A House in Beverly and Its Revolutionary Owner

In Beverly, a developer has offered a 1715 house to anyone who will move it away from its present location, where the firm plans to build a drugstore. The Salem News reported that offer this month, describing the house like this:

Built in 1715, it is one of the last remaining First Period homes from Beverly’s earliest settlement. It was the home of Nathaniel Greenwood, a captain in the militia and a member of the Sons of Liberty, a group of patriots that included John Adams, John Hancock and Paul Revere.

An earlier article described the building’s history in more detail:

The wood-frame house was built by a shoemaker named Nehemiah Wood between 1715 and 1725 and was later owned by Nathaniel Greenwood, an officer in the Boston Regiment. The building was a grocery store in the early 1900s. It was bought by Johnny Appleseed’s in 1947 and became the clothing company’s headquarters.

It’s currently a real-estate office.

As for former owner Nathaniel Greenwood, the articles appear to be combining two men of that name, father and son. The son owned the house and kept an inn there for a while later in the eighteenth century. He was born in 1732, married Priscilla Snelling of Boston in 1766, and moved out of town during the war. Later he returned to Boston, established a sail-making business, and died in 1823.

The older Nathaniel Greenwood was born in 1693 and became a merchant, militia captain, town official, and Old South member. Everyone seemed to know who “Captain Greenwood” was. He died in 1780, having lived his last couple of years with his son in this Beverly house.

Much of the information about the family comes from The Greenwood Family of Norwich, England in America (1934), and I can’t confirm a lot of it. The genealogy says, “Nathaniel Greenwood belonged to the ‘North End Caucus’, the most important political club in the town at the time.” But I don’t see that name in the only surviving records of that group, published in Elbridge Goss’s Life of Col. Paul Revere.

The name of “Capt. Greenwood” is indeed on the long list of men who dined with the Sons of Liberty in August 1769. This was a large event that involved most of the prominent men in Boston. Some of those diners later became Loyalists, others Patriots.

The Greenwood family included men in both political camps. The captain’s son-in-law John Marston was a fairly prominent Whig. Yet the captain’s son Samuel Greenwood (1741-1826) joined the Sandemanian sect, which preached against rebellion, and became a Loyalist. (Interestingly, Samuel’s second wife was another Snelling. The captain had been business partner with their father.)

In the spring of 1774, Nathaniel Greenwood, Sr., signed a complimentary address to Gov. Thomas Hutchinson as he prepared to sail to England. He also signed a protest against actions of the Whig-dominated town meeting. That put the octogenarian captain into the Loyalist camp, at least that year. [ADDENDUM: In late 1773, during the tea crisis, Greenwood was one of the liaisons between the public meetings and the governor’s sons, who were tea importers.]

When the British military left Boston in 1776, Samuel Greenwood and his family sailed with them. But his brother Nathaniel stayed behind, and the old captain evidently stayed with him. They moved out of Boston, eventually settling in that house in Beverly. So saying that building was home to “a member of the Sons of Liberty” makes a complex picture too simple. But a muddle doesn’t sell buildings.

Intimate Acquaintance

After Abigail Adams learned the details of Dr. Benjamin Church’s correspondence with the British command, conducted at one point through his mistress, she wrote to her husband in Philadelphia:

What are your thoughts with regard to Dr. Church? Had you much knowledg of him? I think you had no intimate acquaintance with him.

This is the sort of query for which there’s really only one acceptable answer. It’s not, “We worked together for years as political organizers, and everyone kept quiet about his mistresses.” It’s, “I barely knew the man, honey.”

(By the time John Adams received that letter, he’d actually already sent Abigail his thoughts about the “detestible Subject” of Dr. Church, so he got the answer right.)

On Sunday, 5 February, at 2:00 P.M. the Shirley-Eustis House in Roxbury will host a performance of “The Intimate Correspondence of John and Abigail Adams,” based on letters like that one. The press release says:

Today, over 230 years later, we can still listen to their conversations, share in their thoughts and desires, and get to know them as real people, not just as words in a history textbook. During the “Love Letters” presentation, the audience will hear letters that began with John’s and Abigail’s courtship, and continuing through John’s years at the Continental Congress. Enjoy these iconic personalities as they reveal their teasing humor, their pleasure in children and farm, their deepest hopes for the future, and their undying love and respect for each other.

“Love Letters” will be presented by two Adams scholars and living history performers—Patricia Bridgman and Thomas Macy—who have over forty years of living history experience between them.

After the show, there will be a question-and-answer session in character and refreshments. Admission is $10 for the general public, $5 for members of the Shirley-Eustis House Association. Call 617-442-2275 to reserve seats.

Occupy the Royall Estate

Maj. Andrew McClary of New Hampshire was the highest-ranking American officer killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill. After his death on 17 June, the New Hampshire Provincial Congress received an expense account from his estate that included payment “To Horse-keeping six weeks at Colonl. Royall’s.”

That’s one contemporaneous source showing that Col. John Stark’s New Hampshire regiment started using Isaac Royall’s estate in Medford within a short time after arriving at the siege lines outside Boston.

In his Memoir and Official Correspondence of Gen. John Stark, published in 1860, Caleb Stark told this story of how his ancestor had come to use that mansion:

a gentleman named “Royal,” who, on retiring to the city [Boston], had left his lady, with a family of beautiful and accomplished daughters, in possession of his abode. The mansion being conveniently situated for his “head quarters,” Colonel Stark called upon the family, and proposed, if agreeable to them, his occupancy of a few rooms for that purpose; to which Madame Royal most cheerfully assented, being well aware that the presence of an officer of his rank would afford her family and premises the best protection against any possible insult or encroachment

That all sounds mighty chivalric, doesn’t it?

The problem with that story is that Isaac Royall (1719?-1781) was a widower. His “lady” Elizabeth had died in 1770. Their daughters Mary, Elizabeth, and Miriam (the first two shown above, courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts) had all married before the war.

Col. Stark probably just invoked military necessity and moved into the house that Isaac Royall had left behind in April. Later in the siege, Gen. Charles Lee and Gen. John Sullivan also slept in the Royall House until Gen. George Washington firmly suggested they should be closer to the front lines. Today it’s maintained by the Medford Historical Society.

Symposium on the Deerfield Raid, 3 March

On Saturday, 3 March, Historic Deerfield will host a one-day symposium on “Exploring the 1704 Deerfield Raid.” This event will take place from 8:30 A.M. to 5:30 P.M. at the Deerfield Community Center.

The scheduled speakers are:

• John Demos, Samuel Knight Professor of History Emeritus, Yale University.
• William M. Fowler, Jr., Northeastern University, Distinguished Professor of History.
• Alice Nash, Associate Professor at University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
• R. Scott Stephenson, Director of Collections and Interpretation, American Revolution Center.
• Kevin Sweeney, Professor of History at Amherst College.
• Philip Zea, President of Historic Deerfield.

Demos wrote The Unredeemed Captive. Sweeney cowrote Captors and Captives, which I really liked. Stephenson’s talk is titled “From Deerfield to Deerslayer: Borderlands Conflict and the Origins of the American Rifleman.” I know other speakers and think it’s an impressive lineup.

Participants will receive a copy of a new “1704 Raid Walking Tour,” and can view the Flynt Center’s new exhibit “Furnishing the Frontier: The Material World of the Connecticut River Valley, 1680-1720.” I’d also stop in at the Memorial Hall Museum because I think it’s done a good job of updating its display on the raid, preserving the older form while reflecting modern understandings.

Pre-registration is required to attend the symposium. The registration fee is $75 ($65 for Historic Deerfield members and school teachers, who can also receive P.D.P.’s). Visit the website at top for more information and online registration. Folks can also reserve a space by email or by calling Julie Marcinkiewicz at 413-775-7179.

Anna Lætitia Barbauld: “The awe this day struck into me”

Anna Lætitia Barbauld (1743-1825) was a writer, teacher, and minister’s wife in England. She moved in circles of religious and political dissenters, and was acquainted with Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

This is the last part of Barbauld’s poem “Washing Day,” first published in the Monthly Magazine of December 1797. It’s an evocative slice of life, showing a moment when laundry day meant all the women in a household were busy and little girls weren’t allowed jelly or butter, yet science was about to let people fly:

I well remember, when a child, the awe
This day struck into me; for then the maids,
I scarce knew why, looked cross, and drove me from them;
Nor soft caress could I obtain, nor hope
Usual indulgencies; jelly or creams,
Relique of costly suppers, and set by
For me their petted one; or butter’d toast,
When butter was forbid; or thrilling tale
Of ghost, or witch, or murder — so I went
And shelter’d me beside the parlour fire:
There my dear grandmother, eldest of forms,
Tended the little ones, and watched from harm,
Anxiously fond, tho’ oft her spectacles
With elfin cunning hid, and oft the pins
Drawn from her ravell’d stocking, might have sour’d
One less indulgent. —
At intervals my mother’s voice was heard,
Urging dispatch; briskly the work went on,
All hands employed to wash, to rinse, to wring,
To fold, and starch, and clap, and iron, and plait.
Then would I sit me down, and ponder much
Why washings were. Sometimes thro’ hollow bowl
Of pipe amused we blew, and sent aloft
The floating bubbles, little dreaming then
To see, Mongolfier, thy silken ball
Ride buoyant through the clouds — so near approach
The sports of children and the toils of men.
Earth, air, and sky, and ocean, hath its bubbles,
And verse is one of them — this most of all.

Read the whole poem here.

The New Sexual Freedom of the 1700s

Larry Cebula at Northwest History alerted me to this interesting extract in the Guardian from The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution by Faramerz Dabhoiwala. Although Dabhoiwala focused on life in England, some of the findings would also apply to eighteenth-century America, even New England:

The most obvious change was a surge in pre- and extramarital sex. We can measure this, crudely but unmistakably, in the numbers of children conceived out of wedlock. During the 17th century this figure had been extremely low: in 1650 only about 1% of all births in England were illegitimate. But by 1800, almost 40% of brides came to the altar pregnant, and about a quarter of all first-born children were illegitimate. It was to be a permanent change in behaviour.

Just as striking was the collapse of public punishment, which made this new sexual freedom possible. By 1800, most forms of consensual sex between men and women had come to be treated as private, beyond the reach of the law. This extraordinary reversal of centuries of severity was partly the result of increasing social pressures. The traditional methods of moral policing had evolved in small, slow, rural communities in which conformity was easy to enforce. Things were different in towns, especially in London. . . .

Urban living provided many more opportunities for sexual adventure. It also gave rise to new, professional systems of policing, which prioritised public order. Crime became distinguished from sin. And the fast circulation of news and ideas created a different, freer and more pluralist intellectual environment.

This was crucial to the development of the ideal of sexual freedom. By the later 18th century, for the first time, many serious observers had come to take it for granted that sex was a private matter, that men and women should be free to indulge in it irrespective of marriage, and that sexual pleasure should be celebrated as one of the purposes of life. As well as reinterpreting the Bible, they found support in new ideas about the importance of personal conscience and in the laws of nature, which were regarded as more clearly indicative of God’s will than the inherited dogma of the church and the text of the scriptures. In his 1730 work, Christianity as Old as the Creation, the Oxford don Matthew Tindal ridiculed traditional sexual norms as priestly inventions, no more appropriate to a modern state than the biblical prohibitions against drinking blood or lending money: “Enjoying a woman, or lusting after her, can’t be said, without considering the circumstances, to be either good or evil. That warm desire, which is implanted in human nature, can’t be criminal, when perused after such a manner as tends most to promote the happiness of the parties, and to propagate and preserve the species.” . . .

It’s no accident that all these early celebrations of the new sexual world were voiced by white, upper-class men. In practice, sexual liberty was limited in important ways. The bastardy laws continued to apply to the labouring classes: their morals remained a public matter. The new permissiveness towards “natural” freedoms also led to a sharper definition and abhorrence of supposedly “unnatural” behaviour. . . .

James Boswell’s diary records the tragic story of Jean, the brilliant only daughter of Henry Home, Lord Kames, one of the leading thinkers of the Enlightenment. In the early 1760s, when she was only 16 or 17 and already married, she embarked on a passionate affair with Boswell, arguing to him that they were doing nothing wrong:

“She was a subtle philosopher. She said, ‘I love my husband as a husband, and you as a lover, each in his own sphere. I perform for him all the duties of a good wife. With you, I give myself up to delicious pleasures. We keep our secret. Nature has so made me that I shall never bear children. No one suffers because of our loves. My conscience does not reproach me, and I am sure that God cannot be offended by them.’”

A decade later, when her husband divorced her over another affair, she declared “that she hoped that God Almighty would not punish her for the only crime she could charge herself with, which was the gratification of those passions which he himself had implanted in her nature.” But her father, the scholar and moral authority, took the conventional view that adultery in a man “may happen occasionally, with little or no alienation of affection”, but in a woman was unpardonable. After his daughter’s divorce, he and Lady Kames exiled her to France and never saw her again.

Dabhoiwala’s The Origins of Sex is being published in the U.S. of A. by Oxford University Press in May.

The End of Gov. Bowdoin’s Dinner Party

Boston saw its first worthwhile snowstorm of the season this weekend, so I’m pulling out an anecdote that real-estate lawyer Nathaniel Ingersoll Bowditch (1805-1861) published under the pseudonym “The Gleaner” in the Boston Daily Transcript in 1855. It concerns Gov. James Bowdoin and his mansion on Beacon Hill:

The house [was…] placed back from the street, being approached by a high flight of stone steps. At a dinner party once…a rain occurred, and the weather becoming cold the steps were found to be entirely covered with ice.

Under any circumstances there would have been almost a certainty that life or limb would be put in jeopardy by an attempt to walk down; and the guests had probably done justice to the generous wines of their host,—a circumstance which tended to increase the difficulty. At last they all concluded to sit down on the upper step, and so hitch along from step to step in a perfectly safe, though, it must be confessed, in a somewhat ungraceful manner.

Probably, indeed, there never was an occasion where so many of our first citizens voluntarily took such low seats; or where the dignity of small clothes, silk stockings, and cocked hats was sacrificed to necessity or expediency in a more amusing manner.

Bowdoin was governor in 1785-87 and died in 1790, so this event—or whatever gave rise to the memory—probably occurred in that decade.

Actors Wanted for Tea Party Museum

The Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum organization is looking for actors for its opening season this summer. And the organization is advertising on Craigslist. The notice says:

The Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum is dedicated to reliving the historic night of the Boston Tea Party. The museum will be a multilayered experience that will feature interactive exhibits, live historical performance, and historical artifacts. The site will also feature three historically accurate colonial ships which our guests will be free to explore.

We are looking to create an ensemble of actors to portray historical characters throughout the experience and to serve as hosts to our guests as they explore the attraction. Each actor will perform multiple roles. Must be comfortable working with and leading large groups of people. Prior performance experience, experience in improvisation, and an interest in history strongly preferred.

The museum invite hopefuls to email for an appointment and “prepare a one-minute monologue that is appropriate for a historical performance.” Auditions begin 13 February, training in early April, and the museum opening on 25 June.

I believe the museum is opening with only one ship at first, or maybe two. According to the museum website, the third is still in the drawing stage. The Boston Tea Party Museum blog shows progress on the building and its exhibits. I’m really not sure why there will be a statue of John Parker, captain of the Lexington militia in 1775, but he does have nice shoes.

Running the Numbers in 1776

While I was confirming some figures in Charles H. Lesser’s The Sinews of Independence, a Bicentennial book collecting the best records of the size of the Continental Army throughout the Revolutionary War, I spotted a couple of curious trends.

We often think of the first American invasion of British Canada as coming to a spectacular end in the attack on Québec on 31 Dec 1775. Gen. Richard Montgomery was killed; Col. Benedict Arnold wounded; Capt. Daniel Morgan, Capt. Henry Dearborn, and many other men captured. (John Trumbull’s painting of Montgomery’s death above.)

But the Continental Congress actually ordered more troops north after that battle. In late February 1776, Arnold (now a brigadier general) reported having 1,290 soldiers under his command, of whom 964 were able to fight. The next month, that number had grown to 2,505 men, with 1,719 in shape. The invasion of Canada outlasted the siege of Boston. But it doesn’t have a good narrative shape, with a long, dreary second act.

Meanwhile, Col. Henry Knox was moving his artillery regiment south—and losing men. As of February 1776, he reported having 604 artillerists under his command outside Boston, with 563 ready to fight. As soon as the units left New England, where almost all those troops came from, they evidently began peeling off. In April, Knox could report only 421 men, of whom 358 were listed as available. Through October, he never had more than 500 soldiers assigned to him, and never was able to field even 400.

Lesser’s book, thorough as it is, isn’t a useful source for the strength of American armies in really bad times early in the war: when the invasion of Canada collapsed under the onslaught of smallpox, when the British forces drove Gen. George Washington and Knox out of New York and across New Jersey. In those hectic months, the army couldn’t collect and maintain systematic returns, so no total figures survive.

William Scott’s Wives

In publishing ladies’ reactions to his poem about his beard, and to the beard itself, shoemaker William Scott seemed to argue that some found it attractive, outrageously unfashionable as it was. So I wondered if Scott ever married.

Fortunately, researcher Annie Haven Thwing found some real-estate transactions involving William Scott, cordwainer (an old term for a shoemaker). Those deeds also state his first wife’s name, which allowed Thwing to single him out from the other men named William Scott (or Scot) in Boston records.

Our William Scott married Nancy or Nanny Coit on 24 Nov 1748, in a ceremony conducted by the Rev. Samuel Cooper (shown here, since I don’t have a picture of anyone else). They deeded some land beside their property on Ann Street in 1750, and bought two houses on North Centre Street later that month.

The Scotts had two children: Nanny born in 1751 and William in 1753. Nanny (Coit) Scott must have died shortly after the birth of that son because William married Ann Thomas on 27 Nov 1755. That second marriage produced a son named Benjamin in 1758.

In 1756 and 1758, William Scott bought more North End land from a Gloucester man with the wonderful name of Nymphas Stacey, Jr.; Stacey’s first wife was a Coit, so those deals were probably within the extended family. Stacey was a also shoemaker. In 1757 William Scott and his new wife deeded land to a blacksmith named Edward Marion.

According to Hannah Mather Crocker, Scott started to wear his beard long in the early 1760s, so there’s no evidence that he attracted a wife after growing it. He may well have still been married to his second wife, Ann, of course. It was unusual for a woman in colonial America to have a long marriage and only one child, but maybe Thwing and I just haven’t found the rest.

On 28 Apr 1774, William Scott announced the death of a son in the Boston News-Letter. Later that same week, he deeded land to Jonathan Williams, one of the town selectmen. He died in that year or the next, according to Crocker, but I didn’t find a record of his death.

So over all I’m left with more questions than answers about the hirsute William Scott.