Paging Through the Nova-Scotia Chronicle

The Nova Scotia Archives has digitized several newspapers from various periods in the province’s history, with the results open for anyone to look at.

This digital archive doesn’t include the region’s first newspaper—the Halifax Gazette launched by John Bushell, fresh from Boston, on 23 Mar 1752. But the Nova Scotia Archives does own the one surviving copy of Bushell’s first issue; it acquired that precious sheet from the Massachusetts Historical Society in 2002.

The earliest newspaper available in the digital database is the Nova Scotia Chronicle and Weekly Advertiser, published by Anthony Henry in Halifax from 1769 to 1770.

Henry had taken over the Halifax Gazette when Bushell died in 1761. But then he lost his position as the local government’s preferred printer by opposing the Stamp Act of 1765. (Isaiah Thomas, who worked for Henry after skipping out on his apprenticeship in Boston, claimed he pushed his employer into political action. Thomas also sniffed that Henry printed “in a very indifferent manner.”)

For a few years Robert Fletcher enjoyed the government’s favor for his new Nova-Scotia Gazette. Copies of that paper can be read through the University of Toronto.

Anthony Henry’s Nova-Scotia Chronicle was thus the province’s first newspaper published without being sponsored by the province itself. When he started, Henry had only eighty subscribers.

In 1770, after Fletcher returned to Britain, Henry renamed his newspaper Nova Scotia Gazette and Weekly Advertiser, regaining semi-official status by default. He even became the King’s Printer in 1788. After Henry died in 1800, another Boston-trained printer, the Loyalist John Howe, took over. A version of that paper appears today as an official organ of the provincial government: Nova Scotia’s Royal Gazette.

Like other North American newspapers, the Nova-Scotia Chronicle was a weekly. Its pages were half the size of most other papers, but a typical issue contained eight pages instead of four. Without much local news that his readers hadn’t already heard, Henry printed lots of excerpts from British newspapers, as well as articles from the other North American ports.

Folks using the digital archive to track particular citations should bear in mind that Henry dated each issue by the full week it covered: “From TUESDAY September 26, to TUESDAY October 3, 1769,” for instance. Each paper was actually printed on the last date in that range, and the database dates each paper accordingly. However, sometimes authors have cited issues by the first date.

I digitally flipped through these pages hoping to find interesting coverage of the Boston Massacre, but Henry appears to have reprinted articles from the Boston newspapers without commentary. But then I stumbled across an interesting page I’d never read anywhere before.

TOMORROW: “John Plain Dealer” speaks out.

The Good Properties of Richard Lechmere

Back here, in introducing a letter by Richard Lechmere, I wrote about him as leaving his country estate in Cambridge after accepting a seat on the mandamus Council and moving into Boston.

Charles Bahne, Cambridge historian and good friend of the blog, commented:

I question whether Richard Lechmere ever lived in what is now called East Cambridge. Certainly he owned a lot of land there, much of it inherited from his in-laws, the Phips family, and then he bought more parcels from other Phips heirs. And from this we get the names of Lechmere's Point, Lechmere Square, Lechmere station, and, at one time, the Lechmere Sales chain of department stores.

But my understanding is that the Phips mansion standing on that land in East Cambridge hadn't been occupied for some years prior to Lechmere's inheritance, and I don't think he ever lived there himself. It was in a remote location with no easy access, often becoming an island at high tide.

The Cambridge residence I associate with Richard Lechmere was the Tory Row house on Brattle Street, which he built circa 1761. In 1771 Lechmere sold that house to Jonathan Sewall, who still owned it in 1774-75. About the same time, Lechmere bought an estate residence in Dorchester, from Thomas Oliver, who had moved to Cambridge shortly before that. But it appears that Lechmere only owned that Dorchester house for about eight months, before selling it to an Ezekiel Lewis, who in turn quickly resold it to John Vassall [Jr.], another Tory Row resident. (And as you know, John, the Vassall, Oliver, Lechmere, and Phips families were all intermarried with each other.)

Lechmere may have purchased the Dorchester property with the intent of moving there, but since he resold it so quickly, he may never have actually occupied the estate. I believe he may already have relocated to Boston itself by 1772 or so. (I remember reading that somewhere, but can't track the source down right now.) He did own a large distillery in Boston.

The fact that the Phips mansion in East Cambridge was vacant in 1775 may well have been a reason why Gen. [Thomas] Gage chose that isolated area as the landing place for the Concord expedition on April 18. With no nearby residents, there wouldn't be any nosy neighbors to notice the troops' arrival.

There’s no dispute that Richard Lechmere owned a lot of property when he left Massachusetts. On 13 Oct 1784 he applied to the Loyalists Commission, seeking compensation for his losses. The commission’s records discuss “his House in Boston,” “his farm at Cambridge,” part of “a great Distillery at Boston,” “some Land at Muscongus” in Maine, and “property at Bromfield [Brimfield] & Sturbridge.”

But where did Richard Lechmere live? Some of those properties were real-estate investments. He may have moved between a couple of houses seasonally. But where was his legal residence? I went looking for period sources.

Lechmere’s name (as well as others’) is still attached to his 1760s home on Brattle Street in Cambridge, shown above. But according to Cambridge historian Lucius Paige, Lechmere turned that property over to royal attorney general Jonathan Sewall on 10 June 1771.

The 17 May 1770 Boston News-Letter contains an advertisement for the Dorchester house that had belonged to Thomas Oliver. That ad directed inquiries to “Richard Lechmere, of Cambridge,” meaning he didn’t move to Dorchester, just owned the property there while still living in Cambridge.

On 22 Aug 1773 the Boston Evening-Post contains another advertisement for a house in Boston on Hanover Street, “lately in the Occupation of Jacob Royall, Esq; deceased.” That directs inquiries to “Richard Lechmere, of Boston.” So by that date Lechmere presented himself as back in the town of his birth, no longer a Cambridge resident.

According to James Henry Stark’s Loyalists of Massachusetts, the Boston real estate confiscated from Lechmere was a house, land, and distill-house on Cambridge Street. He may have moved there from Hanover Street, or the house in that second advertisement was another property he managed. Cambridge Street was probably where Richard Lechmere was living when he became a mandamus Councilor—already safe from actual Cambridge residents.

“Illuminating” Symposium in Williamsburg, 7 Dec.

On Saturday, 7 December, the Dr. Joseph Warren Foundation will present a symposium in Williamsburg, Virginia, on the theme of “Illuminating the Role of Six American Founders.” The day’s presentations will include:

Christian Di Spigna: “Founding Martyr: Dr. Joseph Warren, the American Revolution’s Lost Hero.” A Phi Beta Kappa graduate from Columbia University, Di Spigna wrote the Warren biography Founding Martyr and is the Executive Director of the Dr. Joseph Warren Foundation.

Edward G. Lengel, Ph.D.: “First Among Many Founders: George Washington Guides the Revolution to Victory.” For many years Lengel directed the Washington Papers Project. He has written fourteen books on different periods of American history, including General George Washington: A Military Life and Inventing George Washington.

Elizabeth Mauer: “There Were Founding Mothers Too: Martha Washington Supports the Revolution.” Maurer is the Chief of Programs & Education at the National Museum of the United States Army, having previously held various roles at Colonial Williamsburg, Mount Vernon, the National Women’s History Museum, and the D.E.A. Museum. She’s a former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Museum Education.

Gordon Steffey, Ph.D.: “‘Better known than acknowledged’: Richard Henry Lee and the American Cause.” Steffey is the Director of Research and of the Jessie Ball duPont Memorial Library at Stratford Hall. For nearly twenty years he taught at Randolph College in Lynchburg, Virginia, holding an endowed chair in Comparative Philosophy.

Bruce M. Venter, Ed.D.: “Rough-hewn and Enigmatic Founder: Ethan Allen Does Some Crazy Things.” President of America’s History, L.L.C., Venter organizes an annual conference on the American Revolution that’s considered the premier symposium for Revolutionary War enthusiasts, public historians, and scholars. He’s the author of The Battle of Hubbardton: The Rear-Guard Action that Saved America.

Stephen Wilson: “‘Give me liberty or give me death!’: One of America’s Most Important Speeches Celebrates its 250th Anniversary.” As Executive Director at the St. John’s Church Foundation, Wilson highlights the effect of Patrick Henry’s famous speech in that building on 20 Mar 1775.

This Founders Illuminated symposium will take place in the Williamsburg Regional Library Theatre starting at 9:00 A.M. The $95 registration fee includes lunch at the Hound’s Tale and snacks. For more information and to register, follow this link.

Though this event isn’t associated with Colonial Williamsburg, folks attending it will also be able to see that historic museum’s first Grand Illumination, or fireworks show, of the season.

More Light from the Portrait of Francis Williams

Earlier in the month I reported on Fara Dabhoiwala’s work on the portrait of Francis Williams based on two news articles.

I’ve now read Prof. Dabhoiwala’s own article in the London Review of Books, and he has even more to say.

About the painter:

The only oil painter known to have been active in Jamaica during these years was an Anglo-American artist called William Williams, who was then in his early thirties. This Williams, the son of an ordinary mariner, had been born in Bristol in 1727. He’d always loved to draw. Sent to sea as a youth, he abandoned his crew in Virginia and spent a few years knocking around the West Indies and Central America, sometimes living among Indians, learning their language and trying his luck as a painter for the local colonists.

Eventually, around 1747, he ended up in Philadelphia, where he worked for a theatre, painting sets and backdrops, and in a boatyard, painting ships, as well as doing sign-painting and lettering, teaching music, writing poetry and composing what is now regarded as the first American novel.

Though he was entirely self-taught, he also made landscapes and portraits; he collected engravings; he used a camera obscura as a drawing aid; he studied the lives of the great artists and wanted to be one himself. He was the earliest teacher of the young Benjamin West, who…in the 1770s commemorated his old mentor by including his likeness in one of his monumental historical canvases.

William Williams kept a list of every painting he ever made. The original doesn’t survive, but in the 19th century someone jotted down a summary of it. In the spring of 1760, Williams travelled from Philadelphia to Jamaica to offer his services as an artist. His list recorded that during his months in Jamaica, he painted 54 pictures. None of these has ever been found. I am confident that the portrait of Francis Williams is one of them.

There is in fact a scientific test that could prove this, because it has recently been discovered that William Williams prepared his canvases with a distinctive and very unusual triple layer of underpainting. I’m pressing the V&A [Victoria & Albert Museum] to undertake this new test as soon as possible.

Dabhoiwala also posits that the painting depicts not only the page in Newton’s Principia showing how to calculate the path of a comet but Halley’s comet itself. I’m not entirely convinced by this because the visual clues aren’t distinct. Then again, neither are comets a lot of the time. And the painter was definitely charting something in that portion of the canvas:

We can see that on the infrared scans of the picture. When William Williams made his first pencilled marks on this canvas, to plot the composition, he carefully ruled a series of lines to show where that white object in the sky should go – and to mark its relation to the constellations he was told to paint below. His sitter made sure of that, as he made sure of every other carefully placed detail in his portrait.

The portrait of Francis Williams is the only painting ever made of Halley’s comet in 1759, on its momentous first predicted return. 

“The Spies in Henry Barnes’s House” at Hingham, 17 Nov.

Yesterday I wrote about Ens. Henry DeBerniere, the young mapmaking army officer.

He turned up at Henry and Christian Barnes’s house in Marlborough on 1 Mar 1775, along with Capt. William Brown.

Those two officers were “The Spies in Henry Barnes’s House” that I’ll speak about on the afternoon of Sunday, 17 November, in the Hingham Historical Society’s Revisiting The American Revolution series.

Dr. Samuel Curtis will also show up in my talk, just as he showed up at the Barnes house that night, trying to ferret out information on DeBerniere and Brown. So he was spying, too.

I may even bring in Gib Speakman and Prince Demah because of their ties to the Barnes family, even though I can’t link them to events of that night.

Why, you might ask, am I delivering this talk in Hingham rather than in Marlborough, where all the action happened?

Because another player in that night’s drama was Chrisy Arbuthnot, an orphaned ten-year-old niece living with the Barneses. She had come to them from Hingham.

In addition, Prince Demah’s portraits of Henry and Christian Barnes are now among the treasures of the Hingham Historical Society.

Like other talks in this series, this presentation will be accessible in person and online, as part of the whole series or on its town. Admission (which isn’t cheap) helps to fund the society.

“There is one very bad place in this five miles”

A few days back, I linked again to a hand-drawn map at the Library of Congress that appears to be the work of Ens. Henry DeBerniere. The locations on that map match DeBerniere’s first spying trip to the west with Capt. William Brown in February 1775.

Gen. Thomas Gage had those two British officers make a second foray into the countryside starting on 20 March, this time to look for cannon and other military supplies in Concord.

We know the two officers went out to Concord on roads that appear on this map, as shown in the detail above. DeBerniere wrote:

We went through Roxbury and Brookline, and came into the main road between the thirteen and fourteen mile-stones in the township of Weston; we went through part of the pass at the eleven mile-stone, took the Concord road, which is seven miles from the main road.

But Brown and DeBerniere came back by a different route:

Mr. [Daniel] Bliss…told us he could shew us another road, called the Lexington road. We set out and crossed the bridge in the town, and of consequence left the town on the contrary side of the river to what we entered it. The road continued very open and good for six miles, the next five a little inclosed, (there is one very bad place in this five miles) the road good to Lexington.

You then come to Menotomy, the road still good; a pond or lake at Menotomy. You then leave Cambridge on your right, and fall into the main road a little below Cambridge, and so to Charlestown; the road is very good almost all the way.

That “Lexington road” doesn’t appear on the hand-drawn map. It’s possible that DeBerniere produced another map to show it. That would have been useful since that’s the road that Lt. Col. Francis Smith followed to Concord on 18–19 April and then withdrew along.

Donald L. Hafner of Boston College drew my attention to that omission when he left this comment to my recent posting:

It is unfortunate that the surviving map attributed to Ensign DeBerniere does not include the alternate route through Lexington and Menotomy that he and Capt William Brown took on their return to Boston, because it leaves a puzzle about where on that route was the "one very bad place" that DeBerniere describes in his written report to Gage. DeBerniere's sentence is a bit garbled, but he is referring to some location between Lexington and Menotomy center. A good guess would be those locations where the main road is hemmed in to the south by sharply-rising hills, and on the north by wetlands and the Mill Brook. A good candidate would be near the current Lexington/Arlington border. But that is just a guess. Are there better candidates that a soldier would describe as "one very bad place"?

DeBerniere wasn’t clear about where in Concord he started estimating distances, but it is about six miles from the center of Concord to Lexington common, and about five from Lexington common to the modern Arlington town hall. So that does suggest somewhere in the second stretch the officers judged the road “good” but “a little inclosed” with “one very bad place.” The area between Liberty Heights and the Mill Brook in east Lexington indeed seems to be the best candidate—about where Wicked Bagel sits, in fact.

Notably, Smith’s column had its worst experiences before reaching Lexington center at places like Merriam’s Corner, Elm Brook Hill, and the “Parker’s Revenge” site—other spots where the road turned and/or narrowed, but not so much as to make DeBerniere worry.

“You will have doubtless have an account of their surprizing Ticonderoga”

One striking feature of Richard Lechmere’s 22 May 1775 letter to Henry Seymour Conway, partially transcribed here, is how well informed the Loyalist merchant was about events outside besieged Boston.

Lechmere wrote to the British politician:

you will have doubtless have an account of their surprizing Ticonderoga in which Fort, there was upwards of One hundred pieces of Cannon, and some Mortars, these they are bringing down, and a Considerable train are expected to arrive from Providence to Morrow...

Col. Ethan Allen had led the takeover of Fort Ticonderoga on 10 May, only twelve days before. Lechmere not only had that news, but also an estimate of how many artillery pieces the rebels would find there.

Lechmere understood that ordnance was to be brought to the siege lines around Boston. The Massachusetts committee of safety’s orders for Col. Benedict Arnold also stated that possibility. It wasn’t some wild brainstorm of Henry Knox later in the year.

The letter also refers to “a Considerable train…from Providence.” On 8 May the Rhode Island government had commissioned John Crane as a captain of an artillery company. However, he brought only four small cannon to the siege lines. Those weren’t “Considerable,” even by Rhode Island standards, though they did double the number of brass artillery pieces available to the Continentals. Most artillery in Rhode Island was, I suspect, being held back for privateering.

But that wasn’t all Lechmere had heard about. He had heard news from Pennsylvania:

Mr. [Benjamin] Franklyn & General [Charles] Lee are Arriv’d at Philadelphia the former chosen a Delegate to the Congress & most probably the Latter may be appointed Generalissimo of the Rebel Army. Birds of a feather flock together

Lechmere probably had only a dim awareness, if any, of George Washington from Virginia. Lee, on the other hand, was a celebrated veteran of the British army who had come through Massachusetts the previous year. Lechmere wasn’t the only contemporary to mention him as a candidate to be commander-in-chief.

“You justly observe that he has a difficult card to play”

Yesterday I started quoting from Loyalist merchant Richard Lechmere’s 22 May 1775 letter about the beginning of the Revolutionary War, as transcribed and shared a few years ago at Heritage Auctions.

Lechmere was notably ambivalent about the performance of Thomas Gage as both commander of the British army in North America and royal governor of Massachusetts.

On the one hand, he thought the ministry in London was hamstringing Gage by not sending him enough troops and limiting his autonomy:

The fine friends of Government that are hear [sic] impatiently long, for the Arrival of the Troops from Ireland, The Marines and recruits are arriv’d about 1100 in all, when the others arrive we hope, the Rebels may be drove to some distance from the town, tho’ we have our fears that the General has not and will not have Sufficient power from the Minister to act offensively, we form this Opinion from what has (or rather has not) been done, ’tis a pity he had not discretionary powers, the want of this, has, and I fear will again produce some bad Consequences.

On the other hand, Lechmere suspected that Gage was holding his forces back. After describing the previous day’s fighting over Grape Island, the merchant wrote:

in the Hay Expedition ’tis said both the Troops and Schooners had orders not to Fire, this seems very strange, indeed there has been several instances of their firing upon Boats and their not returning it, these little attempts and not succeeding in them, give the Rebels great sprit, and I wish it may not have the opposite Effect upon the Troops, the General is one of the most humane good men that lives, and I wish his tenderness may not in the end hurt him, and the Cause, he feels and Pitys the distresses of the Country

In particular, Lechmere thought Gage had erred in not calling on his Council—a body that Lechmere himself had been appointed to.

As to the Council we have not been call’d together since I wrote you, nor it is it I believe the wish of any one member so to be, but I can’t help saying, the Gov.r miss’d the best Opportunity of having them recogniz’d by the People the day after the 19 April,

town Meeting was call’d with a design to choose a Committee to wait upon the Gov.r to Ask his Leave that the Inhabitants might remove out of town with their Effects, this Committee was [composed?] of the Select Men with the Addition of Mr [James] Bowdin as their Chairman, they went to the Governor towards Evening, and after being with him some time, he Consented that they might remove with their Effects, whenever they pleas’d,

it woul’d have been a lucky circumstance if he had said, he should as it was a matter of a civil nature consult his council, and in the Next day give his answer but unluckily he was in my poor opinion a little to precipitate, in giving his Answer immediately, and they have been constantly moving out every day since I really believe he has done this from good principles, because he could not render us more obnoxious than we were before but in this once instance, I think he was wrong.

you justly observe that he has a difficult card to play, but when he is invested with powers, I hope he will convince the Rebels that he does not want [courage?] to execute them

Gage did cancel permission for people to leave Boston and then negotiated an agreement that they would deposit their firearms with the selectmen at Faneuil Hall before reopening the gates. Naturally, people criticized him for both decisions.

TOMORROW: News from outside.

“I fear Great Brittain will find it difficult to subdue an extensive Continent”

Back in 2008, Heritage Auctions sold a letter from Richard Lechmere (1727–1814) commenting on the first month of the Revolutionary War.

Lechmere was a wealthy merchant, a King’s Chapel vestryman, and a steady supporter of the royal government. The ministers in London had named him to the mandamus Council in 1774. He took that office even though it meant leaving his estate in east Cambridge and moving into Boston.

It’s interesting, therefore, that Lechmere’s letter surfaced in a collection of papers owned by Henry Seymour Conway (1721–1795), a British Member of Parliament and sometime minister who usually opposed stringent measures against the colonies. While Lechmere was a clear “Tory” by Massachusetts standards, in London he might have been among the moderate Whigs who agreed that something had to be done about the colonial resistance but didn’t want the response to be too harsh.

Of course, the outbreak of war has a way of changing people’s outlooks. In this letter Lechmere wrote:

Blood must be shed, before the Colonies can be brought [to s]ubmission is sufficiently prov’d by the Event of 19 April, [it is] my opinion that large quantities must be spilt before the Continent can be reduc’d and indeed I think it a doubtfull matter, whether it can be ever be effected[.]

the Corsicans without resources gave the french a great deal of trouble by retiring into the Interior Country[.] if they were able to do there under those disadvantages, I fear Great Brittain will find it difficult to subdue an extensive Continent, full of people United in the same cause and abounding with every necessary to defend themselves, if they pursue the same method, as the Corsicans, which I believe to be their plan, and especially while Government move[s] so slow, as to give them time, from discipline, to become good soldiers,

we still remain Blockaded and the Rebels are fortifying every pass and Defile in the neighbourhood of the Town, they have strong and extensive lines at Cambridge and Batteries upon the Hills about Charelstown that command the Roads there[.]

Later Lechmere discussed the British military’s attempts to raid the countryside, starting in September 1774 with the “Powder Alarm”:

The Troops have been unsuccessful in a very late Attempt they have made (except removing the powder at Charlestown) by some means or other, the Rebels got intelligence of their intentions, as soon as the scheme is laid, and with their usual industry find means to prevent their Executing it, 250 Troops were sent to [Salem] to secure some Cannon, they got intellig[ence]…Revmo’d the Cannon, and pulled up the Drawbridge...

Yesterday they [the troops] went to Hingham with an Arm’d s[ch]ooner several Sloops and a number of Boats with thirty…Soldiers) to fetch away about 90 Tons of Hay, from an Island about 500 yards form the shore, the Rebels came down to the shore, fired upon them, wounded one or two men, and oblig’d them to return without the Hay...

That description of actions in the harbor matches the skirmish over Grape Island on 21 May. Together with other mentions of things that had happened, and lack of mentions of things that would happen later, that allowed Heritage to date this letter on 22 May 1775.

TOMORROW: Lechmere’s thoughts on Gov. Gage.

(The photo above shows, courtesy of Find a Grave, the memorial plaque for Richard and Mary Lechmere in Bristol Cathedral, where they are buried.)

Looking at Lexington and Concord through Eighteenth-Century Eyes

Last month Alexander Cain at Historical Nerdery announced a resource for people researching the Battle of Lexington and Concord ahead of next spring’s Sestercentennial: a list of links to eyewitness accounts of the day.

That listing will be very useful, and it can grow. Perforce these are texts that have been digitized in one way or another. I’m sure that more lurk within books, newspapers, and letters. It’s a matter of ferreting them out and/or digitizing them in usable forms.

For instance, here is the list’s link to Gen. Thomas Gage’s instructions to Lt. Col. Francis Smith for the march to Concord on 18–19 April.

We also have what appears to be Gage’s notes or first draft of those instructions, quoted in General Gage’s Informers (1932) by Allan French. A digital version of that book can be borrowed from the Internet Archive, at least for now. Look on pages 29–30.

Since the Massachusetts Historical Society has scanned merchant John Rowe’s diaries, we can see his response to the news coming into Boston here. A transcription of what a descendant thought were the most important parts of that diary was published a century ago. Among the details one can find only in the handwritten journal is that on 20 April Capt. John Linzee, R.N., dined and spent the evening at Rowe’s house after fending off an attack on his ship on the Charles River.

It’s possible to identify the sources of some anonymous accounts. One resource on the list, Ezekiel Russell’s “Bloody Butchery by the British Troops” broadside, includes text headlined “SALEM, April 25.” Those paragraphs commence: “LAST Wednesday, the nineteenth of April, the troops of his Britannic Majesty commenced hostilities upon the people of this province…”

The preceding paragraphs come with a source citation—not coincidentally, to Russell’s own Salem Gazette newspaper. But Russell didn’t give his competition publicity by revealing that he took the second and longer passage from Samuel Hall’s Essex Gazette for 25 April. That text was later imperfectly transcribed in Peter Force’s American Archives.

The 3 May Massachusetts Spy on the list includes an unsourced story about what happened “When the expresses [from Boston] got about a mile beyond Lexington.” That story matches one that William Dawes’s family recalled hearing from him, revealing that Dawes was probably printer Isaiah Thomas’s source.

Among the lately revealed visual resources is this hand-drawn map in the Library of Congress. I’m convinced by Ed Redmond’s hypothesis that Ens. Henry DeBerniere created this map ahead of the march to Concord. It thus offers a look at what British army officers knew of the countryside west of Boston. (I discussed details of that map starting here.)

TOMORROW: A source from May 1775.

Helping to Shape Two Gifts for Revolutionary History Fans

I autograph copies of my book The Road to Concord for people who order through The History List. Sometimes I also help out polishing the details of its products for fans of the American Revolution.

One of the recent items I advised on is this handsome portrait of the handsome Carpenters’ Hall in Philadelphia by artist and calligrapher Larry Stuart. It’s available as a print, a tea towel, and a magnet.

Two hundred fifty years ago this year, Carpenters’ Hall hosted the Continental Congress. That body was later renamed the First Continental Congress since a follow-up gathering at the nearby Pennsylvania State House ended up lasting for years and overshadowing its namesake. (So much so that that building is now Independence Hall.)

That created a challenge for how to explain the historic significance of what happened in Carpenters’ Hall in 1774. Conveying the mindset of that year meant not reading the First Continental Congress through the lens of the Second. Thus, we usually think the first Congress had delegates from twelve of the “thirteen colonies,” but there were open invitations to more than thirteen, and thirteen didn’t become a meaningful number for another few years.

Likewise, it seemed important to describe the First Continental Congress not as laying the groundwork for independence but as trying to resolve the dispute with Britain while avoiding independence and/or war. I found a quotation from the Congress’s address to the people of Great Britain which summed up the message of 1774:

Permit us to be as free as yourselves, and we shall ever esteem a union with you to be our greatest glory and our greatest happiness

(Of course, in the original eighteenth-century prose, that’s only a fragment of a much longer sentence.)

In addition, The History List just announced its advent calendar, conceived by proprietor Lee Wright.

This calendar counts down the days to 25 December because that was the night Gen. George Washington launched the attack on the Crown forces at Trenton, crossing the Delaware as depicted in the main image. Each window in that picture opens to a new image of some object associated with that event.

For this item, I drafted a brief description of how December 1776 was going for Washington. (Not well.) 

I don’t see any money from my little contributions to History List products, but every so often I do get ice cream.

The Intriguing Portraits of William Williams

[Today’s posting would be simpler if so many of the people involved weren’t named Williams.]

Yesterday I passed on articles about Fara Dabhoiwala’s conclusions about a painting of the Jamaican scholar Francis Williams.

Dabhoiwala hypothesizes that this portrait was made in or shortly after 1759 by the artist William Williams, born in Wales in 1727 but active in the American colonies.

William Williams is known for a couple of other portraits of unusual men in Britain’s American empire.

One portrait, now lost, showed the Haudenosaunee leader Theyanoquin, often called “King Hendrick” by British sources. In January 1755, Theyanoquin was in Philadelphia meeting with Gov. John Penn and the Council about a land dispute. At the time, British authorities were pleased to have the Haudenosaunee as allies in their growing conflict with the French.

The Fishing Company of Fort St. David’s, a genteel men’s club, commissioned William Williams to paint Theyanoquin’s portrait, and club records show it was displayed in their clubhouse. (This club later merged with the Schuylkill Fishing Company, discussed here.)

Later in 1755, Theyanoquin led a contingent of Native soldiers in a British force commanded by Sir William Johnson. Col. Ephraim Williams, Jr., led the Massachusetts contingent. (His brother, Dr. Thomas Williams of Deerfield, came along as a surgeon, and their relative, the Rev. Stephen Williams, as a chaplain.)

That British force clashed with the French beside Lake George on 8 September. Col. Williams and Theyanoquin were both killed, though ultimately Johnson claimed victory.

That event made Theyanoquin, or Hendrick, a martyr for people in Britain. Elizabeth Bakewell and Henry Parker issued an engraved portrait of him titled “The Brave old Hendrick the great Sachem or Chief of the Mohawk Indians” (shown above). That print isn’t dated, and its source is uncertain, but scholars appear to believe that it was most likely based on the William Williams painting. If so, it’s the only remaining version of that image.

In the same decade, Williams painted the radical Quaker Benjamin Lay. The earliest trace of this portrait appears to be a remark in Benjamin Franklin’s 10 June 1758 letter from London to his wife Deborah. The retired printer wrote: “I wonder how you came by Ben. Lay’s Picture.”

Unfortunately, Deborah’s letters to Benjamin before and after that one don’t survive, so we don’t know what she’d told him about that picture or how she answered his query. Franklin had published some of Lay’s writing decades earlier, but the man wrote a lot, and I don’t see signs of a close friendship.

Deborah Franklin might have commissioned William Williams to paint Lay because she sensed public interest in an engraved portrait. At some point such an engraving appeared, credited to painter “W. Williams” and engraver “H.D.” That was Henry Dawkins, another British-born craftsman who had come to the Middle Colonies of America to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond. (It’s also possible Dawkins published that engraving himself and the “Picture” Benjamin Franklin wrote about was a print, not the painting.)

That brings us back to Francis Williams, the Jamaican polymath. Did William Williams paint his portrait with an eye toward its eventual engraving? No such engraving survives.

The painting went into the hands of the planter and lawyer Edward Long (1734–1813), who published a history of Jamaica in 1774. That book includes a poem by Francis Williams and a short, inaccurate, racist biography of him. Did Long at some point also think of putting an illustration of Williams into the book?

For more about those unusual portrait subjects, see Eric Hinderaker’s The Two Hendricks: Unraveling a Mohawk Mystery, Marcus Rediker’s The Fearless Benjamin Lay, and Vincent Carretta’s article “Who Was Francis Williams?” in Early American Literature.

New Light on the Portrait of Francis Williams

Last month Artnet and the Guardian reported on historian Fara Dabhoiwala’s findings about a painting I discussed in 2009.

The painting shows Francis Williams (1697–1762), a Jamaican of African ancestry. Born into a free and prospering family with special legal status, he went to London for education and then returned to the family estate.

The painting is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and fifteen years ago I quoted its webpage as saying:

Some writers have suggested that the painting is a caricature of Francis as he has been depicted with a large head and skinny legs. . . . Other critics have considered that the ‘unnaturalistic’ depiction may have been intended to emphasise the subject’s intellectual skills over his physical stature (Francis was alive at the time of the painting’s creation and may even have commissioned it). It may, more simply, be a reflection of the artist’s limited skills.

The new research connects the creation of the painting to a specific historical, and astronomical event.

The Guardian report explains:

Dabhoiwala…discovered the significance of the page number carefully inscribed on the book Williams is reading: it is the page in the third edition of Newton’s Principia that discusses how to calculate the trajectory of a comet by reference to the constellations around it.

An X-ray of the window scene depicted in the background of the painting showed lines intersecting what appears to be a luminous white comet, streaking through the sky at dusk, and connecting – with stunning accuracy – to constellations of stars. These stars would have been visible in that position in the firmament when Halley’s comet was in the sky over Jamaica in 1759, according to research by Dabhoiwala.

In other words, this picture shows a particular moment when Halley’s comet appeared over Williams’s estate, and it shows him as an educated gentleman who knew how to calculate the path of that comet.

Artnet adds:

As for the painting’s creator, Dabhoiwala is confident it’s the work of William Williams, an English-American artist who traveled to Jamaica in the 1760s. The comet together with the appearance [in the bookcase] of [Dr. Samuel] Johnson’s Dictionary, which was first published in 1755, align with this timing and the painting’s style is similar to other early Williams portraits of Benjamin Lay, a Quaker abolitionist, and Hendrick Theyanoguin, a Mohawk Indian.

The Lay portrait, now at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, also shows a man “with a large head and skinny legs.” Like Williams, Lay (c. 1681–1759) was notable for standing out in British-American society rather than fitting in. Williams (1727–1791) might have specialized in such subjects.

TOMORROw: More on William Williams’s work.

“On peut tromper quelques hommes…”

According to Quote Investigator, the fourth volume of the Encyclopédie, issued in 1754 by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert (shown here), contained this line:

…on peut tromper quelques hommes, ou les tromper tous dans certains lieux & en certains tems, mais non pas tous les hommes, dans tous les lieux & dans tous les siécles.

Those same lines had appeared (with an older spelling) in Jacques Abbadie’s Traité de la Vérité de la Religion Chrétienne, published in 1684.

A modern English translation of those words is:

One can fool some men, or fool all men in some places and times, but not all men in all places and in all ages.

In the 1880s, some campaigners for Prohibition in America started to quote a different version:

You can fool all the people part of the time, or you can fool some people all the time, but you cannot fool all people all the time.

In our culture, certain historical figures are magnets for unattributed quotations: Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, Will Rogers, Dorothy Parker. For folksy political wisdom, Abraham Lincoln is one of those quote magnets. (As opposed to sober political wisdom, often attributed to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, or another Founder.)

Because of that phenomenon, within just a few years authors and speakers were crediting Lincoln with that saying about fooling some of the people all of the time. Nothing of the sort appears in any of his writings, nor in any memoir about him until decades later.

Instead, that piece of wisdom has its roots in the French Enlightenment.