Elisha Adams’s Admission

Last night author Nathaniel Philbrick and I talked about the Battle of Bunker Hill at Cambridge Forum. That was taped to make a radio show or podcast, and I’ll post the link when it’s ready.

In the meantime, here’s a record of something else happening that same day, 17 June 1775, from the Boston Public Library’s collection, made available through archive.org.

Whereas I having been Suspected to be unfriendly and inimical to the Just rights & Liberties of America & the Constitution of the Province, Being Sensible that by Some imprudent Conversation & Conduct I have Justly Caused Such Suspicions, & more Especially in my Selling a horse on the way from Acton to Charlston ferry, but a Day or 2 before the late Hostilities Commenced at Concord, & also by Conversation with Katherine wife of Jonathan Adams sd. Relating to the Negro Plan for killing woman Children &c, And being Sensable of my Imprudence therein Do freely Say, That with Regard to Selling sd. horse I Sincerely Declare that I had no thought nor intention any way, whatsoever to Assist & Enable the British forces then at Boston to march into the Country, Neither Did I think any thing but that the sd. horse was to have been Sent Directly to Deerfield. But as it is Strongly Suspected the sd. horse was made use of in the sd. Hostilities, I am Sorry I Sold sd. horse as I Did, And with Regard to my Conversation with mrs. Adams Relative to the Negro plan afore sd., Altho. I had no unfriendly intention, yet I Acknowledg the sd. Conversation & Answers then made to Mrs. Adams Justly Aggravated the Suspicions Afore sd., and that thereby I manifested an unfriendly inhumane Disposition, for which unadvised Conduct I ask the forgiveness of my Neighbours & acquaintances & of Neighbour Adams & wife in Particular.

Elisha Adams
June 17 1775

Recreating the background of this document is a bit uncertain since there were so many families named Adams in Medway, where it’s from. But it looks like Elisha Adams (1719-1781) had been a big man in town: deacon, town clerk, and often selectman. He was Medway’s representative in the Massachusetts General Court for several years in the 1760s, but Jeremiah Adams had won that seat and held it since 1769.

Elisha’s neighbor Jonathan Adams (1737-1814) was some sort of cousin a generation younger. He may have recently become a selectman, or that might be another member of the same family.

In any event, Elisha Adams seems to have been less enthusiastic about the uprising against the royal government than his neighbors, and to have spread alarmist rumors about a slave revolt. There were similar alarms at other times in 1774 and 1775 with very little evidence behind them—it was simply a common fear in a slaveholding society. Other folks in Medway in turn assumed the worst about how Adams had sold his horse.

On 8 June Elisha Adams had signed another document declaring that he felt Parliament’s new laws were unconstitutional and that he would support the Continental Congress’s plans to counteract them. But the town’s committee of correspondence and selectmen evidently wanted a more specific admission of fault, hence this document.

All the Adamses remained in Medway during the war. Elisha paid a higher-than-average amount to maintain soldiers, presumably substitutes for himself or family members. He died in Medway in 1781 and is buried there.

Dr. Joseph Warren’s Psalm Book?

Tonight I’ll be discussing the Battle of Bunker Hill with author Nathaniel Philbrick at Cambridge Forum, and the name of Dr. Joseph Warren is sure to come up. Relics of Dr. Warren have been one of the recurring themes of Boston 1775, and here’s yet another example.

In the 1852 edition of his book The Hundred Boston Orators (and perhaps in other editions), James S. Loring wrote:

A British soldier, on his return to London, exhibited a Psalm-book to Rev. Dr. Samuel Wilton, of that city, stating that he took the volume from the pocket of Gen. Warren, after the battle of Bunker Hill.

The clergyman, knowing that it would be a treasure to the Warren family, purchased the book of the soldier, and transmitted it to the Rev. Dr. William Gordon, of Roxbury, the historian, with a request that it might be given to the nearest relative of the general. It was, therefore, given to his youngest brother, Dr. John Warren, of Boston, March 15, 1778.

The title of the volume, which the editor has examined, is as follows: “The Boke of Psalmes, wherein are contained praires, meditations and thanksgivings to God, for his benefits toward his Church, translated faithfully according to the Hebrew. With brief and apt annotations in the margin. Printed at Geneva, by Rowland Hall. 1559.” It is less than the 32mo. size. On the inside cover of this book is inscribed,—“Taken at ye Battle of Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775, out of Dr. Warren’s pocket.” On the inside cover, at the end of the book, is written, “Thomas Knight,”—probably the regular who secured the book.

Warren’s signature was on a blank leaf, but it has been abstracted.

In other words, the page with the signature had been sliced out.

Benjamin Silliman described seeing this book in 1835. The Warren family wrote about it in a biography of Dr. John C. Warren and eventually donated the book to the Massachusetts Historical Society. Dr. Sam Forman’s recent biography of Joseph Warren describes the book and shows a photo of its title page and the notes about its provenance opposite.

The Rev. Samuel Wilton (his D.D. was an honorary one from Princeton) was indeed a friend and correspondent of the Rev. William Gordon of Roxbury. Wilton’s father was a church deacon in the East London parish of Wapping, and he became a dissenting minister in the South London parish of Tooting. He was still in his early thirties when he died in the spring of 1778, soon after sending that psalm book across the Atlantic.

Unfortunately, we have only the Warren family’s memory about the page signed with Joseph Warren’s name. That would be the crucial link in the chain of evidence connecting the book back to the doctor. Without it, we have to consider the possibility that a British army veteran might have taken advantage of a minister with some ties to New England and sold him an old psalm book and a story.

Little-Known Morale Poster from the Seven Years War

With apologies to Fort Ti, which has its own version on a T-shirt.

Reenactment of the Lexington Tea-Burning, 14 Dec.

As I’ve mentioned before, Old South Meeting House and the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum will host their annual reenactment of the Boston Tea Party on Monday, 16 December. That’s the 240th anniversary of the event. Tickets are still available.

Two days before then, on Saturday the 14th, the Lexington Historical Society will host its second annnual “Burning of the Tea” reenactment. That event actually occurred on 13 Dec 1773, and three days later the radical Massachusetts Spy reported:

We are positively informed that the patriotic inhabitants of Lexington, at a late meeting, unanimously resolved against the use of Bohea Tea of all sorts, Dutch or English importation; and to manifest the sincerity of their resolution, they bro’t together every ounce contained in the town, and committed it to one common bonfire.

That item went on to say that the people of Charlestown were considering the same action.

The next Monday newspapers, including the Boston Gazette and Boston Post-Boy, reprinted the first paragraph but not the second. I don’t know whether that means Charlestown didn’t proceed to destroying tea or whether its inhabitants’ action was lost in the excitement over the Tea Party. Because by then, of course, a much larger amount of tea had been sunk in Boston harbor.

Though the tea-burning in Lexington was thus overshadowed, it’s still significant as an early sign of rural support for Boston. The interests of farmers didn’t necessarily align with those of merchants, mariners, and craftsmen, but the voters of Lexington chose to support the people of the port. The Boston Gazette for 20 December printed the Lexington town meeting’s detailed resolves against the tea, adopted just before the burning, as the first item on its front page. (The Boston Post-Boy, which leaned toward the Crown, declined to run those resolves on account of space.)

Lexington’s reenactment of the tea burning will take place at 3:00 P.M. at Munroe Tavern (shown above), 1332 Massachusetts Avenue. The Rev. Peter Meek will portray the Rev. Jonas Clarke. The Boy Scouts will build a bonfire, and the William Diamond Fife and Drum Corps will play music. All other children must be supervised.

If You Missed the RevWar Schmoozer…

Last month Journal of the American Revolution editor Todd Andrlik organized what he called a “RevWar Schmoozer” for anyone in Boston involved in Revolutionary history—researching, preserving, interpreting, reenacting, writing, teaching, guiding, whatever.

I wasn’t sure what to expect at that event, but I when I walked in and saw a fellow in a redcoat uniform (from the Freedom Trail Foundation) chatting with a gent in a modern U.S. Navy uniform (from the U.S.S. Constitution), I knew that Todd’s vision had panned out.

I found friendly faces from the National Park Service and many individual sites, from tour companies, from the publishing industry, not to mention from my home-town ice cream parlor. Later that evening, Gary Gregory from Edes & Gill noted the irony that it took a guy from Chicago to make that event happen in Boston.

Well, we locals have another opportunity to gather in Cambridge this Wednesday at 9:00 P.M. That evening Nathaniel Philbrick will be answering my questions about Bunker Hill and George Washington at Cambridge Forum—a free event starting at 7:00. After Nat finishes signing books, we’ll walk over to the Nubar restaurant in the Sheraton Commander Hotel for a reception in his honor hosted by the Friends of the Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters with support from the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati.

There will be some hors d’oeuvres and a cash bar. And as many Revolutionary-history folks as want to come and schmooze with each other. Even if you can’t make the Cambridge Forum conversation, stop by the reception to say hello to fellow professionals and enthusiasts.

(Above: A photo of some Boston history folks at the end of the “schmoozer” after most people had gone home. Todd’s the big fellow in the back. Note Ben Edwards in front holding a copy of the first Journal of the American Revolution collection.)

Environmental History Methods Panel, 10 Dec.

Starting in late 1769, there was a famine in Bengal which lasted deep into the next year. Those poor harvests, followed by shortfalls in the next two years, are blamed for ten million deaths. They also caused many people to migrate from the most affected areas, some of which turned back into tropical jungle.

The government of Bengal—which at that time was the British East India Company—had no control over the environment, of course. But many historians say the famine was exacerbated by its policies. As a profit-seeking corporation, it had pressed farmers to switch to non-food cash crops (opium, indigo), discouraged food “hoarding” for lean times, and kept raising and collecting the tax on land while harvests failed.

Even so, the East India Company remained in terrible financial straits in the early 1770s. For years gentlemen in London had been debating how to reform the company, and reports of the famine suggested that there would be no quick recovery to solve the problem. With many Members of Parliament owning stock, the East India Company was obviously too big to fail.

Lord North and his ministers came up with what they thought was a clever solution: the company could increase revenue by exporting its overstock of Chinese tea directly to North America. By cutting out middlemen, the company could increase its revenue even as it lowered the cost of tea to consumers. The tea tax, in place since 1767 and to be collected as soon as the tea was legally landed, would continue to finance the Customs service and salaries for royal governors and other appointees.

North Americans disagreed.

The connection between the Bengal Famine and the Boston Tea Party of 1773, along with other anti-tea protests in America, is a fairly obvious example of how the environment helps to drive what we usually consider economic and political history. Environmental historians are drawing out much more subtle effects with more sophisticated methods.

On Tuesday, 10 December, the Massachusetts Historical Society will host a panel discussion on “Telling Environmental History.” It will explore “different ways of presenting environmental history, including the use of G.I.S., the intersection of environmental history and planning history, incorporating visual materials, and environmental history as narrative.”

The participants will be:

• Brian Donahue, Brandeis University
• Karl Haglund, Department of Conservation and Recreation, Commonwealth of Massachusetts
• Megan Kate Nelson, Brown University
• Aaron Sachs, Cornell University
• Anthony N. Penna, Northeastern University (moderator)

This discussion is scheduled to start at 5:15 P.M. and run until 7:30, including discussion over a light buffet afterwards. It’s part of a series on Environmental History that the society hosts. Sessions are free and open to the public; email the M.H.S. if you want a seat.

Carp on Resolute Men and Mohawks at Old South, 12 Dec.

The January 1774 London Magazine shared this news from Boston:

The people finding all their efforts to preserve the property of the East-India company, and return it safely to London, frustrated by the tea consignees, the collector of the customs and the governor of the province, dissolved their meeting.—But, behold, what followed! A number of resolute men (dressed like Mohawks or Indians) determined to do all in their power to save their country from the ruin which their enemies had plotted, in less than four hours emptied every chest of tea on board the three ships commanded by the captains [James] Hall, [James] Bruce, and [Hezekiah] Coffin, amounting to 341 chests, into the sea! without the least damage done to the ships or any other property. The masters and owners are well pleased that their ships are thus cleared; and the people are almost universally congratulating each other on this happy event.

Eventually that “happy event” became known as the Boston Tea Party, of course. And, as the latter-day illustration above shows, the “Mohawk” disguises have been a crucial part of that story.

On Thursday, 12 December, Benjamin L. Carp, author of Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America, will give a lunchtime talk at Old South Meeting House on “Resolute Men (Dressed as Mohawks)”:

What does historic evidence tell us about these disguises, and what misconceptions linger? Learn why Boston Tea Party participants selected Native American, and specifically Mohawk, disguises, and what this aspect of the Boston Tea Party can tell us about the emerging identity of Anglo-Americans in eighteenth-century Boston.

Ben Carp’s lecture will begin at 12:15 P.M. Admission is free for Old South members, $6 for others. A book-signing will follow.

“Kidnapping the Enemy” in Newport, 12 Dec.

Next Thursday, 12 December, the Newport Historical Society will host author Christian McBurney’s first lecture about his new book Kidnapping the Enemy: The Special Operations to Capture General Charles Lee and Richard Prescott. The society describes the event this way:

On December 13, 1776, at an isolated New Jersey tavern, George Washington’s second-in-command, Major-General Charles Lee, was captured by a party of British dragoons. The American army needed a British captive who was the same rank as General Lee.

Rhode Island’s William Barton planned and executed the cross-bay capture of Major-General Richard Prescott at the Overing house in Middletown, where Prescott commanded the British garrison occupying Newport and the rest of Aquidneck Island. Barton’s raid was the outstanding special operation of the Revolutionary War and still ranks as one of the greatest in American military history. But did the pride he earned from this mission ruin thirteen years of his life?

McBurney is a graduate of Brown University and partner in a Washington, D.C., law firm. He is the author of other books on early Rhode Island history, including The Rhode Island Campaign: The First French and American Operation of the Revolutionary War and British Treatment of Prisoners During the Occupation of Newport, 1776–1779.

Admission to this event is $5 per person, or just $1 for Newport Historical Society members. It will take place in the Newport Colony House, Washington Square, starting at 5:30 P.M. To reserve a space, call 401-841-8770.

Discussing Leadership at Bunker Hill at Cambridge Forum, 11 Dec.

Next Wednesday, 11 December, Cambridge Forum will welcome Nathaniel Philbrick, author of Bunker Hill: A City, a Siege, a Revolution, for a discussion of “Bunker Hill and the Crisis of Leadership in Revolutionary America.”

I’ll be Nat’s interlocutor in this discussion. After his opening remarks, we’ll talk about the Patriot leaders at the start of the Revolutionary War—men like Dr. Joseph Warren, Artemas Ward, and a forty-three-year-old gentleman from Virginia named George Washington. There will be time for questions from the audience, and Nat will sign copies of his book for folks on your holiday list.

After the Battle of Bunker Hill, and in the historiography since, people fervently debated who was in charge of the American forces, who should have been in charge, and what that commander (or those commanders) should have done. The very history of that debate seems to indicate some significant vacuum or disagreement at the top.

Paradoxically, however, the Battle of Bunker Hill decided the siege of Boston. Though the provincial troops lost the ground they were defending and had to retreat off the Charlestown peninsula, they inflicted such casualties on their foe that British commanders began to advocate for withdrawing from Boston and putting down the American rebellion from a less hostile base. It was a delayed success.

So did flaws in American leadership during that battle, or during the spring of 1775, matter that much? Had political leaders in the preceding years instilled such fervency into the New England populace that it could fight two major battles against the king’s army without a firm and unified command? Did any of Gen. Washington’s plans and initiatives over the following eight months make a real difference? Or did they have delayed benefits as well, bearing fruit after the Boston campaign when the new Continental Army faced a stronger enemy in less supportive regions?

Come join the Cambridge Forum discussion at First Parish, 3 Church Street in Harvard Square, at 7:00 P.M. next Wednesday, 11 December. This event is co-sponsored by the Friends of the Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters, the National Park Service (Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site and Boston National Historical Park), and the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati.

More from Bruce Richardson on the History of Tea

Here’s more of my exchange with Bruce Richardson, Tea Master for the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum. He’s coming to Boston to speak about “Five Teas that Launched a Revolution” at the Old South Meeting House on Thursday, 5 December. That event will also be the debut of the new expanded edition of Jane Pettigrew and Bruce’s book A Social History of Tea, originally published by the National Trust of Britain.

Are there any common misconceptions about the tea involved in the Boston Tea Party?

The visitor’s center at Monticello says the tea was in brick form. That’s not true. The English, and hence the Americans, had no taste for brick tea. See this blog post for more about tea bricks.

Chocolate meant something very different in eighteenth-century cuisine from how we think of it today—it was a hot drink, not particularly sweet, and often for breakfast. Are there significant differences in the way people consumed tea between the 1770s and today? Did tea have a different symbolic or cultural connotation?

In the stylish homes of Boston and throughout provincial America, the ritual of taking tea reenacted and reinforced the growth of an Anglo-American culture. But it was a culture based on a global circulation of goods. Tea drinking, often dispensed from specially designed tables, gathered together goods from around the globe–tea and porcelain from China, sugar from the Caribbean, sweetmeats flavored with spices from Indonesia, all arrayed on a Turkish carpet and served by an African slave to gentlemen and ladies dressed in fabrics from India and China.

These Boston tea settings were similar to those found in the fine homes of London or Bath. The ensemble of objects might also have included Asian-modeled cane chairs and have been set off by Chinese-style wallpaper. Bostonians understood tea not as an exotic curiosity, but as one of the many global products that signaled their participation in a polite and worldly culture modeled after the lifestyles of their English cousins.

Some museums in Boston contain small bottles of tea said to have come from the Tea Party, gathered either from participants’ clothing or from the water. If you had access to those tea samples, would there be any way to tell if that tea was actually from 1773?

I would love to see those. I could probably tell whether it was machine- or hand-rolled which might negate its authenticity, but not confirm it.

And a bonus that’s a little out of period: What do you think of the theory that the Earl Grey mixture of tea and bergamot was an adulteration later gussied up with a noble name?

I don’t drink Earl Grey, but we tea-blenders all say it pays the mortgage. The most famous of all flavored teas was named after Charles, the 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) who was British Prime Minister from 1830 to 1834. The original recipe for this blend simply calls for black tea with the addition of oil of bergamot, squeezed from tiny lemons grown in the Mediterranean region. China black tea was first used as the base until English blenders began using India or Sri Lankan black teas as those gardens developed through the second half of the 1800s.

The stories about the origin of the blend are many and varied. Some say the recipe was given in thanks to a British diplomat when he saved the life of mandarin—or perhaps the mandarin’s son—while in China on a mission for the Prime Minister. Some say it was Earl Grey himself who was travelling in China and saved the mandarin. Neither story has ever been substantiated. You can read more in this blog posting.

Thanks to Bruce Richardson for sharing his knowledge of tea here, and at Old South and the Tea Party Ships!

Readers might be able to tell that the Boston 1775 staff doesn’t care much for Earl Grey tea. Here’s an article from World Wide Words discussing the mysterious origin of that term.