The Mystery of “Mr. Inspector Williams”
November 17. Proceeded to London, where I arrived about 11 oClock a.m. . . . Was waited upon by Messrs. Thomas Bromfield, and Edward Dilly, and Mr. Jonathan Williams—from all of whom I received many civilities. . . .The only Jonathan Williams from Massachusetts in London in late 1774 was the one born in 1750, a young merchant using his status as the famous Benjamin Franklin’s great-nephew to amass contacts.
November 18. This morning Jonathan Williams Esqr., Inspector of the Customs in the Massachusetts Bay[,] waited upon me and we had more than an hour [of] private conversation together.
But based on the second journal entry, the editors of the Quincy diary concluded that he had secured a no-show job as “a customs inspector in Massachusetts.” When I read that, my first thought was that a twentysomething would have to be very lucky to snag a government appointment at that level. Maybe nepotism helped—he was Franklin’s protégé, after all, plus a nephew of John Williams, documented elsewhere as Inspector-General of Customs in North America. But I couldn’t find anything more about a Jonathan Williams being in the Customs service. And if he had that job, why had he been sailing back and forth to Boston with goods to sell?
After several days I had a breakthrough. We have to read Quincy’s diary carefully—and to recognize his own confusion about Williamses.
Look at how Quincy wrote about his visitors on those two successive days: “Mr. Jonathan Williams” on 17 November and “Jonathan Williams Esqr., Inspector of the Customs” on 18 November. Under eighteenth-century etiquette, a plain ‘Mr. Williams’ ranked below a ‘Williams, Esq.’ In his journal Quincy was indicating two different men. One was a young merchant, the other a middle-aged government official. When in his diary Quincy went to the trouble of referring to “Jonathan Williams Esqr.” and “Mr. Inspector Williams” at the start of an entry, he was referring to the second man.
Furthermore, I think Quincy misstated the first name and title of the Customs official who visited on 18 November. That was actually John Williams, who had been Inspector-General of His Majesty’s Customs in North America since 1767. Knowing so many men from Boston named Jonathan Williams, Quincy slipped and created one more.
In writing “Inspector of the Customs in the Massachusetts Bay,” Quincy referred to how John Williams was normally based in Boston, but the man’s job wasn’t limited to one colony. As Inspector-General, Williams didn’t inspect ships like lower Customs officers. Instead, he was tasked with visiting the Customs offices in all North American ports to make sure they were efficient and uncorrupted. Since he worked for a bureaucracy, Williams’s professional activity is well documented; here’s a whole William & Mary Quarterly paper based on his reports about the Chesapeake region.
Boston’s waterfront crowd attacked John Williams’s house during the Liberty riot of 1768, as reported by a colleague. He then got into a dispute with the Customs Commissioners over compensation. John Adams recorded Williams speaking snarkily about his bosses in late 1769. Soon he headed off to London to complain that he deserved more money. John Williams wasn’t a close relative of Franklin, being a half-sister’s daughter’s husband’s brother, but he did try to borrow funds in the summer of 1773.
Thus, in late 1774 Inspector-General John Williams was in London with, at least nominally, an important role in imperial government. He was somewhat alienated from the North American Customs department. He was also linked to the Boston Whig business community through his brother, Jonathan Williams, Sr. That position between the two hostile camps goes a long way to explaining why Inspector Williams tried to set himself up as an intermediary between Quincy and the government ministers in London.
My annotations for the diary passage above would be:
- “Mr. Jonathan Williams: Benjamin Franklin’s grandnephew (1750–1815). His father Jonathan, Sr., a wealthy Boston merchant and prominent Whig, had married Franklin’s niece, Grace Harris. In the early 1770s the younger Williams was establishing himself as a transatlantic merchant, using contacts gained during visits to his great-uncle. On January 16, 1775, he would deliver a letter from Dr. Joseph Warren to Quincy.”
- “Jonathan Williams Esqr., Inspector of the Customs in the Massachusetts Bay: Quincy misstated the given name of John Williams, Esq., Inspector-General of Customs in North America (d. 1791). Inspector Williams was an uncle of the Jonathan Williams who had visited Quincy the day before. Quincy took care to use ‘Inspector’ or ‘Esq.’ when referring to the older man. At odds with his supervisors in Boston, Inspector Williams spent most of the 1770s in London lobbying unsuccessfully for better compensation. He would engineer Quincy’s meetings with Lord North, the Earl of Dartmouth, and Customs Commissioner Corbyn Morris.”
4 comments:
John Williams, the Inspector, had two sons, ( John and Jonathan) one who clerked for John Adams, as you mentioned. Each married a daughter of Ezekiel Goldthwaite, Town Clerk, and both died shortly after the marriages, due to I’ll health.
John Williams, Inspector, later after the Revolutionary War, was appointed to an administrative position in the Caribbean. He had hoped to be governor but was given a lower position in financial affairs. He returned to Boston and died there ( I think) in 1791.
One of his letters to Ben Franklin has “ WhiteHall, London” as an address , if I recall correctly. Franklin referred to him in letters on record as “ dear cousin”
His huge home in Boston was occupied by Lord Percy, while Percy was in Boston during Revolutionary era.
It appears that the Inspector had friends and family on both sides of the Revolutionary War era. He supported the Patriot cause while in London, as did Ben Franklin.
It is possible that Ben Franklin used influence to get John Williams ( of Boston) appointed as Inspector General.
Does anyone know who his wife Elizabeth was?
Signed Sue Leighton Smith, great, great granddaughter of Inspector Williams.
John Williams, the Insoector, even though employed, it appears, by the treasury department in London, maintained his ties with John Adams, his deceased son’s employer(clerk). In the records of John Adams is a letter from the Inspector offering to broker/ negotiate the peace treaty between England and the colonies. Another negotiator was chosen.
The Williams family in London was part of a very old, aristocratic clan.
The archives of both Ben Franklin and John Adams letters have correspondence with John Williams inspector. Ben Franklin referred to him warmly as dear cousin. John Adams was the lawyer one of the Inspectors Harvard law grad sons clerked for. Towards the end of the Revolutionary War, one letter of the Inspector to John Adams includes an offer by the Inspector to personally negotiate the peace agreement between England and the colonies. John Adams chose someone else.
John Williams, Inspector, may have played a more significant role in the Revolutionary War than is generally recognized. For example, he served in the West Indies in financial oversight ( customs ) before being appointed to Boston position and also after leaving Boston in I think Grands, before returning to friends and family in Boston.He even was highly placed in London that he thought he was to appointed Governor of the island after his role during revolutionary War at WhiteHall. He was disappointed to be finance, not Hovernor.
John Williams, the elder, was referred to as the Inspector while Jonathan Williams, BF’s grand nephew ( and the Inspector’s nephew) was referred to as the Engineer as he later was famous in the new USA as a surveyor, engineer and first supervisor of the new West Point Academy. He also became a USA military colonel and was active in Philadelphia politics where BF returned to after the war. There is a famous Copley oil portrait of him in an American museum. Jonathan, the Engineer, was much more than a trader. He helped his uncle BF in France when BF left London to seek French support for the patriots. Even John Adams visited them in a secret visit, if Iremember correctly, to help arrange French military support, especially through West Indies ports.
The population of the colonies was so small before the Revolutionary War that most of the “elite” landowners, merchants, ship owners, large farm owners were related by blood or legally, in-laws. This elite had significant ties to the European trading system and political/social scene. They “ stuck tigether”. Indeed, somewhere I read, perhaps in BF archives, that BF who lived in London pre-war, had helped the Inspector get his Customs job in Boston. BF also helped Captain Timothy Folger, a Nantucket whale captain with big ties in London, get his appointment as Customs Inspector for in Nantucket ( controversial appointment). BF and Timothy shared the same Nantucket grandfather, a founder of the island (The shipping of whale oil from Nantucket to London was a very lucrative market.)
What did customs officials do? Among other things, they kept records of what ships entered or left the harbor, who owned the ships, and what was in or not in cargo as they entered and left. They also collected what was due in taxes or duty to local officials or to the King.
In New England the wealthy ports were Salem, Boston and Nantucket. Reports suggest that there was a lot of “ creative writing” in these reports and in what ships were allowed in to leave or pick up goods.
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