In Exchange for John Callender

In June 1777, as quoted here, the Massachusetts General Court voted to send imprisoned Loyalist Benjamin Davis, Jr., with his father to New York on condition that the royal authorities send back John Callender in exchange.

Callender (1747-1797) had been one of four provincial officers ordered to lead their artillery companies onto the field at the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Only one of those officers, Samuel Russell Trevett, actually stayed through the whole battle doing damage to the regulars. Only one—again, Trevett—kept any of the provincials’ valuable cannon from being captured.

However, two of the other officers had the advantage of being related to Col. Richard Gridley, commander of the artillery. They were Maj. Scarborough Gridley, the colonel’s son, and Capt. Samuel Gridley, his nephew.

Eventually both young Gridleys were removed from the ranks. But that took months, and in July 1775 the new commander-in-chief, Gen. George Washington, had to make an example of someone. So John Callender was cashiered in a very public way.

Callender carved out a second chance for himself. He went to New York in the fall of 1776 as a gentleman volunteer or “cadet” attached to the artillery company commanded by Capt.-Lt. John Johnson (c. 1753–1818, self-portrait shown above).

During the Battle of Brooklyn, Johnson was “desperately wounded,” in the words of Henry P. Johnston. Callender took command of the company and “fought his piece on Long Island until the enemy’s bayonets were at his breast.” Both officers and their men became prisoners.

Johnson was exchanged in May 1777 but was in no physical shape to return to the army. He became Boston’s leading portrait painter during and immediately after the war.

Callender was awarded a Continental Army commission as a captain-lieutenant, dated 1 Jan 1777. And the Massachusetts legislature tried to get him back, as its June resolution showed.

But that didn’t work. Callender was still a prisoner in New York in September. And I rather doubt Benjamin Davis, Jr., returned to Massachusetts to be locked up again.

I suspect the British authorities didn’t see a fair trade in exchanging a Continental officer captured in battle for a young man, barely of age, who just happened to be with his father on a merchant ship when it was seized. It’s possible the Crown freed another young American man whose identity I haven’t found, and it’s possible the issue of Benjamin, Jr.’s trade faded away.

In September 1777, John Callender’s wife Hepzibah asked the Massachusetts legislature to approve another swap for her husband. The man to be freed from the Boston jail this time was John Hill, a Loyalist captured during the evacuation in the spring of 1776.

The General Court approved that swap on 17 September. I presume it actually happened because by the end of the year Callender and Hill were both back on their own sides.

In subsequent years Hill served as “a Capt. of Marines on board a Privateer for 8 months, than as Capt. of Marines in the Jason.” Then with his brother Richard he was inspector of the ferry between Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Callender remained on duty in the Continental artillery force for the rest of the war, mustering out in 1784.

TOMORROW: The Davises in New York.

The Capture and Release of Capt. Samuel Richards

By 1777, both sides of the Revolutionary War held a significant number of prisoners.

Some of those people were soldiers or sailors captured in military operations while others had been detained as politically suspect.

American authorities were ready to arrange exchange prisoners as long as the British released someone of equal importance.

There were disputes about what that meant, of course. In July, a Boston crowd forcibly prevented Dr. Benjamin Church, suspected traitor and spy, from being traded for Dr. James McHenry, a young military surgeon who had already been paroled.

The Massachusetts government balked at releasing the Loyalist merchant Benjamin Davis, Sr., until a petition linked his case to Samuel Richards of Norwalk, Connecticut, as quoted yesterday.

Richards (1716–1777) lived in the village of Rowayton. He was a committee man clamping down on local Loyalism and captain of the militia company that guarded the shore.

Another Norwalk man, Stephen Hoyt (c. 1750–1809), had crossed to Long Island, New York, to work for the Crown. He cruised the coast in a sloop, picking up recruits for a Loyalist regiment called the Prince of Wales’s American Volunteers.

On the rainy night of 16 March, Capt. Hoyt led about twenty men into Rowayton to raid Richards’s farm. He captured fifteen armed men, including Capt. Richards, three Continental soldiers on leave, and eleven local guards.

Hoyt took those prisoners to New York, where they were locked up in the Provost jail. On 10 April the city’s Royal American Gazette praised the raid: “Such excursions as these will keep the Rebels in constant trepidation & give life & Spirit to our new made Soldiers & Officers.”

In May, Richards’s brother petitioned the Massachusetts General Court to exchange Benjamin Davis, Sr., for Capt. Richards. The legislature approved that plan on 2 June.

Davis traveled to New York. Samuel Richards returned to Norwalk but died very soon after, on 23 June. His gravestone appears above, courtesy of Find a Grave.

TOMORROW: Benjamin, Jr.

“Leave for his brother Benjamin, his son and servant, to depart this State”

As the year 1777 began, the Loyalist Benjamin Davis remained in the Boston jail along with his son and an enslaved servant.

Davis refused to petition the Massachusetts General Court for his release since he didn’t want to recognize the independent state government. But his religious scruples didn’t stop his brother Edward.

On 4 February, Massachusetts Council member Benjamin Austin came into the assembly chamber with

a petition of Edward Davis, of Boston, in behalf of his brother, Benjamin Davis, and son, prisoners in Boston Goal, praying that they may be permitted to go with a cartel to Newport

A “cartel” was the mechanism for a prisoner exchange.

The legislature named a joint committee of Austin and two House members to consider the request. The next day, that committee recommended “That the petitioner have leave to withdraw the same.” The General Court approved. That was a polite way of saying no.

On 18 February, jailer Joseph Otis listed his prisoners. Among the men noted as “being Enemical to the States” was Benjamin Davis but not his son. Benjamin, Jr., might have been paroled into the town, or at twenty years old he might still have been too young to merit his own listing.

On 6 March, the House noted

A petition of Edward Davis, praying leave for his brother Benjamin, his son and servant, to depart this State, in a cartel vessel bound for Halifax.

This time the response was “Read and dismissed.” That was a blunt way of saying no.

A newly elected legislature took their seats in May. Even as the House was getting itself in order

Nathan Cushing, Esq; brought down a Petition of James Richards, of Norwalk, praying that Mr. Benjamin Davis, a Prisoner in Boston, may be exchanged for his Brother Capt. Samuel Richards, a close Prisoner in New York Goal.

Again, the lawmakers referred this to a committee.

On 2 June, the Massachusetts House and Council reached this agreement:

Resolved that the prayer of the within petition be granted, & that Benjamin Davis now a Prisoner in the Goal in the town of Boston, be exchanged for Capt. Samuel Richards a prisoner in New York, provided that proper care be taken that sd Davis does not carry any papers with him & is cautiously sarched when deliver’d up. And it is also

Resolved that Benjamin Davis junr. Son of the aforesaid Davis, now a Prisoner in Boston Goal be exchanged for Mr John Callender a Prisoner in New York, provided due caution be taken that he does not carry any papers with him & is properly sarched when deliver’d up. But if said Callender or some person of equal rank should not be procured in Exchange for said Davis that said Davis be returned to this State.

Two days later, according to what Davis later told the British government, he was let out of the Boston jail. By the end of the year, it appears, the Davises were established in New York.

TOMORROW: The other side of those exchanges.

“‘Subject’ to an authority founded on the late Declaration of Independence”

During the siege of Boston, Benjamin Davis, Sr., signed up for the Loyal American Association, which appears to have been a pro-Crown militia.

We have these companies’ rolls but little other information on what they actually did, if anything. But membership is a useful yardstick for Loyalism.

According to Todd Braisted’s On-Line Institute for Advanced Loyalist Studies website, Davis was listed as a sergeant in the Third Company, headed by Adino Paddock. Hopestill Capen, a fellow Sandemanian, was also a fellow sergeant.

Benjamin Davis, Jr., joined the Second Company under Capt. Abijah Willard at the rank of private. He was around nineteen years old, thus of prime military age.

In 1776 both father and son evacuated Boston with the British military. Then they headed back to New York to be part of the British military’s return to the newly-declared independent U.S. of A. After their ship was captured, both were locked up in the Boston jail starting in July.

In the Massachusetts state archives, and published in Peter Force’s American Archives, is a long letter dated 10 Oct 1776 to James Bowdoin, who happened to be a senior member of the Massachusetts Council. The signature as transcribed was “Benj’a Davis, Jun.” However, the writer refers to “my son” and “the property which I left in my store in Boston, in March past, worth about a thousand pounds sterling,” so it must have come from Benjamin, Sr.

This letter lays out Benjamin Davis’s religious motivation for remaining loyal to the royal government, to the extent that he refused to recognize the authority of his captors, even to ask for his release:

There is a proverb that it will be well for me to attend to, as it is applicable to one in my present situation: “The fear of man bringeth a snare.” [Proverbs, 29:25] I consider myself now to be wholly in the power of the people, and that there is no legal authority for me to apply to for relief. The present distressed situation I am in, and the method pointed out to me in order to get relieved, are such as makes it necessary for me to be much on my guard, lest I get ensnared.

I am bound by God’s law to “be subject to the higher power;” [Romans 13:1] and I have much more to dread from the disobedience of his commands than I can have to fear from those who may be offended at me because I cannot in conscience be “subject” to an authority founded on the late Declaration of Independence. I am very sorry I am placed in such a situation, as though designed to compel me to take such a step for my enlargement as would be in me a breach of God’s law.

To compel me to act or do, contrary to the dictates of my conscience, any one thing that shall carry with it any authority founded on the Declaration of Independence, until the same be recognized and fully settled so as to become my duty to be “subject,” would be the same, and I see no odds, as if I was in Spain or Portugal and committed to the Inquisition as a heretick, and they were to inflict on me the most cruel tortures in order to compel me to deny the faith.

I’m sure Bowdoin didn’t expect that!

Davis pointed out that he wasn’t demanding his confiscated property since doing so would be another form of recognizing the local courts. He probably knew that also meant fewer locals would see him as an enemy.

The letter continued:

I profess myself a liege subject of his Majesty King George III, founded on this principle, that all who are born within his dominions or realm he has a claim upon as his rightful and lawful subjects; that the Provinces and Colonies in North America make a part of his realm.

I was born in this Province; of course allegiance is due from me to him, nor can it be dissolved but by his consent, or by a revolution taking place within the Kingdom, or the Government fixed and established, in which case it would be dissolved. I am bound by God’s law to “honour the King,” and to be subject to the legislative authority of Great Britain as “the higher power.”

I cannot, in any way, be aiding or assisting in any plan or scheme for bringing about any revolution in the Empire upon any pretence whatsoever, without breaking a positive law of God. But whenever any revolution does take place within the Kingdom, and the Government becomes fixed and established, be the cause that brings it about what it may, I shall then be bound in conscience to be “subject” to its authority, for they will then become the “higher power” in the Apostle’s sense.

That’s Sandemanian doctrine.

Davis said he didn’t desire “being abroad” in Boston, lest people think he was trying to convert them or spy on them; that “would be as unbecoming as to be an informer against my neighbour, who may be concerned in an illicit trade.” But he also said he hoped to “take lodgings in town.”

Finally, Davis suggested that “my son, together with myself and servant, could be exchanged for any prisoners in the hands of his Excellency General [William] Howe, at New-York.”

TOMORROW: Petitions.

The Losses of Benjamin Davis

In the newspaper reports on the May 1775 fire on Boston’s Town Dock, Benjamin Davis’s name appears only as the man who used to use (“improve”) the building where the fire started.

Davis had “Let General Robenson [James Robertson] have his store for the Brit Troops in the year 1775,” as he told the Loyalists Commission years later.

In his testimony to that commission Davis said he’d lost a great deal of property in the fire: “his story & wharf & Goods in the cellar were destroyed to amount of £900.”

In addition, Davis said that he was out:

• £56 in whaling supplies on a ship “the Rebels” seized in Salem
• £375 more in goods left behind in Boston in March 1776
• £200 in household furniture in Boston
• about £3,666 in uncollected debt due to him through his old partnership with his brother Edward
• £700 in “Money & Wine” confiscated when he was captured in July 1776

Davis also said he “Was robbed of £400 on his way to Halifax,” but I can’t tell whether that was in 1776 or at the end of the war.

Most of Davis’s commission hearing involved discussing financial details like a mortgage or the value of certain land. He asked to be compensated for a total of £4,865 in losses, according to E. Alfred Jones’s The Loyalists of Massachusetts.

The commissioners awarded Davis only £300, suggesting they thought his claims were too high or too poorly documented, and/or that he had already been compensated enough through his wartime business with the government.

TOMORROW: Junior.

“May God preserve this second Sodom”

On 25 May 1775, one week after the New-England Chronicle’s initial, hazy report on the fire that started in the 65th Regiment’s barracks, printers Samuel and Ebenezer Hall returned to the subject with a longer dispatch.

This article started by summarizing the account of how the fire started and listing a few damaged buildings. It continued:

The following Letter contains an Account of the Transactions of the Military at the Fire; and will give the Public some Idea of the present wretched Police of that once well governed Town.

Extract of a Letter from Boston.

“I propose to give you a circumstantial Account of the late Fire, previous to which please to observe, that for ten Days past, a Report has been propagated, that the Liberty Party intended to set Fire to the Town in different Places as soon as the greater Part of them had got out.

The General [Thomas Gage] took the Alarm, and took the Engines under Guard, and appointed new Captains; the late Engine Men took umbrage at it; but to the Point.---

I being informed that Barrack was on Fire, ran through the Street crying Fire, (as no Bells rang) but was stopped by a Man who told me it was the Officer’s Order not to cry Fire, one having threatened to beat the Man’s Brains out that did. The Drums all this Time beating to Arms.

When I came to the Fire I found no engine there. Applying to one of the late Engine Men to know the Reason, was informed that he had applied for the Engine, but the Bayonet was pointed at him, and he was told that he must apply to some Officer for an Order before he could have it.

After this fatal Delay the Engines appeared with the new appointed Captains and military Firewards, and a miserable figure they cut, the former not knowing how to obey if the latter had known how to command.---

Upon the whole, it appears to me as plain as the meridian Sun, had the Engines been on the old Footing, the Fire would have been put out, and *twenty thousand Pounds Sterling Loss prevented. Let that be as it may, I will venture to say, had the Fire broke out in the Center of the Town it would have laid it in Ashes, in the Direction it took to the Water. May God preserve this second Sodom from the Fate of the First.”

* The whole Loss is thought to be £40,000 Sterling.

After that Hall printed the complete list of property losses that had already appeared in the Newport Mercury and other papers. That list included: “50 Barrels of Flour, belonging to the Donation Stock, destroyed.” That stock was food donated to feed the poor of Boston since the previous year’s Port Bill.

That contemporaneous account was rewritten for the Saturday Morning Transcript of 15 Mar 1834 under the headline “Fire Reminiscences: No XVI.” The best new line put into the original voice was: “I asked the reason of such extraordinary delay, and was told by an Engineman that he had been to his Engine, but the bayonets were too thick.”

That text in turn was printed with small changes in Arthur Wellington Brayley’s A Complete History of the Boston Fire Department in 1889.

As a first-person account, it was more dramatic than the list of burned buildings alone. At the same time, the writer and printers had a political message about how military occupation was damaging the community.

TOMORROW: Back to Benjamin Davis.

Spreading the News of the Spread of a Fire

We can see the spread of news in the spring of 1775 through articles on the fire in Boston on the night of 17–18 May 1775.

The first printed report appeared in Samuel Hall’s Cambridge-based New-England Chronicle on 18 May, in the middle of other local news:

A terrible Fire broke out in Boston about 9 o’Clock last Evening, and raged a long Time. We hear it began just above the Draw Bridge, and burnt along the Town-Dock. A great Number of Buildings are doubtless consumed; but it is not possible to collect the Particulars for this Paper.

That same dire but vague paragraph was reprinted in Hartford on 22 May, Portsmouth on 26 May, and Philadelphia on 29 May.

Ebenezer Watson’s Connecticut Courant of Hartford confirmed that report in the 22 May issue by also quoting “a Letter from a Gentlemen in Cambridge…dated May 18”:

They had a great Fire in Boston last Night---it appeared to be between King-Street and the Market---it continued all night, and is not yet extinguished. What has really happened, is to us uncertain, as yet.

James Rivington chose to run the latter item in his 25 May New-York Gazetteer.

Meanwhile, on 22 May Solomon Southwick’s Newport Mercury offered an extract from “a manuscript account of the fire which happened in Boston last Wednesday night”:

The fire began in the barracks, under the arch formerly improved by Benjamin Davis, about half after eight o’clock, 17th May.—The soldiers were receiving some cartridges, by which means one took fire, and communicated to many more, which immediately set fire to the room.

That account then listed many property owners starting with John Hancock and including “a cooper’s shop, owned by Eliakim Hutchinson, adjoining the town dock, improved for barracks.” It concluded:

Instead of ringing the bells as usual, the soldiers beat to arms, by which means the people were in great confusion, not being used to such signals in time of fire.

N.B. The inhabitants took particular care to save the goods in Mr. Hancock’s store.

Curiously, in his 26 May New-Hampshire Gazette Daniel Fowle printed a version of that same detailed report on page 1 even as on page 3 he ran the New-England Chronicle’s first story saying it was “not possible to collect the Particulars for this Paper.”

John Holt put the “manuscript account” in his New-York Journal on 1 June with the dateline “CAMBRIDGE, May 12”—an obvious error since the fire hadn’t yet occurred then. Presumably Holt’s shop should have printed 19, 21, or 22 May, getting one digit wrong or transposing them.

No newspaper was published in Cambridge on those dates, suggesting Holt indeed took that text from a manuscript, not from a preceding newspaper. In addition, that text never appeared in the New-England Chronicle, the only newspaper then published out of Cambridge.

That strongly suggests that the Patriot authorities in Cambridge, perhaps Boston town officials in exile, sent their own quasi-official report on the fire out to newspapers in other colonies.

TOMORROW: A more pointed description.

“The 65th lost their Arms, Cloathing, and everything”

Yesterday I quoted the first newspaper account of the fire at the 65th Regiment’s barracks on the Town Dock, rented from the Loyalist merchant Benjamin Davis.

Here are some more accounts from the town, starting with Lt. John Barker’s journal entry for 18 May:

About 9 oclock last night a fire broke out in the Barracks of the 65th Regt. on a Wharf near the Market: every house on the Wharf, amounting to 41, was burnt to the Ground, and most of the things in them; the 65th lost their Arms, Cloathing, and everything; and the 47th has lost 4 Companies cloathing; the loss altogether is considerable as they were all stores on the Wharf and full of Goods. – A chest of Bullets was found in [John] Hancock’s store.

Coll. [James] Abercrombie Adjt. Genl., lately arrived from England, going up Cambridge river this morning in a Man of War’s Boat was fired upon by several of the Rebels from the Banks; several balls went thro’ the boat but nobody was hurt; they made the best of their way back, and I don’t hear that he has been as fond of reconnoitring since.

Detachments from the different Corps were sent to extinguish the fire, which had began to break out again; in 4 or 5 hours they effected it.

Merchant John Rowe put in his journal:

17 May … About Eight of Clock A Terrible Fire Broke Out in the Barracks on Treats Wharff Occupied by the 65th Regiment. it was Occasiond by Accident or rather from Great Carelessness — it destroyd 33 Stores on Dock Square — Mine was in Great Danger I thought it So & therefore removd Great part of my Effects — from thence. it continued untill half past One with Progress — The Officers Behavd Very Well

The Cloathing of 4 Companies belonging to the 47th. Regimt was burnt & Some Fire Arms Lost

18 May Thursday Warm Weather W So. W — The People in General very Busy in Collecting the Effects that were Sav'd Out of the Fire

Rumors were more dire, as usual. From Salem, Nathaniel Appelton wrote: “There has been a very great fire at Boston last night don’t yet learn the particulars but in generall that it broke out near draw-bridge & consumed many buildings; some say 30, some say 100, oh poor Boston!”

In fact, this fire appears to have been confined to a central business district. Although lots of warehouses and stores were destroyed, along with the goods inside them, no private homes were lost—just the 65th Regiment’s quarters.

TOMORROW: Newspaper coverage.

“A fire broke out in the barracks of the 65th regiment”

When the British army returned to central Boston in 1774, Benjamin Davis, Sr., rented his store on the south side of the Town Dock as a barracks.

Davis later told the Loyalists Commission that he “put his own goods in a Cellar” to make room for the redcoats. That turned out to be a costly decision.

On 24 May 1775, Isaiah Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy reported that on 17 May:

a fire broke out in the barracks of the 65th regiment on the south side of the Town-Dock, occasioned by a serjeant of said regiment delivering cartridges to the men by candle-light, a spark from the candle falling amongst them, set fire thereto and immediately the building was in a blaze.

Upon discovery of the fire the troops immediately beat to arms, which being unusual upon such occasions, caused great consternation amongst the inhabitants, and but few dared to leave their habitations; some that did repaired to the engine houses as usual, but to their surprize were told, the engines were not to be delivered without an order from the General [Thomas Gage] (he having a few days before taken the engines under his care, information being given to him, as he said, that when the inhabitants had removed some desperate people, purposely left, were to set fire to the town;)

by this delay the fire got to so great a height, as put it out of the power of the people to stop its progress speedily: It raged with uncommon fury till near three o’clock next morning, in which time all the barracks on the Dock, with a number of stores adjoining, near thirty buildings in the whole, were entirely consumed, with merchandize to a great amount.

The merchandize was chiefly taken out of the stores and put upon the wharf, and might have been saved had not the Admiral [Samuel Graves] some time before taken every boat from the town, and at the time of the fire cruelly refused any assistance.

It was the opinion of the inhabitants, that had the engines been in their hands as formerly, or could they have got them in any season, the fire might have been stopped at the first barrack.

Earlier in the occupation, redcoats and locals had worked together to stop a fire. But with the town besieged and the military commanders on edge, there was more finger-pointing than cooperation.

TOMORROW: Eyewitness reports.

Benjamin Davis, Jr., at the Boston Massacre

On 4 Apr 1756, Trinity Church in Boston recorded the baptism of “Benjamin Davis, Son of Benj. & [blank].”

Benjamin, Jr.’s mother was Elizabeth (Phillips) Davis, a convert to the Church of England. She bore a third child in 1757 but must have died in the few years following.

Presumably Benjamin, Jr., was baptized a few days after birth, meaning he was born in the spring of 1756. However, when he died on 28 Dec 1836, Boston newspapers reported that he was eighty-one, so it’s also possible his baptism was delayed a few months.

In 1762 Benjamin, Sr., married a second time, to Anstis Greenleaf, daughter of Suffolk County sheriff Stephen Greenleaf. She died in 1764, after giving birth, and Benjamin, Sr., remarried again to Alice Whipple of Rhode Island—and we all know how that turned out.

As a teenager, Benjamin, Jr., was present at the shooting on King Street in March 1770. He was called to testify at the soldiers’ trial, identified as “son to Mr. Davis a former witness.”

Here, as taken down by John Hodgson, is what Benjamin, Jr., experienced:

On the evening of the 5th March last, near the bottom of Royal exchange-lane, I saw a mob by Mr. [John] Greenleaf’s, I went right along into King street, I saw the Sentinel [Hugh White]; a barber’s boy [Edward Garrick] was there crying, and said the Sentry had struck him, and asked him what business he had to do it:

I went home and staid at the gate in Green’s lane some time,

Samuel Gray (one of the persons killed that night in King-street) came along, and asked where the fire was?

I said there was no fire, it was the soldiers fighting, he said, damn it, I am glad of it, I will knock some of them on the head; he ran off, I said to him, take heed you do not get killed in the affray yourself, he said, do not fear, damn their bloods.

Q. Had he a stick in his hand?

A. He had one under his arm.

Q. What sort of a stick was it?

A. I did not take notice.

Q. How long was this before the firing?

A. I do not suppose he could have got into King-street two minutes before the firing.

Benjamin’s father was also observing the action from a different angle, and his uncle Edward’s family had a clear view across the street at the Customs office. They were all defense witnesses at various trials.

TOMORROW: Fire!

(Based on Benjamin’s quick description, I’m guessing he first spotted the crowd near John Greenleaf’s apothecary store, which survived into the late 1800s as the Old Feather Store at Dock Square, shown above.)

“We went to see Mr. Davis in Jail”

As I wrote back here, the lore in Benjamin Davis’s family was that his third wife, Alice, left him soon after their marriage in 1768 because she couldn’t stand how he worshipped with the Sandemanians.

Reportedly the men of the sect agreed that Davis could remarry if he chose. In a profile of Davis written for the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Henry H. Edes said:

If Mr. Davis married a fourth wife, it is probable that she was Katharine Overlick, whose Intention of Marriage with Benjamin Davis was entered 24 April, 1773, but as we find no record of a marriage, and do find that Catharine Overlick,—presumably the same woman—entered her Intention of Marriage with John Clows 10 November, 1774, it is doubtful if Mr. Davis made another matrimonial alliance.

Alice (Whipple) Davis died in Cranston, Rhode Island, in 1795.

When captured on the Peggy sailing from Halifax to New York in July 1776, Benjamin Davis was accompanied only by his son and an enslaved man. In contrast, a couple of other merchants on the same ship were traveling with their wives, most notably Robert and Mary Semple, formerly Mary Wheat of Lincoln.

In her journal, published by the Essex Institute in 1868, Mary Holyoke (1737–1802, shown above) of Salem wrote:

July 28. Mr. Ben. Davis taken and put into Jail at Boston, and on the 31st Mrs. Davis spent the day with us at Mrs. Minott’s; we went to see Mr. Davis in Jail.

It appears that this “Mrs. Davis” wasn’t Benjamin Davis’s wife but a friend and/or relative of Mary Holyoke whom she mentioned many other times. But this Mrs. Davis could also have been related to Benjamin, giving him a courtesy call.

Life in the Boston jail wasn’t easy. The mates on the British transport ship Anne, James Young and John M’Kurdy, escaped from custody in Massachusetts and provided this intelligence on 24 August:

That Mr. Benjamin Davis, and several others were passengers, and that they treated Mr. Davis very ill. That they do not give the prisoners sufficient provisions, but offer them good wages to enter on board their privateers, and that many do enter.

The captain of the Peggy, James Kennedy, even petitioned the Massachusetts Council on 13 August for release on the grounds that he didn’t deserve to be associated with his passenger:

As your Petitioner had a Man on Board by the Name of Davis whose Character he did not know till he was brought into this Place, he beleives is the Occasion of his receiving different punishment from other Masters of Vessells.

Kennedy was indeed let out of the jail. According to the Naval Documents of the American Revolution editors, four other men gained release through “similar petitions.”

TOMORROW: Junior.

Listening to Abigail Adams on Paper

A comment about yesterday’s quotation from Abigail Adams has prompted me to veer off into some linguistic digging.

Referring to Benjamin Davis, apparently notorious for taking gingerbread from refugees, Adams wrote: “How many little ones can say I was an Hungry & you gave me no Bread, but inhumanely took what little I had from me.”

The Massachusetts Historical Society shared a scan of this letter, so we can confirm she spelled the words that way.

As a minister’s daughter, Adams knew her Christian scripture. But she wasn’t quoting the King James Bible exactly. Matthew 25:42 says: “For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat:…” According to linguists, “an” was a form of the prefix “a,” as in “times’s a-wasting,” adapted to go before an H.

Adams instead used the form “an hungry,” which this linguistic website defines in its single-word form as “an obsolete word for hungry that is allowed to stay in Webster's Third New International Dictionary because it shows up in Shakespeare (Coriolanus I:i:209).” Did Adams misremember the Biblical verse? Or were people in the mid-1700s people reading the phrase that way?

Discussing Abigail Adams’s expressions leads me to Susan Walsh and Christopher S. Davis’s Adams Letters and Language podcast, hosted on YouTube. Walsh portrays Adams, along with being a librarian and educator. Davis is a historical dialect coach who studied 18th-century New England speech for the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum.

On Saturday I heard their presentation at History Camp Boston, which will become a future podcast episode. Each episode includes a reading of John and Abigail Adams’s in period style “as well as discussion of the history, themes, and linguistics revealed by the letters.”

Since I’ve been impressionistically opining on how people really spoke in Revolutionary America since 2008, I look forward to hearing a more expert discussion.

“The Women from the Windows asking Davis whether he wanted any Gingerbread”

Massachusetts ships captured the Peggy on its voyage from Halifax to New York on 22 July 1776, as described yesterday.

The civilians aboard that ship were taken to Marblehead, then to Boston under guard. Word spread quickly that one of them was Benjamin Davis, a merchant who had left town months before.

On 28 July, Joseph Ward wrote to John Adams from Boston about the ship: “There are many Tories on board, among whom is the noted Benjamin Davis.”

The next day, Ezekiel Price put in his diary: “Brought to town Benjamin Davis and a number of other Tories, who were committed to jail.”

Why was Davis being singled out? He’d made himself notorious in some way, and we have a couple of hints about how.

David Cobb wrote to Robert Treat Paine on 29 July:

Just now the Tories were Landed at the Long Wharf from Marblehead & were attended from thence to the Prison by 2 thousand people; the Women from the Windows asking Davis whether he wanted any Gingerbread, refering to his treatment of the little Chreldren when they were going out of Town last Year. I wish the Devil had ’em.

Abigail Adams alluded to the same scuttlebut in her letter to John the same day:

we have taken a vessel from Halifax bound to New York, which we should call a prize but that it containd about 14 Tories among whom is that infamous Wretch of a Ben Davis the Ginger Bread Robber. How many little ones can say I was an Hungry and you gave me no Bread, but inhumanely took what little I had from me. I wish the Sea or any other Element had them rather than we should be tormented with them.

The editors of the Adams and Paine Papers weren’t sure what to make of those remarks about gingerbread.

I can’t find any sources providing a definite answer, but here’s my guess. At the start of the war, many families sought to leave Boston. Gen. Thomas Gage didn’t want refugees to take out food, which his army needed, or weapons, which the provincial army needed. So the governor set up a system of passes and inspections using both military and civilian administrators.

In the 5 June 1775 Boston Gazette, Benjamin Edes published an open letter addressed “To the perfidious, the truce breaking THOMAS GAGE” and signed “Massachusettensis.” (This was not, presumably, the Loyalist political writer.) Among its complaints about Gage was:

Nay, have not you, and your associates by your orders, been mean enough to steal rum and sugar from a poor teamster, half a cake of gingerbread, a nutmeg, and half a bisket from a poor woman who was flying half famished out of Boston from your low lived tyranny and oppression?

That item was reprinted in several other Massachusetts and Connecticut newspapers over the next couple of weeks. It’s the one gingerbread-related complaint I could find from the period.

That complaint shows that people working for the royal government were confiscating food from folks trying to leave Boston, even mundane food like gingerbread, even from “a poor woman.”

I suspect that Benjamin Davis had agreed to work for Gage’s royal government as some sort of inspector or administrator. At some point that spring, he took gingerbread from a family or two trying to leave town. Children may have cried. That incident didn’t get into the newspapers, but it made him notorious enough that citizens yelled at “Ben Davis the Ginger Bread Robber” more than a year later.

And, unlike Hopestill Capen, few people in Boston minded seeing Davis locked up.

(The picture above shows the Pennsylvania politician Joseph Galloway, not mentioned anywhere in this posting. In September 1774 John Adams wrote in his diary that he was “introduced to Mr. Galloway, the Speaker of the House in Pensylvania. He looks like Ben. Davis the Sandimanian.”)

“Fell in with two Arm’d Schooners”

Yesterday I wrote about Benjamin and Edward Davis, two brothers who were mercantile partners in Boston until religion and Revolutionary politics split them apart.

Benjamin became a Sandemanian, devoutly guided not to oppose British Crown policies by, for instance, signing on to the non-importation boycotts.

Edward remained an Anglican, attending Trinity Church. By late 1774 the Whigs coopted him into helping to enforce their strongest boycott, the Continental Association.

Both brothers remained in Boston during the siege. But when the British military evacuated, Edward stayed while Benjamin sailed away to Halifax, Nova Scotia. In April 1776 the Patriot authorities ordered magistrates to question Edward about his loyalty, but evidently he passed muster.

Around the start of July, Benjamin Davis boarded the ship Peggy, headed for New York. Along with him came his son Benjamin, Jr., who turned twenty that year; an enslaved man; half a dozen other Loyalist men; and a few Loyalist women.

Evidently those refugees saw business opportunities supplying the huge British and Hessian army assembling at New York. The Peggy was loaded with provisions, including 2,648 “mutton hams,” 311 “tierces salted beef,” fish, flour, snuff, cloth, stockings, and a large quantity of alcohol in various forms.

The Peggy also carried six 3-pounder and two 2-pounder cannon. It sailed in convoy with dozens of other merchant ships and troop transports, all escorted by two Royal Navy warships. The sea voyage probably seemed safe.

We have the ship captain’s account of what happened next:

I James Kennedy, Master of the Ship Peggy, in the Merchant Service, declare that I left Hallifax about the first Inst. [i.e., of this month] under Convoy of the Renown of Fifty Guns, with a Fleet of sixteen [torn] Transports containing the 42nd & 71 Scotch Regiments & Fraziers new rais’d Regiment, about 3000 in all, & three Large Ships with Hessian Troops on board, about 600 in all, & one Ship with 5 companys of English foot Guards, & four Victualling Ships, the whole Fleet bound for New York.

Off Nantucket Shoals we fell in with the Flora Frigate of Thirty Guns & four Transports with Highland Troops, these had been in Boston Bay, where they got information from a Fisherman that the Town was Evacuated, on which they Stood for Hallifax untill they met with us, they then joyn’d our Fleet for New York.

The Scotch Troops were all to be of Coll [Archibald] Campbells division (of the Grand Army in America, the whole of which Army I was informd, would by the last of July, amount, to 50,000.) the Hessian Troops left England about the 12th of May, some of the Officers informd me they came out with 304 Sail under the Command of Commodore Hawtham [William Hotham], on board of whom were 10,000 Foreign Troops & some English Troops (number unknown).

last Fryday sennight [19 July] in a gale of wind & thick weather I lost the Fleet & on monday [22 July] I fell in with two [American] Arm’d Schooners, Capts. [John] Skimmer & [Samuel] Tucker, to whom I surrendered after a short engagement, in which I had only one man Wounded.

The day after the Fleet left Hallifax, I saw from my Deck forty Sail of Ships standing in for that Harbour, & which I suppose to be part of the Fleet under Commodore Hawtham.

Skimmer commanded the Franklin and Tucker the Hancock, schooners originally launched under the authority of the Continental Army commander. They were now sailing for Massachusetts.

The Patriot authorities who took Capt. Kennedy’s deposition were evidently pumping him for intelliegence on what other British ships and troops were out there rather than details of his engagement with the schooners.

For Benjamin Davis, all that mattered now was that he was a prisoner of the state he’d left four months before.

TOMORROW: The gingerbread man.