The Flight of the Cambridge Loyalists, part 2

One direct target of the “Powder Alarm” protest in Cambridge on 2 Sept 1774 was Joseph Lee, a judge and appointee to the mandamus Council.

He tried to get ahead of the crowd’s demands by writing out a resignation from that Council in the morning, then reading it aloud on Cambridge common at midday.

But Lee and his wife Rebecca were still nervous. Her brother, Sheriff David Phips, and her niece’s husband, Lt. Gov. Thomas Oliver, took refuge in Boston, as recounted yesterday. Toward the middle of the month, the Lees decided to leave town, too.

Instead of seeking the protection of the troops, the Lees headed south. To make their journey secure, they obtained this certificate from Isaac Foster, Jr., on 16 September:

To our Bretheren the Friends of Liberty

Whereas the honourable Joseph Lee Esqr has proposed to take a Tour through the Country for his [insert: Ladys] health, and it is possible that some Persons unacquainted with the Transactions at Cambridge on the 2d. instant, (when so great a Part of this County were collected there) may still be uneasy at his having taken the Oath as Councellor, on the intended new and unconstitutional Plan; these may certify that the said honourable Joseph Lee Esqr. had voluntarily, before he was called upon, and as we trust from a Conviction of the unconstitutionality of his Appointments, resigned his seat at the Council Board; which resignation he publickly and politely declared to the respectable Inhabitants of this County, with a promise that in future he would accept of no Office inconsistent with the Charter of this Province; and that the said Declaration and Promise was by the People assembled as aforesaid, unanimously voted satisfactory, having given such ample Satisfaction, we doubt not he will be treated by all the Friends of our happy Constitution, with such Civility and Respect, as shall do honour to our common Cause.

By order of the Committee of Correspondence for Charlstown

That’s another document from the Massachusetts Historical Society’s Miscellaneous Bound Manuscripts collection.

During Monday’s commemoration of the “Powder Alarm” in Charlestown, Karen Falb alerted me to a glimpse of Joseph and Rebecca Lee on their journey south. It appears in a letter from Henry Pelham to his half-brother John Singleton Copley, dated 2 November from Philadelphia. Pelham wrote:

I wish I had a more satisfactory account to give than that I have taken this Journey in search of lost Health; but still Happy should I be could I say I had entirely recovered it. I have been for near 10 Months [i.e., pretty much since the Tea Party] past very subject to nervous complaints which shewed themselves in an almost continued Dizziness, Headack, Loss of Appetite, Trembling of the Nerves, and Lowness of Spiritts. for these I early put myself under the Care of Doct’r [William Lee or Nathaniel] Perkins, who ordered me a course of Steel and frequent Riding, and recommended a long journey in the fall which my friends much advised too.

Mr. and Mrs. [Charles and Sarah] Startin [Susanna Copley’s sister and her husband] returning home, I thought it a favourable time for the excursion, and have come thus far in Company with them and Judge Lee and Lady, our Cambridge Friends, who propose passing the winter here. In a few days I intend to sett out for home, stoping for about a fortnight at New Haven, where Mr. [Adam] Babcock has engaged me to do two or three minature Pictures.

This letter shows that Pelham was friendly with the Lees before he drew his monumental map of the siege of Boston. (Another letter in the collection shows that Copley had visited Judge Lee at his home.) That has a bearing on the question of how much accuracy we can assign to Pelham’s rendering of the “Tory Row” estates, shown above.

Joseph and Rebecca Lee sat out the first years of the war in New Jersey and returned to their Cambridge home in 1777. Since they were no longer ”absentees,” Massachusetts did not confiscate that property.

The next mansion west from the Lees belonged to George and Susanna Ruggles. She was a Vassall by birth, thus a paternal aunt to Elizabeth Oliver.

George Ruggles made a unique arrangement for leaving the neighborhood: he swapped houses with the Boston merchant Thomas Fayerweather. On 31 October, Fayerweather deeded his house on Summer Street to Ruggles, and Ruggles deeded his estate on the Watertown road to Fayerweather. That estate included more than fifty acres of land, and Fayerweather paid Ruggles £2,000 to make an even swap.

That’s why Henry Pelham’s map of the siege of Boston labels that property as belonging to “Mr. Fairwather”—the one “Tory Row” estate no longer legally owned by a Loyalist at the start of the war.

TOMORROW: John Vassall’s secret.