“Assertions that Salem, Marblehead and Newbury had departed”

On 31 July 1770, Faneuil Hall hosted another meeting of “The Trade and Inhabitants of the Town of Boston.” The group of people invited to participate had widened again to include not just businessmen but all “Inhabitants.”

Per the report in the 13 August Boston Gazette, the spur for this meeting appears to have been “some very positive Assertions that Salem, Marblehead and Newbury had departed from the Non-Importation Agreement.”

In his copy of that newspaper, Harbottle Dorr wrote that those assertions came from the merchant John Amory (1728-1803, shown here courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts).

Amory and his brother Jonathan (1726-1797) had a mercantile house together. They hovered in the political middle—not taking strong stands, signing the non-importation agreement but not following it strictly, protesting against too much protest. Eventually John would be a Loyalist exile while Jonathan remained in America.

At this juncture, it appears, John Amory was telling his colleagues in the Boston business community that other ports in the province would soon be bringing in goods, so they might as well drop their boycott.

The meeting responded by appointing a committee of William Molineux, William Phillips, William Cooper, William Greenleaf, and, for diversity, Ebenezer Storer ”to repair forthwith to the Towns above said and Haverhill” and find out what was going on.

In addition, the Body named a larger group of top Whig politicians—John Hancock, Phillips, Samuel Adams, Molineux, Greenleaf, Dr. Joseph Warren, Dr. Thomas Young, John Adams, Josiah Quincy, Richard Dana, Henderson Inches, Thomas Cushing, and Jonathan Mason—“to consider what may be proper to be done toward strengthening a Union of the Colonies.”

On 7 August, the Molineux committee returned from Essex County and “reported that the Conduct of our Brethren in said Towns was honorable and sincere.” The Boston meeting that day “VOTED UNANIMOUSLY” to express their “utmost satisfaction” and “sincere Respect” for their colleagues to the north.

That gathering then appointed a similar committee—Molineux, Cooper, William Whitwell, Thomas Boylston, and Mason—to take the same message to “Providence and New Port in Rhode Island.”

Only after that 7 August meeting—two weeks after the initial 31 July response to Amory—did Edes and Gill report on these proceedings. The Boston Whigs had evidently been sitting on the story until they had good news to announce. It wouldn’t have helped the non-importation movement for other port to read any hint that some Massachusetts towns were dropping out.

TOMORROW: What really happened in Salem?