While exploring the fictionalized account of the early military career of Jacob Frost, I mentioned his younger brother, Dr. Joshua Frost.
Dr. Frost graduated from Harvard College in 1793. The university still holds his drawing of the lunar eclipse that would occur on 14 Feb 1794. Massachusetts was on the edge of the viewing area while states outside of New England got no sight of this eclipse.
The town of Stoneham, previously known as Charlestown End, was incorporated in 1725. A vote in 1726 provided for the building of a 1,440-square-foot meetinghouse. First Church itself was not founded until July 1729. Their first pastor was Rev. James Osgood who was called in October 1728, and ordained and installed in September 1729. Osgood served until his death in 1746 and was replaced by Rev. John Carnes, who was dismissed from his position in 1757.Despite distractions, my eye was caught by the name of the Rev. John Carnes. A few years back, I named him as Gen. George Washington’s first paid spy. However, that was nearly twenty years after Carnes’s contentious tenure at Stoneham.
John Searl succeeded John Carnes in 1758/59, followed by the ordination of John Cleaveland in 1785. Cleaveland’s ministry began amicably and he continued in the town and church's favor until the death of his wife in 1793. After his wife’s death, Cleaveland married Elizabeth Evans, his housekeeper, which created tensions in the town. While the church chose to support Cleaveland, the town did not, and both Cleaveland and the church building itself were targets of the town’s ire. An ecclesiastical council called late September 1794 dissolved Cleaveland’s relationship with the town and church.
I have year after year desired you to consider me with regard to my Salary, but notwithstanding this, and notwithstanding I have sunk by ye fall several Hundred Pounds, I have never had since my ordination but a poor pitiful consideration of £50 Old Ternor.Carnes lasted seven more years at Stoneham before asking to be dismissed. He published a newspaper essay about the conflict, prompting a town meeting vote to respond. Despite that friction, Carnes secured another pulpit at Rehoboth—but that lasted even less time. Finally he opened a shop in Boston, his last career before becoming a spy.
Whatever you think of it, gentlemen, you have been guilty of great Injustice & oppression and have withheld from your minister more than is meet, not considering what you read, Prov. 11, 24, 25, which Verses run thus. There is that scattereth and yet Increaseth, and there is yt witholdeth more than is meet but it tendeth to poverty. The liberal soul shall be made fat; and he yt watereth shall be watered also himself.
You have never made good your contract with your minister, and was it not for some of his good Friends in this Town and other Places, he must have suffered. Time has been when I have had no corn nor meal in my House & when I have wanted many other necessaries and havent had one Forty shillings in ye World, nor yet Thirty shillings, and when I have been obliged to live by borrowing; and this is ye case now.
But I shall say no more about my circumstances and your Injustice and oppression. What I desire of you now is that you would at this meeting act like honest men and make good your contract that you would make such an addition to my Salary for the present year as that I may be able to subsist. I desire nothing that is unreasonable, make good what you first voted me and I shall be easy. I remain your friend and servant, John Carnes.
P. S. Gentlemen—Please to send me word before your meeting is over what you have done, yt I may send you a Line or two in order to let you know I am easy with what you done or not; for if I cant get a Support by the ministry I must pursue something else; must betake myself to some other business and will immediately do it.
During the Revolutionary War, the British occupied Newport, Rhode Island, for nearly three years—a time that dramatically changed the city. Prior to the war, Newport was the fifth-largest city in the American colonies and was experiencing a Golden Age of wealth. But beginning in December 1776, British troops arrived, and the course of Newport’s future was dramatically altered. Much of the population left, and those who remained struggled; tensions between local Loyalists and British troops grew during each year of the three-year occupation.The activity takes place from 12:00 noon to 5:00 P.M. The main action in the public areas is free. It looks like these include:
The afternoon program will open with a heated argument between two gentlemen who favor the Crown, and will close with the capture of General Richard Prescott.
In 1797 Major General Banastre Tarleton was ending his relationship with the actress and courtesan Mary Robinson (before Banastre she was better known as the Perdita to the Prince of Wales’ Florizel). The diarist Joseph Farington recorded on the 2nd May 1797 that Banastre and Mary had separated due to his designs on her daughter ‘who is now 21.’ Maria Elizabeth Robinson, the daughter of Mary and Thomas Robinson, the husband from whom she had separated many years before, had been born in October 1774 so was actually a year older than the diarist thought.Murden dug up more about Banina Georgiana Tarleton and others in her circle, though she wasn’t able to reach a firm conclusion about the baby’s mother.
In December 1798 Banastre married Susan Priscilla Bertie, illegitimate daughter and heiress of his former friend Robert Bertie, 4th Duke of Ancaster, who had been brought up by her titled grandmother and her aunt Lady Cholmondeley and who was almost a quarter of a century her husband’s junior.
And at some point around his split from Mary and before his marriage to Susan Priscilla, Banastre was to father an illegitimate daughter, named in his honour and for his friend the Prince, as Banina Georgiana Tarleton. Born on the 19th December 1797, the little girl was not baptized until the 26th May 1801, at the Old Church in Saint Pancras, her mother simply named as Kolina on the baptism register.
This girl had but a short life, almost anonymous until a notice of her death appeared at the age of just twenty years on the 12th April 1818. If her birth date (which is given in the parish register entry of her baptism) is correct, then she must have been conceived around the middle of March 1797, and Banastre appears to be resident in London at that time. Interestingly, the only other woman he is linked with by the press in 1797, other than Mary Robinson, was her daughter.
Mary Robinson’s meteoric rise to fame began in 1776 with her dazzling performance on the London stage as Juliet, and in 1779 with her spirited rendering of Perdita in David Garrick’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. The latter representation captivated the Prince of Wales (the future George IV), and an infamous romance between the newly styled “Perdita” and “Florizel” ensued.TOMORROW: Tarleton and the Robinsons.
Like many starlets today, her love life became a source of scandal and intrigue. When the Prince’s affection waned, Robinson left the stage and travelled to France. She befriended Marie Antoinette and was courted by the wealthiest man in Europe, the Duke de Chartres. In 1782, after her return from the Continent, Robinson indulged in romances with the dashing young dragoon Colonel Banastre Tarleton, a leading commander of British troops in the war against the American colonies, and Charles James Fox, the charismatic leader of the Whig party.
Robinson’s stage career, though brief (she retired from the boards at the close of the 1779-1780 season), was a tour de force. Her performances—both as an actress and a mistress—earned her widespread acclaim and notoriety. . . . But while Robinson’s acting and amours sparked her popularity, it was her fashion sense and style that kept the flame ablaze. By decorating herself in stunning confections known as the “Perdita Hood,” the “Robinson hat for Ranelagh,” the “Perdita handkerchief,” and the “Robinson gown,” she transformed herself into one of the foremost fashion icons of her day and sent the stylish set into a frenzy.
Fox and Elizabeth did not start out as lovers. They had a decade long platonic friendship before they became lovers. After their love affair began, one person asked Fox why he was suddenly absent so much from the gentleman’s club he attended called Brooks’s. He supposedly replied:Can this marriage be saved? See Walton’s full article for the full story.
“You know I have pledged myself to the public to keep a strict eye on Lord Shelburne’s motions; and that is my sole motive for being so much in Berkeley-square; and that, you may tell my friends, in the sole reason they have not seen me at Brookes’s [sic].”Fox had always been considered a rake, a drinker, and a gambler. Moreover, he was a notorious womanizer. . . . If Elizabeth planned to have a temporary fling with Fox, it soon turned long-lasting and exclusive. The exclusivity soon caused her financial problems and when she attempted to end her relationship with Fox, Fox would not allow it as he was too smitten.
“I have examined myself and know that I can better abandon friends, country, everything than live without Liz.”Fox’s gay and frivolous lifestyle ended when he married Elizabeth secretly on 28 September 1795. . . . because of Elizabeth’s past, news of the marriage would cause a scandal and so Fox felt that he could not introduce her into society (supposedly she also insisted that he not do so).
It took seven years before he formally introduced Elizabeth as his wife.
John Adams’ reputation as a reactionary proponent of American aristocracy emerged from the bitter political disputes of the 1790s, when the norms and structures of the new republic were still being shaped. Thomas Jefferson first promoted the hypothesis that Adams had been swayed from the path of revolutionary republicanism by his time as ambassador in the courts of Europe. Mercy Otis Warren repeated the claim in her anti-Federalist history of the revolution. Most historians since, at least those who have not specialised in Adams’ thought, broadly accepted the Jeffersonian narrative. But it was false. John Adams never was a friend of aristocracy. In fact, he was its most vigilant and perceptive critic. . . .So Adams might have been more of a critic of the aristocracy on paper than in practice.
Whether it was best described as aristocracy or oligarchy, Ryerson and Mayville agree that the primary quality of this dangerous grouping was its money. The revolution, and especially the exigencies of the war, had helped create “a new, enlarged, aggressive aristocracy of wealth,” transforming Boston and other cities in the new republic (Ryerson, p. 243). Yet Adams could be slippery with his definition. As Ryerson emphasises, aristocracy implied a quality rather than a quantity—a distinction which fits Adams’ approach. What mattered was not the precise membership of the category, but the processes that created it. Mayville, following C. Wright Mills, pins Adams as a theorist of the “power elite.” We might simply call it the ruling class. . . .
While Ryerson’s account embeds Adams’ political thought deep in the context of his own life and writings, it does not pay much attention to other thinkers. Mayville’s book, while much shorter, gives us a better sense of the authors with whom Adams was in conversation, including contemporaries like Jefferson, James Madison, and John Taylor of Caroline, as well as European authorities like Machiavelli, Montesquieu, and Jean-Louis de Lolme. Of course, what all these men shared—most of the time, anyway—was a disdain for the political abilities and virtue of ordinary citizens. Both Mayville and Ryerson are clear that Adams was no democrat. His theorising was bent on the task of taming natural aristocracy without handing control to the licentious mob.
In 1774 it was the masses, not the aristocrats, who overthrew imperial rule in Massachusetts. “Real authority now derived from the people, exercised directly in their town meetings and militia companies” (Ryerson, p. 156). Their government had neither executive nor judicial branches, and Adams was “deeply impressed, indeed astonished,” at their “good order” (p. 161). If his theory of aristocracy foresaw that men of wealth and influence would never allow such conditions to persist, there was a certain perverse ingenuity to the way Adams and men like him—politicians, thinkers, natural aristocrats—helped bring his prediction to pass.
My elder Brothers were all put Apprentices to different Trades. I was put to the Grammar School at Eight Years of Age, my Father intending to devote me, as the Tithe of his Sons, to the Service of the Church. My early Readiness in learning to read (which must have been very early, as I do not remember when I could not read), and the Opinion of all his Friends that I should certainly make a good Scholar, encourag’d him in this Purpose of his. My Uncle Benjamin too approv’d of it, and propos’d to give me all his Shorthand Volumes of Sermons, I suppose as a stock to set up with, if I would learn his Character.The manuscript shows Franklin’s little edits, such as changing his time at Boston’s Latin School from “only one Year” to “not quite one Year” and adding the description of Brownell’s “mild encouraging Methods” of teaching.
I continu’d however at the Grammar School not quite one Year, tho’ in that time I had risen gradually from the Middle of the Class of that Year to be the Head of it, and farther was remov’d into the next Class above it, in order to go with that into the third at the End of the Year. But my Father in the mean time, from a view of the Expence of a College Education which, having so large a Family, he could not well afford, and the mean Living many so educated were afterwards able to obtain, Reasons that be gave to his Friends in my Hearing, altered his first Intention, took me from the Grammar School, and sent me to a School for Writing and Arithmetic kept by a then famous Man, Mr. Geo. Brownell, very successful in his Profession generally, and that by mild encouraging Methods. Under him I acquired fair Writing pretty soon, but I failed in the Arithmetic, & made no Progress in it.
At Ten Years old I was taken home to assist my Father in his Business, which was that of a Tallow Chandler and Sope-boiler; a Business he was not bred to, but had assumed on his Arrival in New England & on finding his Dying Trade would not maintain his Family, being in little Request. Accordingly I was employed in cutting Wick for the Candles, filling the Dipping Mold, & the Molds for cast Candles, attending the Shop, going of Errands, &c.
On the 11th December 1742, the young Samuel Foote arrived at London’s imposing Fleet debtors’ prison. At the age of twenty-two the eccentric and extravagant failed lawyer had already been thrown out of Oxford under a cloud of debt, married into money, spent all his wife’s money in London’s premier coffee houses and tailors, and exhausted even the most patient of his creditors. He was thus committed to prison until he came up with the money he owed, amounting to over £650, the equivalent of about £60,000 today.Dr. Joseph Warren’s mother Mary Warren never went to prison for debt, but she was one of the many people who declared bankruptcy in the mid-1760s after the business failure of Nathaniel Wheelwright. Debt was so widespread in that period that Massachusetts rewrote its bankruptcy law because the prison method clearly wasn’t going to settle enough debt.
Foote eventually wrote his way to solvency, cashing in on a highly public family scandal, subsequently taking the London comic scene by storm and ending his life as one of London’s wealthiest theatrical figures as master of the Haymarket theatre. . . .
Behind the young actor entering the Fleet that day was Mary Walpole, a Westminster widow, committed to answer two debts, £20 to William Oakley and £60 to William Harris. Nor was she alone, women made up 9% of commitments to the Fleet that year. They were hardly a majority group though they were certainly far more frequent and representative than artists like Foote. Indeed, other years experienced almost twice as large a female share of commitments.
Even if Foote had somehow not noticed Mary, or (improbably) failed to meet any of the rest of that 9% of prisoners, a letter that arrived shortly after his arrival made him only too aware. The letter, written by his mother Eleanor back home in Truro, must have raised Foote’s hopes upon its arrival, though its contents dashed any hope of rescue, simply reading: “Dear Sam, I am in prison for debt. Come and assist your loving mother – E Foote”. Samuel, without much choice, wrote back “Dear Mother, so am I”.
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.I was particularly gratified by the “structured like a thriller” line. I really did borrow all the tricks I could from fiction without deviating from the historical record, such as ending chapters with cliffhangers. Of course, it helps when the narrative is actually about stealing cannon from an armory under guard inside an occupied town and about spies hunting for those cannon in an unfriendly countryside.
When I wrote you by the Doctor I was in hopes that I should have been out the next day, but my disorder did not leave me as I expected and I am still confind extreemly weak, and I believe low spirited. The Doctor encourages me, tells me I shall be better in a few days. I hope to find his words true, but at present I feel, I dont know how, hardly myself. I would not have the Cart come a tuesday but should be extreemly glad to see you a Monday.Twelve days later, Abigail was recovered enough to marry John at the house of her father, the Rev. William Smith.
