“Our tour was about the American Revolution”

Nick DeLuca’s article “When Is History Advocacy?” at the Contingent Magazine site begins like this:

“Excuse me,” a visitor asked as they tapped my shoulder. I was leading a tour group for the National Parks of Boston. We were standing inside Faneuil Hall and just about to hit the Freedom Trail.

Faneuil Hall was the social, political, and commercial heart of colonial Boston. It also was an arena for action and resistance before, during, and after the American Revolution. The visitor inquired, “Is this one of those woke tours?”

I paused. I thought he was joking at first but he waited for a response. “What do you mean?” I replied.

He asked if the tour was “political.” I told him that our tour was about the American Revolution in Boston, so yes.

DeLuca is a longtime seasonal ranger at Boston National Historical Park.

He’s also a longtime student of the political background of the National Park Service, as he discussed years back in this History News Network article.

It’s of course impossible to discuss history without touching on politics, especially at a site that was created for a political purpose and preserved because of political activity. And even if, say, Abolitionism is no longer controversial, its principles and arguments echo in today’s issues.

Furthermore, because the National Park Service is a government entity, it’s inescapably political. The fact that the overwhelming majority of American citizens approve of the agency doesn’t change how it was created through a political process and answers to politicians.

National Parks employees understand the responsibilities that go along with their jobs. They’re very careful to avoid political advocacy—far more so than the politicians above them or than we the people have to. But that can’t mean misrepresenting history or science.

DeLuca’s story of meeting this anti-“woke” visitor ends happily because he did his job. Unfortunately, the current administration has been moving to cut lots of jobs from the National Park Service, and perhaps cut parks as well, in order to reduce taxes on rich people and leave a mark on history. 

“To become a Keeper of the Light House on Bald Head”

Commonplace published David E. Paterson’s article “Jefferson’s Mystery Woman Identified.”

It begins:

Historians have long wondered what prompted President Thomas Jefferson’s cryptic sentence in a note dated January 13, 1807, to Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin: “The appointment of a woman to office is an innovation for which the public is not prepared, nor am I.”

Given Jefferson’s opinion explicitly expressed elsewhere that women were best suited to domestic roles, not to boisterous public political forums, and not as actors in the halls and offices of government, scholars of the early republic and popular authors alike, since at least 1920, have tried to reconstruct the specific context in which the president made this comment. For the last twenty years, the consensus explanation has been that Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin, unable to find enough qualified men to fill federal government jobs, proposed hiring women for those positions.

However, while Jefferson’s statement may reflect his thoughts on women as office holders in general, my recent research in federal records proves that Jefferson wrote the sentence in reaction to Gallatin’s proposal to appoint a specific woman to a specific job.

As Paterson says, Gallatin’s letter to the President and other pertinent documents don’t survive, so he had to work with other sources. One key bit of news:

The Wilmington (N.C.) Gazette of October 21, 1806, reported that five days earlier, a man named Joseph Swain, hunting deer and wild hogs on Bald Head Island, fired at a noise he heard in the bushes—only to find that he had killed his father-in-law, light-keeper Henry Long.

Paterson’s research also indicates that Gallatin; Timothy Bloodworth, the federal Customs Collector at Wilmington; and twelve local men were all willing to see a woman appointed to the office in question. Only President Jefferson deemed that “the public” wasn’t prepared for that.

Nineteen years later, President John Quincy Adams made the opposite call in regard to the same type of federal office.

For additional reading, here’s Kevin Duffus’s article for Coastal Review on the slain lighthouse keeper, Henry Long. It turns out he was born in the Palatinate in 1743. At the age of ten his family emigrated to Maine, the same region where Christopher Seider’s family first settled. His father, a schoolteacher also named Heinrich Lange, was still there in 1767, according to Jasper Jacob Stahl’s History of Old Broad Bay and Waldoboro.

As a young man, Henry Long moved to North Carolina, which had German-speaking Moravian communities. He became a river pilot, married, and had children. Entering his fifties, Long seems to have wanted a more stable job. In 1794 the Hooper family—who also had roots in the Massachusetts colony—recommended him to the federal government to tend the lighthouse off Cape Fear. And that went well for twelve years.

“Willard Gibbs free”?

One ciphered line in the diary of Thomas Newell was still mysterious to me, even after being transcribed and published by the Massachusetts Historical Society.

This entry is dated 30 Sept 1773, and it reads:

Willard Gibbs free

I doublechecked those words with the original pages and the cipher, and they’re accurate. (The transcriber did regularize Newell’s spelling, capitalization, and punctuation, deeming him “illiterate.”)

Figuring out what that meant was hampered by the visibility of Josiah Willard Gibbs, the great engineer at Yale, and his father, a Yale professor of theology. But several other members of the extended family also had that name.

Pushing back far enough, we find the first Josiah Willard Gibbs (1752–1822), not a direct ancestor of those two famous men but an uncle.

The Gibbs Family Papers are at the Clements Library, and its finding aid has a lot to say about that man’s father, Henry Gibbs (1709–1759, shown above courtesy of Geni).

Son of a minister, Henry went to Harvard College and “came into a considerable inheritance from both sides of the family.” He was the college librarian from 1730 to 1734, then settled in Salem as a merchant. His first wife died young, and he then married Katharine Willard (1724–1769), daughter of the province secretary, Josiah Willard.

This marriage further cemented the prominent place of the Gibbs in Salem society but brought comparatively little lucre, and only the fortunate bequest of £500 from a friend, William Lynde, helped the Gibbs maintain their lifestyle and social obligations. A theological liberal and political supporter of the power of the crown and broad colonial obligations, Gibbs held several important local and provincial offices during the next several years, including justice of the peace (appt. 1753), judge, delegate in the House of Representatives (three terms, beginning in 1753), and Clerk of the House (1755-1759). In February, 1759, at what should have been the peak of his career, he contracted measles, leaving five children and an insolvent estate with a meager 10s allotted to each child.

Evidently Katherine Gibbs moved her family back to Boston, where she died on 31 May 1769. At that point her son Josiah Willard Gibbs was sixteen, not yet of legal age. He had a prestigious name and probably little else.

On 14 July, merchant and selectman Timothy Newell became Josiah’s guardian. (The probate judge overseeing this arrangement was Thomas Hutchinson. Newell’s sureties were Richard Clarke and John Amory. The witness to this action was William Cooper. Just showing what a tight little community colonial Boston was.)

It looks like Josiah Willard Gibbs became part of Timothy Newell’s household, probably learning business alongside that merchant’s nephew Thomas (who was three years older). Young Gibbs turned twenty-one on 30 Sept 1773—the day of Thomas Newell’s mysterious line.

Thus, “Willard Gibbs free” meant that Josiah Willard Gibbs had come of age. He could manage his own property and no longer answered to Timothy Newell. As to whether that was cause for celebration or mere acknowledgement, the diary didn’t say.

According to the Memoir of the Gibbs Family of Warwickshire, England, and United States of America (1879), compiled by (naturally) Josiah Willard Gibbs, this Willard Gibbs went on to marry Elizabeth Warner in 1779; she was just about to turn sixteen.

These Gibbses had ten or eleven children between 1780 and 1801. Their son George was born in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1793, and the family settled in Philadelphia. Josiah died in that city in 1822, Elizabeth in 1842. Their son Josiah Willard Gibbs was a merchant there. His son Josiah Willard Gibbs went out to Sacramento in the Gold Rush and died in 1850.

Thomas Newell and “that Detestable Tea”

Thomas Newell’s diary makes clear that he opposed Parliament’s tea tax in 1773, as most Bostonians did. On 2 December, for instance, he wrote about James Bruce bringing in the Eleanor with “116 Chest of that Detestable Tea.”

But what did Newell do to support that stance?

On 17 November the young man made clear he didn’t participate in the attack on the Clarke family’s warehouse, discussed back here: “This evening a number of persons assembled before Richard Clarke’s, Esq., one of the consignees of tea; they broke the windows, and did other damage. (I was at fire meeting this evening.)”

On 2 December, the same day Capt. Bruce arrived, Newell’s diary contains one of the longer bits of cipher in the diary. The word “Junr” is legible among the little symbols, and a squiggle that doesn’t fit the cipher turns out to be “St.” What was Newell hiding?

Not a whole lot, it turns out. Once deciphered, the line reads: “This Eving. was at St. Andrew’s Lodge, I was chosen Junr Deacon of said Lodge.” Well, good for Thomas Newell.

Some people credit that lodge of Freemasons with being at the heart of the anti-tea operation. (None give it more credit than the lodge itself.) And indeed Newell got more involved the next night.

On 3 December, Newell recorded: “This evening I was one of the watch on board of Captain Bruce (with twenty-four more), that has tea for the Clarkes & Co.” That patrol was to keep the tea from being landed so the tax could be collected.

Finally, here’s Thomas Newell’s account of 16 December:

Town and country sons mustered according to adjournment. The people ordered Mr. [Francis] Rotch, owner of Captain [James] Hall’s ship, to make a demand for a clearance of Mr. [Joseph] Harrison, the collector of the custom house (and he was refused a clearance for his ship). The body desired Mr. Rotch to protest against the custom-house, and apply to the governor for his pass for the castle. He applied accordingly, and the governor refused to give him one. The people, finding all their efforts to preserve the East India Company’s tea, at night dissolved the meeting. But behold what followed the same evening: a number of brave men (some say Indians), in less than three hours emptied every chest of tea on board the three ships, commanded by Captains Hall, Bruce, and [Hezekiah] Coffin (amounting to 342 chests), into the sea.

Was Newell among those “brave men”? I’d guess not. But he surely knew some of them.

A couple of details struck me Newell’s writing about the Boston tea protesters. First, he consistently referred to the people meeting in Old South Meeting-House as ”sons of liberty.” He didn’t worry about calling them the “body of the people.”

Second, in Newell’s telling the crowd that afternoon was trying “to preserve the East India Company’s tea.” By having it shipped back to Britain, that is. Would be a shame if anything else happened to it.

TOMORROW: A mystery name.

“Townspeople took four brass cannon”

Here are all the entries from Thomas Newell’s 1774–74 diary that pertain to artillery and thus show the coming of war.

• 4 June 1773: “King’s birthday; general training; the grandest appearance ever known in these parts.”

John Rowe wrote about this same militia exhibition in honor of the king:

Colo. [John] Hancock & Company of Cadets, Major [Adino] Paddock & Artillery, Colo. [John] Erving & the Regiment, Colo. [David] Phipps & Company all made their appearance in the Common — Such a Quantity or Rather Multitude of People as Spectators I never saw before, they behaved very well.

Phips commanded the horse guards.

• 1 July: “Major Paddock’s son drowned at Cambridge River.”

Adino Paddock was a coachmaker as well as commander of Boston’s militia artillery company. His son John was a student in Harvard College’s class of 1776, carrying the family’s hopes to secure their rise into gentility, when he died at age seventeen.

• 15 September: “General training.”
• 22 September: “General training for the last time this year.”
• 12 November: “Workmen began to set another row of elms in the common.”

Paddock instigated the planting of trees along Tremont Street, opposite his coachyard. Years after he had left Boston as a Loyalist, those would still be called the “Paddock elms.”

Gen. Thomas Gage arrived as the new royal governor in May 1774, and the following summer was punctuated by the arrival of more army units, including companies of Royal Artillery:

• 2 July: “A.M. Artillery from Castle William landed, with eight brass cannon, and encamped in the common. 258 sheep given for the relief of this town by the town of Windham, in Connecticut. (I cut my hair off.)”
• 6 August: ”The Scarboro. man-of-war arrived, nine weeks from England; P.M. three transports from Halifax, with the 59th Regiment on board, and company of artillery, and brass cannon, eight days out.”
• 7 August: “A.M. three transports from New York with the Royal Regiment of Welsh Fusileers and detachment of Royal Artillery, and a quantity of ordnance stores, &c.”
• 8 August: “Company of artillery landed; encamped in common.”

Soon after Gage put the Massachusetts Government Act into effect, he had his soldiers remove militia gunpowder from the storehouse in Charlestown. That set off a big reaction in the countryside:

• 1 September: “This morning, half after four, about 260 troops embarked on board thirteen boats at the Long Wharf, and proceeded up Mystic River to Temple Farm, where they landed; went to the powder-house on Quarry Hill, in Charlestown bounds, from whence they have taken 250 half-barrels of gunpowder, the whole store there, and carried it to the castle. A detachment from this corps went to Cambridge and brought off two field-pieces.”
• 2 September: “From these several hostile appearances, the county of Middlesex took the alarm, and on last evening began to collect in large bodies, with their arms, provisions, and ammunitions, &c. This morning some thousands of them advanced to Cambridge, armed only with sticks. The committee of Cambridge sent express to Charlestown, who communicated the intelligence to Boston, and their respective committee proceeded to Cambridge without delay. Thomas Oliver, S[amuel]. Danforth, J[oseph]. Lee, made declaration and resignation of a seat in the new constituted council, which satisfied the body. At sunset, they began to return home. At dark, rain and thundered very hard.”

That “Powder Alarm” uprising prompted Gen. Gage and Adm. Samuel Graves to strengthen Boston’s military defenses against attacks from land.

• 3 September: “Four large field-pieces were dragged from the common by the soldiery and placed at the only entrance into this town by land. The Lively frigate, of twenty guns, came to her mooring in the ferry-way between Boston and Charlestown.”
• 5 September: “Artillery training.”
• 15 September: “Last night all the cannon in the North Battery were spiked up: it is said to be done by about one hundred men (who came in boats) from the man-of war in this harbor.”
• 17 September: “Last night, townspeople took four brass cannon from the gun-house near very near the common.”

Newell conflated two events in that last entry. Maj. Paddock’s militia artillery had two gunhouses, each containing one pair of small cannon. As other sources show, persons unknown spirited away the two cannon in the old gunhouse on the night of 14–15 September. When Royal Artillery officers opened the new gunhouse on 17 September, they discovered its two cannon were gone, too.

Newell’s diary entry shows that many Bostonians knew about those events even though they were never reported in the newspapers or in Gen. Gage’s letters to the government in London.

• 20 September: “Some cannon removed (by the man-of war’s men) from the mill-pond.”

People had tried to smuggle these guns up the Charles River, but their boat got hung up on the dam that formed the Mill Pond and they had to abandon it.

• 3 October: “Artillery training for the last time this year.”

Since the train’s weapons had vanished, and most of the company’s men were refusing to serve under Maj. Paddock, there probably wasn’t a lot of artillery training accomplished that day.

• 22 October: “This morning, about 7 o’clock, after three days’ illness, Mr. William Molineaux died, in the fifty-eighth year of his age. (A true son of liberty and of America.) It may with truth be said of this friend, that he died a martyr to the interest of America. His watchfulness, labors, distresses, and exertions to promote the general interest, produced an inflammation in his bowels, of which he died. ‘Oh, save my country, Heaven,’ he said, and died.”

Molineux was involved in many acts of resistance, and among the last was buying four cannon from Duncan Ingraham, Jr., in September or October 1774. Those guns were sent out to four rural towns to be equipped for use by spring. 

• 23 October: “This day four transports arrived here from New York, with a company royal artillery, a large quantity of ordnance stores for Castle William, three companies of the Royal Regiment of Ireland, or the 18th Regiment, and the 47th Regiment on board.”

This one document thus shows us both sides of the political conflict preparing for military action—with cannon.

Ultimately those efforts led to the British army’s march to Concord and to war. I’ll tell that story at the Scituate Historical Society this week.

Thursday, 15 May, 7–8:30 P.M.
Secrets on the Road to Concord
G.A.R. Hall, 353 Country Way, Scituate

Admission is $15, or $10 for society members. Reservations are recommended, but payment will be accepted at the door. I look forward to meeting folks there.

TOMORROW: Thomas Newell and the tea.

Thomas Newell’s Secret Notes

As discussed yesterday, Thomas Newell wrote several lines in his 1773–74 diary in cipher.

Since one of those lines coincides with Newell joining the effort to keep the East India Company tea from landing, one might hope the secret words would have political significance.

Barring that, they could be juicy personal gossip. Better than the weather reports that comprise the great majority of entries in this diary.

But no, these ciphered lines turn out to be far less juicy than other things Newell wrote about openly: political brouhahas, a duel between British military officers, the suicide of a British sailor.

Of eleven lines in cipher, four were Newell admitting to not going to a meetinghouse on a Sunday. Four times in two years!

Three expressed Newell’s worry for a woman named Hannah, who was suffering ill health:

• 10 Oct 1773, Sunday: “Staid at home this day upon account of my dear Hannah being unwell with a breaking out on her hands and legs.”
• 28 December: “My dear Hannah very unwell; out of her head most of this evening.”
• 13 Mar 1774: “My Hannah [not in cipher:] went to meeting, after many months’ illness.”

This was presumably the Hannah he married and had two daughters with years later. I haven’t found a date for that marriage, but the Newells were members of the Brattle Street congregation, and the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper wasn’t known for scrupulous record-keeping. Hannah Newell died in 1807.

Two entries were about attending social events that would be standard for a young man of his class:

• 17 July 1773: “I went to Commencement” at Harvard College, an annual public festival.
• 28 October, after a concert at Faneuil Hall by Josiah Flagg: “For the first time my uncle gave me a ticket.”

And one ciphered entry was about a holiday gift:

• 2 Jan 1774: “Yesterday being New Year’s Day, my father gave me a new shirt, for which I was greatly obliged to him.”

Thomas Newell’s father had the same name; he was called captain because he had commanded a ship as a younger man, but in this period he was running a wharf.

Why would Thomas Newell feel the need to keep that information from posterity? Well, he probably didn’t care about us. In this period a diary was less private than we now expect, so Newell’s uncle Timothy or his father or his friends might have expected to be able to read it.

I suspect that Thomas Newell kept these little personal notes private because they were about his own personal life and not the weather or public events.

TOMORROW: Cannon.

The Cipher in Thomas Newell’s Diary

Last month I went to a one-day display of interesting Revolutionary documents from the Boston Public Library’s Archives & Special Collections department.

Among the items I saw for the first time was the diary of Thomas Newell (1749–1827), nephew and either protégé or employee of merchant and selectman Timothy Newell.

I’d read the text of that diary as published by the Massachusetts Historical Society and even quoted it for crucial details in The Road to Concord, but I didn’t know that the document still survived at the B.P.L.

Even more eye-catching, the archivists had opened it to a page about the lead-up to the Boston Tea Party, and one entry contains two lines of mysterious writing. Here’s a clip from the digitized version.

On 2 Dec 1773, Capt. James Bruce arrived in Boston harbor with the second shipment of East India Company tea. Thomas Newell did or saw something that evening. And the next day he joined two dozen other men in patrolling the docks to ensure no tea was landed.

I spoke to the archivists about the writing. Was it a cipher? An attempt to write in Hebrew? I put this diary on my list of things to investigate.

Now I can’t take all the credit for what I found because none other than the statesman Edward Everett worked out the cipher in the mid-1800s. He didn’t explain it, but he translated what Newell had written, and those translations are in the published transcript. That let me reverse-engineer the method.

As I suspected, Newell used a type of pigpen cipher, in which letters are written into tic-tac-toe grids and the boundaries of each cell stand in for the letter within. Newell’s cipher treats I and J as the same letter, and U and V as the same letter. So the grids are:

No dots over a symbol mean the letter is in the left-hand grid, one dot the middle grid, and two dots the right-hand grid. Thus, a square (all four boundaries) with no dot is an E, with one dot an O, and with two dots a Y.

That system let me decipher Newell’s secret lines. Or, rather, it let me confirm what Everett deciphered about a century and a half ago.

TOMORROW: So what did Thomas Newell write?

“Remarkably susceptible to the spread of fake news”

The H-Net journal Remembering the American Revolution at 250 recently shared a new paper by Jonathan Bayer of the University of Toronto.

The abstract begins:

On April 8, 1780, a copy of a letter titled “Private No. 15” appeared in the Pennsylvania Packet of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Purportedly sent from British General Sir Henry Clinton to Lord George Germain, the letter painted a dismally dim picture of the British war effort and admitted to the use of underhanded tactics such as the counterfeiting of the Continental Dollar, subsequently buoying American spirits. The letter, however, was a fake.

This paper explores the ways in which the structures of the early American press proved remarkably susceptible to the spread of fake news, such as this forged letter.

The paper also explores the ways in which the fake news that appeared in early American newspapers continues to influence the American historiography. The letter has been taken as genuine by every secondary source that has addressed it, significantly influencing the study of the counterfeiting of the Continental Dollar.

Bayer’s paper is titled “‘Private No. 15’: Fake News in the Early American Press and the Influence of a Forged Letter on the Historiography of the American Revolution.” It’s available for anyone to download in P.D.F. form.

“The Body of Michael Johnson then and there being Dead”

Revolutionary Spaces preserves what might be the first piece of legal paperwork arising from the Boston Massacre: the report of an inquest convened the day after the shooting.

This document a printed form filled out with specific details on the deceased and the names and signatures of the coroner and his jury. I’ve transcribed it with the printed words in boldface:

Suffolk, ss.

AN Inquisition Indented, taken at Boston within the said County of Suffolk the Sixth Day of March in the tenth Year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord George the third by the Grace of God, of Great-Britain, France and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, &c. Before Robert Pierpont Gentm. one of the Coroners of our said Lord the King, within the County of Suffolk aforesaid;

upon the View of the Body of Michael Johnson then and there being Dead, by the Oaths of Benjamin Waldo Foreman Jacob Emmons John McLane William Fleet John Wise John How Nathaniel Hurd William Baker junior William Flagg William Crafts Enoch Rust Robert Duncan William Palfrey & Samuel Danforth good and lawful Men of Boston aforesaid, within the County aforesaid; who being Charged and Sworn to enquire for our said Lord the King, When and by what Means, and how the said Michael Johnson came to his Death: Upon their Oaths do say,

That the said Michael Johnson was wilfully and feloniously murdered at King Street in Boston in the County aforesaid on the Evening of the 5th. instant between the hours of nine & ten by the discharge of a Musket or Muskets loaded with Bullets, two of which were shot thro’ his body, by a party of Soldiers to us unknown, then and there headed and commanded by Captain Thomas Preston of his Majesty’s 29th. Regiment of foot against the peace of our Sovereign Lord the King his Crown and dignity and so by that means he came by his death as appears by evidence.

In Witness whereof, as well I the Coroner aforesaid, as the Jurors aforesaid, to this Inquisition have interchangeably put our Hands and Seals, the Day and Year aforesaid.

This document was made so early that Bostonians hadn’t realized that “Michael Johnson” was really named Crispus Attucks.

Revolutionary Spaces shared an essay about this document’s history as a museum artifact and the work that’s been done to conserve it.

Tonight I’ll speak online to the American Revolution Round Table of New Jersey about how Massachusetts’s legal system responded to the Boston Massacre. Four criminal trials followed that event, though we usually hear about only one or two (so I might end up talking more about the others). 

“It was not disturbed, nor was any of their property taken”

I’ve now quoted two nineteenth-century accounts from descendants of Elbridge Gerry, Azor Orne, and Jeremiah Lee (shown here) saying that British soldiers searched the tavern in Menotomy where they were staying on the night of 18–19 Apr 1775.

The three men, all delegates from Marblehead to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, fled out the back of the tavern and hid outside in the cold.

Less than a month later, Lee died of an illness, which his family attributed to the stress of that night. That obviously made the men’s choices in the early hours of 19 April carry more weight.

There are, however, big problems with the story that part of the British army column searched Ethan Wetherby’s Black Horse tavern that night.

First, Gen. Thomas Gage’s orders for the march said nothing about looking for committee of safety members along the way. His intelligence files have no information on the whereabouts of those committee men. Rather, the general wanted his troops to get to Concord as quickly as possible.

Furthermore, none of the British army officers who wrote reports on that march described searching a tavern in west Cambridge, or anywhere else on their way out.

Finally, no contemporaneous accounts from the provincial side—neither depositions, letters, nor newspaper articles—complained about this search, either. And people made a lot of complaints in the wake of the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

There might be a seed of truth at the start of the story. Both versions say a small number of soldiers approached the tavern after the vanguard passed by. It’s conceivable that some redcoats turned aside to use the tavern’s well or outhouse before catching up with the column. But the lore goes much further than that, saying soldiers spent “more than an hour” searching every room in the building, “even the beds.”

The lore offers no corroborating evidence for that detail, such as the landlord’s testimony. In fact, the nineteenth-century versions specify that the committee men couldn’t point to anything missing as a sign that the soldiers had visited their room:

• “a valuable watch of Mr. Gerry’s, which was under his pillow, was not disturbed.”
• “Mr. Gerry’s watch was under his pillow, but it was not disturbed, nor was any of their property taken.”

Ordinarily if everything in a room looks the same as before, we treat that as a sign it wasn’t searched.

By 1916, Thomas Amory Lee might have spotted that weakness in the traditional tale because his article “Colonel Jeremiah Lee: Patriot” for the Essex Institute Historical Collections stated: “Gerry’s silver watch and French great coat disappeared.” That’s a direct contradiction of earlier Gerry family lore, and even that new version said Orne’s watch went untouched.

Given the totality of evidence, I think the Marblehead delegates were more worried about arrest than Gerry’s exchange of notes with John Hancock let on. Seeing hundreds of British soldiers outside their inn, perhaps seeing some of those soldiers coming closer to the building, they bolted for an exit.

There are reports Gerry and perhaps Lee sustained injuries in their flight. Then they stayed outside in the cold until it felt safe to return. Waiting for the whole army column to pass by and go out of sight may have felt like an hour, but it probably took less time than that.

Finally the three men came back inside, grateful to have escaped arrest. Then came news of the shooting at Lexington, the redcoat reinforcement column, the outbreak of war. The delegates fled the tavern again, this time with their possessions. Lee fell ill soon after, and died on 10 May.

Looking back on the episode decades later, Gerry and Orne—and perhaps even more so their and Lee’s descendants—would have resisted the thought that those sacrifices weren’t really necessary. That the three Marblehead men could have stayed in their warm bedroom, watched the glittering troops march by, and never faced arrest. That Lee might have lived longer.

So they convinced themselves that running outside had been necessary. Not just prudent but necessary. Which meant believing that soldiers came into the tavern and searched the bedrooms, leaving no sign of their presence.

“The soldiers searched for them, for more than an hour”

On 27 Apr 1861, the Cambridge Chronicle published an article headlined “Revolutionary Incident.” and signed “C.F.O.”

The first paragraph listed its “authentic and reliable sources,” including “the Records of the Provincial Congress, Austin’s Life of Gerry, and the niece of Col. Gerry, daughter in law of Col. Orne, and the grand-daughter of Col. Lee.”

“C.F.O.” was Caroline Frances Orne (1818–1905, shown here), a poet, local historian, and Cambridge’s librarian for seventeen years.

She was a granddaughter of Sally (Gerry) Orne (d. 1846), who was “the niece of Col. [Elbridge] Gerry, [and] daughter in law of Col. [Azor] Orne.” I believe “the grand-daughter of Col. [Jeremiah] Lee” was most likely either Louise Lee Tracy (1787–1869) or Helen Tracy (1796–1865).

Thus, this article was based on family lore, not first-hand witnesses, and the author was herself a member of the intertwined family. She consulted books like the Journals of Each Provincial Congress of Massachusetts and James T. Austin’s biography of his father-in-law, but used those to fill out a story she’d undoubtedly heard from her grandmother.

Caroline Frances Orne wrote of the British army march in April 1775:

Among the objects of this march one was to seize the persons of some of the influential members of the Provincial Congress, to hold them as hostages, or send them to England for trial as traitors, and thus to terrify and dismay their associates and friends.

Among others, Col. [John] Hancock, Col. [Azor] Orne and Mr. Elbridge Gerry had been in session, on the day preceding the march of the troops, in the village of Menotomy, then part of the township of Cambridge, on the road to Lexington, at [Ethan] Wetherby’s Black-Horse Tavern.

Col. Hancock, Samuel Adams, and some others went over to Lexington to pass the night, while Messrs. Gerry, Lee, and Orne remained at the village. The appearance of some officers of the royal army who passed through the village just before dark, attracted the attention of these gentlemen, and a message of warning was at once despatched to Col. Hancock. Of their personal danger they did not entertain an idea, but retired quietly to rest, without taking the least precaution.

As the British advance came into view of the dwelling-house, they arose and looked out of the windows, and in the bright moonlight saw the glitter of the bayonets, and marked the regular march of the disciplined troops. The front had passed, and the centre was opposite the house, when a signal was given, and an officer and a file of men marched towards it. Then the apprehension of danger first struck them, and they hastened to escape.

Rushing down stairs, Col. Gerry in his perturbation, was about to open the door in the face of the British, when the agitated landlord exclaimed, “For God’s sake, gentlemen, don’t open that door[.]” He then hurried them out at the back door, into a cornfield, where the old stalks still remained. Hastening along, Col. Gerry soon fell. “Stop, Orne,” he called in low, urgent voice, “Stop for me till I can get up; I have hurt myself.”

“Lie still,” replied Col Orne, in the same low tone, “Throw yourself flat on the ground,” proceeding at once to do the same himself, in which he was imitated by Col Lee.

This manoeuvre saved them. The soldiers searched for them, for more than an hour. Every apartment of the house was searched “for the members of the Rebel Congress,” and even the beds in which they had lain. Mr. Gerry’s watch was under his pillow, but it was not disturbed, nor was any of their property taken. The troops finally left, and the gentlemen returned, suffering greatly from cold, for it was a cold frosty night, and they were but slightly clothed.

Col. Lee never recovered from the effects of the exposure. He was attacked, soon after, by a severe fever, and died, May 10th, 1775, universally lamented. The others lived to render most important services to their country.

Three years later, the Rev. Samuel Abbot Smith (1829-1865) put a shorter version of the same story into his West Cambridge on the Nineteenth of April, 1775. He credited “Miss Orne, who received this account from the lips of her grandmother, who was niece of Elbridge Gerry, and daughter-in-law of Col. Orne.”

TOMORROW: The watch under the pillow.

“Opposite to the house occupied by the committee”

On 18 Apr 1775, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s committee of safety met “at Mr. [Ethan] Wetherby’s, at the Black Horse” tavern in west Cambridge.

Among other business that day, the committee promised “the two brass two pounders, and two brass three pounders” that had been stolen out of Boston to Lemuel Robinson’s Suffolk County artillery company. Robinson had hidden those cannon at his tavern in Dorchester earlier in the year, before they were moved out to Concord.

The committee decided to continue meeting in the same tavern at 10 A.M. the next morning. Three important members from Marblehead—Elbridge Gerry, Jeremiah Lee, and Azor Orne—chose to stay overnight since they were far from their own beds. Other members went home to Charlestown, Newton, and elsewhere. 

On the afternoon of the 18th people spotted Maj. Edward Mitchell and other army officers riding by that tavern on horseback. Gerry sent a warning note to John Hancock in Lexington, and Hancock replied. There was a widespread worry that troops might arrest leaders of the resistance. Of course, neither man’s message indicated that he was worried for himself, certainly not.

In 1828 James T. Austin published a two-volume Life of Elbridge Gerry, his father-in-law, which offered this story about what happened in the night that followed:

Mr. Gerry and colonel Orne retired to rest without taking the least precaution against personal exposure, and they remained quietly in their beds until the British advance were within view of the dwelling house. It was a fine moonlight night, and they quietly marked the glittering of its beams on the polished arms of the soldiers as the troops moved with the silence and regularity of accomplished discipline. The front passed on.

When the centre were opposite to the house occupied by the committee, an officer and file of men were detached by signal, and marched towards it. It was not until this moment they entertained any apprehension of danger.

While the officer was posting his files the gentlemen found means by their better knowledge of the premises to escape, half dressed as they were, into an adjoining corn-field, where they remained concealed for more than an hour, until the troops were withdrawn. Every apartment of the house was searched “for the members of the rebel congress”; even the beds in which they had lain were examined.

But their property, and among other things a valuable watch of Mr. Gerry’s, which was under his pillow, was not disturbed.

I can’t identify the source of the phrase in quotation marks, either in earlier books, period newspapers, or Gen. Thomas Gage’s orders. 

TOMORROW: Another family source.

“It means exactly what it says, it’s a declaration”

Back in early March, following reports that Donald Trump was demanding a Declaration of Independence to hang in the Oval Office, I wrote:

Donald Trump doesn’t want the Declaration in his office to honor that text or its values. He wants a rare, beloved national asset brought to him to glorify himself.

Eventually Trump did get a printed Declaration behind a curtain in his heavily guarded workspace, an odd way for it to be “shared and put on display,” as a White House publicist had claimed.

This past week the television journalist Terry Moran visited the Oval Office and asked Trump what the Declaration meant to him. Trump confirmed my reading of his character by offering this ignorant blather:

Well, it means exactly what it says, it’s a declaration, it’s a declaration of unity and love and respect and it means a lot and it’s something very special to our country.

Trump couldn’t explain the meaning of the Declaration, its historical significance, or its relevance to today. His comments reveal his desperation to believe that a rare copy’s presence in his office shows the country feels “unity and love and respect” for him.

Last month the White House issued a proclamation on the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, as a Boston 1775 commenter alerted me. This document was obviously not written by Trump since it was focused on the historical event, coherent, and grammatical.

Much of that proclamation landed within the realm of common accuracy. In other words, it made the usual mistakes: that Paul Revere rode to Concord, that the “shot heard ’round the world” happened at Lexington, and so on. But a lot of other cursorily researched descriptions of the 19th of April make those same mistakes.

This White House document, however, made some mistakes all its own. It described the opening skirmish as “The British ambush at Lexington.” It said that at the North Bridge “the startled British opened fire, killing 49 Americans.” The correct number is 2. (The number 49 refers to the total number of provincial dead over the whole day.) Obviously the team drawing public salaries to prepare that proclamation for signature didn’t value fact-checking.

Incidents like these show how hollow the Trump administration’s claim to value American history really is. Behind the rhetorical trumpery, the White House is trying to defund our national parks, museums, libraries, universities, humanities research, public schools, and public television. The only forms of history its occupant shows any sign of valuing are statuary and birthday parades.

“Eads escaped out of town last night”

I got interested this week in how printers exited Boston around the start of the war because of a question from a Boston 1775 reader about Benjamin Edes.

The standard understanding of Edes’s departure goes back to the 1901 biography of his son, Peter Edes, Pioneer Printer in Maine. Samuel Lane Boardman wrote:

In the spring of 1775, the town of Boston being in possession of the British troops, Mr. Edes contrived to evade the vigilance of their guards and went to Watertown with an old press and one or two imperfect fonts of type. The escape was made by night in a boat up the Charles river.

We know Edes reestablished the Boston Gazette in Watertown on 5 June 1775, and the shortest distance between Boston and Watertown is indeed up the Charles River.

But Edes’s journey was more complicated than that. Let’s start with a letter from Peter Edes that Boardman reprinted later in his biography, the same letter that I quoted a couple of days ago in regard to the Tea Party.

Writing to a grandson in 1836, Peter Edes said his father:

made his escape by disguising himself as a fisherman, and getting on board a fishing boat; and when they were a few miles from town he was landed on one of the islands, from which he made his escape to the main land.

To escape from Boston on a fishing vessel and to land on an island meant heading out into the harbor or beyond, not up the Charles River.

That detail matches a couple of contemporary reports from south of Boston, both sent to John Adams.

First, on 7 May Abigail Adams told her husband:

Poor Eads escaped out of town last night with one Ayers in a small boat, and was fired upon, but got safe and came up to Braintree to day. His name it seems was upon the black list.

On the same day James Warren wrote to his friend:

By the way I have Just heard that Edes has stole out. I wish his partner was with him. I called on Mrs. Adams as I came along. Found her and Family well.

Thus, Benjamin Edes left Boston in disguise on the night of 6 May. He may have brought out printing equipment, though these early sources don’t say that. I’d love to identify “Ayers,” but I’m not even certain of that spelling.

Edes must have landed somewhere off the south shore, given how Patriots in Braintree heard about his arrival within a day. Did Warren tell Adams, or did Adams tell Warren?

Then Edes made his way back toward the siege lines, settling in Watertown to be close to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, its news, and its printing jobs.

Edes’s partner, John Gill, didn’t get out of Boston. Instead, in the wake of the Battle of Bunker Hill he and the teen-aged Peter Edes were arrested and held in the Boston jail for several weeks.

COMING UP: Under one roof.

“He engages in the fight which was the beginning of the end”

The printer Isaiah Thomas’s family understood him to have been very active on the first day of the Revolutionary War.

As stated in the preface to the 1874 edition of Thomas’s History of Printing in America:

He went out on the night of the 18th of April, to assist in giving notice that the troops were crossing the Charles river. He returned, but was out again by daylight. Crossing the ferry with Dr. [Joseph] Warren he went into a public meeting at Charlestown and urged the arming of the people, and was opposed by one Mr. [James?] Russell “on principles of prudence.”

Gen. Thomas Gage ordered his forces to stop anyone trying to leave Boston via the Neck or the ferry on the night of 18 April, so as to prevent the sort of “notice” Thomas supposedly spread.

Not only did the printer get out of town, this family lore said, but he then got back in. Even though one of the main points of this passage was that Thomas was on the royal authorities’ enemies list.

We know Dr. Warren did get out of Boston early on the morning of 19 April. Richard Frothingham’s 1865 biography of the doctor quoted witnesses saying he rode the ferry to Charlestown, then headed west on horseback.

We also know there was debate in Charlestown about whether to oppose the British army by force. Ultimately most of the townspeople decided to hunker down because they were too vulnerable to counterattack from the army and navy.

As to what Isaiah Thomas did in those busy hours, I’m not sure. He definitely did thrust himself into events at other times, so I’m sure he would have spread the alarm and urged opposition to the troops if he could. I’m just not sure the opportunities were available.

For a couple of paragraphs, the 1874 account slips into a breathless present tense.

As one of the minute men, he [Thomas] engages in the fight which was the beginning of the end. At night he goes to Medford. On the morning of the 20th, he makes a flying visit to his family at Watertown, and then starts on foot for Worcester.

He is constantly met on his journey by bodies of armed men on their way to Cambridge, anxious to learn even the minutest details of yesterday’s fight. After traveling on foot some miles, he meets with a friend who procures him the loan of a horse. Late at night, weary and travel worn, he arrives at Worcester to begin life anew; a good head and stout heart his only capital. . . .

The presses and types sent before him were all that were left as the fruit of five years’ toil and peril. A sum exceeding three thousand dollars (and a dollar meant something then, though soon to lose its meaning) was due him from subscribers, scattered over the continent.

The printer may well have had debts due him, but he was also being sued for debt he owed. The war, a new government, and a new town offered the possibility of a new start.

Isaiah Thomas struggled through the war years but prospered in the new republic. He settled in Worcester, publishing the Massachusetts Spy and many books from that town, and also invested in other print shops and newspapers. Ultimately his estate was solid enough that he set up the American Antiquarian Society to maintain his printing archive and tell his story his way.

TOMORROW: How another printer left Boston.