Talking about Ebenezer Richardson in Stoneham, June 4

On the evening of Tuesday, 4 June, I’ll speak to the Stoneham Historical Society. The society is headlining my talk “The Most Hated Man in Revolutionary Boston.”

Was that Gov. Thomas Hutchinson? Customs Commissioner Benjamin Hallowell? Or even Boston 1775’s latest figure in the spotlight, Capt. John Malcom?

No, for producing long-lasting, multifaceted, bitter antipathy, I don’t think anyone could beat Ebenezer Richardson. In fact, I’ve argued that Richardson did as much as any other individual to turn people in rural Massachusetts against the royal government.

Richardson was born in 1718 on a Woburn farm touching the border with Stoneham. Until the age of thirty-four he was an ordinary middling New England farmer—married, raising children, and helping to house his wife’s poor widowed sister.

Over the next quarter-century Richardson became a secret adulterer, an outcast from his home town, a government informant, a Customs officer, a target of riots, a convicted child murderer, and a fugitive. Starting around 1760, each new scandalous episode linked him more closely to royal officials, whom people saw as protecting him.

I’ve chased traces of Ebenezer Richardson through archives on two continents. This talk brings his story back to, well, not quite to his home town, but to the neighboring town, and also the town where his widowed mother moved after she remarried.

This event is scheduled to start at 7:00 P.M. at the Stoneham Public Library, 431 Main Street. It is free and open to the public, sponsored by the Stoneham and Massachusetts Cultural Councils.