“Landed and quartered in town”

On 18 Nov 1768, 250 years ago today, the Boston Whigs’ “Journal of Occurrences” alerted their readers in other North American ports to this news:

The 64th Regiment of those troops Col. [John] Pomeroy, are landed and quartered in town, the 65th Regiment Col. [Alexander] Mackay, at Castle Island; they consist of 500 men each.—The battalion-men of the detachment of the 59th are to return to Halifax.

The Whigs also counted eleven Royal Navy ships, not counting the chartered transport ships, in the harbor.

With four regiments (the 14th, 29th, 64th, and 65th) in town, plus part of the 59th and a contingent of Royal Artillery, this was the largest number of soldiers stationed in Boston before late 1774.

The 64th and 65th were fresh from recruiting in Ireland, so they were at full strength. The Whigs’ estimate of “500 men each” is probably a little high and doesn’t necessarily apply to the two regiments that had arrived earlier from Nova Scotia.

Nonetheless, there were probably around 2,000 soldiers in Boston for a couple of weeks that fall. The 1765 census counted 2,941 white men above age sixteen (i.e., eligible for militia duty). Thus, in that stretch two out of every five white men in Boston belonged to the British army.

[The photograph above comes from Revolution250’s recent “Boston Occupied” reenactment, photographed by Chris Christo for this gallery at the Boston Herald.]