankets, and “An assortment of childrens toys.”

On 23 May 1778 “Benjamin Davis, & Son,” advertised in the Royal Gazette from “their Store, No. 229, Queen-Street, the Corner of King-Street.“ They sold cloth, garments, notions, and wine.

In 1779 the father and son offered “A neat and elegant assortment of BOOKS.” In 1781 they had “Four hundred gallons choice fresh South Carolina ORANGE JUICE.” In 1782 they advertised “Garden SEEDS” shipped from London. Several of their newspaper ads offered the cloth and trimmings for military uniforms. But never bread.

That firm’s advertisements disappeared after August 1783 as the British military left New York. That’s why I’m confident these merchants were Benjamin Davis, Sr. and Jr., from Boston. (Because of course there were a bunch of men with that name in Revolutionary America.)

It’s conceivable that Benjamin Davis, Sr., provided some capital for a bakery that supplied the British military in New York, but there’s no sign he was involved in running that operation. And I wonder if the word “Baker” was correctly transcribed.

TOMORROW: Benjamin Davis, to the end.

In Exchange for John Callender

In June 1777, as quoted here, the Massachusetts General Court voted to send imprisoned Loyalist Benjamin Davis, Jr., with his father to New York on condition that the royal authorities send back John Callender in exchange.

Callender (1747-1797) had been one of four provincial officers ordered to lead their artillery companies onto the field at the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Only one of those officers, Samuel Russell Trevett, actually stayed through the whole battle doing damage to the regulars. Only one—again, Trevett—kept any of the provincials’ valuable cannon from being captured.

However, two of the other officers had the advantage of being related to Col. Richard Gridley, commander of the artillery. They were Maj. Scarborough Gridley, the colonel’s son, and Capt. Samuel Gridley, his nephew.

Eventually both young Gridleys were removed from the ranks. But that took months, and in July 1775 the new commander-in-chief, Gen. George Washington, had to make an example of someone. So John Callender was cashiered in a very public way.

Callender carved out a second chance for himself. He went to New York in the fall of 1776 as a gentleman volunteer or “cadet” attached to the artillery company commanded by Capt.-Lt. John Johnson (c. 1753–1818, self-portrait shown above).

During the Battle of Brooklyn, Johnson was “desperately wounded,” in the words of Henry P. Johnston. Callender took command of the company and “fought his piece on Long Island until the enemy’s bayonets were at his breast.” Both officers and their men became prisoners.

Johnson was exchanged in May 1777 but was in no physical shape to return to the army. He became Boston’s leading portrait painter during and immediately after the war.

Callender was awarded a Continental Army commission as a captain-lieutenant, dated 1 Jan 1777. And the Massachusetts legislature tried to get him back, as its June resolution showed.

But that didn’t work. Callender was still a prisoner in New York in September. And I rather doubt Benjamin Davis, Jr., returned to Massachusetts to be locked up again.

I suspect the British authorities didn’t see a fair trade in exchanging a Continental officer captured in battle for a young man, barely of age, who just happened to be with his father on a merchant ship when it was seized. It’s possible the Crown freed another young American man whose identity I haven’t found, and it’s possible the issue of Benjamin, Jr.’s trade faded away.

In September 1777, John Callender’s wife Hepzibah asked the Massachusetts legislature to approve another swap for her husband. The man to be freed from the Boston jail this time was John Hill, a Loyalist captured during the evacuation in the spring of 1776.

The General Court approved that swap on 17 September. I presume it actually happened because by the end of the year Callender and Hill were both back on their own sides.

In subsequent years Hill served as “a Capt. of Marines on board a Privateer for 8 months, than as Capt. of Marines in the Jason.” Then with his brother Richard he was inspector of the ferry between Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Callender remained on duty in the Continental artillery force for the rest of the war, mustering out in 1784.

TOMORROW: The Davises in New York.

The Capture and Release of Capt. Samuel Richards

By 1777, both sides of the Revolutionary War held a significant number of prisoners.

Some of those people were soldiers or sailors captured in military operations while others had been detained as politically suspect.

American authorities were ready to arrange exchange prisoners as long as the British released someone of equal importance.

There were disputes about what that meant, of course. In July, a Boston crowd forcibly prevented Dr. Benjamin Church, suspected traitor and spy, from being traded for Dr. James McHenry, a young military surgeon who had already been paroled.

The Massachusetts government balked at releasing the Loyalist merchant Benjamin Davis, Sr., until a petition linked his case to Samuel Richards of Norwalk, Connecticut, as quoted yesterday.

Richards (1716–1777) lived in the village of Rowayton. He was a committee man clamping down on local Loyalism and captain of the militia company that guarded the shore.

Another Norwalk man, Stephen Hoyt (c. 1750–1809), had crossed to Long Island, New York, to work for the Crown. He cruised the coast in a sloop, picking up recruits for a Loyalist regiment called the Prince of Wales’s American Volunteers.

On the rainy night of 16 March, Capt. Hoyt led about twenty men into Rowayton to raid Richards’s farm. He captured fifteen armed men, including Capt. Richards, three Continental soldiers on leave, and eleven local guards.

Hoyt took those prisoners to New York, where they were locked up in the Provost jail. On 10 April the city’s Royal American Gazette praised the raid: “Such excursions as these will keep the Rebels in constant trepidation & give life & Spirit to our new made Soldiers & Officers.”

In May, Richards’s brother petitioned the Massachusetts General Court to exchange Benjamin Davis, Sr., for Capt. Richards. The legislature approved that plan on 2 June.

Davis traveled to New York. Samuel Richards returned to Norwalk but died very soon after, on 23 June. His gravestone appears above, courtesy of Find a Grave.

TOMORROW: Benjamin, Jr.

“Leave for his brother Benjamin, his son and servant, to depart this State”

As the year 1777 began, the Loyalist Benjamin Davis remained in the Boston jail along with his son and an enslaved servant.

Davis refused to petition the Massachusetts General Court for his release since he didn’t want to recognize the independent state government. But his religious scruples didn’t stop his brother Edward.

On 4 February, Massachusetts Council member Benjamin Austin came into the assembly chamber with

a petition of Edward Davis, of Boston, in behalf of his brother, Benjamin Davis, and son, prisoners in Boston Goal, praying that they may be permitted to go with a cartel to Newport

A “cartel” was the mechanism for a prisoner exchange.

The legislature named a joint committee of Austin and two House members to consider the request. The next day, that committee recommended “That the petitioner have leave to withdraw the same.” The General Court approved. That was a polite way of saying no.

On 18 February, jailer Joseph Otis listed his prisoners. Among the men noted as “being Enemical to the States” was Benjamin Davis but not his son. Benjamin, Jr., might have been paroled into the town, or at twenty years old he might still have been too young to merit his own listing.

On 6 March, the House noted

A petition of Edward Davis, praying leave for his brother Benjamin, his son and servant, to depart this State, in a cartel vessel bound for Halifax.

This time the response was “Read and dismissed.” That was a blunt way of saying no.

A newly elected legislature took their seats in May. Even as the House was getting itself in order

Nathan Cushing, Esq; brought down a Petition of James Richards, of Norwalk, praying that Mr. Benjamin Davis, a Prisoner in Boston, may be exchanged for his Brother Capt. Samuel Richards, a close Prisoner in New York Goal.

Again, the lawmakers referred this to a committee.

On 2 June, the Massachusetts House and Council reached this agreement:

Resolved that the prayer of the within petition be granted, & that Benjamin Davis now a Prisoner in the Goal in the town of Boston, be exchanged for Capt. Samuel Richards a prisoner in New York, provided that proper care be taken that sd Davis does not carry any papers with him & is cautiously sarched when deliver’d up. And it is also

Resolved that Benjamin Davis junr. Son of the aforesaid Davis, now a Prisoner in Boston Goal be exchanged for Mr John Callender a Prisoner in New York, provided due caution be taken that he does not carry any papers with him & is properly sarched when deliver’d up. But if said Callender or some person of equal rank should not be procured in Exchange for said Davis that said Davis be returned to this State.

Two days later, according to what Davis later told the British government, he was let out of the Boston jail. By the end of the year, it appears, the Davises were established in New York.

TOMORROW: The other side of those exchanges.

“‘Subject’ to an authority founded on the late Declaration of Independence”

During the siege of Boston, Benjamin Davis, Sr., signed up for the Loyal American Association, which appears to have been a pro-Crown militia.

We have these companies’ rolls but little other information on what they actually did, if anything. But membership is a useful yardstick for Loyalism.

According to Todd Braisted’s On-Line Institute for Advanced Loyalist Studies website, Davis was listed as a sergeant in the Third Company, headed by Adino Paddock. Hopestill Capen, a fellow Sandemanian, was also a fellow sergeant.

Benjamin Davis, Jr., joined the Second Company under Capt. Abijah Willard at the rank of private. He was around nineteen years old, thus of prime military age.

In 1776 both father and son evacuated Boston with the British military. Then they headed back to New York to be part of the British military’s return to the newly-declared independent U.S. of A. After their ship was captured, both were locked up in the Boston jail starting in July.

In the Massachusetts state archives, and published in Peter Force’s American Archives, is a long letter dated 10 Oct 1776 to James Bowdoin, who happened to be a senior member of the Massachusetts Council. The signature as transcribed was “Benj’a Davis, Jun.” However, the writer refers to “my son” and “the property which I left in my store in Boston, in March past, worth about a thousand pounds sterling,” so it must have come from Benjamin, Sr.

This letter lays out Benjamin Davis’s religious motivation for remaining loyal to the royal government, to the extent that he refused to recognize the authority of his captors, even to ask for his release:

There is a proverb that it will be well for me to attend to, as it is applicable to one in my present situation: “The fear of man bringeth a snare.” [Proverbs, 29:25] I consider myself now to be wholly in the power of the people, and that there is no legal authority for me to apply to for relief. The present distressed situation I am in, and the method pointed out to me in order to get relieved, are such as makes it necessary for me to be much on my guard, lest I get ensnared.

I am bound by God’s law to “be subject to the higher power;” [Romans 13:1] and I have much more to dread from the disobedience of his commands than I can have to fear from those who may be offended at me because I cannot in conscience be “subject” to an authority founded on the late Declaration of Independence. I am very sorry I am placed in such a situation, as though designed to compel me to take such a step for my enlargement as would be in me a breach of God’s law.

To compel me to act or do, contrary to the dictates of my conscience, any one thing that shall carry with it any authority founded on the Declaration of Independence, until the same be recognized and fully settled so as to become my duty to be “subject,” would be the same, and I see no odds, as if I was in Spain or Portugal and committed to the Inquisition as a heretick, and they were to inflict on me the most cruel tortures in order to compel me to deny the faith.

I’m sure Bowdoin didn’t expect that!

Davis pointed out that he wasn’t demanding his confiscated property since doing so would be another form of recognizing the local courts. He probably knew that also meant fewer locals would see him as an enemy.

The letter continued:

I profess myself a liege subject of his Majesty King George III, founded on this principle, that all who are born within his dominions or realm he has a claim upon as his rightful and lawful subjects; that the Provinces and Colonies in North America make a part of his realm.

I was born in this Province; of course allegiance is due from me to him, nor can it be dissolved but by his consent, or by a revolution taking place within the Kingdom, or the Government fixed and established, in which case it would be dissolved. I am bound by God’s law to “honour the King,” and to be subject to the legislative authority of Great Britain as “the higher power.”

I cannot, in any way, be aiding or assisting in any plan or scheme for bringing about any revolution in the Empire upon any pretence whatsoever, without breaking a positive law of God. But whenever any revolution does take place within the Kingdom, and the Government becomes fixed and established, be the cause that brings it about what it may, I shall then be bound in conscience to be “subject” to its authority, for they will then become the “higher power” in the Apostle’s sense.

That’s Sandemanian doctrine.

Davis said he didn’t desire “being abroad” in Boston, lest people think he was trying to convert them or spy on them; that “would be as unbecoming as to be an informer against my neighbour, who may be concerned in an illicit trade.” But he also said he hoped to “take lodgings in town.”

Finally, Davis suggested that “my son, together with myself and servant, could be exchanged for any prisoners in the hands of his Excellency General [William] Howe, at New-York.”

TOMORROW: Petitions.

The Losses of Benjamin Davis

In the newspaper reports on the May 1775 fire on Boston’s Town Dock, Benjamin Davis’s name appears only as the man who used to use (“improve”) the building where the fire started.

Davis had “Let General Robenson [James Robertson] have his store for the Brit Troops in the year 1775,” as he told the Loyalists Commission years later.

In his testimony to that commission Davis said he’d lost a great deal of property in the fire: “his story & wharf & Goods in the cellar were destroyed to amount of £900.”

In addition, Davis said that he was out:

• £56 in whaling supplies on a ship “the Rebels” seized in Salem
• £375 more in goods left behind in Boston in March 1776
• £200 in household furniture in Boston
• about £3,666 in uncollected debt due to him through his old partnership with his brother Edward
• £700 in “Money & Wine” confiscated when he was captured in July 1776

Davis also said he “Was robbed of £400 on his way to Halifax,” but I can’t tell whether that was in 1776 or at the end of the war.

Most of Davis’s commission hearing involved discussing financial details like a mortgage or the value of certain land. He asked to be compensated for a total of £4,865 in losses, according to E. Alfred Jones’s The Loyalists of Massachusetts.

The commissioners awarded Davis only £300, suggesting they thought his claims were too high or too poorly documented, and/or that he had already been compensated enough through his wartime business with the government.

TOMORROW: Junior.

“May God preserve this second Sodom”

On 25 May 1775, one week after the New-England Chronicle’s initial, hazy report on the fire that started in the 65th Regiment’s barracks, printers Samuel and Ebenezer Hall returned to the subject with a longer dispatch.

This article started by summarizing the account of how the fire started and listing a few damaged buildings. It continued:

The following Letter contains an Account of the Transactions of the Military at the Fire; and will give the Public some Idea of the present wretched Police of that once well governed Town.

Extract of a Letter from Boston.

“I propose to give you a circumstantial Account of the late Fire, previous to which please to observe, that for ten Days past, a Report has been propagated, that the Liberty Party intended to set Fire to the Town in different Places as soon as the greater Part of them had got out.

The General [Thomas Gage] took the Alarm, and took the Engines under Guard, and appointed new Captains; the late Engine Men took umbrage at it; but to the Point.---

I being informed that Barrack was on Fire, ran through the Street crying Fire, (as no Bells rang) but was stopped by a Man who told me it was the Officer’s Order not to cry Fire, one having threatened to beat the Man’s Brains out that did. The Drums all this Time beating to Arms.

When I came to the Fire I found no engine there. Applying to one of the late Engine Men to know the Reason, was informed that he had applied for the Engine, but the Bayonet was pointed at him, and he was told that he must apply to some Officer for an Order before he could have it.

After this fatal Delay the Engines appeared with the new appointed Captains and military Firewards, and a miserable figure they cut, the former not knowing how to obey if the latter had known how to command.---

Upon the whole, it appears to me as plain as the meridian Sun, had the Engines been on the old Footing, the Fire would have been put out, and *twenty thousand Pounds Sterling Loss prevented. Let that be as it may, I will venture to say, had the Fire broke out in the Center of the Town it would have laid it in Ashes, in the Direction it took to the Water. May God preserve this second Sodom from the Fate of the First.”

* The whole Loss is thought to be £40,000 Sterling.

After that Hall printed the complete list of property losses that had already appeared in the Newport Mercury and other papers. That list included: “50 Barrels of Flour, belonging to the Donation Stock, destroyed.” That stock was food donated to feed the poor of Boston since the previous year’s Port Bill.

That contemporaneous account was rewritten for the Saturday Morning Transcript of 15 Mar 1834 under the headline “Fire Reminiscences: No XVI.” The best new line put into the original voice was: “I asked the reason of such extraordinary delay, and was told by an Engineman that he had been to his Engine, but the bayonets were too thick.”

That text in turn was printed with small changes in Arthur Wellington Brayley’s A Complete History of the Boston Fire Department in 1889.

As a first-person account, it was more dramatic than the list of burned buildings alone. At the same time, the writer and printers had a political message about how military occupation was damaging the community.

TOMORROW: Back to Benjamin Davis.

Spreading the News of the Spread of a Fire

We can see the spread of news in the spring of 1775 through articles on the fire in Boston on the night of 17–18 May 1775.

The first printed report appeared in Samuel Hall’s Cambridge-based New-England Chronicle on 18 May, in the middle of other local news:

A terrible Fire broke out in Boston about 9 o’Clock last Evening, and raged a long Time. We hear it began just above the Draw Bridge, and burnt along the Town-Dock. A great Number of Buildings are doubtless consumed; but it is not possible to collect the Particulars for this Paper.

That same dire but vague paragraph was reprinted in Hartford on 22 May, Portsmouth on 26 May, and Philadelphia on 29 May.

Ebenezer Watson’s Connecticut Courant of Hartford confirmed that report in the 22 May issue by also quoting “a Letter from a Gentlemen in Cambridge…dated May 18”:

They had a great Fire in Boston last Night---it appeared to be between King-Street and the Market---it continued all night, and is not yet extinguished. What has really happened, is to us uncertain, as yet.

James Rivington chose to run the latter item in his 25 May New-York Gazetteer.

Meanwhile, on 22 May Solomon Southwick’s Newport Mercury offered an extract from “a manuscript account of the fire which happened in Boston last Wednesday night”:

The fire began in the barracks, under the arch formerly improved by Benjamin Davis, about half after eight o’clock, 17th May.—The soldiers were receiving some cartridges, by which means one took fire, and communicated to many more, which immediately set fire to the room.

That account then listed many property owners starting with John Hancock and including “a cooper’s shop, owned by Eliakim Hutchinson, adjoining the town dock, improved for barracks.” It concluded:

Instead of ringing the bells as usual, the soldiers beat to arms, by which means the people were in great confusion, not being used to such signals in time of fire.

N.B. The inhabitants took particular care to save the goods in Mr. Hancock’s store.

Curiously, in his 26 May New-Hampshire Gazette Daniel Fowle printed a version of that same detailed report on page 1 even as on page 3 he ran the New-England Chronicle’s first story saying it was “not possible to collect the Particulars for this Paper.”

John Holt put the “manuscript account” in his New-York Journal on 1 June with the dateline “CAMBRIDGE, May 12”—an obvious error since the fire hadn’t yet occurred then. Presumably Holt’s shop should have printed 19, 21, or 22 May, getting one digit wrong or transposing them.

No newspaper was published in Cambridge on those dates, suggesting Holt indeed took that text from a manuscript, not from a preceding newspaper. In addition, that text never appeared in the New-England Chronicle, the only newspaper then published out of Cambridge.

That strongly suggests that the Patriot authorities in Cambridge, perhaps Boston town officials in exile, sent their own quasi-official report on the fire out to newspapers in other colonies.

TOMORROW: A more pointed description.

“The 65th lost their Arms, Cloathing, and everything”

Yesterday I quoted the first newspaper account of the fire at the 65th Regiment’s barracks on the Town Dock, rented from the Loyalist merchant Benjamin Davis.

Here are some more accounts from the town, starting with Lt. John Barker’s journal entry for 18 May:

About 9 oclock last night a fire broke out in the Barracks of the 65th Regt. on a Wharf near the Market: every house on the Wharf, amounting to 41, was burnt to the Ground, and most of the things in them; the 65th lost their Arms, Cloathing, and everything; and the 47th has lost 4 Companies cloathing; the loss altogether is considerable as they were all stores on the Wharf and full of Goods. – A chest of Bullets was found in [John] Hancock’s store.

Coll. [James] Abercrombie Adjt. Genl., lately arrived from England, going up Cambridge river this morning in a Man of War’s Boat was fired upon by several of the Rebels from the Banks; several balls went thro’ the boat but nobody was hurt; they made the best of their way back, and I don’t hear that he has been as fond of reconnoitring since.

Detachments from the different Corps were sent to extinguish the fire, which had began to break out again; in 4 or 5 hours they effected it.

Merchant John Rowe put in his journal:

17 May … About Eight of Clock A Terrible Fire Broke Out in the Barracks on Treats Wharff Occupied by the 65th Regiment. it was Occasiond by Accident or rather from Great Carelessness — it destroyd 33 Stores on Dock Square — Mine was in Great Danger I thought it So & therefore removd Great part of my Effects — from thence. it continued untill half past One with Progress — The Officers Behavd Very Well

The Cloathing of 4 Companies belonging to the 47th. Regimt was burnt & Some Fire Arms Lost

18 May Thursday Warm Weather W So. W — The People in General very Busy in Collecting the Effects that were Sav'd Out of the Fire

Rumors were more dire, as usual. From Salem, Nathaniel Appelton wrote: “There has been a very great fire at Boston last night don’t yet learn the particulars but in generall that it broke out near draw-bridge & consumed many buildings; some say 30, some say 100, oh poor Boston!”

In fact, this fire appears to have been confined to a central business district. Although lots of warehouses and stores were destroyed, along with the goods inside them, no private homes were lost—just the 65th Regiment’s quarters.

TOMORROW: Newspaper coverage.