Examining the American Attack on Québec

Even as Col. Henry Knox was moving cannon south from Lake Champlain, Gen. Richard Montgomery was besieging Québec.

The American Revolution Institute is offering two online events about that invasion this week, two hundred fifty years later.

Tuesday, 9 December, 6:30 to 7:30 P.M.
The Battle for the Fourteenth Colony
Mark R. Anderson

Anderson examines the American colonies’ efforts to bring Quebec into the Continental confederation and free Canadians from British “tyranny.” He offers new insight into the key political and military factors that ultimately doomed America’s first foreign war of liberation and resulted in the Continental Army’s decisive expulsion from Canada on the eve of the Declaration of Independence.

Mark R. Anderson is a retired U.S. Air Force officer, having earned his M.A. in military studies from American Military University, with a concentration in early American land warfare. He is the author of several books, including The Battle for the Fourteenth Colony: America’s War of Liberation in Canada, 1774–1776 (2013), The Invasion of Canada by the Americans, 1775–1776: As Told through Jean-Baptiste Badeaux’s Three Rivers Journal and New York Captain William Goforth’s Letters (2017), and Down the Warpath to the Cedars: Indians’ First Battles in the Revolution (2022).

Anderson will be speaking at the American Revolution Institute in Washington, D.C. Register for the livestream of his talk through this webpage.

Friday, 12 December, 12:30 to 1 P.M.
The Revolution’s First Winter: Loyalist Thomas Ainslie’s Account of the 1775 American Assault of Quebec
Thomas Lannon

With unrest spreading in the southern colonies, British leaders worried rebellion might cross into Canada. That fear was justified, and Canada figured prominently in the American strategy for an opening campaign in the Revolution. Congress authorized the invasion in 1775, with the expectation that French Canadians would embrace union with the colonies.

At the center of this Lunch Bite presentation is a letter authored by Quebec’s Collector of Customs, Thomas Ainslie, preserved in the institute’s collections. Ainslie’s recollections provide a reliable day-to-day record from inside Quebec City during the American siege until British reinforcements arrived. The presentation will also explore the crucial role Loyalists played in defending the city, the uncertain loyalties of French Canadians, and the constant British fear that revolutionary fervor might spill over the border.

Lannon is the institute’s library director. Sign up to hear his virtual presentation here.

Following the Knox 250 Trail through New York, 13–14 Dec.

On the weekend after my 11 December talk at the Saratoga battlefield park, many local historic sites and communities in New York will host commemorations of Henry Knox’s mission to transport more ordnance to the siege of Boston.

The first leg of that journey involved floating and dragging heavy cannon and mortars south on Lake George and then to greater Albany in December 1775.

The Saratoga 250 website lists these celebrations.

Saturday, 13 December

• Washington County Knox Parade
• The Noble Train Arrives at Hudson Crossing Park in Saratoga County
• Knox Fest 250 in Fort Hardy Park
• Candlelight Concert at the Arts Center on the Hudson in Mechanicville

Sunday, 14 December

• Procession and Wreath-Laying Ceremony in Waterford
• Arrival on Van Schaick Island

The celebrations appear to culminate in this event.

Sunday, 14 December, 1 to 5 P.M.
Knox’s Noble Train of Artillery Layover at Albany
Schuyler Mansion State Historic Site, Albany

In the early afternoon, the ceremonial linstock will arrive at Gen. Philip Schuyler’s home. Historical reenactors and 18th-century refreshments will be on hand. This outdoor event will be free and open to the public.

From 2 to 4 P.M., visitors with tickets can go inside the mansion for guided dramatic tours. Witness Knox’s stay at the mansion, his impact on the household, and Schuyler’s role as host and facilitator of the wagon train’s passage through Albany and over the Hudson River. Space is limited. Purchase timed tickets through this site or by calling 518-434-0834.

The Knox Trail 250 events will pick up again in January.

“Knox’s Mission to Lake Champlain” in Saratoga, 11 Dec.

On Thursday, 11 December, I’ll be in Saratoga, New York, to share thoughts on “Myths and Realities of Col. Henry Knox’s Mission to Lake Champlain.”

Our event description:

In November 1775, Gen. George Washington gave Henry Knox a mission to travel to New York and bring back cannons for the Continental Army. Knox was a 25-year-old bookseller with no military rank. His trek back to Cambridge has become a beloved part of the American saga. This talk digs deeper into that story, examining such questions as who first had the idea to fetch cannon from Lake Champlain, how Knox had contributed to the Patriot movement, the ways weather affected the mission, and how much those cannon changed the British army’s plans.

This talk will take place in the Saratoga National Historical Park visitor center starting at 6:30 P.M. It is free, but because seating is limited, the park asks people to make reservations by email to SARA_Reservations@nps.gov. The Friends of Saratoga Battlefield supports this and other fall lectures at the park.

The Saratoga battlefield park is within the town of Stillwater, New York. Exactly two hundred and fifty years before the date of this talk, Knox wrote in his diary, he sent a man from Fort George “to Squire Palmer of Stillwater to prepare a number of Sleds & oxen to drag the Cannon presuming that we should get there.”

According to the Gilder Lehrman Institute’s abstract of Knox’s letter to Palmer, the colonel asked for forty sleds. Since he would soon refer to “eighty Yoke of oxen,” that meant he was planning to use four beasts per sled. (The institute also says that letter was dated 12 December, so it’s possible Knox was off by a day in his journal.)

George Palmer (1719–1809) was a local bigwig, more than twice Knox’s age. According to Stillwater’s website, he had “at his own expense equipped a company of militia which marched to Crown Point and Ticonderoga, arriving just after Ethan Allen had taken the fort.”

Palmer came to Fort George on 13 December and “agreed to provide the necessary number of sleds & oxen & they to be ready by the first snow.”

COMING UP: Making other plans.

Sentence Analysis

The next step in the Continental Army’s punishment of Pvt. John Short, Pvt. John Smith, and Owen Ruick was to send them to Simsbury, Connecticut, to be locked up (or locked down) in the colony’s new underground prison, later dubbed “Old New-Gate.” 

As quoted back here, on 11 Dec 1775 Gen. George Washington wrote to the committee of safety in that town, stating:

the prisoners which will be deliverd you with this [letter] haveing been tried by a Court Martial & deemd to be Such flagrant & Attrocious villains, that they Cannot by any Means be Set at Large or Confined in any place near this Camp

That letter is often quoted in connection with Loyalists, thus implicating Washington in the persecution of political prisoners.

The Old New-Gate Prison no doubt did hold some Loyalists during the war, but the courts-martial which sentenced those three men to that prison in December 1775 show that they weren’t brought up on political charges. Short was convicted as a deserter from the Massachusetts army and a thief, Smith as an attempted deserter, and Ruick as a “transient” who had encouraged Smith to desert.

The legal record shows us some other things as well.

Short and Smith were convicted of violating the Massachusetts articles of war, approved by the provincial congress back in April (shown above, as published by Samuel and Ebenezer Hall in Salem). The privates had enlisted in the colony’s army under those terms.

In contrast, during this same season Gen. Washington and his staff were wrestling with how to deal with Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr., detected in a more serious “correspondence with the enemy” than John Short. Church’s commission came from the Continental Congress, so he was bound by the Continental articles of war. That document limited his potential punishment. (The military authorities thus showed their wish to be fair; they felt they that legally they had to follow the rules in place when the accused acted, not rewrite those rules later.)

That said, these sentences show the colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut working together in the new Continental structure. Ordinarily one colony couldn’t sentence men to imprisonment in a neighboring colony. But this was a Continental Army ruling, and Washington promised that Connecticut wouldn’t have to pay the cost of imprisoning those men.

The stated sentences of two years for Short and one year for Ruick appear to have been minimums. The court-martial said both men could be confined “for as much longer as the present contest between Great Britain and the American Colonies shall subsist.” (There was no such proviso recorded for Smith, yet in practice he remained in the prison for longer than six months.)

We know now that the war would last seven more years. I don’t think anyone at the time anticipated it would take so long. But the court-martial didn’t want Short and Ruick to be free while it was still going on.

To be sure, those men’s fates could have been worse. As the American press had reported critically, the British army executed deserters on Boston Common. For theft, Short was sentenced to the Massachusetts army maximum of 39 lashes (Art. 30). In contrast, British soldiers could be subjected to hundreds.

By eighteenth-century standards, the Continental Army court-martial’s sentence to (open-ended) incarceration instead of execution, the limit on lashes, and even Connecticut’s underground prison were all reforms to the prevailing systems of crime and punishment.

COMING UP: Accounting for the prisoners.

“After the first five Stripes Never Said one word”

A couple of Continental Army diaries from the siege of Boston record what happened after the courts-martial that I recounted back here.

Pvt. Samuel Bixby was a soldier from Sutton stationed in Roxbury in 1775. The Massachusetts Historical Society published his diary a century later.

That diary includes these entries:

Dec. 7th, 1775. Thurs: Capt. [Peter] Ingersoll was tried by a Court Martial for spreading false reports about the Country, tending to defame the General. He was fined £8, and dismissed the service.—

8th. Friday. The same Court fined one man £8.7s., and sentenced him to two years imprisonment in the New Gate Prison in Simsbury [Connecticut], for stealing & deserting; and another man, John Smith, for similar offences, was fined £8, and sentenced to six months at Newgate.

Bixby didn’t record the name of defendant John Short, and his figure for John Smith’s penalty misstates the fine as eight pounds instead of eight shillings. But his officers would no doubt have been pleased that Bixby was paying some attention to these examples of military justice.

Sgt. Henry Bedinger of Virginia was also stationed in Roxbury and also keeping a diary, eventually published by Danske Dandridge in Historic Shepherdstown. He recorded these scenes:

7th. John Short, a Soldier in Coll. [Theophilus] Cotton’s Regiment Tryed by a Gen’l Court Martial for theft, Desertion, & Divers other Crimes. The C’t Sentenced him to have 39 Lashes on his Bare Back & Suffer two Years Imprisonment In Simsberry Mines in Conecticut,

he Rec’d his Corporal punishment about 4 OClock this Evening, & after the first five Stripes Never Said one word Untill he had his Due—

This Day a C’t Martial was held over some Riflemen Composed of Rifle officers the first Time

9. Two of Cap’t [Moses] Rawling’s men & one of Cap’t [Thomas] Price’s men Tryed by the above C’t Martial for Divers Crimes were Sentenced to be Whipt, accordingly the Three Companys were Drawed up, Formed a Hollow Square, (the men) were Tyed to an apple Tree, & Rec’d their Corporal punishment

TOMORROW: Shipped to darkest Connecticut.

“The said Short is a midling sized man”

During the siege of Boston, Benjamin Edes published the Boston Gazette out of Watertown. His main competition was the New-England Chronicle that Samuel Hall printed in Cambridge.

Geography put Edes’s print office closer to the Continental camp in Roxbury. On 13 Nov 1775, and for the next two weeks after, the Boston Gazette carried this advertisement:

DESETED [sic] from Capt. Earl Clap’s company in Col. Theophilus Cotton’s regiment, on the 12th of June last, and taken up on the 9th of this inst. [i.e., this month] at Cambridge, John Short, and in conveying him to Roxbury he ran-away again.

The said Short is a midling sized man, goes a little stooping, fresh looking, lately had the small pox, with a scarr on the right side of his face, and dark complection: Had on when he was last taken a blue coat, wash leather breeches, a surtout of a greyish colour, small brim’d hat with a white ribbon round the crown, and boots on.——

Whoever will take up said run-away, and secure or return him to the regiment he deserted from, shall receive four Dollars reward and all necessary charges paid by me.

Roxbury, Nov. 10, 1775. EARL CLAP.

“Wash leather” meant a form of chamois.

Short was evidently caught in late November or early December since the ad stopped appearing and he was court-martialed on 4 December, as recounted yesterday.

In addition to running away twice, as the ad described, Short’s trial record says he’d gotten Capt. Clapp to pay 36 shillings “for a former theft.” No wonder the army was ready to throw the book at him.

Part of Short’s sentence was to repay Clapp that sum plus £1.16s. for the “expense of advertising and apprehending him.” Most of that was probably the $4 reward, then pegged at £1.

TOMORROW: Witnessing the punishment.

“From his own incoherent stories”

On 4 Dec 1775, Col. Jonathan Ward of Southborough convened a court-martial in the Continental Army camp at Roxbury.

Col. Ward presided over a board of officers that included four captains and seven lieutenants.

Pvt. John Short of Rochester was one defendant in that proceeding. He had marched under Col. Theophilus Cotton and Capt. Earl Clapp (represented above by his shoe buckles) during the Lexington Alarm and then enlisted under them for the rest of the year.

Short was charged with “desertion and theft.” He pled not guilty. The record of the court-martial published in American Archives states:

On hearing the evidence brought to support the charge, the Court are unanimously of opinion the prisoner is guilty. It likewise appears very clear to the Court, from sundry papers that were found with him, and from his own incoherent stories, that he is guilty of a breach of the 27th and 29th, and also the 3d article of the Rules and Regulations of the Massachusetts Army.

[Those articles forbade corresponding with the enemy, leaving one’s post to plunder, and provoking mutiny, respectively.]

According to said rules, the Court adjudge the following sums of money to be paid out of his wages and effects, viz:

To Captain Earl Clapp, the sum of 1£.16s., for expense of advertising and apprehending him; also, 36s., that said Clapp paid, at said Short’s desire, for a former theft.

To William Cowing [also listed as Cowen], a soldier in Captain Clapp’s company, 36s.10d., that he carried away with him when he deserted.

To Daniel Crawford [also Croxford], in said company, 4£.16s., for the damage done him by stealing his clothes.

Likewise adjudge him to be whipped thirty-nine stripes on the naked back, and suffer two years imprisonment in Newgate Prison, in Symsbury [Connecticut], and as much longer as the present contest between Great Britain and the American Colonies shall subsist.

The court then turned to Pvt. John Smith, a soldier in Capt. Peter Harwood’s company of Col. Ebenezer Learned’s regiment. Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors includes many pages of John Smith entries, of course, but this information matches a man from Brookfield who had enlisted on 12 June.

Smith was charged with “attempting to desert to the enemy.” He pled guilty. The court sentenced him to “pay the sum of eight shillings to Brigadier-General [John] Thomas, to defray the expense of bringing him back to camp, and suffer six months imprisonment in Newgate Prison, in Symsbury.”

Finally the officers considered “Owen Resick, a transient person,” for “aiding, advising, and assisting John Smith to desert to the enemy.” He denied the charge. (Based on other sources, I now think this man’s surname should have been transcribed as Ruick.)

After “hearing and examining the evidence,” the panel found Ruick guilty and sentenced him to “one year’s imprisonment in Newgate Prison, in Symsbury, and as much longer as the present disputes between Great Britain and the Colonies shall subsist.”

Gen. Artemas Ward affirmed those sentences. They don’t appear in Gen. George Washington’s general orders, issued out of Cambridge.

TOMORROW: A glimpse of John Short.

“Sentenced to be Sent to Simsburty in Connecticut”

Here’s another glimpse of Gen. George Washington’s work in Cambridge 250 years ago.

On 11 Dec 1775, mustermaster general Stephen Moylan wrote out a letter to the committee of safety of Simsbury, Connecticut, for the commander’s signature:

Gentlemen

the prisoners which will be deliverd you with this haveing been tried by a Court Martial & deemd to be Such flagrant & Attrocious villains, that they Cannot by any Means be Set at Large or Confined in any place near this Camp were Sentenced to be Sent to Simsburty in Connecticut.

you will therefore be pleas’d to have them Secured in your Jail or in such other manner as to you shall Seem necessary So that they Cannot possibly make their escape—the Charges of their imprisonment will be at the Continental expence.

That same day Washington’s new military secretary Robert Hanson Harrison (shown here) sent this note to Gen. Artemas Ward in Roxbury, as published by Peter Force in American Archives:

I am commanded by his Excellency to enclose to your care the letter which you will herewith receive for the Committee at Symsbury. Should there be any of the Connecticut troops at Roxbury, which are going that way, and with whom the prisoners can be trusted, you will get them to take charge of them, as it will save some expense; but if you are of opinion that there will be the least risk of their getting away, you will send them off under a proper guard, with a copy of their sentence for the Committee.

On 21 December, Harrison sent a follow-up:

I wrote you the 11th inst., respecting the prisoners to be sent to Simsbury, and enclosed a letter for the Committee of that place; to these I beg leave to refer you. In case you did not receive them, his Excellency desires that you will send them off under a proper guard, unless there should be any of the Connecticut troops going home, who will take the charge of them to the Committee. You will please certify the Committee of the atrociousness of their crime, and of the court’s sentence.

Some of the Connecticut regiments had finished their enlistment terms on 10 December and were heading home. Hence the suggestion that those men could escort these prisoners to Simsbury (and presumably get a little more pay for that work).

Because Washington’s letter was printed in American Archives, a widely distributed and authoritative nineteenth-century source, it’s been quoted in many books about the Old New Gate Prison at Simsbury and American incarceration in general. 

However, I haven’t found any of those books stating who these prisoners were. Because Loyalists were confined at Simsbury later in the war, many authors have assumed that the people Washington sent to Connecticut were political prisoners. 

TOMORROW: Naming names.

“Like a shock of electricity upon a morbid system”

Yesterday I discussed how An Authentic Narrative of the Life of Joshua Slocum was anything but an authentic memoir of a Revolutionary War soldier.

Joshua Slocum had spent time in the Continental Army, to be sure, but the book his son John published in 1844 went into great detail about events his father had nothing to do with, producing bogus stories based on preceding books and popular lore.

When the war began, Joshua Slocum was about fifteen years old, probably living in the part of Wrentham that became Franklin. Although there are cases of boys that young serving in the siege of Boston—as musicians, servants, clerks, substitutes for older brothers—there’s no documentation that Joshua did. He probably stayed in the countryside and worked on the farm. Four years later, when he reached the typical age for military service, he enlisted for one of the Rhode Island campaigns.

Because John Slocum wanted to connect his father to the famous events of the Revolutionary War, he wrote about 1775: the Lexington alarm, the siege of Boston, the capture of Fort Ticonderoga. When he created the book, in the middle of the nineteenth century, one of the most celebrated events from that year was Gen. George Washington taking command of the Continental Army.

This is how the Authentic Narrative treats that moment:

When this heart-cheering intelligence [of George Washington’s appointment] reached Cambridge, my father informed me that one long, loud and joyful acclamation rent the skies—each successive post catching the sound, till it was wafted through the entire line of the arm, operating upon it like a shock of electricity upon a morbid system.

If, continues he, the mere announcement of his appointment could create so much enthusiasm and awaken such joyous sensations through our ranks, what must have been the feelings inspired when, on the 2d of July, fifteen days from the date of his commission, Washington, in company with Gen. [Charles] Lee, arrived at Head Quarters in Cambridge—when, for the first time, we were permitted to see, face to face, the great man who, under God, was destined to achieve the Independence of his country, and to lay broad and deep the foundation of this stupendous republic? For myself I shall not attempt to describe it—language would fail in the attempt.

As eyewitness testimony, this is worthless. Indeed, Slocum didn’t even try to provide details of the generalissimo’s arrival.

As a reflection of how Americans of 1844 wanted to think about Washington, however, it’s very interesting. Since John Slocum was writing without any reliable input from his father, this passage is entirely untainted by what the fighting men of 1775 actually thought. It’s a pure expression of myth.

Slocum depicted the provincial troops around Boston as “a morbid system” needing a jolt of power. Ordinary men were excited to learn about the new commander-in-chief, not because he represented support from colonies outside New England but because they somehow sensed he was the “great man who, under God, was destined to achieve the Independence of his country.”

Actual diaries from July 1775 show much less emotion. Some barely mention Washington. Most of the soldiers had probably never heard of the man. Few entertained thoughts of independence yet.

Those newly dubbed Continental soldiers probably did share the nineteenth-century Americans’ wish to believe their success was destined and protected by God, but so have many other groups in history. Stories like this are one way to reinforce that belief.

John Slocum might come up in Tuesday’s panel discussion at the Cambridge Public Library about “The First Commander Remembered.”

Slocum’s “Authentic Narrative”

In 1844, John Slocum published An Authentic Narrative of the Life of Joshua Slocum: Containing a Succinct Account of His Revolutionary Services through a printer in Hartford.

This book fit into a growing genre: memoirs of unheralded Revolutionary War veterans looking back from old age. The most vital of these was Joseph Plumb Martin’s Narrative of Some of the Adventures, Dangers and Sufferings of a Revolutionary Soldier (1830), but I have a fondness for The Revolutionary Adventures of Ebenezer Fox, of Roxbury, Massachusetts (1838).

U.S. pension laws had encouraged veterans to write down their memories in order to authenticate their claims. I posit that that led men toward composing and then publishing these longer autobiographies. 

Joshua Slocum had died in 1816, at about the age of fifty-six, so he didn’t feel that impetus. Instead, his son John set down the veteran’s stories, shifting between third person, first person, and quoted documents.

Or so John Slocum claimed. He acknowledged pulling large sections of the book from other sources, such as the chapter on the capture of Fort Ticonderoga, which his father had no part in. But in truth he borrowed a great deal more. Over and over, the details in this Authentic Narrative just don’t add up, exposing a later perspective shaped by borrowed details and wishful thinking.

The book starts out by saying: “The subject of this sketch was born in the town of Franklin, Franklin county in the State of Massachusetts, in 1760.” The town of Franklin was never in Franklin County, and neither of those places legally existed in 1760. It’s possible Joshua Slocum was born in the town of Wrentham, which calved off Franklin during the war; there was a Slocum/Slocomb family there, but his birth doesn’t appear in the surviving vital records.

On the day after the town received news of the fighting at Lexington, the Authentic Narrative says, the “Franklin company” set out toward Boston. By the time those men made camp, “The intelligence of the surrender of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, with all their valuable stores, had already reached Roxbury.” That would mean the company took more than a month to travel fifty miles.

Somehow Joshua Slocum wrote a dramatic letter to his Loyalist father from Roxbury on 16 June 1775 but was also in one of the regiments based north of the Charles River that fought the Battle of Bunker Hill the next day.

In fact, Joshua was wounded—but he refused to leave his post! And a good thing, too:

Among the [British] killed was Major [John] Pitcairn, one of the flower of their army. I shall always believe that it was my rifle that sent him to his final account—for, as the enemy ascended the hill, I selected an officer answering his description, for a target, and as I took good aim, and my rifle seldom missing its object, I am very certain I killed him.

This account, then, is yet another claim to have killed Maj. Pitcairn. The narrator almost always refers to his weapon as a “rifle,” though such guns were almost unknown in New England at the time.

A month later, the narrator claims to have been about to volunteer for Col. Benedict Arnold’s expedition to Québec when he received a letter from a family friend dated 20 July. Since Arnold started to recruit in early September, that letter must have traveled even more slowly than the “Franklin company.”

The letter invited Slocum to leave the Continental Army camp, go out to the recruiting station at Worcester, and become a clerk in the friend’s company. Like most armies, the real Continentals frowned on soldiers deciding all by themselves where they’ll serve, but that’s what this account said Slocum did. 

And on it goes. Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War states that a Joshua Slocumb of Franklin served in the Rhode Island campaign of 1779–80. Ironically, the Authentic Narrative never mentions Rhode Island—most likely the one stint of military service by John Slocum’s father.

In 1882 Dr. Charles Elihu Slocum published A Short History of the Slocums, Slocumbs and Slocombs of America. Ordinarily such family histories are credulous toward sources that offer information and reflect well on members of the clan. But Dr. Slocum wrote of the Authentic Narrative:

This little book—of which but few copies can now be found—is written in a style interesting to the young, but it is open to criticism in some of its references to contemporaneous history.

In other words, don’t believe a word of it.

TOMORROW: The arrival of Washington through Slocum eyes.

“The First Commander Remembered” Panel in Cambridge, 2 Dec.

On Tuesday, 2 December, I’ll take part in a panel discussion on “The First Commander Remembered: Washington’s Legacy in Cambridge.”

This is the second in a series of Sestercentennial events on “Washington in American Memory” to be held at the Cambridge Public Library through April 2026.

The panel will include:

• Charles Sullivan, executive director of the Cambridge Historical Commission and coauthor of Building Old Cambridge: Architecture and Development.
• Christopher Beagan, site manager at the Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, moderator.
• me, drawing from a study of the commander-in-chief’s months in Cambridge in 1775–76 and any thoughts that have occurred to me since. 

We’ll talk about how Gen. Washington came to Cambridge, how authors have portrayed his time there, and how he’s been commemorated in Cambridge by, among other things, a tree, a park, a monumental gate, a hotel (shown above), and a National Park Service site. What do all those landmarks tell us about how we like to think of Washington? And could we remember and teach that period of history more accurately?

This event is scheduled from 6 to 7:30 P.M. in the Cambridge Public Library’s Lecture Hall. It will also be livestreamed and recorded for online viewing.

This program and all the series will be free and open to the public. Follow this link to register.

The main supporter of this series is Eastern National, a nonprofit partner of the National Park Service. It has been organized by the National Park Service/Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, History Cambridge, Cambridge Public Library, Cambridge Historical Commission, and Cambridge MA250.

A Tight Squeeze for the 1780–81 School Year

When we left the Boston selectmen yesterday, a town meeting committee had just told them that they’d heard the widow Rebecca Holbrook might have a room in her house suitable for teaching handwriting and arithmetic to 70–80 boys.

Since Widow Holbrook’s late husband and his brother had both been masters of the South Writing School, she would surely be willing to host scholars from that school while it was repaired after a fire, right?

The selectmen delegated two of their number, Gustavus Fellows and Tuthill Hubbard, to confer with Rebecca Holbrook. On 12 April they reported back “that Mr. [Samuel? Mrs.?] Holbrook was out of Town & they were of opinion that said Room would not accommodate the Schoolars of the South part of the Town, without very great expence.”

“Very great“ was the same level of expense that had prompted the selectmen to reject refitting the laboratory building as a school. With the war and wartime inflation both raging, the selectmen very much wanted to avoid spending a lot.

So the selectmen and town came to a decision about what to do with the South Writing School: nothing.

At least that’s how I interpret the record, which doesn’t include any moment of decision but shows the results. The boys appear to have been crowded into the town’s two other Writing Schools, on Queen Street and in the North End. The charred building was apparently left alone.

Normally in early July the selectmen led a big committee of officials and eminent male citizens on a visit to each of the schools. This was an end-of-school-year ritual, an occasion for the Writing School boys to show off their skills and for the Latin School boys to recite. The parents of the Latin School boys who were graduating after the full course of study (only about a third of those who had entered seven years before) joined the town notables for a dinner in Faneuil Hall.

I see no record of that ceremony in 1780—another likely sign of wartime austerity. The selectmen’s records say they visited the schools on 6 July, but there’s no list of invitees. That page left space for the count of boys in the South Latin School, North Latin School, Writing School on Queen Street, and North Writing School—but those spaces are blank. And the South Writing School wasn’t mentioned at all.

On 11 July 1781 the custom was back on, and the count was:

• South Latin School: 91 scholars
• North Latin School: 39
• Queen Street Writing School: 270
• North Writing School: 271

Back in 1773, the three Writing Schools held 674 students. Evidently Boston’s population was still low enough that all the Writing School boys could squeeze into two buildings.

But that population was growing. Inflation leveled off with the arrival of hard money from France. Bostonians wanted to go back to normal—even if that might cost a bit.

In May 1781 the town meeting authorized paying “Three hundred Pounds old Currency towards purchasing Repairs for South Writing School.” The next month, the selectmen reached an agreement with an experienced writing master to reopen that school, sixteen months after the fire.

John Vinal was moving back from Newburyport.

COMING UP: Vinal in the new republic.

“To accommodate the Youth of the South part of the Town with a School House”

As March 1780 began, the selectmen of Boston were looking for two new schoolmasters and one temporary schoolhouse.

Before the war, men tended to serve as schoolmasters for many years. There was more churn among the ushers, or assistant teachers—they probably had so little chance of advancement that they took jobs in other towns.

By 1780 the wartime economy was causing problems for everyone, but especially men who provided services in return for set salaries. The town provided extra grants (of paper money), but it also paid late, so the teachers were struggling.

William Bentley had taught at the North Latin School for three years, starting as usher in 1777 and becoming master in 1779. But on 23 Feb 1780 parents told the selectmen that he would leave “next Satturday.” A couple of years later Bentley became a minister in Salem, a job more to his liking. (He kept it for more than thirty-five years.)

Fortunately, the North Latin School usher, Aaron Smith, could keep the lessons going there. He and two other men immediately applied for the job of master. Furthermore, that public school was the smallest in Boston—only 39 boys attended as of July 1781.

On 8 March, Smith promised the selectmen that as master he would stay for at least twelve months, so the selectmen gave him the job. One problem solved! (Smith did serve through the end of the 1780–81 school year before leaving.)

The South Writing School presented a bigger difficulty. The night before the selectmen heard about Bentley’s departure, that schoolhouse had caught fire. Then Master Samuel Holbrook resigned, as described yesterday. I can’t be sure, but it looks like he took his usher with him.

There were probably over 150 boys attending the South Writing School—a drop from before the war, when the town routinely counted over 200, but still too many to let loose unsupervised on the town.

At the time, a schoolhouse was a large room with long desks and benches for all those boys. The master and usher needed their own desks, and the room needed a stove and a firewood supply, but that was about it. No chalkboards, bookshelves, or other special pedagogical equipment. The town just need to find a big room unoccupied during the day.

On the morning after the fire, the selectmen delegated two of their number, Nathan Frazier and Harbottle Dorr, “to apply to the Overseers of the Poor, for the use of the Workhouse Hall for Mr. Holbrooks Scholars.” At best that might have been a short-term remedy.

On 1 March, the selectmen added John Preston to that committee and sent them to ask whether the “Labretory” could become the new Writing School. After all, it was right next to the fire-damaged building.

A week later those selectmen reported:

That Colo. [William] Burbeck has the care of it at present for the use of the State—that he came in possession of it under Colo. [Thomas] Crafts—

that the Land on which it is built belongs to the Town, Major [Adino] Paddock building on it first—

That it will answer for a School, tho not without a very great expense to the Town in fitting it up in a proper manner.

So the town could demand the property back, kick out the artillerists in the middle of a war, and refit the building with a lot of money—which it didn’t have. Not a practical solution. 

On 13 March, Boston embarked on its annual town meeting to elect new officials. One item on that meeting’s agenda was “what is necessary to be done to accommodate the Youth of the South part of the Town with a School House.” Eventually, on 21 March, the meeting chose a committee to tackle that problem, headed by militia colonel Josiah Waters. John Preston wasn’t reelected as a selectman, but he was put on that committee, so he couldn’t escape the problem.

The schoolhouse committee submitted their first report on 24 March. It was “Recommitted,” or rejected, and the town meeting record doesn’t even say what they suggested. On 4 April they told the meeting:

That upon enquirey they had found that the Widow Holbrook had a Room which would accomodate about Seventy or Eighty Scholars, and that they were of Opinion that if this Room could be obtained it would be best to hire it for a School

This was Rebecca Holbrook, widow of the late Abiah Holbrook and sister-in-law of Samuel Holbrook. So she knew what a writing master needed in order to teach.

The town meeting quickly approved that idea and directed the selectmen “to agree with Mrs. Holbrook for said Room as they shall Judge for the Interest of the Town.”

TOMORROW: The cheapest solution.

Fire in the Schoolhouse

On 24 Feb 1780, Boston’s Continental Journal reported:

Early on Tuesday morning last [i.e., 22 February], a fire broke out in the South Writing-School, (near the Laboratory) in this town, which entirely consumed the same; but by the usual activity of the inhabitants, it was happily prevented from doing further mischief.—

’Tis not yet discovered how the fire happened.

Four days later the Boston Gazette added:

Wednesday last a Person was prosecuted for disobeying the Orders of the Firewards in this Town, at the Fire of the South School the Morning preceeding, and fined £.47 for the same.—

[This Information being given, and the second Instance of the Kind, ’tis doubted whether there will be any Need of cautioning Persons in future, against disobeying the Firewards, at the Time of Fire ]

No information on who disobeyed and how.

The selectmen had other business to handle after a fire. They rewarded Richard Hunnewell’s engine company for being the first to arrive on the scene. On 1 March they announced that “those Persons who have taken Stuff from the late Fire [and] refuse to deliver up what they have taken” had one more week to return those goods before being summoned to Faneuil Hall.

In addition, on 23 February the selectmen asked Master Samuel Holbrook how this fire had broken out in his schoolhouse. He couldn’t explain, saying:

that there had been but little Fire [in the stove] that afternoon, and that he left the School the last of any one, and his Son had looked thro. the Windows about 9. OClock, having smelt fire.

I sense that the selectmen found that inadequate. It had been Master Holbrook’s responsibility to check that the schoolhouse stove was left in safe condition at the end of Monday’s lessons.

On 1 March the selectmen recorded: “Mr. Holbrook Master of the South Writing School has sent a Letter of resignation as Master on account of his health.” He was then fifty-one years old.

So now in the middle of the school year the selectmen had to find a new schoolhouse and a new schoolmaster.

TOMORROW: The search.

(John Fenno, Jr.’s 1787 advertisement for leather fire buckets above comes courtesy of Skinner. The leather-dresser’s nephew, also named John Fenno, knew the South Writing School well: he had trained there under Abiah Holbrook and then worked as Samuel Holbrook’s usher in 1773–74.)