“Recapturing the realities of daily governance”

Creating a Federal Government is an online database developed at Washington University in St. Louis and launched earlier this year.

It seeks to document the U.S. federal government from its creation in 1789 until 1829. That starts with listing all the people documented as hired by the federal government in that period, their jobs, where they worked, and other details.

The project explains itself this way:

What happens to our story of the American founding when we shift the focus from the pursuit of electoral office and toward the actions of appointed officials? Recapturing the realities of daily governance is crucial to our understanding of both the nation’s past and its present. . . .

Day in and day out, the Founding Fathers were consumed with managing the thousands of employees in the federal government. Much as we might now prefer reading their most high-minded writings about the meaning of representative government, once the Founders moved into federal leadership they were far more concerned with day-to-day matters. This does not mean they lost sight of the big picture or pressing national goals. Rather, they understood that their ability to realize their goals for the nation depended on their ability to organize and mobilize the personnel and resources of the federal government.

This task was all the more difficult because they did not possess the organizational tools that we have today. First and foremost, the federal government was highly decentralized. Although each federal agency did possess a central office in the nation’s capital, they had the most limited staff. Nothing reveals this state of affairs more clearly than the fact that so much of the minutiae of managing the federal government appears in the familiar handwriting of people like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. As cabinet members and later as Presidents, they devoted much of their time to appointing subordinates and drafting specific instructions to them.

Indeed, those high officials were flooded with requests from people seeking appointments. There was no civil service system to channel that process, simply personal connections and peristence.

Fortunately for those top managers, and for the people trying to document every federal employee, the national government was quite small. And for a brief time under one President, it got smaller:

That President was Thomas Jefferson, and the period was 1801-1803. Jefferson came into office convinced that the federal government had become too large and expensive. He also suspected that many in the federal workforce shared dangerous ideas that put them at risk of violating the commitment to republican government that was at the core of the government’s mission. So Jefferson fired a number of personnel and eliminated a small number of federal offices. The result was to produce a brief reduction in the total number of federal employees. But the combination of the Louisiana Purchase (which expanded the federal domain), international tension, and ongoing domestic challenges led Jefferson to hire new officials and create new offices. As a result, he left office with a federal government larger and more powerful than the one he inherited.

In the period covered by this database, the population of the U.S. of A. grew from a little less than 4 million people to more than 12 million. Both the country and the economy expanded. So we shouldn’t be surprised that the federal government grew as well.

In contrast, for the last four decades the number of federal government civilian employees has hovered around 3 million (as high as 3.19 million in 1990, as low as 2.71 million in 2007). During that time, the national population has grown by more than 100 million people, or 46%.

TOMORROW: Looking in the Creating a Federal Government database for familiar faces.

“Recalling the Revolution in New England” at the 2025 Dublin Seminar

The Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife has announced that its 27–28 June 2025 conference at Historic Deerfield will focus on the topic “Recalling the Revolution in New England.”

The seminar says:

On September 11, 1765, political leaders in Boston attached a plaque to a majestic elm and named it “Liberty Tree” to honor its role in an anti-Stamp Act protest the previous month. New Englanders thus started to commemorate the events of the American Revolution even before they had any idea there would be such a revolution. Over the following centuries, people from New England shaped the national memory of that era through schoolbooks, popular poetry, civic celebrations, monuments, and more.

On the 250th anniversary of the outbreak of the Revolutionary War in 1775, the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife welcomes proposals for papers and presentations that address the broad range of ways the people of New England have looked back on the nation’s founding—and what they forgot, or chose to forget, in the process.

For this year the seminar invites proposals for papers and presentations that illuminate how the peoples of the region have commemorated, memorialized, documented, invoked, fictionalized, and even forgotten the American Revolution through the Bicentennial period. Papers should examine events and trends in New England and adjoining regions.

The Seminar encourages papers grounded in interdisciplinary approaches and original research, particularly material and visual culture, manuscripts, government and business records, the public press, oral histories, and public history practice or advocacy. Papers addressing such contemporary themes as gender dynamics, racial dimensions, and environmental aspects of Revolutionary commemoration are strongly encouraged.

Some possible topics might include:

• Efforts to recover the stories of marginalized participants in the American Revolution
• The processes of local commemoration in orations, pageants, reenactments, and more
• Recreating and depicting the American Revolution in popular fiction, theater, prints, and toys
• The collecting and preservation of Revolutionary-era artifacts and material culture
• Activating, maintaining, and interpreting historic sites, battlefields, monuments, homes, and other spaces
• The formation and activities of historical societies and heritage organizations
• Contesting the memory and meaning of the American Revolution

Researchers whose proposals are accepted will be invited to prepare a 20-minute presentation of that work and present it on site in Deerfield. They’ll be expected to make a written version of about 7,000 words available for inclusion in the Dublin Seminar Proceedings.

The Seminar will convene on 27–28 June. That will be a hybrid program with both on-site and virtual registration options for attendees. The conference keynote will be provided by Dr. Zara Anishanslin of the University of Delaware, author of the forthcoming book The Painter’s Fire: A Forgotten History of the Artists who Championed the American Revolution.

To submit a proposal, scholars should prepare (as a single email attachment, in MS Word or as a PDF, labeled LASTNAME.DubSem2025) a one-page prospectus that describes the paper and the archival, material, or visual sources on which it is grounded, followed by a one-page vita or biography. Send that to dublinseminar@historic-deerfield.org by noon on Monday, 23 Jan 2025.

One last detail about the 2025 Dublin Seminar: I’m one of the co-chairs of the organizing committee along with Erica Lome of Historic New England.

“For the Continuance of general Peace” in New Hampshire

Gov. Thomas Gage didn’t follow the tradition of his New England-born predecessor, Thomas Hutchinson, by proclaiming a Thanksgiving holiday toward the end of 1774.

Perhaps he didn’t grasp the local significance of that holiday. Perhaps, with barracks to be finished, he couldn’t afford to give people a day off work. Or perhaps he just didn’t feel thankful.

Gov. John Wentworth did declare a Thanksgiving in New Hampshire, issuing this proclamation at the start of the month for a holiday on 24 November.

Back in 2008, I wrote a couple of posts about how the Massachusetts Provincial Congress declared 15 December as a Thanksgiving Day, and how people responded in army-occupied Boston and in Newport.

Dr. Johnson, Miss M’Queen, and a “book of science”

At the Scilicet blog, James Fox wrote about a gift from Dr. Samuel Johnson:

In 1773, during their now famous tour of the Western Isles of Scotland, Samuel Johnson and James Boswell made a pit stop at a settlement called Aonach in Glen Moriston, near Inverness. As Johnson later recalled, a girl who served them tea ‘engaged me so much’ that he decided to give her a present. Having only what he could source in Inverness to hand, the gift was a copy of the highly popular maths textbook, Cocker’s Arithmetick.

Despite Boswell’s surprise, Johnson justified his giving of a practical gift. ‘When you have read through a book of entertainment’, he said, ‘you know it, and it can do no more for you; but a book of science is inexhaustible’. . . .

On the surface, Cocker’s Arithmetick was hardly riveting stuff. It taught the basics of arithmetic – addition, subtraction, multiplication and division – presented as a set of ‘rules’ to be memorised with many worked examples that began with very basic problems that became increasinging difficult. Yet its popularity is remarkable by any standards. Written by Edward Cocker, a London-based teacher of writing and arithmetic, the book was first published posthumously in 1678. It was then reissued continually for decades after, not only in London, but also Dublin, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Its final edition appeared over a century later, in 1787, and by my own (conservative) estimate, it saw at least seventy editions. . . .

Chapters on commercial arithmetic skills in the second half of the text hinted at its target audience: aspiring businesspeople. It was this facet of Cocker’s appeal that ensured its enormous popularity. The book appeared at just the moment when the currency of arithmetic was exploding thanks to rising literacy and the emergence of a society oriented around commerce, consumerism and sociability. Buying Cocker’s Arithmetick represented a ticket to this new world.

Fox’s article is framed around Boswell’s report that “Several ladies” later found this gift laughable. He concludes that those women laughed because it had become almost cliché to recommend this “humble textbook.”

I suspect at least part of that laughter came from how the scholar had given this book to “a young woman,” as opposed to an ambitious young man. Even a young woman who “had been a year at Inverness, and learnt reading and writing, sewing, knotting, working lace, and pastry”?

Plus, there’s the class issue. Johnson and Boswell were visiting “a village…of three huts, one of which is distinguished by a chimney.” Fortunately for them, the owner of that one hut with a chimney, a man named M’Queen, accommodated them for the night.

M’Queen’s daughter was the young woman who served these visitors. Johnson later described her as “not inelegant either in mien or dress”; “Her conversation, like her appearance, was gentle and pleasing.” He insisted that in Highlander society she was a “gentlewoman.” But clearly he and Boswell (perhaps especially Boswell) were surprised by some of the family’s claim to gentility:

There were some books here: a Treatise against Drunkenness, translated from the French; a volume of the Spectator; a volume of Prideaux’s Connection, and Cyrus’s Travels. M’Queen said he had more volumes; and his pride seemed to be much piqued that we were surprised at his having books.

Dr. Johnson himself would protest that the Scilicet article’s phrase “Having only what he could source in Inverness to hand” might be misleading. He didn’t pop down to the Inverness shops to find the best available book to give as a present. Instead, the men had already passed through Inverness, and Johnson had bought Cocker’s Arithmetic for his own reading. Then when he wanted to give Miss M’Queen a present, “I presented her with a book which I happened to have about me.”

To Boswell, it was “singular” that Johnson “should happen to have Cocker’s Arithmetick.” That prompted the scholar’s observation that “if you are to have but one book with you upon a Journey, let it be a book of science.” His remark about exhausting “a book of entertainment” wasn’t a comment on what a young woman like Miss M’Queen would most benefit from; it was a comment on what kept his own interest.

“What says the psalm-singer and Johnny Dupe”?

I’ve been working through my thoughts on a page from the 8 May 1770 Nova Scotia Chronicle, lampooning the Boston Whigs in much the same way that John Mein’s Boston Chronicle had done the preceding October.

Mein got assailed on the street and then chased out of Boston for that, so he couldn’t have written similar items in the Boston Chronicle in early 1770 or this article published in Halifax.

The obvious candidate for carrying on Mein’s work in 1770 is his printing partner, John Fleeming.

Of course, Fleeming might have helped to compose the original character profiles in October 1769. But I sense a little more sloppiness in May 1770: references to characters never introduced, aliases too similar to each other.

One possible pointer to Fleeming is how in October 1769 the Boston Chronicle dubbed Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr., the “Lean Apothecary,” and Mein described him privately as:

One of the greatest miscreants that walks on the face of the Earth who has cheated & back bitten every Person with whom he ever had the least Connection—Father Mother & friend & more than once foxed his Wife &c &c &c.

In contrast, I can’t identify any of the characters in the May 1770 article as Church.

Three months after the Nova Scotia Chronicle publication, John Fleeming married Dr. Church’s sister Alice. Might the printer have held off on lambasting Dr. Church for the sake of his future wife?

Fleeming and Church joined the same new Freemason’s lodge in 1772. They were on friendly terms in 1775, corresponding across the siege lines (which was too friendly for the Patriot authorities). And in the letter that Church introduced as evidence at his inquiry before the Massachusetts General Court, Fleeming wrote:

What says the psalm-singer and Johnny Dupe to fighting British Troops now?

Those terms referred to Samuel Adams and John Hancock, and “John(ny) Dupe” appeared in both the October 1769 and May 1770 character profiles. While not proof that Fleeming created the Nova Scotia Chronicle item, that certainly points in his direction.

Back in the spring of 1770, Fleeming was under threat from the crowd and from Mein’s creditors, represented in Boston by Hancock. In June, the printer shut down the Boston Chronicle and took refuge in Castle William.

“Admiral Renegado, came to anchor in Port Despair”

At the start of February 1770, the big news in Boston was the non-importation movement, and particularly the weekly demonstrations by schoolboys in support of it.

That is to say, every Thursday when the schools let out early, gangs of boys would converge on the shop of someone who hadn’t signed the non-importation agreement, set up a picket line, and shout insults at that shopkeeper and his or her customers. If the kids were feeling feisty, they’d throw snowballs and mud as well.

The Boston Chronicle, which opposed the movement, responded on 1 February with a fictional advertisement:

Intended speedily to be acted,
By a Company of young Tragedians,
A TRAGEDY
(Not acted here these seventy-eight years,)
called the
W I T C H E S,
With many Alterations and Improvements.

(The full item is quoted back here.)

That slammed the Whigs’ boycott, tweaked the town’s ban on theater, and poked at the sore spot of the Salem witchcraft trials all in one. It was masterful trolling before that term was invented.

Four days later, the Boston Chronicle fictionalized another common newspaper item with this start:

S H I P   N E W S.
January 25, 1770.
Last Tuesday Evening the “Well disposed” [i.e., Whiggish] fleet, under the command of ADMIRAL RENEGADO, came to anchor in Port Despair, having left their stations that morning in great confusion on the appearance of an English VICE ADMIRAL, with the British STANDARD flying at the mast head.

This was commentary on how William Molineux led a crowd to confront Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson’s two importer sons at his house—an action that even Josiah Quincy, Jr., had warned could be treated as treason—and how that action had fizzled out.

Exactly one month after the second article, the Boston Massacre occurred. To defuse tensions in the streets, Hutchinson decided to have the 29th and then the 14th Regiments moved to Castle William.

As a result, in the following months there was no governmental force in the streets of Boston strong enough to deter the Whigs and their supporters. Crowds tarred and feathered Customs officer Owen Richards in May and threatened Scottish merchant Patrick McMaster with the same punishment in June.

In that atmosphere, I suspect, the printing staff of the Boston Chronicle didn’t feel safe publishing another item lampooning and lambasting the local Whigs. Somebody in that shop—or perhaps more than one somebody—composed a long article that built on three items the paper had already run:

• Caricatures of prominent Whigs like “Tommy Trifle” and “Johnny Dupe” from October 1769’s “Outlines of the characters of…the Well-Disposed.”
• The fake theatrical announcement.
• The name “Admiral Renegado.”

Instead of publishing that piece in their own newspaper, however, they sent it to Anthony Henry in Halifax. Obviously, disguised gossip about Bostonians had less meaning for readers in Nova Scotia. But after he ran the piece on 8 May, it could filter back to its targets without sparking a riot. Not that any Boston printer dared to reprint it.

The October 1769 “Outlines of the characters of…the Well-Disposed” is always attributed to John Mein, publisher of the Boston Chronicle. He left a written key confirming the targets, so he was obviously involved in the production. But someone at the Boston Chronicle must have carried on in the same mode after Mein was driven away the next month. That person most likely wrote the piece published in Halifax.

TOMORROW: The most likely author.

“Rescued from the Tyrants by the real Friends of Liberty”

Most of the “Characters in high Life, some in low” in the 8 May 1770 Nova Scotia Chronicle were derogatory.

Even when I’m not sure what this newspaper item said about someone (“Private Inspector of Glass and Shoes for a neighbouring Province, and grand Inspector of the original Curiosities in Noah’s Ark”), the tone seems negative.

But three personas stand out for being sympathetic.

I’ve mentioned two already: “Maria—…a worthy virtuous good Woman,” almost certainly points to Ruth Otis, wife of James Otis.

“John Plain Dealer, a Bookseller flying the Country,” was Boston Chronicle publisher John Mein, driven out of Boston by a gang of merchants.

And right after that entry appears:

John Dipe, persecuted by his Enemies for the glorious Liberty of the Press, rescued from the Tyrants by the real Friends of Liberty.

That was most likely Mein’s printing-house partner, John Fleeming. At the time of this publication he was still putting out the Boston Chronicle, but he had to give up in June as John Hancock took legal action to seize Mein’s goods.

These character profiles echo those John Mein had published in October 1769 as “Outlines of the characters of…the Well-Disposed.” Mein explicated those in a document filed in the papers of Customs official Joseph Harrison and now at Harvard’s Houghton Library.

In early 1774 the Public Ledger in London published dozens of essays signed “Sagittarius” sprinkled with similar gossip about the Boston Whigs. Those letters have long been credited to John Mein.

These profiles are also like the brief, catty identifications of the Boston Patriots chosen to promote the Continental Association in late 1774 published by the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1898. There’s no evidence about who wrote those, but Mein is certainly a candidate.

So my first instinct on seeing this page in the Nova Scotia Chronicle was that John Mein wrote it, too. But the timing doesn’t work.

According to John E. Alden’s article ”John Mein: Scourge of Patriots”:

Mein sailed from Boston on November 17 [1769] aboard the schooner Hope, on which he had first taken refuge. The vessel arrived at Halifax the following Friday, November 21, and was reported off Spithead about the middle of the following month.

Letters from London in January 1770 confirm that he was there. In fact, the book publisher Thomas Longman arranged for him to be confined in that city because of a debt.

The Nova Scotia Chronicle article appears to refer to Henderson Inches’s marriage to Sarah Jackson on 22 Feb 1770, as discussed yesterday. Mein couldn’t have written about that and left the article with printer Anthony Henry as he passed through Nova Scotia the previous November.

But equally, since a typical Atlantic crossing was six weeks, Mein couldn’t have received that news from Boston, incorporated it into an article in London, and sent that paper to Henry in Halifax in time to be printed in early May.

The “Characters in high Life” must have been composed in North America.

TOMORROW: A string of articles.

“Once cut for the Simples, but never cured”?

I can easily recognize some of the Revolutionary Bostonians being lampooned as “Characters” in a supposed “Tragi-comic Farce” announced in the 8 May 1770 Nova Scotia Chronicle, but not others.

For example:

Samuel Plunder, a Senator, formerly a Receiver of the Tribute of the Parish, Master of the black Art, can cheat without a Mask of Honesty, supported by Contribution, and the Votes of a Mobb.

That’s Samuel Adams, whom political opponents often criticized for his performance as a tax collector in the early 1760s.

And “Charles Spiritual, Guide and Protector of the Junto,” surely meant the Rev. Dr. Charles Chauncy, minister of the First Meeting and a close ally of the Boston Whigs.

But does that make “Samuel Tubb, private Chaplain to Simple John,” the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper, minister of the Brattle Street Meeting that included John Hancock, already called “John Dupe”?

That seems almost certain, but right after “Samuel Tubb” comes “John Simple, a mighty Coxcomb, very important and bigg with Nothing, well known for the Drubbings he has received.” So is “Simple John” in one sentence different from “John Simple” in the next? This “John Simple” doesn’t resemble Hancock, but who is he?

Speaking of Hancock, that “John Dupe” is called “remarkably melancholy on his Loss of Lady Beaver.” A couple of months earlier, on 22 February, the printer John Boyle wrote in his journal:

Married, Mr. Henderson Inches, Merchant, to Miss Sally Jackson, Daugh. Of Joseph Jackson, Esq.—Mr. John Hancock hath paid his addresses to Miss Jackson for about ten years past, but has lately sent her a Letter of Dismission.

So was Sarah Jackson (1739–1771), shown above, courtesy of the Huntington) “Lady Beaver”? If so, does that let us interpret this entry among the characters:

Alderman Hemp, Son of the transported Cobler, well known for his great Judgment as a Politician, Chief of the grand Committee, by his wond’rous Capacity has cut off John Dupe’s Pretensions to Miss Beaver.

Henderson Inches (1726–1780) was a selectman (“Alderman”?) and active on merchants’ committees. He was born in Dunkeld, Scotland, and his father, Thomas Inches, brought the family to Boston when Henderson was a child. The town meeting voted to make Thomas Inches a sealer of leather for several years in the 1730s, so was he indeed involved in making shoes? But what might “transported” have meant? And why the name “Hemp,” which first made me think of ropemaker and selectman Benjamin Austin?

And as for profiles like these:

Edward Shallow, Friend and Neighbour to Squire Lemon, once cut for the Simples, but never cured, Carrier of Intelligence, full freight’d with Absurdities.

William the Gunner, or the one ey’d Philosopher, Brother to Shallow, formerly kept a chop House in one of the Danish Islands.

William Homer, Esq; the Jew, famous for his Treatise on Cuckoldom, well known for his Humanity and publick Spirit.

I’m at a loss.

TOMORROW: Did John Mein write this article?

“Weak in Arms Void of Virtue, Honor, or Honesty”

Here are some more of the slashing character sketches published in the 8 May 1770 Nova Scotia Chronicle in the guise of detailing a “Tragi-comic Farce” about to the published.

John Dupe, Esq; A Senator, a Man of Fortune, but not of his own acquiring---A Man of weak Capacity and like tainted Meat devoured by the Vermin about them, who drew his Money out of the Cashiers Hands Not trusting to the Loyalty of his Country Men—He is remarkably melancholy on his Loss of Lady Beaver.

Poor Iammy, a Senator, who was the Leading Man in Politicks, but disappointed in Offices of Profit—He stands now ready arm’d to kill any Person who may be mader than himself.

Maria—His Wife, a worthy virtuous good Woman, comforting her Children, and bemoaning his unhappy Fate.

Thomas Wister, an Man weak in Arms Void of Virtue, Honor, or Honesty, whose compounds has poison’d his own Body and Soul, since that he has been finding out an Art to poison the Minds—Private Confessor to Admiral Renegado.

William Town, Regulating Clerk to the Parish—Procurer of Knights of the Post, and Secretary to Admiral Renegado, and Justice Gutts; also Secretary to the Caulkers Club, and chief Compiler of the Country Parish Resolves.

I think these are allusions to merchant John Hancock, lawyer James Otis, his wife Ruth Otis, most likely Dr. Thomas Young, and Boston town clerk William Cooper, respectively.

John Mein identified Hancock as “John Dupe” in his “Key to a certain Publication,” now at the Houghton Library, so that’s an easy one.

Back in October, Mein called Otis “Counsellor Muddlehead,” but by this time people recognized that he was mentally ill. Otis’s wife was indeed known as a Loyalist.

I’m guessing the references to “compounds” and “poison” were hints that “Thomas Wister” was a physician, hence the radical Dr. Young. This page never introduced “Admiral Renegado” at all despite these two allusions to that character. But the 5 Feb 1770 Boston Chronicle had used “Admiral Renegado” as another name for William Molineux, already introduced in the Nova Scotian item as “William the Knave.”

The paragraph on “William Town” contains several pointers to William Cooper, plus a reference to the “Caulkers Club” or caucus. This might be the first publication connecting that mysterious word for a political group to the profession of caulking, and it appears to be a joke.

The article offers no explanation of “Justice Gutts,” and I can’t find the Boston Chronicle using that name anywhere. Perhaps that was an alternate name for the next entry in the article: “Richard Glutton, Esq; a regulating Magistrate.” But I’m not sure who that’s meant to be.

TOMORROW: Mysteries and questions.

“A Tragi-comic Farce, Called the present Times!”

Page 7 of the 8 May 1770 issue of Anthony Henry’s Nova Scotia Chronicle was nearly entirely taken up with what looks like an extraordinarily detailed advertisement for a play.

It began:

Just ready for the PRESS,
A Tragi-comic Farce,
Called the present Times! Some of the Characters in high Life, some in low. It is proposed to be acted by a Set of Comedians shortly expected; at a new Theatre in the enchanted Castle, at the Palace of the Sons of Liberty. Those who subscribe for Six Copies, will have the Seventh gratis; each stitched and bound, with a Variety of elegant Cuts, done by a masterly Hand! As there are already 5000 subscribed for, those who hereafter may be desirous to be out of that Number are requested to direct their Letters, (Post paid) to Don Joseph Azevedo at the Pontac Coffee House, HALIFAX, where Subscriptions are taken in.

The one mention of this newspaper item that I’ve found in books appears to treat it as authentic evidence of theater in Canada. But its real nature is revealed by the paragraphs that follow.

The Characters chiefly attempted are as follows.

William the Knave, introducing the Spinning Wheels, &c., &c. with a Bill of Taxation in his Hand (in order to support Home Manufactures) of Six Pence L[egal] M[oney] per Head on the whole P[rovince] of M[assachusetts] B[a]y; a great Procurer of Affidavits.

Thomas Trifle, Esq; Leading a drunking Man with a Glass of New-England Rum in his Hand, as a Cordial Specifick against all Disorders, lately chosen a great Officer for Indian Affairs.

Simple John, Lieut. Mandarin, demanding Audience of the Heads of the Junto, exclaiming against his Brother Commissioners of the Tribute Money to be collected—Treating the Rabble with good Chear in Hopes of reigning once more alone.

Back in October 1769 the Boston printer and bookstore owner John Mein had printed “Outlines of the characters of…the Well-Disposed” in his Boston Chronicle, lampooning leaders of the non-importation movement in highly personal terms.

That article used “William the Knave” as its label for William Molineux, an insult repeated in the 12 Feb 1770 Boston Chronicle. “Spinning Wheels” and public money “to support Home Manufactures” were allusions to Molineux’s publicly-funded scheme to employ women to make cloth in Boston. The merchant had also been busy helping to promulgate the depositions about the Boston Massacre.

The same “Outlines” article called Thomas Cushing, chairman of the merchants’ committee for non-importation and speaker of the Massachusetts House, “Tommy Trifle, Esq.”

“Simple John” must mean John Temple, the one Customs Commissioner to side with Boston’s merchants against the rest.

One of the few characters presented in a positive light was “John Plain Dealer, a Bookseller flying the Country.” A later entry mentions “Lieut. Col. Thomas Shears, his Valour is well known by his formal Attack on John Plain Dealer…”

Soon after that “Outlines” article appeared, a group of Boston merchants threatened Mein in the street. When the printer pulled out a pistol, Thomas Marshall, a tailor and militia officer not involved in the initial confrontation, swung at him with a shovel. Mein went into hiding and soon fled Boston.

“John Plain Dealer” obviously meant John Mein himself, and “Lieut. Col. Thomas Shears” meant Thomas Marshall.

This whole page in the Nova-Scotia Chronicle was a continuation of an argument that had started in Boston more than half a year before.

TOMORROW: More characters.

Paging Through the Nova-Scotia Chronicle

The Nova Scotia Archives has digitized several newspapers from various periods in the province’s history, with the results open for anyone to look at.

This digital archive doesn’t include the region’s first newspaper—the Halifax Gazette launched by John Bushell, fresh from Boston, on 23 Mar 1752. But the Nova Scotia Archives does own the one surviving copy of Bushell’s first issue; it acquired that precious sheet from the Massachusetts Historical Society in 2002.

The earliest newspaper available in the digital database is the Nova Scotia Chronicle and Weekly Advertiser, published by Anthony Henry in Halifax from 1769 to 1770.

Henry had taken over the Halifax Gazette when Bushell died in 1761. But then he lost his position as the local government’s preferred printer by opposing the Stamp Act of 1765. (Isaiah Thomas, who worked for Henry after skipping out on his apprenticeship in Boston, claimed he pushed his employer into political action. Thomas also sniffed that Henry printed “in a very indifferent manner.”)

For a few years Robert Fletcher enjoyed the government’s favor for his new Nova-Scotia Gazette. Copies of that paper can be read through the University of Toronto.

Anthony Henry’s Nova-Scotia Chronicle was thus the province’s first newspaper published without being sponsored by the province itself. When he started, Henry had only eighty subscribers.

In 1770, after Fletcher returned to Britain, Henry renamed his newspaper Nova Scotia Gazette and Weekly Advertiser, regaining semi-official status by default. He even became the King’s Printer in 1788. After Henry died in 1800, another Boston-trained printer, the Loyalist John Howe, took over. A version of that paper appears today as an official organ of the provincial government: Nova Scotia’s Royal Gazette.

Like other North American newspapers, the Nova-Scotia Chronicle was a weekly. Its pages were half the size of most other papers, but a typical issue contained eight pages instead of four. Without much local news that his readers hadn’t already heard, Henry printed lots of excerpts from British newspapers, as well as articles from the other North American ports.

Folks using the digital archive to track particular citations should bear in mind that Henry dated each issue by the full week it covered: “From TUESDAY September 26, to TUESDAY October 3, 1769,” for instance. Each paper was actually printed on the last date in that range, and the database dates each paper accordingly. However, sometimes authors have cited issues by the first date.

I digitally flipped through these pages hoping to find interesting coverage of the Boston Massacre, but Henry appears to have reprinted articles from the Boston newspapers without commentary. But then I stumbled across an interesting page I’d never read anywhere before.

TOMORROW: Character studies.

The Good Properties of Richard Lechmere

Back here, in introducing a letter by Richard Lechmere, I wrote about him as leaving his country estate in Cambridge after accepting a seat on the mandamus Council and moving into Boston.

Charles Bahne, Cambridge historian and good friend of the blog, commented:

I question whether Richard Lechmere ever lived in what is now called East Cambridge. Certainly he owned a lot of land there, much of it inherited from his in-laws, the Phips family, and then he bought more parcels from other Phips heirs. And from this we get the names of Lechmere's Point, Lechmere Square, Lechmere station, and, at one time, the Lechmere Sales chain of department stores.

But my understanding is that the Phips mansion standing on that land in East Cambridge hadn't been occupied for some years prior to Lechmere's inheritance, and I don't think he ever lived there himself. It was in a remote location with no easy access, often becoming an island at high tide.

The Cambridge residence I associate with Richard Lechmere was the Tory Row house on Brattle Street, which he built circa 1761. In 1771 Lechmere sold that house to Jonathan Sewall, who still owned it in 1774-75. About the same time, Lechmere bought an estate residence in Dorchester, from Thomas Oliver, who had moved to Cambridge shortly before that. But it appears that Lechmere only owned that Dorchester house for about eight months, before selling it to an Ezekiel Lewis, who in turn quickly resold it to John Vassall [Jr.], another Tory Row resident. (And as you know, John, the Vassall, Oliver, Lechmere, and Phips families were all intermarried with each other.)

Lechmere may have purchased the Dorchester property with the intent of moving there, but since he resold it so quickly, he may never have actually occupied the estate. I believe he may already have relocated to Boston itself by 1772 or so. (I remember reading that somewhere, but can't track the source down right now.) He did own a large distillery in Boston.

The fact that the Phips mansion in East Cambridge was vacant in 1775 may well have been a reason why Gen. [Thomas] Gage chose that isolated area as the landing place for the Concord expedition on April 18. With no nearby residents, there wouldn't be any nosy neighbors to notice the troops' arrival.

There’s no dispute that Richard Lechmere owned a lot of property when he left Massachusetts. On 13 Oct 1784 he applied to the Loyalists Commission, seeking compensation for his losses. The commission’s records discuss “his House in Boston,” “his farm at Cambridge,” part of “a great Distillery at Boston,” “some Land at Muscongus” in Maine, and “property at Bromfield [Brimfield] & Sturbridge.”

But where did Richard Lechmere live? Some of those properties were real-estate investments. He may have moved between a couple of houses seasonally. But where was his legal residence? I went looking for period sources.

Lechmere’s name (as well as others’) is still attached to his 1760s home on Brattle Street in Cambridge, shown above. But according to Cambridge historian Lucius Paige, Lechmere turned that property over to royal attorney general Jonathan Sewall on 10 June 1771.

The 17 May 1770 Boston News-Letter contains an advertisement for the Dorchester house that had belonged to Thomas Oliver. That ad directed inquiries to “Richard Lechmere, of Cambridge,” meaning he didn’t move to Dorchester, just owned the property there while still living in Cambridge.

On 22 Aug 1773 the Boston Evening-Post contains another advertisement for a house in Boston on Hanover Street, “lately in the Occupation of Jacob Royall, Esq; deceased.” That directs inquiries to “Richard Lechmere, of Boston.” So by that date Lechmere presented himself as back in the town of his birth, no longer a Cambridge resident.

According to James Henry Stark’s Loyalists of Massachusetts, the Boston real estate confiscated from Lechmere was a house, land, and distill-house on Cambridge Street. He may have moved there from Hanover Street, or the house in that second advertisement was another property he managed. Cambridge Street was probably where Richard Lechmere was living when he became a mandamus Councilor—already safe from actual Cambridge residents.

“Illuminating” Symposium in Williamsburg, 7 Dec.

On Saturday, 7 December, the Dr. Joseph Warren Foundation will present a symposium in Williamsburg, Virginia, on the theme of “Illuminating the Role of Six American Founders.” The day’s presentations will include:

Christian Di Spigna: “Founding Martyr: Dr. Joseph Warren, the American Revolution’s Lost Hero.” A Phi Beta Kappa graduate from Columbia University, Di Spigna wrote the Warren biography Founding Martyr and is the Executive Director of the Dr. Joseph Warren Foundation.

Edward G. Lengel, Ph.D.: “First Among Many Founders: George Washington Guides the Revolution to Victory.” For many years Lengel directed the Washington Papers Project. He has written fourteen books on different periods of American history, including General George Washington: A Military Life and Inventing George Washington.

Elizabeth Mauer: “There Were Founding Mothers Too: Martha Washington Supports the Revolution.” Maurer is the Chief of Programs & Education at the National Museum of the United States Army, having previously held various roles at Colonial Williamsburg, Mount Vernon, the National Women’s History Museum, and the D.E.A. Museum. She’s a former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Museum Education.

Gordon Steffey, Ph.D.: “‘Better known than acknowledged’: Richard Henry Lee and the American Cause.” Steffey is the Director of Research and of the Jessie Ball duPont Memorial Library at Stratford Hall. For nearly twenty years he taught at Randolph College in Lynchburg, Virginia, holding an endowed chair in Comparative Philosophy.

Bruce M. Venter, Ed.D.: “Rough-hewn and Enigmatic Founder: Ethan Allen Does Some Crazy Things.” President of America’s History, L.L.C., Venter organizes an annual conference on the American Revolution that’s considered the premier symposium for Revolutionary War enthusiasts, public historians, and scholars. He’s the author of The Battle of Hubbardton: The Rear-Guard Action that Saved America.

Stephen Wilson: “‘Give me liberty or give me death!’: One of America’s Most Important Speeches Celebrates its 250th Anniversary.” As Executive Director at the St. John’s Church Foundation, Wilson highlights the effect of Patrick Henry’s famous speech in that building on 20 Mar 1775.

This Founders Illuminated symposium will take place in the Williamsburg Regional Library Theatre starting at 9:00 A.M. The $95 registration fee includes lunch at the Hound’s Tale and snacks. For more information and to register, follow this link.

Though this event isn’t associated with Colonial Williamsburg, folks attending it will also be able to see that historic museum’s first Grand Illumination, or fireworks show, of the season.

More Light from the Portrait of Francis Williams

Earlier in the month I reported on Fara Dabhoiwala’s work on the portrait of Francis Williams based on two news articles.

I’ve now read Prof. Dabhoiwala’s own article in the London Review of Books, and he has even more to say.

About the painter:

The only oil painter known to have been active in Jamaica during these years was an Anglo-American artist called William Williams, who was then in his early thirties. This Williams, the son of an ordinary mariner, had been born in Bristol in 1727. He’d always loved to draw. Sent to sea as a youth, he abandoned his crew in Virginia and spent a few years knocking around the West Indies and Central America, sometimes living among Indians, learning their language and trying his luck as a painter for the local colonists.

Eventually, around 1747, he ended up in Philadelphia, where he worked for a theatre, painting sets and backdrops, and in a boatyard, painting ships, as well as doing sign-painting and lettering, teaching music, writing poetry and composing what is now regarded as the first American novel.

Though he was entirely self-taught, he also made landscapes and portraits; he collected engravings; he used a camera obscura as a drawing aid; he studied the lives of the great artists and wanted to be one himself. He was the earliest teacher of the young Benjamin West, who…in the 1770s commemorated his old mentor by including his likeness in one of his monumental historical canvases.

William Williams kept a list of every painting he ever made. The original doesn’t survive, but in the 19th century someone jotted down a summary of it. In the spring of 1760, Williams travelled from Philadelphia to Jamaica to offer his services as an artist. His list recorded that during his months in Jamaica, he painted 54 pictures. None of these has ever been found. I am confident that the portrait of Francis Williams is one of them.

There is in fact a scientific test that could prove this, because it has recently been discovered that William Williams prepared his canvases with a distinctive and very unusual triple layer of underpainting. I’m pressing the V&A [Victoria & Albert Museum] to undertake this new test as soon as possible.

Dabhoiwala also posits that the painting depicts not only the page in Newton’s Principia showing how to calculate the path of a comet but Halley’s comet itself. I’m not entirely convinced by this because the visual clues aren’t distinct. Then again, neither are comets a lot of the time. And the painter was definitely charting something in that portion of the canvas:

We can see that on the infrared scans of the picture. When William Williams made his first pencilled marks on this canvas, to plot the composition, he carefully ruled a series of lines to show where that white object in the sky should go – and to mark its relation to the constellations he was told to paint below. His sitter made sure of that, as he made sure of every other carefully placed detail in his portrait.

The portrait of Francis Williams is the only painting ever made of Halley’s comet in 1759, on its momentous first predicted return. 

“The Spies in Henry Barnes’s House” at Hingham, 17 Nov.

Yesterday I wrote about Ens. Henry DeBerniere, the young mapmaking army officer.

He turned up at Henry and Christian Barnes’s house in Marlborough on 1 Mar 1775, along with Capt. William Brown.

Those two officers were “The Spies in Henry Barnes’s House” that I’ll speak about on the afternoon of Sunday, 17 November, in the Hingham Historical Society’s Revisiting The American Revolution series.

Dr. Samuel Curtis will also show up in my talk, just as he showed up at the Barnes house that night, trying to ferret out information on DeBerniere and Brown. So he was spying, too.

I may even bring in Gib Speakman and Prince Demah because of their ties to the Barnes family, even though I can’t link them to events of that night.

Why, you might ask, am I delivering this talk in Hingham rather than in Marlborough, where all the action happened?

Because another player in that night’s drama was Chrisy Arbuthnot, an orphaned ten-year-old niece living with the Barneses. She had come to them from Hingham.

In addition, Prince Demah’s portraits of Henry and Christian Barnes are now among the treasures of the Hingham Historical Society.

Like other talks in this series, this presentation will be accessible in person and online, as part of the whole series or on its town. Admission (which isn’t cheap) helps to fund the society.

“There is one very bad place in this five miles”

A few days back, I linked again to a hand-drawn map at the Library of Congress that appears to be the work of Ens. Henry DeBerniere. The locations on that map match DeBerniere’s first spying trip to the west with Capt. William Brown in February 1775.

Gen. Thomas Gage had those two British officers make a second foray into the countryside starting on 20 March, this time to look for cannon and other military supplies in Concord.

We know the two officers went out to Concord on roads that appear on this map, as shown in the detail above. DeBerniere wrote:

We went through Roxbury and Brookline, and came into the main road between the thirteen and fourteen mile-stones in the township of Weston; we went through part of the pass at the eleven mile-stone, took the Concord road, which is seven miles from the main road.

But Brown and DeBerniere came back by a different route:

Mr. [Daniel] Bliss…told us he could shew us another road, called the Lexington road. We set out and crossed the bridge in the town, and of consequence left the town on the contrary side of the river to what we entered it. The road continued very open and good for six miles, the next five a little inclosed, (there is one very bad place in this five miles) the road good to Lexington.

You then come to Menotomy, the road still good; a pond or lake at Menotomy. You then leave Cambridge on your right, and fall into the main road a little below Cambridge, and so to Charlestown; the road is very good almost all the way.

That “Lexington road” doesn’t appear on the hand-drawn map. It’s possible that DeBerniere produced another map to show it. That would have been useful since that’s the road that Lt. Col. Francis Smith followed to Concord on 18–19 April and then withdrew along.

Donald L. Hafner of Boston College drew my attention to that omission when he left this comment to my recent posting:

It is unfortunate that the surviving map attributed to Ensign DeBerniere does not include the alternate route through Lexington and Menotomy that he and Capt William Brown took on their return to Boston, because it leaves a puzzle about where on that route was the "one very bad place" that DeBerniere describes in his written report to Gage. DeBerniere's sentence is a bit garbled, but he is referring to some location between Lexington and Menotomy center. A good guess would be those locations where the main road is hemmed in to the south by sharply-rising hills, and on the north by wetlands and the Mill Brook. A good candidate would be near the current Lexington/Arlington border. But that is just a guess. Are there better candidates that a soldier would describe as "one very bad place"?

DeBerniere wasn’t clear about where in Concord he started estimating distances, but it is about six miles from the center of Concord to Lexington common, and about five from Lexington common to the modern Arlington town hall. So that does suggest somewhere in the second stretch the officers judged the road “good” but “a little inclosed” with “one very bad place.” The area between Liberty Heights and the Mill Brook in east Lexington indeed seems to be the best candidate—about where Wicked Bagel sits, in fact.

Notably, Smith’s column had its worst experiences before reaching Lexington center at places like Merriam’s Corner, Elm Brook Hill, and the “Parker’s Revenge” site—other spots where the road turned and/or narrowed, but not so much as to make DeBerniere worry.

“You will have doubtless have an account of their surprizing Ticonderoga”

One striking feature of Richard Lechmere’s 22 May 1775 letter to Henry Seymour Conway, partially transcribed here, is how well informed the Loyalist merchant was about events outside besieged Boston.

Lechmere wrote to the British politician:

you will have doubtless have an account of their surprizing Ticonderoga in which Fort, there was upwards of One hundred pieces of Cannon, and some Mortars, these they are bringing down, and a Considerable train are expected to arrive from Providence to Morrow...

Col. Ethan Allen had led the takeover of Fort Ticonderoga on 10 May, only twelve days before. Lechmere not only had that news, but also an estimate of how many artillery pieces the rebels would find there.

Lechmere understood that ordnance was to be brought to the siege lines around Boston. The Massachusetts committee of safety’s orders for Col. Benedict Arnold also stated that possibility. It wasn’t some wild brainstorm of Henry Knox later in the year.

The letter also refers to “a Considerable train…from Providence.” On 8 May the Rhode Island government had commissioned John Crane as a captain of an artillery company. However, he brought only four small cannon to the siege lines. Those weren’t “Considerable,” even by Rhode Island standards, though they did double the number of brass artillery pieces available to the Continentals. Most artillery in Rhode Island was, I suspect, being held back for privateering.

But that wasn’t all Lechmere had heard about. He had heard news from Pennsylvania:

Mr. [Benjamin] Franklyn & General [Charles] Lee are Arriv’d at Philadelphia the former chosen a Delegate to the Congress & most probably the Latter may be appointed Generalissimo of the Rebel Army. Birds of a feather flock together

Lechmere probably had only a dim awareness, if any, of George Washington from Virginia. Lee, on the other hand, was a celebrated veteran of the British army who had come through Massachusetts the previous year. Lechmere wasn’t the only contemporary to mention him as a candidate to be commander-in-chief.

“You justly observe that he has a difficult card to play”

Yesterday I started quoting from Loyalist merchant Richard Lechmere’s 22 May 1775 letter about the beginning of the Revolutionary War, as transcribed and shared a few years ago at Heritage Auctions.

Lechmere was notably ambivalent about the performance of Thomas Gage as both commander of the British army in North America and royal governor of Massachusetts.

On the one hand, he thought the ministry in London was hamstringing Gage by not sending him enough troops and limiting his autonomy:

The fine friends of Government that are hear [sic] impatiently long, for the Arrival of the Troops from Ireland, The Marines and recruits are arriv’d about 1100 in all, when the others arrive we hope, the Rebels may be drove to some distance from the town, tho’ we have our fears that the General has not and will not have Sufficient power from the Minister to act offensively, we form this Opinion from what has (or rather has not) been done, ’tis a pity he had not discretionary powers, the want of this, has, and I fear will again produce some bad Consequences.

On the other hand, Lechmere suspected that Gage was holding his forces back. After describing the previous day’s fighting over Grape Island, the merchant wrote:

in the Hay Expedition ’tis said both the Troops and Schooners had orders not to Fire, this seems very strange, indeed there has been several instances of their firing upon Boats and their not returning it, these little attempts and not succeeding in them, give the Rebels great sprit, and I wish it may not have the opposite Effect upon the Troops, the General is one of the most humane good men that lives, and I wish his tenderness may not in the end hurt him, and the Cause, he feels and Pitys the distresses of the Country

In particular, Lechmere thought Gage had erred in not calling on his Council—a body that Lechmere himself had been appointed to.

As to the Council we have not been call’d together since I wrote you, nor it is it I believe the wish of any one member so to be, but I can’t help saying, the Gov.r miss’d the best Opportunity of having them recogniz’d by the People the day after the 19 April,

town Meeting was call’d with a design to choose a Committee to wait upon the Gov.r to Ask his Leave that the Inhabitants might remove out of town with their Effects, this Committee was [composed?] of the Select Men with the Addition of Mr [James] Bowdin as their Chairman, they went to the Governor towards Evening, and after being with him some time, he Consented that they might remove with their Effects, whenever they pleas’d,

it woul’d have been a lucky circumstance if he had said, he should as it was a matter of a civil nature consult his council, and in the Next day give his answer but unluckily he was in my poor opinion a little to precipitate, in giving his Answer immediately, and they have been constantly moving out every day since I really believe he has done this from good principles, because he could not render us more obnoxious than we were before but in this once instance, I think he was wrong.

you justly observe that he has a difficult card to play, but when he is invested with powers, I hope he will convince the Rebels that he does not want [courage?] to execute them

Gage did cancel permission for people to leave Boston and then negotiated an agreement that they would deposit their firearms with the selectmen at Faneuil Hall before reopening the gates. Naturally, people criticized him for both decisions.

TOMORROW: News from outside.

“I fear Great Brittain will find it difficult to subdue an extensive Continent”

Back in 2008, Heritage Auctions sold a letter from Richard Lechmere (1727–1814) commenting on the first month of the Revolutionary War.

Lechmere was a wealthy merchant, a King’s Chapel vestryman, and a steady supporter of the royal government. The ministers in London had named him to the mandamus Council in 1774. He took that office even though it meant leaving his estate in east Cambridge and moving into Boston.

It’s interesting, therefore, that Lechmere’s letter surfaced in a collection of papers owned by Henry Seymour Conway (1721–1795), a British Member of Parliament and sometime minister who usually opposed stringent measures against the colonies. While Lechmere was a clear “Tory” by Massachusetts standards, in London he might have been among the moderate Whigs who agreed that something had to be done about the colonial resistance but didn’t want the response to be too harsh.

Of course, the outbreak of war has a way of changing people’s outlooks. In this letter Lechmere wrote:

Blood must be shed, before the Colonies can be brought [to s]ubmission is sufficiently prov’d by the Event of 19 April, [it is] my opinion that large quantities must be spilt before the Continent can be reduc’d and indeed I think it a doubtfull matter, whether it can be ever be effected[.]

the Corsicans without resources gave the french a great deal of trouble by retiring into the Interior Country[.] if they were able to do there under those disadvantages, I fear Great Brittain will find it difficult to subdue an extensive Continent, full of people United in the same cause and abounding with every necessary to defend themselves, if they pursue the same method, as the Corsicans, which I believe to be their plan, and especially while Government move[s] so slow, as to give them time, from discipline, to become good soldiers,

we still remain Blockaded and the Rebels are fortifying every pass and Defile in the neighbourhood of the Town, they have strong and extensive lines at Cambridge and Batteries upon the Hills about Charelstown that command the Roads there[.]

Later Lechmere discussed the British military’s attempts to raid the countryside, starting in September 1774 with the “Powder Alarm”:

The Troops have been unsuccessful in a very late Attempt they have made (except removing the powder at Charlestown) by some means or other, the Rebels got intelligence of their intentions, as soon as the scheme is laid, and with their usual industry find means to prevent their Executing it, 250 Troops were sent to [Salem] to secure some Cannon, they got intellig[ence]…Revmo’d the Cannon, and pulled up the Drawbridge...

Yesterday they [the troops] went to Hingham with an Arm’d s[ch]ooner several Sloops and a number of Boats with thirty…Soldiers) to fetch away about 90 Tons of Hay, from an Island about 500 yards form the shore, the Rebels came down to the shore, fired upon them, wounded one or two men, and oblig’d them to return without the Hay...

That description of actions in the harbor matches the skirmish over Grape Island on 21 May. Together with other mentions of things that had happened, and lack of mentions of things that would happen later, that allowed Heritage to date this letter on 22 May 1775.

TOMORROW: Lechmere’s thoughts on Gov. Gage.

(The photo above shows, courtesy of Find a Grave, the memorial plaque for Richard and Mary Lechmere in Bristol Cathedral, where they are buried.)

Looking at Lexington and Concord through Eighteenth-Century Eyes

Last month Alexander Cain at Historical Nerdery announced a resource for people researching the Battle of Lexington and Concord ahead of next spring’s Sestercentennial: a list of links to eyewitness accounts of the day.

That listing will be very useful, and it can grow. Perforce these are texts that have been digitized in one way or another. I’m sure that more lurk within books, newspapers, and letters. It’s a matter of ferreting them out and/or digitizing them in usable forms.

For instance, here is the list’s link to Gen. Thomas Gage’s instructions to Lt. Col. Francis Smith for the march to Concord on 18–19 April.

We also have what appears to be Gage’s notes or first draft of those instructions, quoted in General Gage’s Informers (1932) by Allan French. A digital version of that book can be borrowed from the Internet Archive, at least for now. Look on pages 29–30.

Since the Massachusetts Historical Society has scanned merchant John Rowe’s diaries, we can see his response to the news coming into Boston here. A transcription of what a descendant thought were the most important parts of that diary was published a century ago. Among the details one can find only in the handwritten journal is that on 20 April Capt. John Linzee, R.N., dined and spent the evening at Rowe’s house after fending off an attack on his ship on the Charles River.

It’s possible to identify the sources of some anonymous accounts. One resource on the list, Ezekiel Russell’s “Bloody Butchery by the British Troops” broadside, includes text headlined “SALEM, April 25.” Those paragraphs commence: “LAST Wednesday, the nineteenth of April, the troops of his Britannic Majesty commenced hostilities upon the people of this province…”

The preceding paragraphs come with a source citation—not coincidentally, to Russell’s own Salem Gazette newspaper. But Russell didn’t give his competition publicity by revealing that he took the second and longer passage from Samuel Hall’s Essex Gazette for 25 April. That text was later imperfectly transcribed in Peter Force’s American Archives.

The 3 May Massachusetts Spy on the list includes an unsourced story about what happened “When the expresses [from Boston] got about a mile beyond Lexington.” That story matches one that William Dawes’s family recalled hearing from him, revealing that Dawes was probably printer Isaiah Thomas’s source.

Among the lately revealed visual resources is this hand-drawn map in the Library of Congress. I’m convinced by Ed Redmond’s hypothesis that Ens. Henry DeBerniere created this map ahead of the march to Concord. It thus offers a look at what British army officers knew of the countryside west of Boston. (I discussed details of that map starting here.)

TOMORROW: A source from May 1775.

Helping to Shape Two Gifts for Revolutionary History Fans

I autograph copies of my book The Road to Concord for people who order through The History List. Sometimes I also help out polishing the details of its products for fans of the American Revolution.

One of the recent items I advised on is this handsome portrait of the handsome Carpenters’ Hall in Philadelphia by artist and calligrapher Larry Stuart. It’s available as a print, a tea towel, and a magnet.

Two hundred fifty years ago this year, Carpenters’ Hall hosted the Continental Congress. That body was later renamed the First Continental Congress since a follow-up gathering at the nearby Pennsylvania State House ended up lasting for years and overshadowing its namesake. (So much so that that building is now Independence Hall.)

That created a challenge for how to explain the historic significance of what happened in Carpenters’ Hall in 1774. Conveying the mindset of that year meant not reading the First Continental Congress through the lens of the Second. Thus, we usually think the first Congress had delegates from twelve of the “thirteen colonies,” but there were open invitations to more than thirteen, and thirteen didn’t become a meaningful number for another few years.

Likewise, it seemed important to describe the First Continental Congress not as laying the groundwork for independence but as trying to resolve the dispute with Britain while avoiding independence and/or war. I found a quotation from the Congress’s address to the people of Great Britain which summed up the message of 1774:

Permit us to be as free as yourselves, and we shall ever esteem a union with you to be our greatest glory and our greatest happiness

(Of course, in the original eighteenth-century prose, that’s only a fragment of a much longer sentence.)

In addition, The History List just announced its advent calendar, conceived by proprietor Lee Wright.

This calendar counts down the days to 25 December because that was the night Gen. George Washington launched the attack on the Crown forces at Trenton, crossing the Delaware as depicted in the main image. Each window in that picture opens to a new image of some object associated with that event.

For this item, I drafted a brief description of how December 1776 was going for Washington. (Not well.) 

I don’t see any money from my little contributions to History List products, but every so often I do get ice cream.