The Triumph of the Barnstable Crowd

As recounted yesterday, on 27 Sept 1774 a reported 1,500 people surrounded the courthouse in Barnstable, refusing to let the county court session begin.

The local justices kept assuring the crowd that they, too, were concerned about the Massachusetts Government Act and other Coercive Acts, but they felt they should sit to hear local cases.

The committee chosen by the crowd, led by Dr. Nathaniel Freeman, told the justices that wasn’t satisfactory. That day apparently ended in a stalemate with the courthouse still closed.

The committee drafted a promise for each justice to sign, promising not to act under the new laws, even if that meant losing their governmental appointment. Then the crowd decided that sheriffs, deputies, and anyone else holding a royal commission do the same.

Feeling even more expansive, the crowd went on to demand that a local who had threatened (jokingly, he said) to cut down Barnstable’s Liberty Pole promise never to do that. That man made himself scarce.

Finally, the crowd voted to ask James Otis, Sr., a longtime member of the Massachusetts Council under the previous constitution, to go to Salem in case Gov. Thomas Gage went through with his initial plan to convene the Massachusetts General Court there.

On 28 September, 250 years ago today, several justices and other royal appointees signed the crowd’s promises. Otis promised to go to Salem. The crowd marched back to the courthouse, drums sounding. There they resolved to provide arms for their defense, not to buy any imported goods, and “endeavor to suppress mobs and riots” (as well as “common peddlers”).

In 1830, Barnstable County built a new, larger courthouse. The 1763 building was eventually sold to a Baptist church that expanded and remodeled it, as shown above. Then in 1972 it became the headquarters of Tales of Cape Cod. But somewhere within that building is the courthouse at the center of a political protest in 1774.