“Cast away upon the Isle of Sable”

There are a lot of unanswered questions about the disappearance of Capt. Thomas Parsons, his ship, and his crew in early 1772.

As colonial newspapers show, shipwrecks happened all the time. The rocky shores of Nova Scotia were notorious for their dangers.

For example, on 16 Sept 1773, the Massachusetts Spy ran this report from John Callahan, just arrived from London:

Capt. Callahan, last Thursday se’nnight, went on shore at Cape Sable, where he saw the Wreck of a Snow, New-England built, Pink Stern, called the Kitty, loaded with Lumber, had all her Cargo on board, but her Sails, Rigging and Crew gone.

That might seem mysterious, even suspicious. But back on 10 May the Boston Post-Boy had reported:

A Fisherman, who arrived here last Week, informs, that the Snow Katy, Capt. Major, from this Port for Newfoundland, is cast away upon the Isle of Sable: The Vessel and Cargo is entirely lost; the Captain and Mate, with great Difficulty saved their Lives, and the Remainder of the Crew, (five in Number) perished.

In the case of Capt. Parsons’s schooner, within a year New Englanders suspected he’d met with foul play. What led them to that conclusion? Unfortunately, our sources don’t say.

Those sources do raise some geographic questions about this voyage. One is why, if Capt. Parsons was heading from Newburyport to the Caribbean, he’d ended up far north. Perhaps that was a way of catching trade winds. Perhaps a storm had pushed his ship off course. Perhaps people didn’t remember his destination accurately. Or perhaps Parsons’s ship was returning from the islands and overshot Cape Cod because of weather.

The March 1773 news item quoted here said a schooner had been lost “near Cape-Sable,” which is the southernmost corner of the Nova Scotia peninsula. In Newburyport people came to believe Parsons had met his fate at “St. Mary’s,” which must mean St. Mary Bay’s at the westernmost corner. Was that close enough to count as “near Cape-Sable” to a New Englander?

Yet another mystery: Near the mouth of St. Mary’s Bay sits the village of Comeauville, where Basile Boudrot was granted 300 acres in May 1772. That was three months after Capt. Parsons reportedly left Newburyport, and in that season Boudrot was supposedly busy digging up buried money. Yet somehow the people of New England came to believe that Basile Boudrot was responsible for the death of Capt. Parsons and his crew.

TOMORROW: Spotting the culprit?

[The picture above is Bonaventura Peeters’s “Shipwreck,” ca. 1652, courtesy of the Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art.]

“The supposed Plunder of the Cargo and burning of the Vessel”

Alas, the first newspaper printed in Newburyport, Massachusetts, Henry-Walter Tinges’s Essex Journal and Merrimack Packet, wasn’t founded until the end of 1773.

That means we don’t have published accounts of ships coming and going from that port in 1772, or stories on topics of local interest.

It’s possible a historian digging into the local sources like Alexander Cain will uncover a contemporaneous source on what happened to Capt. Thomas Parsons in 1772. But for now the closest he’s found is the lore published by Joshua Coffin in A Sketch of the History of Newbury, Newburyport, and West Newbury, from 1635 to 1845:

February 10th [1772]. Captain Thomas Parsons sailed from Newburyport, in a schooner, for the West Indies; was wrecked at St. Mary’s, Nova Scotia. It was supposed that he, with all his crew, eight in number, were massacred by the inhabitants there, after plundering the vessel, and setting it on fire.

We don’t know the name of Parsons’s ship or of his crewmen. Coffin also offered no sources—no indication of how the news got back to Newburyport, or when. I suspect that for months people thought the schooner had been lost at sea. Then something—the sight of a burned wreck, a bit of loot, seamen’s gossip—made people suspect there had been foul play.

On 11 Mar 1773, more than a year after Capt. Parsons’s departure, the Boston News-Letter ran this item:

We are informed, that the Accounts sent from hence of the Loss of a Schooner, belonging to Newbury, near Cape-Sable, and the supposed Plunder of the Cargo and burning of the Vessel if not the Murder of the Crew, had been received by the Governor of Nova-Scotia, and that there would be the strictest Inquiry and Prosecution by the Authority of that Province.

That was reprinted in the following weeks in the Essex Gazette of Salem and in Connecticut newspapers. (Capt. Parsons had brothers and other relatives in Connecticut who might be interested.)

It’s not certain that news item referred to rumors about Capt. Parsons’s ship, but the details are similar, and I’ve found no other possible cases. That suggests the suspicions about what happened in Nova Scotia built up over time until someone demanded an investigation.

Unfortunately, I also haven’t found any follow-up stories. Because of national boundaries, I can’t search the Halifax Gazette. Government archives in Nova Scotia might hold information. In early 1773 the royal governor, Lord William Campbell, was busy chasing smugglers and securing a better berth for himself in South Carolina, but maybe he did start an inquiry. Or at least file the “Accounts” from Massachusetts.

It’s also conceivable that some archive in the Caribbean holds a clue. Did Capt. Parsons sail to an island successfully only to run into difficulty on the way back? If he was on some sort of smuggling voyage, what sort of records would he have left?

TOMORROW: Probing the mystery.

Parson Parsons and His Sons

Jonathan Parsons was born in West Springfield in 1705, the son of a church deacon. As an adolescent he “worked at a trade,” but a Yale tutor named Jonathan Edwards persuaded him to try college.

Parsons graduated at the late age of twenty-four. He then studied more theology under Edwards, who had become the minister at Northampton.

In 1731 Parsons took the pulpit himself in the town of Lyme, Connecticut. He married Phebe Griswold, from a prominent local family, and they started having children—thirteen in all, but six died in infancy.

The children who grew up were four sons, born every two years from 1733 to 1739 (Marshfield, Jonathan, Samuel Holden, and Thomas), and three daughters, born 1748 to 1755 (Phebe, Lucia, and Lydia).

At Lyme the Rev. Mr. Parsons also got caught up in the “New Light” revival inspired by his old mentor Edwards and further inspired by the Rev. George Whitefield, who came through town in 1740. Parsons was soon known for his energetic preaching and evangelical outreach.

In 1745 the minister’s fervor grew too much for his congregation, and they decided on a separation. Parsons moved his family to Newbury to preach to a small “New Light” congregation that set itself up as Presbyterian, independent of New England’s independent network.

That meeting grew, erecting what’s now called the Old South Presbyterian Church in Newburyport in 1756. Whitefield died during a visit to Parsons in 1770 and was buried in its crypt. The minister’s wife Phebe died later the same year. He married the widow Lydia Clarkson of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1771. 

Of the Parsons sons, Marshfield and Samuel Holden moved back to their birthplace of Lyme. Marshfield was a merchant and with his succession of four wives kept a tavern. Samuel Holden graduated from Yale and became a lawyer. Jonathan, Jr., and Thomas kept Newbury as their base and went to sea.

In particular, Thomas Parsons had a son by his first wife, Mary Gibson, and four daughters by his second wife, Sarah Sawyer. The New-Hampshire Gazette shows a captain named Thomas Parsons sailing out of Portsmouth harbor:

• on the Charming Sally to Guadaloupe in 1762.
• on the Success to Dominica and the West Indies in 1769.
• on the Three Friends to the West Indies and Guadaloupe in 1770.

In February 1772, according to secondary sources, Capt. Thomas Parsons took a schooner out of Newburyport for another voyage to the Caribbean. He never came home.

TOMORROW: Mystery off Cape Sable.

Basile Boudrot and “1004 pieces of money”

According to the Musée des Acadiens des Pubnicos website, Basile Boudrot was born in 1739 in Port Royal, which the British had renamed as Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, in 1713.

War broke out between the British and French Empires in the 1740s and again in the 1750s. At some point the Boudrot family moved to Cherbourg, France. Basile’s father was a mariner, and the young man worked as a fisherman “now and then.”

In 1764 Basile married Magdelene d’Entremont in Cherbourg. She, too, had roots on Nova Scotia, in Pubnico on the southeastern shore.

Four years later, the lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia, Michael Francklin, signed a charter creating the settlement of Clare in the easternmost corner of the peninsula. That area was set aside for French-speaking Acadians.

Three important things happened to Basile Boudrot in 1772. First, the Musée des Acadiens des Pubnicos tells this story:

It was in April when he left [France] with a letter from his sister[-in-law] Marguerite Landry for her brother-in-law in Pubnico, asking him to send her the money which had been hidden at the “Cabanaux.”

On his way to Acadia, Basile opened the letter and went right straight to the spot indicated where the money had been hidden and unearthed “1004 pieces of money.”

Then he went to Pubnico and told the d’Entremont bothers that their relatives in France were well provided for, having received money from “the town-hall and a quarter out of two vessels.” Thus, he was going to keep the money. It is obvious that he did not give them Marguerite’s letter.

He left Pubnico on May 7 and disappeared forever. In a letter, we read that some captains from Cherbourg had seen him several times “in America” without saying exactly where.

A few days after Basile had left, Benoni d’Entremont wrote to his sister-in-law Marguerite Landry and told her about the visit that he and his brothers had received from Basile Boudrot. Marguerite answered April 20, 1773, telling of the letter she had entrusted him with and of the lies he had told of her being well provided for, and these the whole story of Basile’s “prevarication” came to light.

Benoni d’Entremont (1745–1841) had spent his adolescence in Marblehead, Medfield, and finally Walpole, Massachusetts, having been expelled from Acadia with his family after the capture of Louisbourg. His father died in 1759 and was reportedly buried in Roxbury. After years as “French neutrals,” the rest of the family returned to Nova Scotia.

Back to Basile Boudrot. According to Isaiah W. Wilson’s A Geography and History of the County of Digby, Nova Scotia (1900), in May 1772 the government of Nova Scotia granted him 300 acres on St. Mary’s Bay within the Clare settlement. Today the village of Comeauville claims him as a founder.

I have questions about how those events fit together, assuming all the details are correct. Did Boudrot use the money he unearthed to buy that land? The timing would be tight if he left France in April and completed the real estate deal by the end of May. Or did he return to Nova Scotia to settle on a land grant and as a bonus stumble onto buried treasure?

Pubnico and Comeauville are more than fifty miles apart, but there weren’t a whole lot of people living on eastern Nova Scotia at that time. Did the D’Entremonts really never hear about Boudrot living in the same province?

As for the third event in 1772, that’s coming up later this week.

TOMORROW: Parson Parsons’s sons.

Museum of African American History Events on the Revolution

The Museum of African American History in Boston has opened a new exhibit called “Black Voices of the Revolution: Liberty, Emancipation, and the Struggle for Independence.”

The museum website says:

What do you do when a country cries out for liberty—but won’t offer it to you? In the shadowed alleys and crowded docks of Revolutionary-era Boston, Black men and women—enslaved and free—listened as white colonists thundered about freedom. They heard the speeches. They read the broadsides. But they knew: the liberty being shouted from the rooftops was not meant for them. Still, they stepped forward.

Interact with AI-driven, holographic images of primary sources, and the men and women who represented the African American community in Massachusetts during the period from the 1620s to 1800. Ask questions of the interactive using a voice activated program or by simply typing your queries on a touchscreen.

Those personages include Lucy Terry Prince, Phillis Wheatley Peters, Chloe Spear, and more.

On Tuesday, 17 February, the museum will host an event called “Digging Deeper into Black Voices of the Revolution.” Chief Curator and Director of Collections Angela Tate and Prof. Nedra Lee will discuss the process of assembling that exhibit. That free event is due to run from 5 to 7 P.M. at the museum on 46 Joy Street. Register to attend here.

On Wednesday, 18 February, the Massachusetts Historical Society will host a panel discussion on the topic “Whose Independence: Black Experiences During the American Revolution.” The panelists will be:

• Dr. Noelle Trent, Museum of African American History | Boston & Nantucket
• Dr. Benjamin Remillard, Providence College
• Dr. Chernoh Sesay Jr., DePaul University
• Dr. Kyera Singleton, Royall House and Slave Quarters

The panel description says:

As cries for liberty and clashes with the British broke out in the American colonies, enslaved and free Black people fought for independence on the battlefield, in courtrooms, and their communities. In petitions and writings, they argued that there were contradictions in a fight for freedom that didn’t include a full abolishment of slavery. Following the promise of freedom advertised, many enslaved men enlisted as soldiers. Many joined the Patriot cause while others volunteered with British forces. Throughout the war and in the years following, free Black leaders built the African Lodge and African Meeting House and established spaces for religion and education in their communities.

That event will run 6 to 7 P.M. Register to attend in person or online starting at this page.

Back at the Museum of African American History, on Thursday, 26 February, it will host the first U.S. showing of “In Search of Phillis Wheatley Peters,” Leslie Askew’s thirty-five-minute documentary about the poet, her work, new discoveries about her life after marriage, and her cultural legacy. That event is scheduled from 6 to 8 P.M. It is free, with donations welcome. Reserve a space here.

Shown above is the first-class stamp featuring Phillis Wheatley, just issued by the U.S. Postal Service.

A Super Bowl Toss-up

Through Craig Bruce Smith I learned that the coin to be tossed at the start of this year’s Super Bowl has a Revolutionary pedigree.

It’s a replica of the Libertas Americana medal that Benjamin Franklin commissioned in 1782 after learning of the French and Continental victory at Yorktown.

That medal has the date 1776 on one side, but the 1777 and 1781 dates of Saratoga and Yorktown are on the other. It’s not quite a Sestercentennial artifact, in sum.

The Super Bowl could have chosen a replica of Washington Before Boston medal, commemorating an event that occurred 250 years ago next month.

That, too, has a 1776 date on it, albeit in Roman numerals. The Continental Congress voted in 1776 to commission that medal, though the project didn’t get done until 1789.

Of course, choosing a coin this year that celebrates the recovery of Boston, based on a medal held by the Boston Public Library, might seem biased toward the New England Patriots.

Knox Trail Commemorations on 8–9 Feb.

Two hundred fifty years ago, the fifty-eight artillery pieces that Col. Henry Knox had convoyed from Fort Ticonderoga were in Framingham, being mounted on carriages and prepared for use.

The Sestercentennial celebrations of that event continue.

Sunday, 8 February, 2 to 4 P.M.
Knox Trail 250th Commemorative Program
Framingham History Center, Village Hall on the Common

This free, family-friendly event is part of a four-community commemoration presented by Revolution250. The program is scheduled to begin at 2 P.M. with a winter procession across the Framingham Centre Common, featuring cannons mounted on draft-animal-pulled sleds, a fife and drum unit, and colonial reenactors portraying a welcoming party.

The event will continue inside with a commemorative program highlighting Framingham’s role and the shared history of nearby Knox Trail communities. Peter Salem will be portrayed alongside a display of the original muster roll that records his service. Another highlighted artifact will be one of only twelve known handwritten fife tune books from the era. The MA250-sponsored “Stitching Revolution in Massachusetts” quilt will be unveiled.

Because of frigid temperatures and snow, most of the program will take place indoors. Parking will be available at Plymouth Church (87 Edgell Road) and First Parish (24 Vernon Street). For more details, see this webpage.

Monday, 9 February, 7 to 8:30 P.M.
The Noble Train Arrives: Knox, Washington and the End of the Siege
Aeronaut Brewing Company, Somerville

As sponsored by the Somerville Museum, Dan Breen concludes his two-part saga by recounting how the cannon from Ticonderoga were hauled over the Berkshires, across the Connecticut River and finally to Dorchester Heights, where they would help to cue Gen. William Howe to abandon Boston. Learn more and reserve tickets through this page.

In addition, a video of my talk in Cambridge at the end of last month on “A Fine Train of Artillery” and how the siege ended is now online here.

“I fired two guns & my Master Mr. Manwarring fired one”

Another document related to the Boston Massacre in the collections of the Boston Public Library is catalogued as “Examination and answers of a servant of Edward Manwaring.”

Though his name doesn’t appear in the manuscript, that servant was Charles Bourgate, the “French boy.”

The handwriting identifies this document as having been made by Samuel Winthrop (1716–1779, shown here), long-time clerk of the Massachusetts superior court.

So far as I can tell, this text has never been published. It doesn’t contain information not found elsewhere—in fact, given that Charles Bourgate was lying, it doesn’t contain actual information at all. But here it is.

Q. was you at the Custom house in Boston on the Eveng. of the 5th. of March last
A. I was there

Q. at what time did you go there
A. I do not know at what hour I went there; it might be half an hour or an hour after Sunset

Q. how long did you stay there
A. after I got into the Custom house I staid there not quite half an hour

Q. Did you leave the Custom house before the firing was over
A. the guns were all discharged before he [sic] left the house

Q. was you at the Custom house at the time the bells rung for fire
A. I went there while the bells were ringing & staid there while the bells rang, when I came out of the house the bells had done ringing—

Q. do you know of any guns being fired out of the Custom house at that time
A. I fired two guns & my Master Mr. Manwarring fired one—

Q. Where were you when Mr. Manwarring fired
A. I was below. I had come from the Chamber down stairs I did not see him fire, I saw him direct the gun out of Window

Q. how came you to give those guns
A. my Master & the tall man ordered me

Q. What Chamber was those guns fired out of
A. Right over the Sentry box

Q. Whether when you went home you found Mr. Hudson & his Wife at home
A. I found them at home in the same Room where I left them when I went away—

There’s no date on this document, but I think it comes from the week after the Massacre. That was when Bourgate first told his story to legal authorities, but before John Munro came forward to provide an alibi for Edward Manwaring. Bourgate subsequently changed his story to accuse Munro as well, and a grand jury indicted both men and a couple more.

The indictment of Capt. Thomas Preston and the soldiers, also in the Boston Public Library, was written and signed by the Massachusetts attorney general, Jonathan Sewall. He then retired from the case. The indictment of Manwaring, Munro, and other men connected to the Customs service appears in Samuel Winthrop’s handwriting, based on Charles Bourgate’s testimony.

“Causes of the breaking out of this ill Humor”

Among the items in the Boston Public Library’s manuscripts department is a 21 Apr 1770 letter from Charles Lloyd (1735–1773) to George Grenville, former prime minister of Britain (shown here).

Lloyd was working at the Treasury office by 1761. His elder brother had tutored Grenville’s sons before becoming dean of Norwich, and through him Charles secured the job of secretary to the new prime minister in 1763.

After the Marquess of Rockingham took over government, Lloyd lost some patronage appointments but continued working at the Treasury. As of 1770, he was writing from the “Salt Office”; that department collected the salt tax, operating somewhat independently.

Lloyd also continued serving Grenville, who remained in Parliament, as a source on London news and a pamphleteer. According to the Dictionary of National Biography, Lord North even suspected that Lloyd wrote the radical Junius letters, a theory most later scholars called “absurd.”

This particular letter passed on news from Boston, which is probably why it ended up on this side of the Atlantic. It began:

Salt Office Saturday
21st April 1770.

Dear Sir

Nothing has occurred since youn left Town that I thought worth troubling you with till this morning when Mr. Robertson [John Robinson] (one of the Commrs. of the Customs in America) arrived in Town with an account that he left the whole Town of Boston in the utmost Confusion.

The immediate Causes of the breaking out of this ill Humor arose from some petty Quarrel between a Townsman & a Soldier. Each had their respective Partizans from words they came to Blows some were killed by the Soldiers & many wounded—

The next Day, a more General Engagement took place between the Civil & military when the Commander in Chief [acting governor Thomas Hutchinson] to prevent further Effusion of Blood order’d the Troops to retire into the Castle, & the Commrs. of the Customs are lodged there likewise—

The Townsmen were guilty of several outrages before the military Fired.

Lloyd then went on to write more about a lottery. He added a brief postscript of political gossip.

We can barely recognize the Boston Massacre in Lloyd’s description. The “petty Quarrel” was probably the ropewalk brawl. Robinson or Lloyd put less significance on the people killed than on Lt. Gov. Hutchinson agreeing to the town’s demand to move the troops—“a more General Engagement…between the Civil & military.” That was how some conservative elements in London first learned about the Massacre. 

Rhymes with Memes

The corporal arrested after the Boston Massacre is recorded in Massachusetts legal papers as William Wemms.

The soldiers’ trial was therefore designated as Rex v. Wemms et al., with the corporal always listed first as a matter of rank. (Ironically, he was most likely the one man who didn’t fire his gun that night.)

We know from the case of Edward Montgomery that those legal records can err. Both the army’s muster rolls and Boston town records establish that that private’s first name was Edward, but his indictment and conviction came under the name of Hugh Montgomery.

In Cpl. Wemms’s case, the army muster rolls consistently spell his name as Wemys, a name which these days is more often rendered as Wemyss.

It wasn’t till this year that I got curious about how that name was pronounced.

Turns out it’s a Gaelic name pronounced “Weems,” like the parson.

So now I have to retrain my brain and mouth around how to say Rex v. Wemms.

Flagging a Call for Presentations at the 2026 HistoryFest in Westfield

In the summer and fall of 1774, New England towns competed to put up Liberty Poles, the taller the better.

On 28 July, Ephraim Potter and Edward Lawrence brought such a flagpole into Deerfield, though they didn’t have time to set it up that day. Young Dr. Elihu Ashley estimated that it was “about fifty feet.”

Dr. Ashley got a good look at that pole because that evening he sawed through it with the help of some friends.

The next day, Ashley wrote in his diary, the talk of the town was “nothing but Liberty, and ye Poles being Sawd.” Soon “ye Liberty Pole was set up and also a Tory Pole as they in their infinite wisdom are pleased to call it.” I wonder if together those poles measured fifty feet.

On 30 July, an anonymous public letter was posted in town. It declared Potter, Lawrence, and their comrades to be “a pack of ignorant villains.” Also, whoever wielded the saw was “some Malicious Person, Inimical to his Country”—though that was meant ironically, since it’s now thought the anonymous letter came from Dr. Ashley. It went on:

Where are things going, that so sensible people as you know the Town of Deerfield are, should suffer these Rascals to carry matters on so. I cannot help feeling, and very sensibly, when I think what the Consequences of these things will be & have no reason to think but that they will issue in blood…

Today Deerfield’s Liberty Pole is commemorated in a stone marker and in a flagpole in Historic Deerfield, as I photographed it above last year. (It was flying a version of the Taunton flag.)

That’s just one Revolutionary story from the Connecticut River valley, also called the Pioneer Valley.

On 11 April, the Pioneer Valley History Network and the Westfield State University History & Philosophy Department will host their 2026 HistoryFest in Westfield. Like History Camp Boston, this is a chance for local chroniclers and researchers to share their work with other people curious about history.

The organizers say:

Our Homespun History Conference thrives on the stories, ideas, and passions of people who care deeply about the history of the Pioneer Valley, Massachusetts, and the many ways history connects to museums, historical societies, and community life today. Whether your focus is local history, material culture, public history practice, education, preservation, or an untold story waiting to be shared, we invite you to submit a proposal to present.

That process starts with their invitation to propose a session through this form.

The organizers say they aren’t necessarily looking for formal “experts” but for:

• Fascinating stories and fresh perspectives
• Practical or thought-provoking workshop topics
• Case studies, community projects, or works-in-progress

For people with questions, they have scheduled some brief Zoom information sessions at different times of the day on 3, 13, and 19 February. For more details, click on the proposal link above.

Getting Warmer on the Origin of a Warming Pan

At Historic New England, Erica Lome, curator of collections, shared a behind-the-scenes essay about a warming pan with a Revolutionary heritage of sorts:

Tucked away in the parlor at Historic New England’s Cogswell’s Grant in Essex, Massachusetts, is a warming pan with a turned wooden handle and a brass container pierced with holes and engraved with scrolling vines and flowerheads. Also referred to as bed warmers, warming pans were a common household tool in colonial and post-revolutionary America, filled with embers and placed under the sheets of a bed to warm it before use.

This particular warming pan had more than just decorative motifs adorning its metallic surface. Engraved on its lid are the words:

From the Townspeople / Patriot and Friend of Gen. Washington / Bell Tavern, Danvers, Massachusetts / Francis Symonds Esq. Innkeeper and Poet.

On the pan’s sides, inside the incised outline of a bell:

I’ll toll you / if you have need / and feed you well / and bid you speed.

On the other side:

Francis Symonds / makes and sells / the best of chocolate / also shells.

John Warner Barber’s Historical Collections (1839) recorded that those verses hung on signs outside the Bell Tavern. In 1841 the Boston Cultivator stated that innkeeper Symonds’s “poetic genius caused [those lines] to be inscribed”; as Lome notes, he was known for adding bits of rhyme to his advertisements. (The Cultivator changed “also shells” to “and shells,” which scans better if you put three syllables into “chocolate.”)

The essay continues:

By its history, as recorded by Nina Fletcher Little, the warming pan was presented to Symonds around 1785: “After the war’s close, the citizens of Danvers evidently wished to present Symonds with a token of their esteem and decided on a warming pan as a practical gift.” The engraved inscription inside the bell matched the Bell Tavern’s signpost. The additional inscription praised Symonds as a patriot, friend of George Washington, and a poet, truly a prominent citizen and worthy of appreciation.

When researching this object for [the upcoming exhibit] Myth and Memory, one major detail of Symonds’s life challenged its story: Francis Symonds died on September 22, 1775. According to the Essex Gazette:

“On the 22nd Instant died at Danvers and on the 24th was very decently interred, Mr. Francis Symonds, Innholder, in the 5th Year of his Age. He was very just in his Dealings, and compassionate to the Poor as far as lay in his Power. In his last Sickness, especially towards the Close of Life, his Calmness and Resignation were very remarkable. He has left a sorrowful Widow and 6 Children, for whom we wish that the fame Compassion that he has shown to others may be shown to them.” . . .

Francis Symonds mustered for two days with Colonel [Timothy] Pickering’s regiment during the Battle of Lexington and Concord, and again on April 24, 1775, serving for a little over three months, until August 1, 1775. He was at home when he died of illness.

So, what about the warming pan? It seems very unlikely that the town of Danvers presented it to him on his deathbed, nor to his family immediately after, given the ongoing Siege of Boston. What is its true history?

Lome doesn’t offer a definite conclusion, but I like her hypothesis that the words were inscribed during a commemoration of the Revolution, such as Danvers’s dedication of a memorial obelisk near the Bell Tavern in 1835. Or later, when warming pans themselves were becoming relics of a quaint past. 

Lunch with Maj. Thomas Musgrave, 6 Feb.

In last week’s talk about the end of the siege of Boston, I recounted the story of the British army raid on the Dorchester peninsula.

For action details I drew on Francis E. Blake’s 1899 article for the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, reprinted with additional realty information as a short book titled Dorchester Neck (Now South Boston): The Raid of British Troops, February 13, 1776.

In fact, most of that action happened in the early morning hours of 14 February. I quoted reactions to the raid in this posting from 2008.

Yet my favorite detail about the event is that Maj. Thomas Musgrave, who led a squad of elite troops across the ice from Boston Neck, was considered the best skater in the British force, as quoted here in 2010.

It was therefore intriguing to learn that the American Revolution Insitute will feature Maj. Musgrave in an online presentation on Friday, 6 February.

Here’s the event description:

Join the Institute’s museum collections and operations manager, Paul Newman, for a discussion of a 1780s manuscript account of the American Revolution by Lt. Col. (later made a General and Baronet) Thomas Musgrave, a British officer who served extensively throughout the war.

At the battle of Germantown, he commanded the British 40th Regiment of Foot that famously defended the Chew House against attacking American forces. Subsequently, he was restationed in the West Indies in 1778, before returning to New York as the last British commandant of the city.

Following the war, Musgrave authored a manuscript, housed in our library collections, that offers extensive details of his service throughout the Revolution.

The presentation will emphasize “the 40th Regiment of Foot at the Battle of Germantown.” But maybe there will some seasonal information about Maj. Musgrave on ice.

Knox Trail Commemorations on 31 Jan.–1 Feb.

This weekend brings another set of commemorations of Col. Henry Knox’s artillery train, including a couple of events displaced by last weekend’s snow.

Saturday and Sunday, 31 January–1 February, 10 A.M. to 4 P.M.
Knox Train of Artillery
Old Sturbridge Village

In partnership with Fort Ticonderoga, this unique event explores the Noble Train as it went through central Massachusetts. For regular museum admission, join staff from the village and Fort Ti and reenactors from Knox’s Regiment of Artillery to learn about the 300-mile journey. Examine reproduction artillery tools and ammunition. Explore the historic village and interact with costumed historians as they demonstrate daily life after the Revolution. Highlights include:

• See oxen in action hauling cannons. 
• Watch Knox’s Regiment of Artillery demonstrate cannon firing. 
• Learn about American artillery of the Revolution compared to the Massachusetts Artillery of the 1830s. 
• Try using an artillery engine, lifting reproduction cannon from Fort Ticonderoga. 
• Handle reproduction cannon ammunition and explore their types and use. 
• See cabinetmakers building a log sled. 
• Learn about using draft animals and their importance to 19th-century farmers. 
• See blacksmiths forging cannon carriage hardware. 
• Hear stories from a recreated patriot who marched on the Knox Trail from Pittsfield to Cambridge in 1976. 

For more details, including the schedule of events on each day, see the Old Sturbridge Village webpage.

Saturday, 31 January, 1 to 4 P.M.
250th Anniversary of Henry Knox & the Noble Train of Artillery
185 Salisbury Street, Worcester

Join Revolution 250, Boston Celebrations, the AC Marriott Hotel Worcester, and citizens of the towns of Brookfield, Leicester, Spencer, Worcester, Shrewsbury, and Northborough for a commemoration of the epic 1776 adventure of Henry Knox and his “Noble Train or Artillery” trekking across Massachusetts on their way to Boston. A procession will step off from Elm Park about 1 P.M. and end at City Hall. An indoor commemorative program will begin at 2 P.M.

Sunday, 1 February, 1:30 to 3 P.M.
“Were so lucky as to get the Cannon out of the River”: Henry Knox and His Noble Train of Artillery
Westford Museum

Alexander Cain will discuss Knox’s journey and its impact on the Continental Army’s firepower and the American cause. At Fort Ticonderoga, the colonel selected 58 artillery pieces, including immense 12-, 18-, and 24-pounders. Once they were ready, some of that artillery was positioned on Dorchester Heights, forcing the British evacuation of Boston. Cain explores Knox’s mission transformed the Continental Army’s firepower while embodying the ingenuity and determination that defined the American cause. Learn more about this presentation.

Sunday, 1 Febuary, 4 to 6 P.M.
Henry Knox: Presentation and Cannon Firing
Martha Mary Chapel, Wayside Inn, Sudbury

Local writer Steven Glovsky explores the improbabilities and inconsistencies of Henry Knox’s story, leading up to his undertaking the transport of urgently needed cannon in the winter of 1775–76. The presentation will be followed by cannon fire from Crane’s Third Artillery. For more information.

For those wanting to-the-date exactitude, as of 250 years ago, the fifty-eight cannon and mortars were parked in Framingham, being equipped for use. Col. Knox had taken command of the artillery regiment on the siege lines, issuing his first regimental orders.