“Punished at Hartford, for Burglary, by the Name of Richard Steele”

On 17 Sept 1770, the Connecticut Courant of Hartford reported on recent cases from “the Superior Court of Assize and General Goal Delivery.”

After trials on bestiality (acquitted) and rape (acquitted), the newspaper told readers:

Also, Richard Steele and John Galloway, both transient Persons, were convicted of Burglary, and sentenced to be whip’d 15 Stripes each, and to be crop’d and branded with the Letter B on their Forehead, which Punishments they accordingly received on Friday last.

That corporal punishment took place on 14 September. Then the felons were set free.

Several weeks later, the Connecticut Courant for 6 November advertised Steele, Galloway, and Charles Livingston as wanted men. They had evidently been arrested again and escaped because the paper said:

The two first are shrewdly suspected to be the same that on the next evening, broke open a shoe makers shop, in said Hartford, and stole a greatcoat suit of cloaths, and two pair of shoes, and also last night Mr. [Peter] Verstille’s shop at Weathersfield, carried off considerable money, and sundry goods, were poorly clad when they went away, but probably by this time are well cloathed.

Whoever shall take up either of the two first mentioned persons, and convey the said Galloway to New-Haven Goal or to this, and the said Steel to this, shall have 20s. lawful money reward for each, and, for the said Livingston, a reward of 10s.

per Ezekiel Williams, Sheriff.

N.B. The Thief stole from Mr. Verstille two dollars, the one a Cobb, the other a Mill’d Dollar, which were both counterfeit, & about a Doz. black Barcelona handkerchiefs, several pieces of ribbon, &c.

That advertisement included a physical description of Steele, but unfortunately the page is ripped in the newspaper database I use, so I can’t offer a word picture of him.

On 4 December, the Connecticut Courant offered some good news, datelined New Haven on 30 November:

Last Tuesday was committed to the Goal in this Town, a Person Charged with breaking open and robbing the Shop of Mr. Marks of Derby: he says his Name is Richard James, but by the Mark on his Forehead, and some other Circumstances, it appears he is the Person who was lately punished at Hartford, for Burglary, by the Name of Richard Steele.

The authorities in New Haven sent the man back to Sheriff Williams in Hartford County. (The sheriff’s house in Wethersfield appears above, courtesy of Daniel Sterner’s Historic Buildings of Connecticut.)

On 24 December, the Boston Evening-Post ran this item from New London, dated 14 December:

Last Monday, one Richard Steele, was punished at Hartford, for the second offence of Burglary, by being whipt & branded, and having his left Ear cropt. He has since escaped from goal, but was yesterday taken and re-committed.

Thus, in the course of four months Richard Steele had been accused of burglary in Hartford, Wethersfield, and Derby; had been whipped, branded, and cropped on his ears twice; and had escaped jail twice—but was once again back in custody.

TOMORROW: On into 1771!

Back to the Old New-Gate Prison

In January I broke off a series of postings about the first years of Connecticut’s New-Gate Prison because of the press of other matters.

As awful as we might think of being imprisoned underground in an old, dank copper mine, the colony actually opened that prison as a reform measure. It was an alternative to corporal and capital punishment. And enforced labor might even make that mine profitable.

From December 1773 to April 1774, Connecticut courts sent six convicted criminals to the prison in Simsbury, to be locked down under the eye of keeper John Viets.

By that April, all six had disappeared, either to parts unknown or under the rubble of a collapsed tunnel.

In a comment on my last posting Mike asked:

Did it occur to the people of Connecticut that Mr. Viet may have been a less than adequate overseer?

That’s a good question, and here are some thoughts grappling for an answer.

First, the official “overseers” of the prison were three members of the Connecticut legislature who supervised Viets. They had the responsibility to hire the keeper, but they were also responsible for securing him the resources necessary to do that job.

Second, long-term incarceration was still an experiment. If the Connecticut legislature wanted its prison to work (and the government had already sunk a fair amount of money into converting the old mine), it needed to get the budget and rules right. The legislators might have expected (or accepted) a period of adjustment.

Finally, the overseers had probably hired John Viets because he was convenient. He owned a tavern right next to the mine. That was the infrastructure for feeding the prisoners, housing the guards, and keeping someone on site watching for disturbances and escapes. Hiring a new keeper and setting him up in Simsbury would have been a big expense.

Viets knew that an unfortunate pattern was developing. His 26 April advertisement began “New Gate Prison was again broke open…” But he remained on the job.

TOMORROW: A hardened criminal appears.

The Graphic Side of The British Are Coming

Speaking of comics, this Sestercentennial summer has also brought us The British Are Coming: The Graphic Edition, Volume 1, adapted from the first half of the first volume of Rick Atkinson’s ongoing history of the Revolutionary War.

The comic is credited to Atkinson, Nora Neus as adapter, and Federico Pietrobon as artist. This Altoona Mirror article on the project in progress and this WGBH interview with Atkinson on publication show how he approved work as it came along.

Yet it’s clear that Neus, a journalist and oral historian, made the creative choices in adapting hundreds of pages of dense, fact-filled narration into comics form for Pietrobon to illustrate.

As a CNN producer, Neus picked up the video dispatches of young Muhammad Najem from the midst of the Syrian Civil War and later worked with him to script the graphic memoir Muhammad Najem, War Reporter. She also scripted Renegade Girls, historical graphic fiction, for the same artist, Julie Robine.

The strategy Neus followed for this book, no doubt with Atkinson’s and Ten Speed Press’s approval, was to minimize the words. There are short captions to set the scenes and occasional labels to identify some individuals. All the speech balloons appear to be quotations from actual participants in the events. There are also sound effects, particularly the “BANG” of muskets. But there are an uncommonly large number of panels with no words at all.

The result doesn’t work. Almost all those quotations come perforce from written sources created after the fact, so they don’t read like speech in the moment. The speakers are rarely identified, though I’m sure the sources could all be searched out in the prose edition. The captions don’t provide enough background to understand most events, though military strategy gets a little more analysis than political developments.

In addition, because the siege of Boston was largely static from July 1775 to March 1776, with not much changing despite all the activity, the book devotes proportionally more pages to smaller campaigns: Gen. Richard Montgomery and Col. Benedict Arnold’s thrusts in Canada, Gov. Dunmore’s struggle in Virginia, and the Royal Navy attack on Falmouth.

The spare verbiage puts more burden on the art to convey the history to readers. Occasional infographics, including maps, take advantage of the visual format to impart useful information. But most of the art consists of straightforward, rather slow-paced depictions of events. And those depictions aren’t visually accurate. Pietrobon, working in Italy, didn’t get the guidance, visual references, and time that task would need.

One of my litmus tests of the right look for the late-1700s British Empire is whether a comic shows men with beards, mustaches, and sideburns, which that society shunned. In this book we see men with facial hair on just about every other page spread. Other tests: Does the art render the British flag of the 1770s correctly? No. Does it depict newspapers and shop signs in eighteenth-century style? No. Do all the women have their hair up? Not on page 208.

Except for George Washington, few individuals are recognizable, even when we know what they looked like from good portraits. Likewise, known settings such as King Street in Boston and the Lexington common appear strange. Other places, like Washington’s Cambridge headquarters and Yale College, are all too recognizable because Pietrobon relied on photographs of their present forms.

To assess panel breakdowns, I looked at an episode I’ve studied to death, the Battle of Lexington and Concord (shown on pages 21–49). This rendering starts by showing Lord Dartmouth’s strong suggestion to arrest Patriot leaders and Gen. Thomas Gage’s order to destroy armaments; we see those men’s own words, but the book doesn’t note or explain the difference for readers.

The commander of the British expedition reads his orders before leaving Boston, not after. Paul Revere and William Dawes are shown spotting the redcoats on the march in Cambridge and then setting out west together, not dispatched separately by Dr. Joseph Warren. Then comes the lantern signal from Old North Church, which is placed out in an open field, not on a hill in a dense neighborhood. We never see anyone receiving that signal (and in fact it didn’t matter to how events turned out).

The few seconds of confrontation in Lexington fill seven pages—perhaps proportionate to the importance of that event, but also an indication of how strung out the action is.

At Concord, the British enter in ranks over a hillside rather than along the road. The coloring on page 38 inexplicably changes from day to twilight. The terse description the troops’ search suggests they found nothing in town and all proceeded west. The fight at the North Bridge is portrayed as “a motley crew of farmers and part-time militiamen” stopping the British from crossing. In fact, four companies of regulars had already passed that point without opposition, and most of the British soldiers were still searching the center of town. Only three companies of redcoats were at the bridge, so the provincials were the larger force trying to take control of that chokepoint.

Much of that history is counterintuitive, calling out for explanation. But by choosing to use only historic quotations and minimizing the word count, the creators of this graphic recounting hobbled their ability to explain.

In its verbal approach and pacing, The British Are Coming: The Graphic Edition, Volume 1 might have worked as a visual teaser or accompaniment for Atkinson’s full prose volume—a way to give readers images of its complete, detailed, and explicated narration of events. But the many inaccuracies in the art undercut that value.

Steve Donoghue assessed the volume at Open Letters Review as a reader of history and comics rather than a historian plowing the same field. He came away disappointed as well.

America250’s Christian Comics

When Boston 1775 last looked in on America250, the commemorative campaign of the Congressionally-established Semiquincentennial commission, the Trump White House was trying to replace it with its own Freedom250 campaign.

And, of course, its own merchandise for sale.

America250 continues to issue material, though. Among the products bearing its brand and sold through its website is a series of comic books about American history.

That line has included fifteen comics about 36 pages long, a collection of ten of those comics which cover the settlement and founding periods, and a graphic novel on the U.S. Constitution.

The America250 website doesn’t offer clear info on contents and credits, and not all the titles are available there anymore. Its publishing partner, Kingstone, offers all the titles, and at lower prices.

Journalist and historian Colin Woodard recently looked at those comics for Talking Points Memo and reported:

The comics — beautifully executed and bearing the America250 logo — were produced by Kingstone, a Christian publisher best known for its 2000-page, 10,000 panel graphic interpretation of the Bible. . . .

The series — drawn by a world-class Brazilian artist [Joe Bennett] who lost his gig with Marvel comics over antisemitic imagery in cartoons championing Jair Bolsonaro — devotes five volumes to the colonial era, its characters, themes and settings carefully curated to depict the eventual creation of the United States as an outgrowth of divine will and intervention. They all take place north of the Mason-Dixon line, with the action rarely leaving the confines of New England, the only part of colonial North America where Calvinists were the dominant political and cultural force. . . . More glaring is the omission of the origin stories of all of the colonies south of New England — home to most of colonial America’s inhabitants — which don’t fit so well into Kingstone’s narrative. . . .

Miracles abound in the story. Among those explicitly called out in the comics: a young George Washington surviving a rain of French bullets in a 1755 raid; Jefferson writing “all men are created equal” even though he was a slaveowner; the dense fog that fell to protect Washington’s army’s retreat across the East River during the Battle of Long Island; the reversal of fortune allowing Washington’s [sic] victory at the Battle of Saratoga in 1777; the early start to the 1781 hurricane season and the bad decisions made by British generals that facilitated the final British defeat at Yorktown; Franklin’s suggestion that delegates pray to find a compromise solution on legislative representation at the Constitutional Convention; and the Constitution itself, because of its alleged brilliance.

Woodard also detailed many ways the Constitution graphic novel promotes particular positions on today’s political issues, from a historically unfounded reading of the Fourteenth Amendment to opposition to gun regulations, reforming the Electoral College, and expanding the Supreme Court.

“At the French lines on Prospect Hill”

In 2019 Ric Detwiller published an excellent article at the Journal of the American Revolution about a Frenchman recruited as a provincial engineer early in the siege of Boston.

Though “Monsieur Dubuque” (Jean-Baptiste du Buq?) lasted only a short time before defecting to the British, he left behind a fortification near Prospect Hill labeled “French Redoubt” on Henry Pelham’s map of the siege, as shown in this posting.

In a comment to the Detwiller article, Les Haskell added a pertinent entry from the diary of his relative, Caleb Haskell, on 26 July 1775:

This morning our regiment was ordered out of the great Fort [on Prospect Hill] to man the French lines — where we are for the future to repair in an alarm. A grenadier, belonging to the enemy’s side when on sentry, quitted his post, came over to us and delivered himself a prisoner to our guards.

In addition, the Massachusetts archives has a return of Capt. Edward Crafts’s artillery company dated 12 Oct 1775 from the “French lines.”

While preparing yesterday’s talk on the Convention Army, the prisoners of war held at Prospect and Winter Hills in 1777–78, I spotted how the label “French lines” lasted past the siege of Boston.

In 1894 the Maine Historical Society published the “Military Journal of Col. Ichabod Goodwin,” an orderly book for a militia contingent detailed to help guard those prisoners. That document shows that the three main positions where the Continental forces posted guards included “french lines.”

The editor of this volume guessed that term “probably refers to Hessians, no French troops having been present.”

However, the German-speaking prisoners (actually Brunswickers) were housed on Winter Hill. Pelham’s map locates the “French Redoubt” much closer to Prospect Hill. And the transcript of the early 1778 inquiry into Col. David Henley’s treatment of the British prisoners shows Col. Jacob Gerrish speaking of “the guard at the French lines on Prospect Hill.”

Thus, nearly three years after “Monsieur Dubuque” slipped away from his job with the Americans, military men in New England still referred to the fortifications he oversaw as the “French lines.”

Looking Back on a Chat with Medford’s Laura Duggan

Earlier this month I visited Medford Community Media to chat with Laura Duggan of Looking Back at Medford History about The Road to Concord and the history surrounding it.

We got into some deep mysteries, such as why the Thomas Gage Papers are in Ann Arbor, the Samuel Adams Papers are in New York, and a lot of the Thomas Jefferson Papers are in Boston.

The conversation runs for an hour and twenty minutes. You can watch the whole thing here.

“To hear the proclamation for independance read and proclamed”

On 18 July 1776, 250 years ago today, the Declaration of Independence was officially proclaimed in Massachusetts.

People had already heard about the Continental Congress’s vote, and many had probably read the Declaration in newspapers. But this was a governmental ceremony. It happened in two places, and on two levels.

With no governor, the highest executive authority in Massachusetts was the Council. Most of its members were meeting in the Edmund Fowle house in Watertown.

Therefore, one part of the official reading was performed by Council secretary Perez Morton, reading the Declaration to the Council and to a crowd gathered outside. Also present were delegates from the Mi’kmaq and St. John’s/Maliseet communities, ready to sign a treaty of friendship with this new United States.

In Boston, there was a parallel, larger ceremony. Inside the Council’s chamber in what was now the State House, Suffolk County sheriff William Greenleaf read the Declaration to some Council members and other officials.

Col. Thomas Crafts of the Massachusetts artillery regiment, who had a bellowing voice, then “deaconed” or repeated the text phrase by phrase from the balcony of the Council chamber to the crowd gathered on the street below.

Thus, most Bostonians at the event heard Col. Crafts’s reading, but the official proclamation in Boston came from Sheriff Greenleaf. The ceremony was meant for both government officials and the “people out of doors.”

On 21 July, Abigail Adams reported to her husband:

Last Thursday after hearing a very Good Sermon I went with the Multitude into Kings Street to hear the proclamation for independance read and proclamed. Some Field peices with the Train were brought there, the troops appeard under Arms and all the inhabitants assembled there (the small pox prevented many thousand from the Country).

When Col. Crafts read from the Belcona of the State House the Proclamation, great attention was given to every word. As soon as he ended, the cry from the Belcona, was God Save our American States and then 3 cheers which rended the air, the Bells rang, the privateers fired, the forts and Batteries, the cannon were discharged, the platoons followed and every face appeard joyfull.

Mr. [James] Bowdoin [a senior member of the Council] then gave a Sentiment, Stability and perpetuity to American independance.

After dinner the kings arms were taken down from the State House and every vestage of him from every place in which it appeard and burnt in King Street. Thus ends royall Authority in this State, and all the people shall say Amen.

Not everyone was entirely pleased. Merchant John Rowe characterized the celebration as “a Great Confusion in Town.”

Pulling the royal emblems of the lion and unicorn down from the State House roof was probably inspired by reports of New Yorkers toppling the statue of King George III after that city’s reading of the Declaration on 9 July. But the street was still called King Street until 1784.

A Boston Stone

This month the city of Boston announced a new finding about a stone in the Granary Burying Ground that reads:

HERE LYES Ye.
BODY OF BOSTON
AGED 70 YEARS
DECd. FEBy. Ye. 28
1 7 2 8

Kelly Thomas, director of the Historic Burying Grounds Initiative for the Boston Parks and Recreation Department, told WBZ: “I was reviewing the photos of headstones, and then I noticed that the stone only had one name.” A geographic name, at that. That hinted the person buried there had been an enslaved man.

Some documentary research turned up records of such a man. Indeed, Gloria McCahon Whiting discussed Sebastian’s marriage to Jane Lake at length in her 2024 book, Belonging: An Intimate History of Slavery and Family in Early New England. Judge Samuel Sewall helped to negotiate the terms of that union at the same time he was writing The Selling of Joseph, his pioneering but self-suppressed anti-slavery pamphlet.

On 13 Feb 1701, after protracted discussions between the couple’s two owners, the judge married the couple. Sebastian’s owner, John Waite, died the next year. Six years after that, when the Boston selectmen listed free black men in town they put to work mending roads (since those men were free/barred from militia training), one of those men was identified as “Bastion Waite.”

Interestingly, Sebastian’s wife came to be known as Jane Basteen and then Jane Boston, taking (or being assigned) her husband’s name while he was assigned his late owner’s surname. As Whiting pointed out, Sabastian would name his second son Joseph, echoing Sewall’s pamphlet. Meanwhile, Sebastian’s name evolved into “Boston.”

The issue of the New-England Weekly Journal dated 24 Feb 1729 included this death notice:

On the 14th. Instant [i.e., of this month] died here a Negro Freeman named Boston, in an advanced Age, and on the 17th, was very decently Buried. A long Train follow’d him to the Grave; it’s said about 150 Blacks, and about 50 Whites, several Magistrates, Ministers, Gentlemen, &c.——

He having borne the Character of a sober Virtuous Liver, and of a very trusty honest and faithful Servant to all that employ’d him, and having acquir’d to himself the general Love and Esteem of his Neighbours by a Readiness to do any good Offices in his power for every one; his Funeral was attended with uncommon Respects, and his Death much lamented.

The carved gravestone, whether paid for by Boston’s estate or by his friends, was another sign of his standing in the community. It is, Mayor Michelle Wu now notes, “one of the oldest gravestones of a free Black person in America.”

At first I was confused by the different death dates stated in the newspaper and on the gravestone. But then I realized the stone was written in the Old Style, Julian date system while the newspaper followed New Style, Gregorian dating decades before the British Empire adopted it officially.

New Signage Installed at the President’s House During the Night

Since September 2025 I’ve been following the dispute over displays at the President’s House, part of Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia.

Reflecting its overall ideology, the Trump White House ordered the National Park Service to replace signs discussing how that site had been a site of enslavement when George and Martha Washington lived there in the 1790s.

Because the city of Philadelphia had participated in creating the exhibit, it claimed legal standing to sue for the signs to be restored. A district judge agreed. A higher judge stopped the restoration process. Over the last month the full circuit ruled that the federal government could control the site and remake the signage.

Yesterday WHYY reported: “Workers replaced the remaining exhibits overnight Tuesday.”

The new exhibit retains references to slavery and those enslaved by Washington while serving as president in Philadelphia, but it devotes significantly more space to the history of the executive mansion and the early presidency. A panel that had been titled “The Dirty Business of Slavery,” for example, has now been replaced by signage that reads, “Celebrating Independence Throughout the Years.”

It also softens Washington’s views on slavery compared to the previous display.

“In 1774, Washington helped draft the Fairfax Resolves at Mount Vernon,” one panel reads. “These condemned the slave trade as ‘wicked,’ ‘cruel,’ and ‘unnatural’ and called for putting ‘an entire Stop’ to it. Over time, he became increasingly committed to the gradual abolition of slavery.” . . .

on Wednesday, several armed members of the National Park Service Police were seen vigilantly watching over the site.

Park service officials stopped one activist, Dr. Sandra Shachar-Krasnoff of Philadelphia, after she briefly taped a piece of paper with “the excavation revealed a kitchen and a slave quarters below the president’s house site” to one of the walls.

She was fined $310.

The photo above, taken by Abraham Gutman for the Philadelphia Inquirer, shows a federal officer writing a citation for Dr. Shachar-Krasnoff. The Inquirer also reported that the N.P.S. installed security cameras at the outdoor site last week, ostensibly because the All-Star Game was about to be played in the city. So there’s no doubt the government will surveil the walls more tightly.

The park website displays eleven large new panels, but the Inquirer states there are also “more than a dozen smaller panels that detail governmental processes, the lives of various historical figures, and a panel dedicated to the escape of Ona Judge and Hercules [Posey], two people enslaved by Washington who fled to freedom.”

All told, says the Inquirer, “the new exhibits mostly offer a broad timeline of U.S. history that significantly strays from the original intent of the President’s House as outlined in the park’s foundation document in 2017: ‘It would explore the historic context of the site in the context of its ties to slavery and the lives of the enslaved who lived at the site.’”

There’s already an effort to have Philadelphia erect a historic marker about Hercules Posey outside of federal control, like one already up for Ona Judge.

“Touching the delivery of the Papers found upon Mrs. Hill”

As recounted yesterday, on 21 Oct 1776 Boston’s committee of correspondence, inspection, and safety questioned Elizabeth and Mary Hill about the documents they had tried to carry into British-occupied New York.

One of those letters was from Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr. The Patriot authorities were pretty certain he had spied for Gen. Thomas Gage, but they were still lacking solid evidence. If that letter had been incriminating, they would have used it.

In the second letter, Elizabeth’s husband John suggested that the merchant John Timmins was a fellow Loyalist.

And when asked who had brought John’s letter out of the Boston jail to her, Elizabeth said it might have been Richard Newton.

The committee sprang into action:

Collo. [Nathaniel] Barber and Mr. [Ebenezer] Dorr were appointed to go to Mr. [Alexander?] Orracks where Newton lodges in order to secure his Papers for the Inspection of the Committee.

A Complaint signed by the chairman [William Davis], was entered with Mr. Justice [Joseph] Greanleaff one of the Court of Enquiry; praying that the said Newton, might be immediately apprehended, & examined, touching the delivery of the Papers found upon Mrs Hill.

Richard Newton appears to have been a merchant, but not one who had been in Boston for long. He had evacuated Boston on the brig Elizabeth in March along with the Hills, William Jackson, Crean Brush, and other hopeful Loyalists. But Capt. John Manley captured that ship.

In April the Massachusetts Council had ordered Newton, Jackson, Brush, and a couple of other men to be detained in the Boston jail. Later they sent John Hill to jail, too.

In August, Newton signed a bond for good behavior, so he was presumably let out then. It seems quite plausible that Newton brought out a letter from Hill to his wife. That letter probably had more to say about the family’s survival than Boston’s defenses. After all, how much could Hill have learned over the summer in jail?

On 22 October the committee met “at their Chamber in King Street,” perhaps in the Town House. This time Ellis Gray chaired.

The Committee appointed to secure Mr. Newtons Papers Reported, that they had examined the same and could not find any one of a criminal nature among them.

Voted, that Mr. Newton shall have his Trunks of Papers returned him by the Committee — also —

Voted, that the Complaint entered with Mr. Justice Greanleaff, one of the Court of Enquiry against Richard Newton be withdrawn.

As for John Timmins, he was also a merchant. In 1768 he had married the young widow Mary (Olney) Greene, and they had children baptized at Trinity Church. During the tea crisis of 1773 he was agent for the cargo on the Beaver and publicly promised not to unload the East India Company’s tea.

The following year, Timmins signed the merchants’ addresses to Govs. Thomas Hutchinson and Thomas Gage. All of which is to say Timmins really did look like a Loyalist before the war. But he hadn’t left town with the British military.

The committee record says:

Mr. John Timmons name having been mentioned in one of the Papers found upon Mrs. Hill, the Committee sent for her Husband who gave the Paper, and having examined him strictly with respect to what he had written, together with his Wife and Daughter, and also made inquiry of Mr Timmins — the Question was put viz. — “Whether the Committee are fully satisfied, that Mr. Timmons conduct with respect to what passed between Mrs. Hill & himself has been quite unexceptionable — passed in the Affirmative unanimously.

The letters that Elizabeth and Mary Hill had been carrying therefore turned out to be less incriminating than first newspaper reports hinted. Yes, John Hill had communicated to them from the jail. Yes, he’d written about Timmins as a potential helper. Yes, Mary Hill and Ralph Cunningham, attached to the British army, were on their way to marrying. But the committee found no sensitive military information or the like.

Nonetheless, Elizabeth and Mary Hill were still locked up in the Boston jail in February 1777. According to John’s claim to the Loyalists Commission, the family “were all tried For their lives, but not Condemned.” Instead, “In November 1777, they were Exchanged, went to Halifax, and afterwards to New York…”

As for John Timmins and Richard Newton, both those men eventually left Boston for Britain. They decided to be Loyalists in the end.

Interrogating Elizabeth and Mary Hill at the Boston Jail

Back in April I wrote a series of postings about John Hill, his wife Elizabeth (?), and their daughter, captured on board the brig Elizabeth as they evacuated Boston in March 1776.

Recently I stumbled back across a source I may have seen before since I could have mentioned it in 2012. But I viewed it with new eyes.

As you recall, on 12 Oct 1776, Patriots in New London detected the two female Hills trying to carry secret letters onto British-occupied Long Island. They sent those women back to Boston, where John Hill was locked up, for questioning.

The records of the Boston committee, inspection, and safety, published by the New England Historical Genealogical Society in 1880, let us fill out that story.

On 21 October, the committee met at the house of Joseph Otis, the jailkeeper. The merchant William Davis chaired. They summoned “One Mrs. Hill Wife of one Hill now in the Jayl of this County examined together with her Daughter” about the incriminating papers they were carrying when detained.

The committee minutes say:

A Letter of recommendation given Mrs. Hill by Dr. [Benjamin] Church was read, together with the other Papers found upon her.

Mrs. Mary Hill the younger was brought in, and examined particularly with respect to Dr. Church, and one Ralph Cunningham mentioned in the Paper, the latter of whom appeared to be a Person who had made Courtship to the said Hill & supposed to be in the British Army at New York.

This source thus tells us that John Hill’s daughter was named Mary, and that she must have been the daughter of John Hill who married Lt. Cunningham of the Legion in 1779, as I guessed here.

Mrs. Hill the Mother was brought in & examined more particularly with respect to Mr. John Timmins of this Town Merchant, who was characterized by Hill the Husband, as a person who had been faithful to Government [i.e., Loyalist].

Mrs. Hill being asked who it was that delivered her the Paper wrote by her Husband answered. that she could not well recollect but thought it was one Richard Newton.

Well, of course we know what happened next: the authorities went on a hunt for Timmins and Newton.

TOMORROW: Further investigation.

“Headquarters of a Revolution” in Cambridge, 19 July

On Sunday, 19 July, the Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site in Cambridge will host a commemoration called “Headquarters of a Revolution: Washington’s Arrival in Cambridge,” coinciding with the 251st anniversary of the new commander-in-chief’s first week living in that mansion.

Here are the events scheduled for that day, including two from me.

10 A.M. to 3 P.M.
Living History
On the Lawn

Interact with living historians John Koopman (as George Washington) and Sandy Spector (as Martha Washington), including a noontime Q&A with Mrs. Washington. Free family activities and a story walk available all day.

10 and 11:30 A.M., 2:30 P.M.
House Tour: Headquarters of a Revolution
Starting in the Visitor Center

General George Washington’s Cambridge headquarters was a testing ground for many of the ideals, institutions, and questions that still define our nation. This conversational tour with an N.P.S. ranger explores Cambridge Headquarters as a hub of revolutionary activity, where generals, enslaved people, paid laborers, poets, Indigenous diplomats, politicians, and soldiers shaped history—and how later generations would shape its memory.

10:15 A.M.
Get Ready with Martha
Carriage House

Learn all about the clothing of 1775 as Mrs. Washington finishes dressing for her day. There will be some stories and some gossip, too! Sandy Spector is a Boston-based historian, researcher, and interpreter, and has been a Revolutionary War reenactor since 2000. She spends most of her time researching and interpreting Mrs. Washington and has been portraying Martha—alone or with George—in numerous states and venues for the past 10 years.

11:30 A.M. to 12:15 P.M.
The Last British Army to Come Through Cambridge
Carriage House

In November 1777, nearly 6,000 soldiers of the king arrived in Cambridge. With them came about a thousand women and children. These weren’t invaders but prisoners of war, British and German, captured at Saratoga. Top officers were housed in mansions along “Tory Row” while enlisted men went into the leftover barracks on Prospect and Winter Hills. Over the next few months Cambridge, Charlestown, and neighboring towns had to adjust to a new population under guard. J. L. Bell explores what we should remember about this “Convention Army” as we approach the 250th anniversary of its arrival.

12:30 to 1:15 P.M.
“Though Dwelling in a Land of Freedom”
Carriage House

Join poet, educator, and Darby Vassall descendant Denise Washington for an exploration of Revolutionary-era freedom struggles surrounding Washington’s Headquarters through the lens of Anthony, Cuba, and Darby Vassall, as well as Phillis Wheatley Peters.

1:30 to 3 P.M.
The Black Patriots of Lexington – Silas Burdoo
Carriage House

This film explores the role that third-generation Lexington resident Silas Burdoo played in the Revolutionary War, starting with the battle on 19 Apr 1775. Burdoo was a grandson of Ann and Philip Burdoo, who married in Medford in 1704 and then purchased 40 acres in Cambridge Farms, which became Lexington. This film screening will be followed by a discussion with Zine Magubane, professor of historical sociology at Boston College, and Sean D. Osborne, producer of the Black Patriots of Lexington YouTube series.

3 P.M.
What Washington Saw on Cambridge Common
Walking Tour starting at the gate at the southern tip of the common

What did the center of Cambridge look like in July 1775? Since April, the town had been the base of the New England army besieging Boston, with war transforming the community. On this walking tour J. L. Bell looks at sites in and around the common, including the first headquarters, buildings turned into barracks, and the Continental artillery’s lost laboratory. How well do the Washington Elm and the Revolutionary monuments that dot the common memorialize the men who were actually there?

All of these events are free, as organized by the National Park Service.

History Camp Boston 2026 Coming Up on 8 August

History Camp Boston will take place on 7–9 August, with the main gathering on Saturday the 8th.

As in recent years, the main venue will be the Suffolk University Law School building at 120 Tremont Street, just a block from the Park Street subway station and across the street from the Park Street Burying Ground. Or, as I like to think of it, on top of Adino Paddock’s coachyard.

This year I’ll talk about the myths and realities of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, from the signature on the first copy not included on later versions to the handprint that mysteriously appeared on the document in the early 20th century.

In fact, there’s a little Declaration track on the schedule, with Andy Volpe speaking about the printing technology behind the spread of that text and Jennifer Epstein Rudnick speaking about locating the Signers’ graves.

And there are many more presentations on eighteenth-century history, including Sam Forman and Salina Baker giving their separate takes on Dr. Joseph Warren; Ben Powers and Bjorn Bruckshaw on Col. Christopher Greene and Janet Uhlar on his cousin, Gen. Nathanael Greene; Bob Allison on the year 1776; Jake Sconyers on the year 1752 and why it was so short for the British Empire; Judy Anderson on Loyalists in Marblehead; Sarah Walsh and Christopher Davis on the spoken language behind the Adams letters; John Morton on Paul Revere; and more.

Other speakers will cover topics ranging from mercantilism and King Philip’s War to the bombing of the Los Angeles Times and Amelia Earhart. The hardest part of History Camp is picking which presentations to attend—but most are available afterwards on video.

In addition, there’s a reception on the preceding Friday evening for people who support History Camp financially, and on Sunday folks can choose among seven tours of historic sites at additional cost.

Registration for Saturday with a hot lunch and morning and afternoon refreshments costs $135. That money goes toward the food, the venue, the recordings, and support services; all the speakers are volunteers, talking about their topics for the pleasure of sharing history.

New Dramas at Old Places in Newport, Deerfield, and East Granby

This is a very busy summer for Plays in Place, which works with historic sites to create new plays built on their past, informed by their archives, and designed for their spaces.

At the Hunter House in Newport, Rhode Island, Newport Mansions presents Loyalty or Liberty, a trio of short plays set between 1778 and 1781 as control of that port changed hands.

“Dinah” by Ken Green follows an enslaved woman in a Loyalist household whose husband plans to enlist in the Continental Army, seeking freedom for the family. “For Love and Glory” by Patrick Gabridge dramatizes the conference between Axel von Fersen, aide-de-camp to Gen. Rochambeau, and Adm. de Barras, who has to be convinced to sail his fleet to Yorktown. “Where We Once” by Lily Mathews picks up the story of Dinah’s enslaver, Sarah Wanton, as she faces life in an independent republic. These plays are directed by Rachel Walshe and produced by Jessica Chace.

Loyalty or Liberty will run Tuesday and Saturday evenings through 1 September. Normally the plays will be staged outdoors, overlooking Narragansett Bay, but in bad weather the production will move into the Guild Hall at St. John’s Church. Buy tickets here.

Historic Deerfield is hosting A Stake in the Ground: 1774, three short plays about conflicts in that Loyalist-leaning town as Massachusetts slid out of royal control.

In the summer of 1774, Patriots brought a Liberty Pole into Deerfield. “The Liberty Lark” by Talya Kingston, “Jinny and Cato” by Valyn Lyric Turner, and “Sparks on Dry Tinder” by Patrick Gabridge explore the political divisions, tangled family relations, and complexities of enslavement stirred up by that political act and the protest against it. These dramas are directed by Brianna Sloane and produced by Talya Kingston.

Performances will take place on Friday and Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoons through 16 August. A Stake in the Ground will be staged outside, with the audience walking to each location and sitting on folding chairs. On 31 July–2 August, and in very bad weather, the same plays will be performed inside the Deerfield Community Center for a more traditional and accessible theatrical experience. Tickets available here.

At the Old New-Gate Prison & Copper Mine in East Granby, Connecticut, visitors can take in The Slippery Truth: Prisonbreak at New Gate by Patrick Gabridge, directed by Zoë Golub-Sass and produced by Nicole Young-Martin.

On 18 May 1781, a group of captive Loyalists rushed up a 35-foot ladder and overpowered their guards, killing one man before escaping into the night. Was this brave resistance by political prisoners or a desperate blow by criminals? Did they have inside help? Prison trustee John Forward interrogates guards and recaptured prisoners to find the truth.

The Slippery Truth will be produced indoors—to be precise, inside the mine. The audience will enter via 33 steps and a 100-yard loop starting at 35 feet below ground and descending to 75 feet below. The shortest tunnel is 4 feet. The mine is always 52 degrees and wet. Strollers, wheelchairs, walkers, and similar devices are not permitted, and visitors should consider their medical history and physical limitations before attending.

Performances will happen on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings through 30 August. Tickets at this page.