J. L. BELL is a Massachusetts writer who specializes in (among other things) the start of the American Revolution in and around Boston. He is particularly interested in the experiences of children in 1765-75. He has published scholarly papers and popular articles for both children and adults. He was consultant for an episode of History Detectives, and contributed to a display at Minute Man National Historic Park.

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Saturday, November 09, 2024

The Intriguing Portraits of William Williams

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friday, November 08, 2024

New Light on the Portrait of Francis Williams

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

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

The painting is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and fifteen years ago I quoted its webpage as saying:
Some writers have suggested that the painting is a caricature of Francis as he has been depicted with a large head and skinny legs. . . . Other critics have considered that the ‘unnaturalistic’ depiction may have been intended to emphasise the subject’s intellectual skills over his physical stature (Francis was alive at the time of the painting’s creation and may even have commissioned it). It may, more simply, be a reflection of the artist’s limited skills.
The new research connects the creation of the painting to a specific historical, and astronomical event.

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

An X-ray of the window scene depicted in the background of the painting showed lines intersecting what appears to be a luminous white comet, streaking through the sky at dusk, and connecting – with stunning accuracy – to constellations of stars. These stars would have been visible in that position in the firmament when Halley’s comet was in the sky over Jamaica in 1759, according to research by Dabhoiwala.
In other words, this picture shows a particular moment when Halley’s comet appeared over Williams’s estate, and it shows him as an educated gentleman who knew how to calculate the path of that comet.

Artnet adds:
As for the painting’s creator, Dabhoiwala is confident it’s the work of William Williams, an English-American artist who traveled to Jamaica in the 1760s. The comet together with the appearance [in the bookcase] of [Dr. Samuel] Johnson’s Dictionary, which was first published in 1755, align with this timing and the painting’s style is similar to other early Williams portraits of Benjamin Lay, a Quaker abolitionist, and Hendrick Theyanoguin, a Mohawk Indian.
The Lay portrait, now at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, also shows a man “with a large head and skinny legs.” Like Williams, Lay (c. 1681–1759) was notable for standing out in British-American society rather than fitting in. Williams (1727–1791) might have specialized in such subjects.

Thursday, November 07, 2024

“On peut tromper quelques hommes…”

According to Quote Investigator, the fourth volume of the Encyclopédie, issued in 1754 by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert (shown here), contained this line:
…on peut tromper quelques hommes, ou les tromper tous dans certains lieux & en certains tems, mais non pas tous les hommes, dans tous les lieux & dans tous les siécles.
Those same lines had appeared (with an older spelling) in Jacques Abbadie’s Traité de la Vérité de la Religion Chrétienne, published in 1684.

A modern English translation of those words is:
One can fool some men, or fool all men in some places and times, but not all men in all places and in all ages.
In the 1880s, some campaigners for Prohibition in America started to quote a different version:
You can fool all the people part of the time, or you can fool some people all the time, but you cannot fool all people all the time.
In our culture, certain historical figures are magnets for unattributed quotations: Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, Will Rogers, Dorothy Parker. For folksy political wisdom, Abraham Lincoln is one of those quote magnets. (As opposed to sober political wisdom, often attributed to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, or another Founder.)

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

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

Wednesday, November 06, 2024

The Marching Society in 1976

As long as I’m thinking back to 1976, I’ll highlight the Mighty Marvel Bicentennial Calendar.

This was published before I read more than a handful of comic books, so I didn’t see it at the time. The “’Taint the Meat…It’s the Humanity!” blog has a thorough overview.

The Stan Lee Papers at the University of Wyoming hold memos from Marvel Comics editor Tony Isabella to different artists, commissioning them to create the pictures for each month. (Start on page 37 of this digitized file.)

For example, to Gil Kane in January 1975:
Gil, this scene should show Conan and some Minute Men fighting British troops at Lexington. The British troops are wielding bayonets. I’m enclosing some reference (an old engraving) for you to (what else) refer to and whatever information on the battle at Lexington I can dig up. We’ll try to get you some additional reference before the end of the week.

Deadline for sketch: IMMEDIATELY!
That image ended up not showing any British troops at all, just the Cimmerian warrior urging on the Minute Men as they fired from behind a rather flat stone wall.
Isabella linked pictures to events in each month of 1776 (or 1775) where he could. January shows the Invaders of World War 2 with a man supposed to be Commodore Esek Hopkins, sailing out with the first Continental Navy. Isabella sent artist Frank Robbins “a pretty bad French engraving” of Hopkins. The result looks dimly like the engraving. But that engraving probably looked nothing like Hopkins, whom the artist in Europe had almost certainly never seen.

It’s rather funny to see the company’s effort to be historically accurate while inserting giant green monsters and flaming men into the Revolutionary War.

Tuesday, November 05, 2024

“Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”

The earliest Presidential election I remember following in the news was during the Bicentennial year of 1976. I collaborated with classmates on an elaborate political cartoon about the Democratic primaries in the unforgiving medium of the mimeograph.

I think that was also the year I learned about the odd workings of the Electoral College. We calculated how a candidate could win the Presidency by winning just the eleven biggest states, as I recall.

(Since then I’ve seen more sophisticated analysis than my fifth-grade crew could muster, pointing out that the way to win the Electoral College with the fewest votes isn’t to win the eleven biggest and therefore underrepresented states but the forty smallest ones by narrow margins.)

At the time, most people saw the Electoral College as a curious relic. It was something political reporters brought up in the last weeks of the campaign as they ran out of fresh topics. Not since 1888 had the front-runner in the popular vote been kept out of the White House because of the Electoral College, and that guy came back and won four years later.

As Election Day approached in 2000, those stories about the anomaly of the Electoral College resurfaced as usual. One of my college roommates passed on pundit speculation about Al Gore losing the popular vote but winning the Electors. I replied that that wouldn’t be a good outcome since the winner of a democratic election should have a popular mandate.

As we all know, that election went the other way: George W. Bush lost the popular vote but won through the Electors (and the Supreme Court’s decision to stop Florida’s recounts). For the first time in more than a century, the Electoral College was more than a curiosity.

That’s why I’ve felt confident in opposing that form of election distortion—I knew that I had opposed it even when it would hypothetically benefit my preferred candidate. I wrote about the problems of the Electoral College on this blog in 2006, and then again in 2008, 2012, 2016, 2017, 2019 (twice), and 2020 (multiple times).

America’s founding generation left us the power to reform the original electoral system. They also left us their example of doing so, with the Twelfth Amendment. And they left us a mandate to do so in the Declaration of Independence, which says:
—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
For decades, clear majorities of the American population have supported the idea of getting rid of the Electoral College and deciding the Presidential election by popular vote, the way we fill every other elected office. The “consent of the governed” should not be determined by inertia or the stubbornness of a minority insisting on keeping an unfair advantage.

Monday, November 04, 2024

“Demagogues never were nor will be Patriots”

The way the Federalists told it, the biggest danger to the new American republic would be some form of “anarchy” leading to a demagogue gaining power.

This was, they warned the voting public, more likely than some form of aristocracy or oligarchy leading to a tyrant gaining power.

That fear motivated George Washington to come out of retirement and chair the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, as he explained to Lafayette on 6 June 1787:
The pressure of the public voice was so loud, I could not resist the call to a convention of the States which is to determine whether we are to have a Government of respectability under which life—liberty, and property secured to us, or whether we are to submit to one which may be the result of chance or the moment, springing perhaps from anarch⟨ie⟩ Confusion, and dictated perhaps by some aspiring demagogue who will not consult the interest of his Country so much as his own ambitious views.
That convention produced a blueprint for government with a stronger national chief executive than anyone had envisioned before, albeit not as strong as it would become later. And of course the Federalists felt they were the best qualified to exercise those powers.

The fear of demagogues remained, now directed at any popular opposition to their policies. After negotiating a treaty with Britain that he knew would provoke complaints, John Jay wrote home to President Washington on 25 Feb 1795:
Demagogues will constantly flatter the Passions and Prejudices of the multitude; and will never cease to employ improper arts against those who will not be their Instruments. I have known many Demagogues, but I have never known one honest man among them. These are among the Evils which are incident to human Life, and none of them shall enduce me to decline or abandon Pursuits, in which I may concieve it to be my Duty to embark or persevere. All creatures will act according to their nature, and it would be absurd to expect that a man who is not upright will act like one that is.
Over a decade later, Jay was a retired jurist, diplomat, and New York governor, but he still expressed distaste for politicians who played to the public in an 18 Apr 1807 letter:
All Parties have their Demagogues, and Demagogues never were nor will be Patriots—Self Interest excites and directs all their Talents and Industry; and…by that Principle they regulate their conduct towards Men and Measures—nor is this all—They not only act improperly themselves, but they diligently strive to mislead the weak the Ignorant and the unwary—as to the corrupt they like to have it so—it makes a good market for them.
While I share these Federalists’ worry about demagogues, I think they directed that worry at the wrong targets, their view distorted by class prejudices and (try as they might) their own self-interests.

Firstly, the politicians the Federalists of the 1790s feared would be demagogues, such as Thomas Jefferson or even Matthew Lyon, didn’t threaten the republic, only Federalist domination of that republic.

Beyond that, history has shown that bigoted inertia was a bigger obstacle to liberty and economic growth than allowing the American government to be more responsive to the whole American people.

Sunday, November 03, 2024

“A sotish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man”

Having whole-heartedly adopted the American cause, Thomas Paine embedded himself with the Continental Army in the fall of 1776.

That was not a good time for the Continental Army.

Returning to Philadelphia, Paine started to publish The Crisis, urging Americans not to let themselves fall back under the control of a tyrant:
Let them call me rebel, and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sotish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man.

I conceive likewise a horrid idea in receiving mercy from a being, who at the last day shall be shrieking to the rocks and mountains to cover him, and fleeing with terror from the orphan, the widow and the slain of America.

There are cases which cannot be overdone by language, and this is one. There are persons, too, who see not the full extent of the evil which threatens them; they solace themselves with hopes that the enemy, if he succeed, will be merciful.

It is the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice; and even mercy, where conquest is the object, is only a trick of war: The cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolfe, and we ought to guard equally against both.
In that quotation I followed the spelling and punctuation of the broadside issued “opposite the Court-House, Queen Street,” in Boston. That was how Edward Eveleth Powars and Nathaniel Willis, publishers of the Independent Chronicle, described their print shop, in a space originally used by James Franklin. The town hadn’t yet gotten around to giving the street a new, non-monarchical name.

Saturday, November 02, 2024

“Apprehensive, that the Government of these States, may in future times, end in a Monarchy”


Last month the Journal of the American Revolution published Ray Raphael’s article “A Kingly Government?: Benjamin Franklin’s Great Fear.”

Franklin and James Madison were among the most vocal of the men at the Constitutional Convention wary of assigning too much power to the executive branch, or investing too much of that power in one man.

Ray Raphael writes:
Madison opened the bidding. Wouldn’t it be “proper,” he asked, “before a choice should be made between a unity and plurality in the Executive, to fix the extent of the Executive authority?” Madison proposed minimal powers: “to carry into execution the national laws” and “to appoint offices in cases not otherwise provided for.” With little dissent, state delegations agreed. Executive authority was subservient to legislative demands, save only for some lesser appointments. Most significantly, he/they would not possess the “powers of war and peace.”
Later the debate turned to whether there would be a single executive and how long one man would hold that office:
Franklin stewed over the prospect of a single executive serving for seven years. “Being very sensible of the effect of age on his memory,” he told the Convention the next morning, he carefully wrote down his objections. Saddled with a weakened voice and failing eyes, he would find it difficult to read aloud what he had just penned, so James Wilson offered to read it for him:
It will be said, that we don’t propose to establish Kings. I know it. But there is a natural inclination in mankind to Kingly Government. It sometimes relieves them from Aristocratic domination. They had rather have one tyrant than five hundred. It gives more of the appearance of equality among Citizens, and that they like. I am apprehensive therefore, perhaps too apprehensive, that the Government of these States, may in future times, end in a Monarchy.
I’d like to refute Franklin’s belief in “a natural inclination in mankind to Kingly Government.” However, too many people speak of U.S. Presidents as solely responsible for laws, court decrees, wars, and other actions that the Constitution explicitly assigns to other branches. And a smaller but still too large number of people are attracted to obvious strongmen.

Back in 1787, as the convention went on, however, most delegates seem to have let those worries subside a bit. The example of George Washington in the chair probably had an influence. No better solutions presented themselves.
We know that Franklin and Mason opposed a single executive, fearing the extent of his powers. They had sounded the alarm at the outset of the convention, and [George] Mason’s opposition to ratification would highlight the dangers of a single executive as well as the absence of a bill of rights. But Madison’s concern has received scant attention. A chief architect of the Constitution’s checks and balances, he failed to gain traction for this protection against an executive who put himself over country. Convention fatigue might well have played a role.
The Constitution did explicitly reserve “powers of war and peace” for the legislature, and limited the single executive to a four-year term. While the British Crown could veto legislation, a U.S. President’s veto could be overridden. Still, the fear of a President taking on monarchical powers and the rest of the government being unable or unwilling to stop it remained.

Ray Raphael’s article ends with Franklin’s exchange with Elizabeth Powel, as recorded by James McHenry:
Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy. A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.
(I’ve discussed that anecdote at length since 2017.)

Friday, November 01, 2024

“Whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government”

From the first “Publius” essay, written by Alexander Hamilton and published on 27 October 1787 in the Independent Journal of New York:
It has been frequently remarked, that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from ref[l]ection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force.

If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis, at which we are arrived, may with propriety be regarded as the æra in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act, may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.. . . .

…a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.
In 1788 most of those essays were collected as The Federalist: A Collection of Essays, with eight more appearing in the New York newspapers after that.

A French edition of 1792 named the authors behind “Publius” as Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay.

In the late 1800s authors began to refer to the essays as “the Federalist papers,” and eventually they came to have the title most people use for them now: The Federalist Papers.

Thursday, October 31, 2024

“The workmen all pack’d up their tools and left the barracks”

In late September 1774, as described by the Boston merchant John Andrews yesterday, towns neighboring Boston put pressure on their own citizens and on Bostonians to stop helping the British army build barracks.

As commander of all the British army in North American, Gov. Thomas Gage had faced that problem before back in 1768. Then the royal government had ended up renting buildings from willing owners and turning them into barracks. But in 1774 there were more regiments to house, and even more on the way.

Gage asked Boston’s selectmen to forestall what would amount to a labor strike. They replied that they actually wanted the troops grouped in barracks, but they had no power over rural towns’ policies.

The next day, 26 September, Andrews reported that Gage approached John Hancock directly. Since Hancock was one of the selectmen, he might already met with the general. Hancock was also the chair of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, and thus might have had leverage with other towns, but Gage officially refused to recognize that extralegal body. Furthermore, at the start of August, the governor had dismissed Hancock as commander of the Company of Cadets, so coming to the man for a favor was quite a concession.

Andrews wrote:
Sometime this day the Governor had a conference with Col: Hancock, requesting him to use his influence with the Committee to re-consider their vote respecting the barracks.

The Colonel observ’d to him that he had taken every possible measure to distress us: that notwithstanding it was the Solicitor’s opinion that the [Boston Port] Act could be construed to prevent goods, &ca., being transported within ye. bounds of the harbour, yet he had not suffered it to he done, and the Ships of War had seiz’d whatever had been attempted to be transported in that manner.

He likewise told him that he had been threat’ned, and apprehended his person was in danger, as it had been gave out by some of his people that he deserv’d to he hang’d: upon which the Governor told him he might have a guard, if he chose it, to attend him night and day. You will naturally conclude that he declin’d accepting.
The work stoppage took hold the next day:
At four o’clock yesterday afternoon, the workmen all pack’d up their tools and left the barracks, frames, &ca.; so that I am apprehensive we in the town will feel ill effects of it, as it has been given out that the troops will force quarters next month, if barracks are not provided for ’em: neither should I blame them for so doing, as the nights are so cold already, that it’s impossible for ’em to sleep comfortable under their slight canvas tents. And as to empty houses, now since we have got so many [Loyalist] refugees among us, there is not half sufficient to hold what troops we have got already here.

After the carpenters had left off work, the General sent Col. Robinson [actually James Robertson] and Major [William] Sheriff to Mr. Hancock, to let him know if they would proceed with the barracks, he could suffer any thing to be transported within the limits of the harbour, under the sanction of King’s stores—but all would not avail; as they very justly suppos’d, that after the work was compleated he would withdraw the indulgence, as he deems it, though in justice it not be prevented at all.

They have got the Carpenters from the Ships of War, and have sent an arm’d Schooner to Halifax for all the Artificers they can procure from there. It’s possible they may be as averse to coming as the Yorkers.
New York’s Patriots had already voted not to cooperate with the British army in Boston, a move that reportedly inspired the rural towns’ decision.

On 29 September, the merchant reported:
In the course of a day or two past, the Roxbury people have burnt several load of straw that was bringing in here, which has enrag’d the soldiers to such a degree, that I am in continual apprehension we shall soon experience another fifth of March, which God forbid!
In those same days, Andrews described how the Royal Artillery, Boston’s Patriot leaders, and ordinary people were all maneuvering over the mortars, cannon, and other ordnance in the inventory of hardware merchant Joseph Scott. Meanwhile, other artillery pieces were being seized by one side or the other (the focus of my book, The Road to Concord). Andrews was not alone in fearing that violence could break out any day.

Wednesday, October 30, 2024

“For the workmen here to go on with building barracks”

Like Richard Lechmere, quoted yesterday, the merchant John Andrews watched the conflict over housing the king’s troops in Boston in the fall of 1774.

Unlike Lechmere, Andrews leaned a little toward the Whigs. He, too, had protested the Boston committee of correspondence’s actions earlier in the year, but in a more mild way. He supported resistance against the Crown—as long as it didn’t threaten his business or his health.

In writing to his relative in Philadelphia on 25 September, Andrews emphasized how the people of Boston weren’t making life easy for the soldiers. He didn’t want people in other colonies to get the idea that Bostonians weren’t worthy of their support.
The example of our worthy brethren of New York, in not letting their vessels for Government service, as well as that their Carpenters would not engage in any work for ’em, has induc’d the country people to think seriously whether they were right in supplying with timber, joice, and Straw for the Barracks here.

They accordingly met and determin’d in ye. negative; sent committees to the severall contractors to let them know if they supply’d any further they would incur the resentment of the whole country; and at the same time signified to our committee of correspondence that they did not think it eligible for the workmen here to go on with building barracks or preparing houses for the reception of the troops, as we might possibly, by persisting, not only incur blame from our sister colonies, but essentially affect the union now subsisting between town and country; which circumstance caus’d the Committee to get together Saturday P.M., when they pass’d a vote, that it was not prudent for ye. workmen to go on with ye. frames, &ca., nor in any shape to contribute towards the accommodation of the soldiery, as they might themselves give offence to their country brethren.

The purport of which coming to the Governor [Thomas Gage], he sent his compliments to the Select men, and beg’d their attendance at six o’clock this evening, when he requested of them that they would not take any measures to prevent the workmen from going on with the barracks.

They reply’d it was not in their power to influence the country, and it lay principally with them whether the workmen should proceed or not: that they themselves were dispos’d to have the barracks go on, as they conceiv’d it much more for the benefit of the town (if the Soldiery must be here) to have them kept together, rather than to be scatter’d over the town, as in that case it would be a very difficult matter to keep them in order.

The Governor seem’d a great deal worried about ye. affair, and am told that in the course of the conversation he express’d himself thus—“Good G—d! for G—d’s sake, Gentlemen! they have got two months work to do, and the Soldiers ought to he in barracks in one. Do consider, Gentlemen!”—Thus the tables are in some measure turn’d. Formerly they solicited the Governor, but now it seems he solicits them.
As Andrews pointed out, that discussion happened on a Sunday, when Bostonians weren’t supposed to do any business unless it was really urgent.

TOMORROW: Trying to strike a bargain.

Tuesday, October 29, 2024

“The barracks that were begun now stand still”

Richard Lechmere was a friend of the royal government with a country estate in Cambridge.

In the summer of 1774, the ministry in London appointed Lechmere to the new mandamus Council. He accepted the post and for his safety moved into Boston.

Lechmere continued to support Gov. Thomas Gage’s administration, as shown in a letter he wrote to his London mercantile contacts on 28 September, published by the Massachusetts Historical Society:

Some time ago Capt. Mitchel left with me about 4000 feet plank, board measure, which I sold to the contractor for building barracks, who sent a cart to the wharfe for them. They got one load into the street, and the populace pull’d them out of the cart, and left them in the street ’till towards evening when a party of soldiers were sent to take them up, which was done without any interruption, but in the night all the rest of the plank were split in peices, and thrown into the water and lost.

This was the first instance of attempting to oppose the building the fortification at the Neck and barracks for the troops. They have since done every thing in their power to oppose and obstruct every measure of governmt. for the safety, as well as convenience of the troops, and finally have prevented the tradesmen from working for them, so that the barracks that were begun now stand still.

I have let them have my distill house, which was fitting for them, and in good forwardness for their reception, and will contain one regiment. By this step, selling the plank to them, accepting the office of a Councillor, my connection with the navy and army, together with my being an Addresser, Protestor against the Committee of Correspondence, and a variety of other incidents, has render’d me one of the most obnoxious of all the friends of government. This scituation, you must be sensible, is not the most desirable, especially to a person who very lately was, I may venture to say, as much esteem’d by the people as almost any private gentleman in town. . . .

They have gone so farr as to prohibit any person’s supplying the government with materials for the King’s service. They have burnt several loads straw at Roxbury, as they were coming in for the troops, and for a day stopp’d the butcher from bringing in beef and other provissions for them, but this last circumstance they soon found wou’d not do, for by this step they wou’d starve six or eight of their own party to one of the other, and that the General wou’d take possession of all the provissions and grain in the town.

They really act like distracted men more than reasonable beings, and seem at their wit’s end, what will become of them when a sufficient number of troops can be got here. By some parts of their conduct one wou’d imagine they were endeavourg. to bring things to extremities before a reinforcement can arrive, but are afraid to make the first attack, and by every act of insolence and impudence they seem to be contriving to provoke the General and troops to commence hostilities, but they, with that calmness and prudence that does them honor, carefully avoid, and put up with many insults and abuses ’till they may be sure of success, both in the town and in the country.
With every regiment in North America headed for Boston and the New England winter coming on, Gen. Gage was feeling pressure to find housing for his troops.

TOMORROW: Calling in the selectmen.

Monday, October 28, 2024

Darius Parkhurst, “deprived of Sight and hearing”

On 27 May 1774, the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman of Westboro wrote in his diary about a trip to Boston:
At Mr. Joseph Coollidge’s bought me a new pair of Gold Buttons, and paid him for them 8£ 6/. Undertook my Journey home. Called at Mr. [most likely the minister Amos] Adams’s at Roxbury where I saw Mr. [blank] of Woodstock [Connecticut], who was blind and deaf. The way to Converse with him, was by writing in his hand.
Parkman had forgotten the name of the deaf and blind man he met, and mistaken his home town. But the minister still remembered that encounter months later because on 12 August he wrote:
Mr. [the minister Aaron] Putnam of Pomfret and his Sister Bethiah dined here.

N.B. He gave me a further account of Mr. Darius Parkhurst of Pomfret (whom I saw at Mr. Adams’s at Roxbury last May) and his accomplishments though deprived of Sight and hearing about 11 AEts [i.e., age eleven]. Is now about 34. You must write in his hand, with your or his finger, to convey your meaning. Blessed be God for my sight and hearing! May I have grace to improve them!
Those details about the man match genealogical records of a Darius Parkhurst born in Pomfret on 7 June 1739 and dying there on 12 May 1792. His gravestone appears above, courtesy of Find a Grave.

Now it’s possible there was a cousin or other man of the same name and approximate age in Pomfret, but I haven’t come across one. So for the rest of this posting I’m going to assume that all the sources refer to one man. There are no mentions in newspapers, but he does appear in government records.

In September 1776 Darius Parkhurst of Pomfret married Joanna (sometimes called Anna) Sabin. Darius’s mother had also been a Sabin, but I can’t trace the family link to his wife.

The Parkhursts started having children, including a little Darius (1777–1778) memorialized on the same stone as his father. There were three more kids by 1785: Darius, Simeon, and Sarah.

In 1783, the town paid Darius Parkhurst for “keeping Seth Sabin.” That might have been Joanna’s father, then nearing seventy.

Joanne Pope Melish’s Disowning Slavery mentions another member of the household:
In 1790, when Jacob Dresser of Thompson, Connecticut, apprenticed “a Negro Girl Named Peggy” (apparently a child of his slave) to Darius Parkhurst of Pomfret, he wrote, “During the aforesd term Sd Dresser Doth fully impower Sd Parkhurst to Control, order & command said Peggy in all Respects, and to all Intents & Purposes a sthrough She were born his Servant.”
This reflected Connecticut’s slow move away from slavery. If Peggy had been born after 1784, she was legally free and would become a free adult at the age of twenty-one. Until that time, however, she was a child (of an enslaved woman, furthermore), and therefore not free but in need of both care and governance.

Remarkably, none of those local and legal records say anything about Darius Parkhurst himself being disabled. (Once again, assuming there was only one man in town by that name.) Legally Darius was the recipient of the town’s relief payments and the master of Peggy, but it seems likely that Joanna provided most of the care and oversight. In fact, the household might have received that money and that indentured child because people knew Darius couldn’t do ordinary farm work.

Still, Darius Parkhurst must have had some way to support himself since he did inherit land, marry, raise kids, travel as far as Roxbury, and so on. His minister told Parkman about “his accomplishments.” Yet he doesn’t seem to have been remembered in any local history. Without Parkman’s diary entries, we’d have no way of knowing that he’d lost his sight and hearing.

Sunday, October 27, 2024

“The Siege of Boston” Tour for Social-Studies Educators, 21 Nov.

The National Council for Social Studies, the largest professional association devoted to social studies education, will meet in Boston on 19–24 November. Over 3,000 classroom teachers and other educators from around the country are expected to come.

Attendees arriving before Thursday, 21 November, have a choice of two all-day tours, among other offerings. One is a trip to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The other, which I’m involved in, is an exploration of “The Siege of Boston” in preparation for the Sestercentennial of that campaign.

This tour has been organized by Dr. Gorman Lee through Revolution 250, and he describes it this way:
The Siege of Boston refers to a significant period in colonial history when militias from the American colonies surrounded the British-occupied city of Boston. Teachers will visit five historical sites to explore how the Siege unfolded through the lenses of enslaved and free African Americans, Loyalists, women, and rank-and-file rebels.
The five significant historic sites are:
  • The Royall House & Slave Quarters in Medford, used by Gen. Charles Lee and Col. John Stark during the siege.
  • The Bunker Hill Monument in Charlestown, site of the biggest, bloodiest, and ultimately decisive battle of the siege.
  • Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site and nearby Cambridge common, from which Gen. George Washington and the Massachusetts committee of safety directed the siege.
  • The Shirley-Eustis House in Roxbury, a former governor’s mansion used as a hospital.
  • The Dillaway-Thomas House in Roxbury, from which Gen. John Thomas spearheaded the final move onto Dorchester Heights.
Prof. Robert J. Allison of Suffolk University will be the expert guide on the first leg of the tour. I’ll hop on in Cambridge, and gents from the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati will be awaiting us in Roxbury. Of course, the docents and curators at each site will share their knowledge.

That’s a packed itinerary, and I expect we’ll adjust the times spent at each site on the day based on time spent in traffic. I’ll try to bring along a store of stories to fill those moments.

This tour has a fee of $50 above the conference registration cost. Conference attendees can sign up for it through this webpage. (At least I think so. I can’t figure out the registration pages myself, but I expect educators have experience navigating that sort of complex bureaucratic system.)