“Subscribers towards Mr. Adams’s debt”

In 1860 the New England Historical and Genealogical Register published the text of an undated document headed “Copy of original list of subscribers toward Mr. Adams’s debt.”

The author of the surrounding article, Andrew H. Ward, believed that debt was one Samuel Adams had inherited from his father’s investment in the Massachusetts Land Bank.

The journal’s editor cast doubt on that idea in a footnote, noting that the presence of “Rev Mr Bowen” on the list must mean it dated between 1766, when Penuel Bowen was ordained at the New South Meeting-House, and 1772, when he left the pulpit and opened a provisions store. That period was long after the estate of Adams’s father was settled.

Another subscriber on the list was “A gentleman of distinction,” and Ward’s footnote said someone had inserted “Mr. T——e” above that. That probably meant Customs Commissioner John Temple. He left Boston in late 1770, further narrowing the span of possible dates.

Kay Menand’s Massachusetts Historical Review article “The Things That Were Caesar’s: Tax Collecting in Eighteenth-Century Boston” reports that in March 1768 the appeals court ordered Adams to pay the town £1,463, and that judgement was satisfied. However, as noted yesterday, in 1772 a Boston town committee found that Adams still owed £1,149.10.0.1/4 of uncollected taxes, money that the town was unlikely ever to see.

Putting all the clues together, I think this list probably dates from the late 1760s. We don’t know if all the subscribers paid what they promised, so we can’t make the sums add up. Even so, it’s an interesting snapshot of people willing to help out Adams and/or Boston.

The top subscriber by far, pledging more than four times as much as any other individual, was John Hancock. At this point he was still firmly at Adams’s side.

The next tier of donors (£60+) consisted of John Erving, James Pitts, and James Bowdoin, wealthy merchants who often served on the Council. Erving was close to the royal establishment, but unlike his sons (including George, pledging £12), he stayed in America after the siege.

Likewise, John Gray the ropemaker (£40), Nathaniel Sparhawk the Maine landowner (£40), and Harrison Gray the provincial treasurer (£20) all leaned toward the Crown in the 1760s while maintaining friendships among the Whigs. Moses Gill (£26.13) was a solid Whig.

Among the smaller donors, Dr. Joseph Warren (£13.6) stands out as a young professional among older, established, and wealthier merchants. William Whitwell (£6) is notable because he led the 1772 inquiry into Adams’s outstanding debt with Thomas Dawes (£13) on his committee. Future Loyalist Isaac Royall offered the smallest amount of any name on the list, a mere £1.8.

This list appears to date from a period before the province’s political dividing lines hardened. Men who opposed Samuel Adams’s tactics were nonetheless willing to help bleach a blot on his reputation—with the knowledge that their money wasn’t going to him personally but to their town.

TOMORROW: The elections of 1772.

“Remaining unpaid of Mr. Adams Debt to the Town”

A couple of days ago I recounted how in March 1771 the Boston town meeting appointed the merchant William Whitwell and four other men to look into the town’s finances.

That committee finally reported on its inquiry on 9 Mar 1772. Among its conclusions was:

We also find that there still remains to be paid into the Province Treasury on Account of Mr. Samuel Adams the Sum of Fifty Pounds and from the information given us by Mr. Robert Peirpoint it appears that there is no probability of any part of the Sum of £1149 10 0 1/4 remaining unpaid of Mr. Adams Debt to the Town, will ever be received and paid into the Treasury——

Adams had been one of Boston’s tax collectors from 1756 to 1765. He turned over a lot less money than he was supposed to collect. No one believed Adams had kept funds for himself, however. Rather, he hadn’t pressed citizens for everything they legally owed. If the townspeople pressured him for more money, they knew he’d have little choice but to squeeze them back, and no one wanted that.

According to Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, John Hancock had spurred that inquiry while knowing it could harm Adams. The finding that Adams owed more than £1,000 might indeed have been embarrassing except that the town meeting had already voted to sue him for uncollected taxes back in 1767. Hutchinson had presided over an appeal of that suit. Boston had granted Pierpont, one of Adams’s bondsmen, authority to collect back taxes on his behalf. In sum, the outstanding sum was old news.

Whitwell and his committee also found that a couple of more recent tax collectors owed £148 and £432, minus their premiums. The town was in legal negotiations with another former tax collector, Jonathan Payson. Such disputes weren’t uncommon, though Adams’s deficit was much bigger than others.

In addition, the committee found that Thomas Cushing owed £155 and John Ruddock £82 from selling lottery tickets for the town. Both those men were politically active Whigs. Hutchinson suspected Cushing had been another of Hancock’s targets.

Yet later in the same afternoon, the meeting considered the even older debt of “the Linnen Manufacturing Company” that had built the Manufactory building beside the Common. Three “Surviving Members” of that company—Lt. Gov. Andrew Oliver, commissary general Thomas Hubbard, and Dr. Silvester Gardiner—asked the town to write off the remaining amount. The meeting refused. Those gentlemen were on Hutchinson’s side in the political disputes.

One more financial question remained: William Molineux petitioned the town for more money for his spinning enterprise, which provided employment for poor women and children. Or at least to forgive the £300 it had loaned him years before. Molineux was among the Boston Whigs’ most radical leaders.

That question was so involved that the discussion was adjourned to the next day. A “printed Paper” criticizing Molineux was spread around by persons unknown. “After considerable debate,” the meeting heard justice Richard Dana’s judgment that the law wouldn’t let the town forgive Molineux’s debt. So the men at the meeting voted to take no action at all beyond rejecting “unjust Reflections on Mr. Mollineuxs Character” and thanking the man for “his faithful discharge of a Contract.”

Meanwhile, Massachusetts’s royal judges took advantage of how Molineux and his supporters were busy in Faneuil Hall on that 10 March to deliver a royal pardon to convicted murderer Ebenezer Richardson so he could slip out of town unnoticed.

All in all, I see the 1772 inquiry into debts owed the town as fairly ordinary business. I’m sure Hutchinson was pleased that people had to pay attention to Samuel Adams’s “defalcation.” But I doubt the governor was accurate in believing Hancock was secretly, deliberately poking at Adams’s sensitive spot.

TOMORROW: Mr. Adams’s debt.

“An inquiry into the state of the finances of the town”

Even as he served as royal governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Hutchinson was writing the third volume of his history of the colony.

Before he died in 1780, Hutchinson cut down that manuscript. Interestingly, he removed some passages defending his own conduct, though of course what survived presented his view of events.

Hutchinson’s grandson published the edited text in 1828. In 1936 the Harvard College administrator Lawrence Shaw Mayo (shown here) republished all three volumes in a scholarly edition.

In 1947, Mayo married Catherine Barton, a “friend and companion of long standing who shared his scholarly interests,” according to Clifford K. Shipton. Six weeks later, Mayo took his own life, to his friends’ shock.

Meanwhile, Shipton was tracking down a collector who had bought Hutchinson’s earlier manuscript. He asked Catherine Barton Mayo to study it, and she published the excised passages in the American Antiquarian Society Proceedings in 1949.

One of those passages stated about the spring of 1772:

The breach between [Samuel] Adams & [John] Hancock was apparently about this time greater than ever. The latter in a town meeting, a few weeks before, had intimated his design to move for an inquiry into the state of the finances of the town, in which the former had occasioned a great deficiency, and also into the state of monies raised by lottery for the benefit of the town of which lottery Mr. [Thomas] Cushing, the speaker of the House and a kinsman and fast friend of Mr. Adams, was one of the Trustees, and reported to be deficient.

As a town selectman, Hancock had a solid reason to push for an audit of Boston’s finances. The governor hinted that this concern was actually a clever way to distance himself from Adams and Cushing.

I’m not convinced Hutchinson’s presentation of events was accurate. To start with, although Adams and Cushing were personally close, Cushing’s politics were closer to Hancock’s, especially as the 1770s went on. On the question of how much to protest the Massachusetts General Court being convened outside of Boston, the issue that reportedly first divided Adams and Hancock in the spring of 1772, Cushing was on Hancock’s side.

Then there’s a matter of timing. Boston’s town records show that the meeting created its committee to look into financial matters on 27 May 1771. (Those records don’t say who proposed that measure.) The committee chairman was the merchant William Whitwell, and the other members were Thomas Dawes, Melatiah Bourn, Alexander Hill, and Ezekiel Price, political and business insiders.

That committee offered an interim report in June but didn’t deliver its full findings until 9 Mar 1772. Even that was, as Hutchinson’s own account says, “a few weeks before” the disagreement in the General Court led to Hancock’s first noted resentment of Adams.

Now according to Hutchinson’s unnamed sources, all the way back in June 1771 Hancock “wished to be seperated from Mr Adams.” And in December Adams sensed it necessary to assure Hancock that he hadn’t said certain things about him in a conversation about James Otis. So it’s possible that Hancock was chafing under Adams’s influence, set up the financial inquiry in May 1771, and finally openly objected to something Adams said the following April.

If so, Hancock was playing a really long game.

TOMORROW: Following the money, counting the votes.

The Chevalier in Boston, 24–25 Oct.

Back in 2017, Boston 1775 shared a couple of postings about Joseph Bologne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a celebrated swordsman and musician of French and African ancestry. At the time his compositions were being rediscovered in concert halls.

On the evenings of 24 and 25 October, Concert Theatre Works will present The Chevalier: The Life and Music of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges at Emmanuel Church on Newbury Street in Boston.

More on this production:

Bologne was a contemporary of the Revolutionary generation with an extraordinary story of his own: born in Guadeloupe to an enslaved mother, he became a virtuoso violinist, composer, and champion fencer in 18th-century France, and later led a regiment during the French Revolution. Despite all of that, his music was largely written out of the canon after his death.

The show tells his story through the words of his contemporaries and the music he composed, performed live by The Chamber Orchestra of Boston alongside young musicians from Project STEP and actors from Concert Theatre Works.

The production was conceived, written, and directed by Bill Barclay, former Director of Music at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. It was commissioned by the Tanglewood Music Festival, premiered there in 2019, and has toured the U.S. and U.K. for seven years. This is its first time in Boston.

Scroll down on this page for a two-minute trailer about the show. To purchase tickets for the upcoming performances, go to this site.

“It was one cause of the alienation between them”

Gov. Thomas Hutchinson wasn’t the only chronicler to say Samuel Adams and John Hancock fell out over the question of how adamantly to protest against Hutchinson convening the Massachusetts General Court in Cambridge.

In 1809, the Rev. John Eliot (1754–1813, shown here) published A Biographical Dictionary, Containing a Brief Account of the First Settlers, and Other Eminent Characters among the Magistrates, Ministers, Literary and Worthy Men, in New-England.

Eliot was a son and successor of the Rev. Andrew Eliot (1718–1778), minister at the New North Meeting-House during the Revolution. He had thus met all the leading politicians of pre-Revolutionary Boston before coming of age and had heard plenty of gossip about them.

In his book’s short biography of Samuel Adams, Eliot wrote:

During these [legislative] sessions at Cambridge, a difference of opinion arose, upon some secondary matters, between Adams and Hancock, which cooled their friendship, and was succeeded by an antipathy, that had an effect upon the minds of the people, many of whom took a warm interest in this personal animosity, though they agreed in political sentiments; and acted together in the great affairs which arrested the attention of all the whigs.

Eliot went into more detail in his profile of Hancock:

There was a collision of sentiment among the leading whigs about the removal of the court to Boston. Hutchinson offered this upon certain conditions, which the majority of members saw fit to comply with.

Adams was against the measure, and expressed his sentiments in opposition to his friend and colleague. Mr. Hancock was a man impatient of contradiction, and, upon some occasions, indulged a petulant humour. He could not bear the opposition of Mr. Adams on this question. It was one cause of the alienation between them.

That gentleman [Adams] was cool and determined, hard and unyielding, as well as bold in his argument. He sometimes was sarcastick in his replies; but upon the subject which then divided the house, he observed the utmost delicacy, and seemed to dread the consequence of this political difference.

These gentlemen had different views, though equally zealous in their opposition to the mother country. Or else one looked further than the other. . . . The division of these two leading characters made parties among the whigs, especially in the town of Boston.

The relationship of Hancock and Adams was still sensitive years after both men had died, Eliot told the Rev. William Bentley in 1810, in a letter published in the New England Historic and Genealogical Register.

Eliot listed his entries about Adams, Hancock, and Hutchinson among his “best drawn.” However, “Several Gentlemen in Boston, estimable for Talents & worth, tho’ federalists (which may lower them with you), say they would not have subscribed for the book had they seen what I have said of S.A. & John Hancock.”

Eliot was looking back through years in which Hancock and Adams were much further apart than they were in 1772, so that could have magnified the importance of this moment. Nonetheless, he offers more testimony that Hancock’s response to Adams’s disagreement was the first crack in their partnership.

COMING UP: Town finances.

“The Right of the Governor to carry them to Houssatonick”

John Hancock and Samuel Adams split in early 1772 over a few small issues—at least according to Gov. Thomas Hutchinson.

The first involved where the Massachusetts General Court was meeting.

Under orders from London, Hutchinson had summoned the legislature to meet in Cambridge instead of in Boston. His predecessor, Gov. Francis Bernard, had done the same. The General Court had also gone to Cambridge during a smallpox outbreak.

In the eighteenth-century British Empire it was widely accepted that colonial legislatures would be elected once a year, but then the royal governors could convene those legislatures where and when they chose. This power derived from their being representatives of the monarch in Britain.

According to Hutchinson in June 1771:

Mr [James] Otis in a Speech the first day after the Election gave his opinion to the house that we had a very good Governour and he was sure the People in all parts of the Province thought so, he condemned the proceedings of the House the last year & acknowledged the Right of the Governor to carry them to Houssatonick, the Western extreme part of the Province, was sensible that it would be inconvenient and that he would not do it and hoped he would carry them back to Boston. This gave a shock to the party and the House voted to go on with their business as usual without a division or opposition.

This speech immediately made Otis’s colleagues and constituents worry about which side he was on.

Soon Adams as assembly clerk rallied the legislators to complain bitterly about being summoned to an inconvenient meeting place and refuse to do any business until they were back in Boston. Hutchinson tried to bring up issues that the representatives, especially those from western towns, couldn’t resist acting on.

As the spring of 1772 came around, Hutchinson let it be known that as long as the house petitioned him to convene the General Court in Boston for practical reasons, with no challenge to his chartered power to summon them elsewhere, he would accede to that preference. (After all, as house speaker decades earlier, he had maneuvered to keep the legislative seat in Boston.) 

Adams wanted to stick to the principled, no-compromise confrontation. Hancock, along with speaker Thomas Cushing, was willing to couch their complaint on practical grounds. Ultimately, so did the majority of legislators.

The difference between Adams’s and Hancock’s positions was not that big, and Hancock may have had a better sense of what his fellow lawmakers and voters were up for. Still, this disagreement over wording or tactics was enough to give Hutchinson hope that two of his biggest opponents were splitting.

One of the grievances in the Declaration of Independence would be:

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

That referred to this dispute over where the General Court should gather, which became an even bigger deal in 1774 when Gen. Thomas Gage summoned the legislature to Salem.

The Revolutionary War ended up changing the norm about where and when American legislatures met. The U.S. Constitution gave Congress authority over “the Seat of the Government of the United States” and provided for regular meetings there. Only “on extraordinary Occasions” can the President convene Congress, and only “in Case of Disagreement between” the two houses can the President adjourn them.

TOMORROW: Another chronicler.

“Told John Hancock Esqr. that he heard me say in a threatning manner”

The newly released first volume of The Papers of John Hancock, covering the years 1754–1769, doesn’t even have an index entry for Samuel Adams. Hancock was politically active in that time, as a Boston selectman and representative in the Massachusetts General Court. But he did his politicking in person, not in (preserved) letters or newspaper essays.

In contrast, the first volume of the Writings of Samuel Adams, covering 1764–1769, includes a couple of items defending Hancock from charges of fomenting riots: a 1768 letter written for the signature of House speaker Thomas Cushing and a 1769 newspaper essay signed “Candidus.” Hancock also served on several committees with Adams, but Adams gets the credit (via a descendant’s biography) for creating those committees’ documents.

In those corpuses, the first sign of a rift between Hancock and Adams appears in a 15 Dec 1771 “Memorandum” that Adams wrote for himself after a conversation with the colony’s deputy treasurer:

This day I waited on Mr. Harrison Gray junr. to acquaint him that I had been informd that he had told John Hancock Esqr. that he heard me say in a threatning manner that Mr. Hancock might think as he pleasd, Mr. [James] Otis had friends & his (Mr. Hancocks) treatment of Mr. Otis would prejudice his (Mr. Hancocks) Election.

Mr. Gray declard to me that he did not hear me mention a Word of Mr. Hancocks Election—that a conversation happend between Mr. John Cotton [deputy secretary of Massachusetts] & myself (Mr. Gray being present) relative to Mr. Otis—that Mr. Cotton said Mr. Otis’ Conduct must be the Effect of Distraction or Drunkeness—that I said I did not think so—but that it rather proceeded from Irritation—that he (Mr. Gray) said if Mr. Otis is distracted why should Mr. Hancock pursue him—& that I answerd that Mr. Hancock might be stirred up by others to do it, but I thought he had better not or it was a pity he should.

This Mr. Gray declared was all that I said relative to Mr. Hancock, in answer to his Question as is before mentiond & that it did not appear to him that I discoverd the least Unfriendliness towards Mr. Hancock. He further said he was willing to give his oath to the truth of this his declaration.

Upon which I told Mr. Gray that it was far from my Intention to make Mr. Hancock displeasd with him, that I was satisfied that Mr. Hancock understood him differently & I should let Mr. Hancock know what he now said, & asked him to repeat it which he did precisely as before—& told me he was freely willing that I should repeat it to Mr. Hancock that if Mr. Hancock & myself desired it he would thus explain it in presense of us both.

Here’s the scan of that document from the New York Public Library.

At this time, Boston had reelected James Otis, Jr., to the House after a year off, hoping he would regain his sanity and efficacy as a legislative leader. Instead, Otis became more inclined to support royal policy and then more irrational, as I discussed back here.

In November, acting in his capacity as a probate judge after a request from the Otis family, Gov. Thomas Hutchinson asked the Boston selectmen to assess whether Otis was “a Non Compos Distracted or Lunatick Person.” The selectmen, including Hancock, decided he needed a guardian. On 3 December, Otis was “carried off…in a post chaise, bound hand and foot,” for treatment.

Samuel Adams’s memorandum doesn’t say when he discussed Otis with Cotton and Gray. Adams had tried to gloss over the situation: Otis was acting from “Irritation,” he insisted, not “Distraction or Drunkeness.” As to why Hancock thought otherwise, he “might be stirred up by others.”

This episode belies the common picture, pushed by Loyalists and adopted by many authors since, that Adams was the savvy politician pulling Hancock’s strings. Not only was Hancock breaking from Adams, but the merchant had a better sense of the situation. Otis needed help, and he was losing popular support. In the spring of 1772, the North End Caucus (in my reading) and then the Boston town meeting chose never to vote for him again.

The memorandum does show Adams’s keen judgment about what could annoy Hancock, however. Adams had heard, quite possibly from Hancock himself, that Gray had described him as speaking “in a threatning manner.” And what was Adams supposedly threatening? Hancock’s popularity and prospects for reelection. Adams recorded this evidence to show Hancock that he’d said no such thing.

Without this memorandum in writing, we’d have no evidence of Adams worrying that Hancock thought he’d revealed “Unfriendliness” in the fall of 1771.

TOMORROW: Matters come to a head.

“They Assured me he wished to be seperated from Mr Adams”

I dug into the early-1770s rift between John Hancock on Samuel Adams the old-fashioned way: By pulling books about those men off my shelves, looking in their indexes, reading the relevant passages, and tracking down the citations.

The earliest signs of trouble appear in the letters of acting governor Thomas Hutchinson, which the Colonial Society of Massachusetts is publishing in a series edited by John W. Tyler.

On 5 June 1771, Hutchinson wrote to a correspondent in Britain, probably John Pownall in the Colonial Office:

I can mention to you what will appear improper in a publick Letter. I was much pressed by many persons well affected in general to consent to the Election of Mr Hancock [to the Council] his connections being large which are strongly prejudiced against me for the frequent refusal to accept of him in Office. They Assured me he wished to be seperated from Mr Adams another Representative of the Town an Incendiary equal to any at present in London and, if I would admit him to the Council, they had no doubt there would be an end to the Influence he now has, by means of his property, in the Town of Boston.

As there had been no advances on his part I could not think it proper for me to follow their advice. I have now reason to think that before another Election he will alter his conduct so far as to justify my acceptance of him which certainly will take off that sowerness of temper from many People which his negatives occasion and unless you think it a step not advisable I believe I shall accept of him.

Hutchinson didn’t state why he believed Hancock would change his behavior. The merchant hadn’t spoken to the acting governor himself. Some men friendly to the royal government (“persons well affected”) had.

Months later, Hutchinson was more confident. On 1 December, he told Gen. Thomas Gage in New York:

The pretenders to Patriotism [in] this Province have always followed the Example of those who make the like pretences in England. They are now quarrelling among themselves. Hancock has declared he will never again connect himself with Adams. They both have their Partizans & like [John] Wilkes & [Richard] Oliver they both declare they will never give up any part of the Cause of Liberty.

Two days later, Hutchinson told his predecessor, Sir Frances Bernard: “At present H & A are at great variance. Some of my friends blow the coals & I hope to see a good effect.”

He wrote to Bernard again on 29 Jan 1772:

If it was not for the Faction in this Town I think the Province would be easy with one Session in a year & it would be enough for the necessary business. This Faction seems to be breaking. The Doctor [Benjamin] Church who wrote the Times is now a writer on the side of Government. Hancock has not been with their club for two months past & seems to have a new set of acquaintance. By means of [Timothy] Folger there have been some overtures. I remember what passed between him & you & therefore shall act with greater caution. His coming over will be a great loss to them as they support themselves with his money.

And finally Hutchinson ventured to describe the situation in an official letter to the Secretary of State for North America, Lord Hillsborough, on 31 January, albeit in veiled fashion: “A Gentleman who has assisted them much by his money and by the reputation which his fortune gives him among the people seems weary of them and I have reason to think is determined to leave them.”

Meanwhile, Adams had sensed some trouble and tried to mend the relationship.

TOMORROW: All a misunderstanding?

Mapping Samuel Adams’s Declining Opinion of John Hancock

Among the intriguing questions posed to the A.I. program on the John Hancock Papers website is: “What did Hancock think about Sam ADams”?

The relationship of John Hancock and Samuel Adams fascinated people during their careers, and it continues to be interesting.

I even consulted on a picture book about the two men: Most Wanted, written by Sarah Jane Marsh and illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham.

When I thought about how I’d answer the question, my mind went to several historical moments:

• The Rev. William Gordon’s anecdote about how Adams “artfully nominated” Hancock for the Massachusetts General Court ahead of John Rowe.
• Adams’s 11 May 1770 letter to Hancock when the merchant wanted to resign from that legislature after not receiving a unanimous vote in the town meeting, assuring him he was “a most valueable Member.”
• Gov. Thomas Hutchinson’s (probably unrealistic) hope in the early 1770s to woo Hancock away from Adams with a seat on the Council, a militia command, and other rewards.
• The Boston Whigs’ choice of Hancock to deliver the Massacre memorial oration in 1774, cementing his place in the radical camp.
• Hancock and Adams’s activity on 18–19 Apr 1775, including Gordon’s “glorious morning” anecdote.
• The disagreement between Hancock and Adams over whether they should let the crowd pull their carriage as they entered New York City—at least as reported later by the Adams family.
• Adams’s opposition to a ball in honor of Martha Washington which John and Dorothy Hancock planned to attend.
• The growing divide between Hancock and Adams during the Second Continental Congress, as recalled by John Adams in his autobiography’s comment about March 1776: “Mr. Samuel Adams had become very bitter against Mr. Hancock and spoke of him with great Asperity, in private Circles, and this Alienation between them continued…”
• The dispute within the Congress over whether it should thank Hancock when he resigned as chair in October 1777.
• Samuel Adams’s catty comments about politicians susceptible to flattery in letters to James Warren that same month.

All those data points, however, come from Samuel Adams or others. The question posed is what Hancock thought of Adams.

TOMORROW: Ups and downs.

Making Hay with the Hancock Papers

Dr. Jeffrey M. Griffith’s John Hancock Papers website uses generative A.I. in a way I haven’t seen elsewhere: to answer questions about Hancock and his career based on a database of over 4,000 documents.

It looks like it’s not possible to search for particular words or phrases in the Hancock letters, as one can do at Founders Online. That might come later, after publication of the volumes through the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. Or that approach might reflect my traditional thinking.

Instead, the “search” function is designed around topics, as interpreted through large language model A.I. software analyzing the transcribed letters. The website explains:

Dr. JMG’s AI seeks to find connections between letters, individuals, events, and subjects. The technology, however, requires extensive training – and will become more comprehensive as additional letters are uploaded and questions are posed to the platform. As a Private AI system, all responses to prompts are entirely generated from the content of the uploaded letters on this website and are not impacted by external sources.

The responses point the user to the primary source material. Any interpretation provided by Dr. JMG's AI response should not be considered authoritative, but rather as a step for the user to interpret and interact with the primary source material.

The queries and answers appear on the Community Bulletin Board, an archive going back to spring 2025. Early on we can see the program responding then that it doesn’t yet have information to answer questions, later (presumably after more documents have been entered into the archive) providing answers. Presumably, we see evidence of the software being “trained.”

One example caught my eye. On 25 Aug 2025, the system responded to the query “Is rain mentioned?” with this text:

Yes, rain is mentioned in the context provided. Specifically, it is noted: "It has been quite otherwise here, I have not known aHotermore Wet Summer, & We have a prospect of a great Quantity of Hay." This indicates that the summer was particularly wet, implying significant rainfall.

In a keyword search of the letters’ text, looking for “rain” wouldn’t have caught the phrase “Wet Summer.” But, depending on its sensitivity, it could have flagged words like “constraint.” For someone seeking meteorological commentary, therefore, that type of search would produce both false negatives and false positives.

A search method that could interpret “rain” as more than a series of four characters, extend that term to find “Wet Summer”—or “storm,” “dry,” “weather,” and related terms—and summarize the findings accurately could indeed be very useful.

However, that query response doesn’t state the source of the words it presented in quotation marks. And there appears to be some garbling: “aHotermore Wet Summer.” So I tried to trace back that response by querying for the phrase “quantity of hay,” thinking that would take me to the specific text, suitable for quoting and citing.

With and without quotation marks, that “quantity of hay” phrase produced long replies beginning:

• “50 sources analyzed / In my extensive review of the 3,900+ letters held within the Hancock Archives, there appears to be no specific mention of the ‘quantity of hay’ in any of the documents. . . . ”
• “50 sources analyzed / After thorough analysis of John Hancock’s correspondence, the term ‘quantity of hay’ does not appear directly in any of the letters in the existing metadata. . . . ”

Likewise, asking about the phrase “wet summer” immediately produced paragraphs of prose on Hancock’s health and business activities, but nothing about summer weather. That response cited a specific letter, dated 14 Nov 1771; it refers a couple of times to “Summer” but says nothing about wetness.

All the responses to my queries came with lists of documents in the database which I could click on, but with no sign of which was most pertinent to the answer. Checking the topmost document, and then random links on the list, showed that some had little connection at all. Several of the documents linked to “quantity of hay” referred to Hancock’s London contacts Hayley & Hopkins—perhaps “hay” producing false positives the same way “rain” did. 

Given large language models’ proclivity for outputting plausible statements that have no basis in reality—what experts call “hallucination”—I now can’t be sure Hancock or his correspondents ever wrote about a “Wet Summer” and a “Quantity of Hay.” If somebody did, I’m no closer to finding that document.

To sum up, I was initially impressed by the potential for an A.I.-assisted approach to searching a large database of documents. After a test, I came away with more dubious questions than solid answers. Will additional training improve the results? According to some experts, “hallucinations” are baked into the system.

TOMORROW: Hancock and Adams.

Seeking a Look at John Hancock

I asked Jeffrey M. Griffith, editor of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts’s new Papers of John Hancock series, about computerized handwriting transcription in part because his website for that project includes elements created with generative A.I.

At the bottom of the home page, for example, are three “John Hancock Videos.” It looks like these started with period images of Hancock—the well known John Singleton Copley painting and a couple of engravings. I presume the engravings were colorized.

Then all three images were fed through the sort of program that animates portraits so the subject appears to move their head, eyes, and mouth. These Hancocks deliver statements on different topics derived from the man’s actual writings through large-language-model A.I.

Those sorts of moving portraits were all the rage online a few years back. The early models showed us George Washington and the like swiveling their eyes and smiling. I wondered then how the results would look if we fed in a photograph of someone we’ve all seen really moving—a twentieth-century President or movie star. Would the output still be impressive, or would the uncanny valley open?

Just this week I saw a similar animated portrait incorporated into a museum exhibit. Now that the technology exists, it might become a standard way to enliven images for the public. Or it may be remembered as a hallmark of the 2020s. At least with figures as old as Hancock, no one will be fooled into thinking it’s genuine footage.

Dr. Griffith alerted me to another way he found an A.I. program valuable:

With that said, a very recent positive use of AI for research that I have come across is Harvard’s Collection Explorer. The metadata and previous digitalization efforts that they have worked on over the past decade has allowed them to create a tool that digs deep into their holdings.

I had a list of a handful of letters that I needed to find from Houghton Library that I could not previously uncover through their traditional search engine, and I was able to find them through this tool. Additionally, I found letters for Hancock that I have never seen cited before, nor did I know they existed. This nearly blew up Volume 2, but fortunately I was able to slip in a letter before the book design was completed.

To summarize, the actual readily-accessible tools to transcribe are not quite ready for wide use…, but the integration of AI searching has done great things for the discovery and acquisition of the materials for me to transcribe.

That speaks to one of the particular challenges of assembling John Hancock’s papers. While some families had the motivation and wherewithal to preserve a famous ancestor’s files, providing a big home base for a documentary project, others didn’t.

Also, I’m pleased to know other people find the Harvard library catalogue requires advanced technology to navigate.

Improving Transcriptions of Handwritten Documents

Even as I muse on the value of A.I. programming for transcribing historical handwritten documents, the Fold3 service announces:

We’ve unlocked 2.4 million pages of Revolutionary War Pension Files with a state-of-the-art, patent-pending Transcription Viewer.

For paid subscribers, the service offers multiple ways to see the scanned documents and its transcriptions at the same time—that seems to be the patent-pending part. But beneath that function are the transcriptions themselves.

Fold3 launched “Full-Text Search” of the Revolutionary War Pension Files in March. However, its staff says, “Handwriting recognition technology has really advanced since” that time, so the service now provides “Dramatically improved line-by-line transcription quality.”

The improved transcriptions were produced, says the staff, “primarily with AI with lots of human interaction.” It’s not clear what form that human interaction took—staff hours, volunteers, feedback from users, advanced programming?

Human oversight still seems to be key. When I asked Dr. Jeffrey M. Griffith of the John Hancock Papers about his impression of the latest handwriting-recognition software, he said:

I have not used AI tools to transcribe the manuscripts, as I have found that widely-accessible large scale models like Chat GPT, Claude, and Grok are not as accurate as I desire. What’s even more troubling for my project in particular, is that the same prompt can result in different outputs. Most problematically, in some instances where I have tested the systems, if the system is uncertain, it just creates contents that may not even be relevant to the particular manuscript.

Knowing how specialized AI systems can get, I am sure there are some extremely powerful (and equally expensive to use) models continue to improve reading handwriting from various decades and centuries, but I have not explored those. Admittedly, even if an AI system is to be used for an initial transcription, the content needs to be thoroughly reviewed and compared to the original text.

Griffith judges the basic transcription tools available now as “much better than those very early efforts by Clements Library at University of Michigan.” Transkribus or a similar service might today produce better results from the Gage Papers. Conversely, if “lots of human interaction” is key to continual improvement, that site might benefit from providing a clear channel for user feedback on texts.

Because the profession of documentary editing puts such value on accuracy, people working in the field would naturally be wary of A.I.-produced transcriptions until they’re much more reliable. A text with errors could mislead readers. More likely, in a time of tight budgets, an institution might decide that a text with errors is good enough and not put funds toward professional-quality transcriptions.

All that said, I do use imperfect transcriptions like those on Google Books or the Gage Papers as my starting point when I quote documents. I did that with texts produced through O.C.R. programs, and I’m doing that with texts produced through A.I.

I find those imperfect databases easier to search, read, and quote than online archives without any transcriptions, like the New York Public Library’s scans of the Samuel Adams Papers and Boston Committee of Correspondence Papers.

So for me the bottom line is the more information that’s available in an online archive, the better. Scans better than mere lists of documents. Scans and bad transcriptions better than scans alone. Good, authoritative transcriptions without scans very useful, and good transcriptions with scans the best of all.

TOMORROW: Other ways of using A.I.

Writing the Second Draft of History with Gen. Heath

Another of the Massachusetts Historical Society’s ongoing crowd-sourced transcription projects is Gen. William Heath’s manuscript diary.

When Heath wrote his memoir, published in 1798, he went back to this document as his source. That book is in day-by-day journal form.

The entries for 9 Oct 1776, 250 years ago today, show how he developed his history.

Heath’s diary entry, as newly transcribed:

Early this morning Three ships Two of 40 Guns and one Frigate, With Two, or Three Tenders Stood up the north River, They were Briskly Cannonaded from Mount Washington and Fort Constitution, They However Passed our works & Chevaux De Frise,

our Gallies Small Craft, and Two Large Ships Stood on before them, The Two Ships were Run on shore nears Philips’s mills, and Two Gallies near Dobbs’s Ferry,

The Enemy took Possession of the Two Gallies and got them off, one Boat Landed and Plundered a Store, (Stove the Cask) & set it on fire, but our People Extinguished it,

Colo. Sargent has marched for that Place, with 500 Infantry and 40 Light Horse, Capt. Horton with 2 twelve Pounders, and Capt. Crofts with a Howtzer

the Enemy also took a Schooner Load,d with Rum Sugar Wine etc, and Sunk a Sloop which had on board the machine for blowing up their Ships, a Contrast this to Sink that, which was to Blow them up —

our Division being under arms on the alarm were marched Down over the Broken Ground in front of our Post

The day’s entry in Memoirs of Major-General Heath:

Early in the morning, three ships, two of 40 guns, and one frigate, with two or three tenders, stood up the North River. They were briskly cannonaded from Fort Washington and Fort Constitution. They however passed our works and the chevaux-de-frise; the American galleys, small craft, and two large ships standing on before them.

The two ships were ran on shore near Phillips’s mills, and two of the galleys near Dobbs’ Ferry. The enemy took possession of the two galleys, and got them off. A boat landed a number of men, who plundered a store, stove the casks, and then set the store on fire, and left it. The Americans soon extinguished the fire.

Our General ordered Col. [Paul Dudley] Sargent, with 500 infantry, 40 light-horse, Capt. [Jotham] Horton of the artillery, with two 12 pounders, and Capt. [Edward] Crafts with a howitzer, to march immediately, with all possible expedition, to Dobbs’ Ferry.

The enemy took a schooner loaded with rum, sugar, wine, &c. and sunk a sloop, which had on board the machine, invented by, and under the direction of, a Mr. [David] Bushnell, intended to blow up the British ships. This machine was worked under water. It conveyed a magazine of powder, which was to be fixed under the keel of a ship, then freed from the machine, and left with clock-work going, which was to produce fire when the machine had got out of the way. Mr. Bushnell had great confidence of its success, and had made several experiments which seemed to give him countenance; but its fate was truly a contrast to its design.

Our General’s division was formed in line, with its advance, reserve, flank-guards, and artillery, all in order of battle, when they were moved down over the different grounds, which it was supposed might be the scene of action. Some of this ground was very broken, and there were many fences. These afforded frequent opportunities for the troops to break off and form; for the pioneers to open avenues, &c. and for the whole to become acquainted with every part of the ground, and the best choice of it, if suddenly called to action.

Heath made sure he appeared in his book, as “our General,” as an active participant, issuing orders and strengthening the forces under his command.

He also took the opportunity to add more detail, such as the backstory of David Bushnell’s submarine.

This entry doesn’t reveal any significant information that Heath left out of his book. But now that the whole diary is digitized and transcribed, folks can look for those details.

Visiting with Mercy Warren

Among the Massachusetts Historical Society’s ongoing crowd-sourced transcription projects is the Mercy Otis Warren Papers, including both political and family letters.

I found an example of a document from Mercy Warren showing the wrinkles of this sort of project. It’s a letter dated 16 June 1775. There’s no recipient noted on the paper, nor on the webpage or caption for the images.

The transcription begins:

With the highest pleasure I Receved the several Letters of my Dearest Friend. & now having Returned to my own Habitation I have Leasure to answer them I Returnd from a Visit to my Father [James Otis, Sr.] yesterday. the two miss Otis’s sister Hannah & Miss Otis Came away with me Designing only to accompany me to Sandwish but it being a very fine Day they Came as far as Plimouth. & after spending the afternoon & Evening & Regaling several times on the finest strawberys I have seen Left me this morning at 10 o clock. but the Beauties of Nature. the Bounties of providence nor the social Intercourse of Friends Can I taste with unalloyed Delight so Long as my Country is threatned with Desolation & Bloodshed. & my Beloved Husband not only Long abscent from me but stationed on Duty in a place where I am Greatly Apprehensive of personal Danger to him.

Eventually the letter is signed “your Mercy Warren.”

Folks who read a bunch of Warren letters will recognize that she often addressed her husband James as “my Dearest Friend.” When she wrote of “my Beloved Husband,” she was being arch and literary, not describing him to a third party. 

Jeffrey H. Richards and Sharon M. Harris recognized that intended recipient in Mercy Otis Warren: Selected Letters, which they published in 2009. Unaccountably, though, they dated this letter to 15 June.

James Warren responded on 18 June. His letter has already been transcribed and published in the Massachusetts Historical Society’s Proceedings and Collections volumes—not because it came from the man in the marriage, but because he had a lot to say about the Battle of Bunker Hill.

In his reply James also told Mercy: “I hope your Strawberries are well taken care of and that you have fine feasting on them.”

TOMORROW: The general’s diary.