Boston’s 1767 Non-Importation Pledge List Comes to Light

This week John Overholt at Harvard’s Houghton Library announced that Karen Nipps and her cataloguing team had discovered six copies of an October 1767 broadside with the signatures of over 650 Bostonians pledging not to import a long list of goods from Britain to protest the new Townshend duties. The library’s blog offers images of three of those sheets and snatches of others.

Bostonians had already made a public stand against importing what they said were unnecessary luxury goods, particularly ostentatious mourning garb. This takes a further step, expanding the list of goods that people promised to boycott. The selectmen publicized the town’s vote (though exactly who received this letter announcing it is unclear).

After another year, the 1768 merchants’ agreement covered every type of import except for a few things deemed necessary for local industry. As Sam Forman describes, in 1769 the Boston Whigs also asked people not to buy goods from shopkeepers who did import.

The 1767 pledge sheets are thus an early look at who in Boston was willing to put their names to a protest against Parliament’s new taxes. The signatories include some future Loyalists, such as Adino Paddock, Hopestill Capen, and (I think) Thomas Flucker. Dr. John Jeffries was among the few who pledged not to buy imports for only one year.

It looks like the signatures might be organized loosely by neighborhood. For example, one sheet includes John Ruddock, John Tudor, and Paul Revere, all prominent in the North End, near the top. I can imagine men carrying each sheet around a ward, asking folks to add their names.

One of the most surprising details of these sheets is the number of women who signed. They often decided on purchases of household goods, of course, and sometimes owned or managed shops. Some of the visible sheets have no female signatories, others several in a row. In the 1769 non-consumption agreement, only 6 of 111 signatories were women; I wonder what proportion of these names are female.

Other mysteries:

• Why did William Dawes, Jr., sign two sheets? (I don’t think there were two William Dawes, Jrs.)
  
• Why is the name under John Machett’s crossed out?
  
• Why does housewright John Bell’s name appear to be stamped instead of written?
• Catharine Thompson signed with her mark—was she really active in commerce or politics?

There’s a lot more data to be gleaned out of this document and comparing it to other records. I understand that it’s being fully digitized for widespread viewing soon.