J. L. BELL is a Massachusetts writer who specializes in (among other things) the start of the American Revolution in and around Boston. He is particularly interested in the experiences of children in 1765-75. He has published scholarly papers and popular articles for both children and adults. He was consultant for an episode of History Detectives, and contributed to a display at Minute Man National Historic Park.

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Wednesday, January 22, 2025

“The bill for laying a duty on goods, wares, and merchandises”

As I wrote yesterday, on 5 May 1789 the new U.S. House faced the text of its first major bill: a schedule of tariffs on various imported goods.

Tariffs within the British Empire had been a huge issue in the years leading up to the Revolutionary War. Colonial merchants had to pay those taxes when their goods were landed.

Though that money went into the central government’s coffers, and therefore theoretically benefited all British subjects, American importers and politicians had complained vociferously.

Of course, since tariffs were an established way for governments to raise money, a number of the states instituted their own import taxes during and after the war. The U.S. Constitution assigned that power to the national government alone, with the requirement that they be equal in every port. But how much tax should the U.S. of A. collect?

Over the next several days, the House kept making itself into a committee of the whole to consider the proposal. More petitions arrived from domestic manufacturers, pushing for higher tariffs. On 16 May the House finally voted, 41–8, to approve the “bill for laying a duty on goods, wares, and merchandises, imported into the United States.”

Nearly a month later, on 12 June, Samuel Allyne Otis, secretary of the U.S. Senate, came to tell the House that that chamber had also passed the bill on duties, but “with sundry amendments.” Over the next two weeks there was a lot of back and forth. The Senate reported which amendments it would “recede” from and which it would insist on. The House approved a conference committee. At last, on 29 June Otis reported that the Senate acceded to the House’s last two proposed amendments.

Congress had reached agreement on a major bill—it had never done that before! Just to be sure, on 1 July the House created a small committee “to examine the enrolled bill” to be sure the text was accurate and ready for signature by the leaders of the two chambers.

The next day, Speaker Frederick Muhlenberg (shown above) signed the document. On 3 July, a joint committee presented it to the President. And on the already symbolic date of the Fourth of July, George Washington signed the first substantial legislation of the first U.S. Congress. It’s now called the Tariff Act of 1789.

But Congress still hadn’t established how to collect those duties.

TOMORROW: Following up.

Tuesday, January 21, 2025

“Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises”

The U.S. Constitution, in Article I, Section 7, states:
All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.
The next section begins:
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises,…but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;…
Under that Constitution, men elected to the U.S. House of Representatives met for the first time on 4 Mar 1789. They quickly saw they didn’t have a quorum. Those men gathered six days a week until 1 April, when finally enough Representatives arrived.

For the next couple of weeks, the House got itself organized: electing a speaker (Frederick Muhlenberg), choosing a clerk and other staff, establishing an oath of office, and composing rules. On 6 April members participated in counting the electoral votes. (Spoiler: George Washington won.)

On Wednesday, 8 April, the House “resolved itself into a Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union.” That bland language meant the legislators were taking themselves off the official record in order to discuss something that could be controversial—in this case, those import duties that the Constitution empowered them to enact. This was the first substantial issue the House took up, the first potential law that affected more than the workings of the government itself.

According to Debates in Congress, compiled decades later, Rep. James Madison of Virginia was first to speak on this subject “of the greatest magnitude.” He suggested starting with the “propositions made on this subject by Congress in 1783,” at least as “the temporary system.”

Madison read off the list of imported goods that the Continental Congress proposed should be taxed. Elias Boudinot of New Jersey endorsed that proposal. The next day, John Laurance of New York argued that an across-the-board duty would be easier and quicker than enumerating what to tax and how much. But there was general agreement that the federal government should start collecting import duties.

Meanwhile, messages started to come in from interest groups: manufacturers in Baltimore, shipwrights in Charleston, and so on. Domestic manufacturers wanted higher tariffs to help their businesses. Merchants wanted lower tariffs to keep down their costs. Ship builders and owners wanted preferential treatment for American vessels. As for consumers, who would ultimately pay higher prices, they weren’t really organized.

On 28 April, a House committee proposed a series of duties on various imported commodities and goods, from Jamaica rum and cheese to millinery and walking-sticks. There were higher tariffs on distilled spirits from “any State or Kingdom not in alliance with the United States” and on teas brought in on ships owned by foreigners. On 5 May, the committee presented the text of a law to enact those duties.

Tariffs have thus been part of American legislation from the beginning of the federal government—even before, considering how Madison was calling on a precedent from the preceding Congress. Those taxes were in fact the main source of revenue for the national government for many decades. But the first Congress understood two things:
  • As revenue measures, those tariffs had to originate in the House, not be imposed by the executive.
  • Imposing tariffs required discussion and careful balancing of the benefits and costs.
TOMORROW: Making law.

Monday, January 20, 2025

John Pope “removed from his late habitation”

It’s possible to follow cancer specialist John Pope’s travels during the Revolutionary War through his advertisements in newspapers.

There was a class of itinerant healers in early America, particularly dentists like John Baker. But Pope had lived in Boston before the war. Not only did he have a family and a Quaker faith community in Boston, but his reputation was strong enough that he didn’t have to go looking for patients; hopeful people came to him.

The siege of Boston disrupted that, sending Pope out to Mendon in the middle of 1775, as mentioned yesterday.

After the British military evacuated Boston in March 1776, Dr. Pope might have returned there, but he didn’t stay. Instead, on 6 July he ran this ad in the Providence Gazette:
The Public are hereby informed, that JOHN POPE who of late Years hath been much noted in curing malignant ULCERS, and inveterate CANCERS, having by Reason of the distressed Situation of the Town of Boston, his native Home, removed into the Country, now resides at Smithfield, near Woonsoket Falls, Rhode-Island Government.
On 22 July Dr. Pope made the same announcement in the Boston Gazette, adding “scrofulous Tumours” to the list of things he was known to cure. Those were swelling in the neck produced by an infection of the lymph nodes, often involving tuberculosis. Since Americans no longer had access to the king’s touch, they need a domestic scrofula cure.

Two years later, on 7 May 1778, Pope told readers of the Independent Chronicle that he had “removed from his late habitation, into Lincoln, at Humphry Farrar’s and expects soon to fix himself in the south of Concord.” Farrar (1741–1816) had mustered in his militia company during the Lexington Alarm and the push onto the Dorchester peninsula. He later moved to Hanover, New Hampshire.

Five more years, and on 22 May 1783 Dr. Pope returned to the Independent Chronicle to announce his new home as “Lynn, Essex County, Massachusetts State, near the Friends Meeting-House.” This ad then added:
He has for sale, at a small Price for the Cash, in the South corner of Concord, about two acres of excellent Land; with some fruit Trees, a well of Water, a small upright House and two other small Buildings; situate very suitable for a Blacksmith, or a good Shoe-Maker.
Folks interested in the property could inquire of a neighbor, Amos Hosmer (1734–1810). Having experience from the previous war, Hosmer had been made a sergeant and then lieutenant in the Middlesex County militia.

Pope’s stay in Lynn wasn’t long, either. On 17 Sept 1785 the Massachusetts Centinel told readers:
John Pope,
Who for 18 years past has been noted for curing Cancers, scrophulous Tumors, fetid and phagedonic Ulcers, &c. has removed into a house, the North corner of Orange and Hollis Street, south end, Boston, Where he proposes to open a school for Reading, Writing, Arithmetick, Surveying, Navigation, Mensuration of superfices and solids, practical Gauging, &c, and an Evening School the 19th inst. [i.e., of this month]
Dr. Pope had finally returned to “his native Home,” and he stayed there until his death in 1796.

[The picture above shows a section on “Mensuration of Superficies” from Nicolas Pike’s A New and Complete System of Arithmetic, Composed for the Use of the Citizens of the United States, published out of Newburyport in 1788.]

Sunday, January 19, 2025

“Going to Mendon to put himself under the Care of Dr. Pope”

Yesterday we left Mary Forbes, wife of the Rev. Eli Forbes of Gloucester, being treated in Boston by the cancer specialist John Pope for a tumor in her breast in the spring of 1775.

On 15 April, news came that the lump “came out in a Body, near of the Bigness and Shape of a Sheeps Kidney.”

It’s not clear whether the Forbeses were still in Boston when the war began four days later. If so, they still had access to Dr. Pope, but he might not have had the materials to make his medicines. And of course there were the dangers of attack and starvation.

The Forbeses may have left just before the war began or soon after, but in any case they were in the countryside by June. So was Dr. Pope. On 30 June Mary’s father, the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman, wrote in his diary:
My Daughter Forbes goes to Mendon in search of her Doctor, Pope: her Breast has Twinges, and she wants some of his [??] salve.
On 19 July, Isaiah Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy, now relocated to Worcester, published this notice:
This is to inform the public, that John Pope who of late years hath been much noted for curing inveterate Cancers, and the most malignant Ulcers at Boston, hath by reason of the deplorable situation of that town removed to Mendon, where any who want his assistance may by enquiring at George Aldrich’s of said Mendon find the place of his Residence.
Aldrich (1715–1797) was a Quaker, son of a prominent Quaker preacher.

On 13 September, Parkman reported on a sermon, adding: “Mr. Forbes [and Mrs. Forbes?] (having been to Dr. at Mendon about her Breast) came.” 

Pope continued to have a reputation as a healer, and on 17 Feb 1776 the minister wrote: “Mr. Edwards Whipple here. He has a Cancer on his Lip—is going to Mendon to put himself under the Care of Dr. Pope—and desires public prayers tomorrow for him.”

However, by that time Mary Forbes was dead. On 19 January her father wrote:
Billy comes from Concord—with The Heavy News, and Letter from my dear son Forbes! Of my most dear Child Mary’s Departure on the 16th at Eve, between 9 and 10 o’Clock! O Lord, Help!
Mary Forbes was fifty years old when she died.

The Rev. Eli Forbes married three more times, and his last wife was Mary’s younger sister Lucy, who by that time was widow of the military engineer Jeduthan Baldwin.

TOMORROW: John Pope’s travels.

(The picture above shows Gloucester’s first meetinghouse as depicted by Fitz Henry Lane.)

Saturday, January 18, 2025

“To consult him on her Sad Case, of her Breast”

Here’s another clergyman’s account of how John Pope, a cancer specialist, treated a patient in pre-Revolutionary Boston.

These extracts come from the diary of the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman of Westborough, which is all transcribed and analyzed at its own website. These extracts were found and organized by Ross W. Beales, Jr., Professor Emeritus at Holy Cross, and his colleagues.

Parkman knew of John Pope by May 1772, when he wrote of “Mr. Smith being at Boston under the operations of Mr. Pope (a Quaker) for the Cure of his Cancer.”

However, Pope’s skills became personal when Parkman’s oldest daughter Mary (Molly), who had married the Rev. Eli Forbes (1726–1804, show here) of Gloucester in 1752, developed some form of breast cancer.

On 10 Jan 1775, Parkman wrote in his diary:
My Son Forbes and his Wife came from Cape Ann, but last from Mr. Brooks’s at Medford.... My Daughters Trouble in her Breast somewhat mitigated, by Methods used by Friend Pope of Boston. Thanks to the Supreme Healer!
The month of March brought lots of news, not all good.
[13 March:] Mr. Forbes and my Daughter Set out on their Journey to Boston, designing to go to Mr. Pope, to consult him on her Sad Case, of her Breast. . . .

[22 March:] A Second Letter from my Son Forbes at Boston, that his Wife has gone through a Second Dressing by the hard Plaister and “by appearance these two have en[crusted?] the Schirrous Tumor about 1/4 of an inch. This dead mass must be separated from the live Flesh by digestive lenient Dressings before another hard Dressing is applyed: which will require a Week or ten Days.” . . .

[24 March:] Received another Letter from Mr. Forbes, dated the 20th…that “moment” whilst She was actually “under the painfull Operation of the 2d hard Plaister, and is as full of pain as She can well bear, though She endures (he writes) with more patience and fortitude than I feared. The Doctor says all Things work very kindly, and he doubts not with the Blessing of God he shall be able to effect a Cure: but will require some time, at least two Months.

[“]At present she is extremely agitated. Last Night she had no sleep, and this Night (Sabbath 2 o’Clock) She has been much worse -- but by the help of an Anodyne she gets a little sleep—hope She will be supported and carryed through—I am encouraged, but verily Sir, it is hard Work—and we hope in God.”

“Six o’Clock in the Morning. We have got through the Night. It has been pritty distressing, though through the great Goodness of God mine and your dear Molly has had several refreshing Naps of Sleep, and is now Comfortable—and does not expect to have any more of these hard Plaisters for a Week or ten Days, and I hope the worst is past. However, Sufficient to the Day is the Evil thereof.” . . .

[28 March:] Put up at [Joshua] Bracketts [tavern]: hastened to Samuels to see Mrs. Forbes. She was under the lenient Plaister—was calm and easy. I saw the sore dressed. . . .

[29 March:] Mrs. Forbes has Comfort, and is cheerfull. We lodged there.
Parkman went home, so the next news came by post on 15 April:
A Letter from Mr. Forbes (by Ripley, who is come to us from Boston and Cambridge) that on the 13th the Remainder of the Cancer in my Daughters Breast came out in a Body, near of the Bigness and Shape of a Sheeps Kidney—the Breast in an healing way. All Praise and Thanks to the glorious God our Healer!
Four days later, war broke out, cutting off Boston from the countryside.

TOMORROW: Can this patient be saved?

Friday, January 17, 2025

“The Judge supposes he is possessed of the secret”

Before returning to Dr. John Newman, I’ll share some other sources on the treatment of cancers in New England on the eve of the Revolutionary War.

In January 1773, the Massachusetts judge Peter Oliver went to Rhode Island to serve on the royal commission investigating the attack on H.M.S. Gaspée.

Politically the Rev. Ezra Stiles was opposed to Oliver and the inquiry, but he was still polite enough to host the man.

On 11 January, Stiles wrote in his diary:
This Afternoon the hon. Judge Oliver came to drink Tea with me and spent the Evening at my house in Company with Mr. [Robert?] Stevens, Major [Jonathan] Otis and Dr. Jabez Bowen of Providence.

The Judge told us that his Wife had been last year cured of a Cancer in her Neck of 30 years standg. by a young man Mr. [John] Pope of Boston. . . .

His remedy is a secret, but he explained the operation of it to Mr. Oliver in a philosophical Manner, though Mr. Pope is not a man of Letters nor does he make pretension to any other part of Medicine or Surgery.
Peter and Mary (Clarke) Oliver’s son Peter (1741–c. 1831) was a respectable sort of doctor: upper-class, male, practicing standard medicine for his time. Nonetheless, Mary sought treatment from John Pope.

How good that treatment was over the long term is another question. Mary Oliver died on 24 Mar 1775 at the age of sixty-one. Among the pictures of Judge Oliver is one, reproduced above, showing the man mourning at his wife’s grave. It’s one of the rare portraits from the time of a person displaying strong emotion.

Stiles wrote down some of Oliver’s other medical remarks in 1773:
The Judge said that the late Mr. Little of Plymouth found an absolute Remedy for the Quincy, called white Drops, and offered me the Receipt. I suppose it the same as Dr. Bartlets which is only volatile Sp[iri]ts. as Hartshorn or Salarmoniac mixed with Oyl Olive. . . .

The Judge knew an illiterate physician to cure his (the Judge’s) Negro of a bilious Colic or perhaps the Illiac passion in a few Minutes—but would not disclose his Remedy. But the Judge supposes he is possessed of the secret, though that physician died without communicating it even to his own son. For being on the Circuit of the Superior Court in the Co. of York he found a Countryman to the Eastward [i.e., in Maine] who had a Cure for the bilious Colic, which Dr. Lyman had proved infallible in 100 instances.

The Judge bought it of the Man for 30. and it was only the Root of Meadow Flags, or Flower de Luce. Not every flag—but such only whose Root was flat with prongs—that flag root which was surrounded with bushy Fibres will not answer.
The most common name for those flowers today is wild iris.

Thursday, January 16, 2025

Amar’s Constitutional Conversation Continues in Concord, 16 Jan.

On Thursday, 16 January, the Concord Museum will host Akhil Reed Amar, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, speaking on the U.S. Constitution.

Amar’s books include The Bill of Rights (1998), America’s Constitution (2005), America’s Unwritten Constitution (2012), and The Words That Made Us: America’s Constitutional Conversation, 1760–1840 (2021).

The event description says:
Uniting history and law through the biggest constitutional questions early Americans confronted, Professor Amar discusses the formative decades of the Constitution after its ratification and its resonance today. As Professor Amar notes, our national “constitutional conversation continues” to this day “in courtrooms, classrooms, newsrooms, family rooms and everywhere in between.”
A couple of years ago, however, Gregory Ablavsky wrote in the Michigan Law Review that Amar’s description of that “constitutional conversation” is too limited:
He focuses much of the book around the idea of a “constitutional conversation,” a cacophonous and capacious dialogue that encompassed many Anglo-Americans. Unfortunately, his account of that conversation quickly collapses to the views of a handful of too-familiar figures—a cramped vision that reads backward our own sometimes narrow constitutional conversation privileging a clubby legal elite oriented around the Supreme Court. Democracy, “America,” and “the people” all feature prominently here, but only as abstractions that get seen but not heard. This is a notably undemocratic history of democracy.

For over a generation, historians have offered a different version of the constitutional conversation—one that is fuller and more inclusive, highlighting the many ways that the actual people accessed and shaped constitutional law. . . . The point of this approach is not more inclusiveness to serve current sensibilities; it is that a diverse range of actors and arguments mattered. They shaped law. Often, the “Big Six [Founders]” were reacting more than acting. . . .

None of this is to fault Amar for not writing a different book. It is to fault him for failing to write the book that he claims he did write, about the early republic’s constitutional conversation. Without much evidence, he announces his conclusory, if regretful, finding that the views of those outside the room didn’t matter, thereby echoing past generations who labored so hard to ignore these voices. . . .

Why not instead have a constitutional history that reflects the pluralism that Amar acknowledges? People with “myriad ethnic backgrounds” and “ideologies” were already present at the beginning, sharing a continent and a nation. They might not all have been at the Constitutional Convention or in [George] Washington’s cabinet, but as Amar argues, “America” was: the document’s drafters were keenly aware of the complex nation that they sought to govern.
That offers plenty to think about.

This event starts at 7:00 P.M. Tickets for seats at the Concord Museum are free for members, $10 for the public. People can also register to watch online for free.

Wednesday, January 15, 2025

Gabrielson on 18th-Century Media Literacy in Newton, 16 Jan.

On Thursday, 16 January, Historic Newton and the Newton Free Library will present Michele Gabrielson speaking on “18th-Century Media Literacy and Bias.”

The event description says:
Media and information literacy are essential 21st-century skills in order to be an informed citizen. These are also skills that, when applied in a historical context, help us become better historians. In this discussion, we will analyze perspective, language and bias in 18th-century newspapers with a critical lens to learn how news was consumed in Colonial America.
Michele Gabrielson is a local history teacher and historic interpreter of the 18th century. The Massachusetts History Alliance gave her its 2024 Rising Star Award for Public History her programming titled “The Revolutionary Classroom,” and the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati just honored her with its 2025 Frederick Graham Award for Excellence in Teaching.

When she is not teaching in the classroom, Gabrielson offers talks, tours, and demonstrations at historic sites around Boston. She specializes in interpreting the stories of women printers, Loyalist refugees, and chocolate makers. Most recently, Gabrielson has started building a detailed first-person impression of playwright, poet, and historian Mercy Warren.

Gabrielson is a member of the Authenticity Standards Committee for Minute Man National Historic Park and the coordinator of Battle Road Guides for the annual reenactment of the Battle of Lexington and Concord. I’ve had the pleasure of working alongside her at reenactments of the Boston Tea Party and Boston Massacre as well as last September’s “Powder Alarm” commemoration.

This free event is scheduled to start at 7:00 P.M. in the library’s Druker Auditorium.

Tuesday, January 14, 2025

Online Talk about Henry Pelham and His Map, 15 Jan.

On Wednesday, 15 January, the National Parks of Boston, in partnership with the Boston Public Library, will present a virtual lecture on the topic “Mapping a City Under Siege: Henry Pelham.”

The event description says:
In 1775, Henry Pelham, aspiring artist and half-brother of the famed John Singleton Copley, found himself inside a city under siege. A loyalist with ample time and nowhere to go, Pelham gained permission from the British military to map the war developing around him. Though many other engineers mapped Boston in 1775 and 1776, Pelham’s artistic eye and intimate loyalist connections resulted in something unparalleled in how it depicts the landscape of the first chapter of a civil war. Today, his work is immensely valuable in helping us understand and reconstruct a Boston under siege 250 years ago.
The N.P.S. ethos apparently precludes naming who on the interpretive staff will speak about this map, but of course the agency has high standards for accuracy.

This Zoom program begins at 6:00 P.M. Anyone who registers can tune in for free.

For more on places that appear Henry Pelham’s map of Boston, and how they appear today, check out the sunny video I made with Lee Wright of The History List.

To tie this event together with my talk at Gore Place on Sunday, in the summer of 1788 the painter and paint merchant Samuel Gore was advertising:
A few elegant Plans of Boston, and its environs, including Milton, Dorchester, Roxbury, Brookline, Cambridge, Medford, Charlestown, parts of Malden and Chelsea, with the military works constructed in those places, in the years 1775 and 76, by Mr. H. PELHAM.
That was shortly after Samuel’s father John Gore had returned from Loyalist exile, probably bringing the first copies of Pelham’s siege map to be sold in Boston. The Gore and Copley/Pelham families had done business before the war, and they did business after the war, too.

Monday, January 13, 2025

“Growing Up in the Gore Family” in Waltham, 19 Jan.

On Sunday, 19 January, I’ll speak at Gore Place in Waltham on “Growing Up in the Gore Family: Class and Conflict in Revolutionary Boston.”

That estate was built by Christopher and Rebecca-Payne Gore in the early republic after they returned from a diplomatic mission. Christopher had made his fortune as an early corporate lawyer, setting up some of the region’s first large industrial companies.

Among those companies was a glass factory co-owned by Christopher’s older brother Samuel and their twice-over brother-in-law Jonathan Hunewell. That factory supplied the glass for the mansion’s first windows.

But I’m going to talk about the American Revolution before America’s Industrial Revolution. As the event description says:
Christopher Gore grew up in a family on the verge of entering Boston’s genteel class. The Gores were active in the Revolutionary resistance—organizing protests at Liberty Tree, hosting spinning bees for Daughters of Liberty, and even being hurt in a riot before the Boston Massacre. But as that conflict heated up, Christopher’s father chose to side with the royal government and left America in 1776. This talk explores the difficult choices that one family worked through.
If that sounds staid, rest assured there’s bloodshed, bigamy, effigies, and weapons theft along the way.

This event is scheduled to start at 3:00 P.M. After we’re done with questions, attendees will have a chance to walk through the mansion. The cost is $10, free to Gore Place members and through Card to Culture. Reserve tickets through this link.

Sunday, January 12, 2025

“He continues, with his usual Success, to carry on his Operations”

The Newport Mercury advertisement I quoted yesterday was just the start of a campaign extolling Dr. John Newman’s cancer cure.

On 3 May, another letter appeared in the newspaper addressed to printer Henry Barber and signed by “Your Constant Readers.” This listed ten more Rhode Islanders who had been cured in the last two months, eight from Newport plus one each from Bristol and North Kingston.

On 28 June, “A Friend to Mankind” reported:
Mr. Benjamin Blossom of Massachusetts State, was sorely afflicted with a Cancer, seated near the eye; which extended itself round both his eye-lids; its progress had been so rapid that the eye-lashes were eaten off, insomuch that in the opinion of good judges it was thought incurable.

However, he applied to the said Doctor, who by his method of cure, in ten days fully extracted the Cancer, without giving the least pain or inconvenience to the eye.
That might have been Benjamin Blossom (1722–1797) of Dartmouth or his son, Benjamin, Jr. (1753–1837), of Fairhaven.

The longest letter yet appeared on 6 September. It was signed “D.G.,” but the writer identified himself (or herself) as the writer of previous “observations on the conduct of Doctor JOHN NEWMAN” published in the paper.

This letter added three more people to the list of Newman’s patients: “Col. Ebenezer Sprout, of Middleborough, Massachusetts State”; “Mr. Elihu Robertson, of Elizabeth Islands, Massachusetts State”; and “Mrs. Parker, her place of residence I have forgot.”

According to the letter, the Middleborough man “had a Cancer, which had eaten out one of his eyes, two years before he applied for relief: entirely extracted and will soon be effectually cured.” This could be the militia colonel Ebenezer Sproat, who would die in 1786, or his namesake son (shown above), a former Continental Army officer who would help to lead the settlement of Marietta, Ohio, where he died in 1805. Reportedly the Shawnee called the younger man “Hetuck,” meaning “eye of the buck deer/buckeye,” but authors connect that to his height rather than the prominence of his eyes.

“D.G.” closed by saying: “I am not intimately acquainted with the Doctor, but as his reputation for humanity seems generally acknowledged, I must own I have a great partiality in his favour.” Frankly, I can’t help suspecting that Newman wrote all those letters himself.

Newman himself spoke out in yet another letter dated 22 November:
For the Benefit of the Public.

DOCTOR JOHN NEWMAN advertises his Removal from his former Place of Residence in the Ferry Wharf-Lane, to the House No. 113, in Louis-Street, at the Sign of the Pestle and Mortar: Where he continues, with his usual Success, to carry on his Operations in the Cure of the Cancer, and other Disorders incident to the human Body:

And in a more particular Manner, has discovered a new and safe Method for the Cure of the Venereal Disease, which he accomplishes in Six Days (provided the Patient adheres to his Advice) without the least Inconvenience—and takes this fresh Opportunity of acknowledging to the Public the many Favours received by their most obliged Servant.
I can’t help noting that only the first Newport Mercury letter about Dr. Newman, published the month after the legislature lowered his sentence for corresponding with the enemy, stated that he would offer his cure for free to anyone who couldn’t pay.

COMING UP: The cure from Fort Pitt.

Saturday, January 11, 2025

“Lately discovered a late method”

Yesterday’s posting left Dr. John Newman in the fall of 1782, convicted of corresponding with the British enemy by traveling from Newport, Rhode Island, to New York City without approval from American authorities that August.

Newman responded by appealing to the state legislature. His petition declared:
that he is very sorry for his offence; that he has a numerous family, which is much distressed by his confinement; that the fine imposed on him is far beyond his ability to pay, and therefore prayed that he may be liberated and discharged.
Most important, Dr. Newman had developed a following—patients who believed in his medical knowledge and ability to deliver patent medicines from Britain. Indeed, a pharmaceutical shopping trip might have been why he went to New York.

The Rhode Island legislature acknowledged that situation this way: “a number of respectable inhabitants of Newport have requested the interposition of this Assembly for the relief of the said John Newman.”

Therefore, in February 1783 the assembly passed a special law:
It is voted and resolved, that the said John Newman be, and he is hereby, ordered to be discharged from gaol, on the payment of costs attending his prosecution, conviction and confinement; that the said fine be remitted to him; that he give bond for his good behavior for the space of one year, and that said bond be lodged in the hands of the attorney general.
The Treaty of Paris was still not signed. The British military still held New York, Charleston, and Savannah. But Rhode Islanders were ready to forgive visiting with the enemy if some hard-to-find medicines came out of it.

The next month saw the start of what looks like a public-relations campaign to show Dr. Newman serving the new republic. The 15 March Newport Mercury, published by Solomon Southwick and Henry Barber, included this item:
Mr. BARBER,
By inserting the following advertisement in your next Mercury, which is designed for public benefit, you will greatly oblige some of
YOUR CONSTANT READERS.

WE the subscribers, having for a long time past (one of us for 14 years) been sorely afflicted with that fatal disorder, the CANCER, which has made such ravages among the human species, whereby the lives of such, who have been therewith infected, have frequently become a burthen to themselves and friends; do, from motives of humanity, make this public declaration to the world—

that having made other attempts to affect a cure of the Cancer, to no purpose; and having heard that Dr. JOHN NEWMAN, now residing in this Town, had lately discovered a late method, by killing or extracting the Cancer wholly, from the various parts infected, without having recourse to the common custom of cutting and mangling the body, which so often proves ineffectual, we applied to the said Doctor for relief, who, by the blessing of God on his endeavours, has, most wonderfully extracted the Cancer from each of us, and do now enjoy as perfect a state of health as we have been accustomed to for some years past.——

In witness whereof we subscribe our names, in Newport, this 14th of March, 1783.
JAMES TEW,
SAMUEL NICHOLS,
LUCINA LANGLEY.

N.B. Such persons whose circumstances will not afford paying for the cure, the said Doctor, we understand, will administer to them gratis.
The thumbnail image above links to Gauvin Alexander Bailey’s photograph of the Samuel Nichols house in Newport, built around 1760. It’s part of Prof. Bailey’s Colonial Architecture Project, sharing photos of European colonial architecture around the world. An 1883 photo of Lucina Langley’s small house, now gone, can be viewed here at Lost New England.

As for James Tew, he died in February 1784, less than a year after writing about the efficacy of Dr. John Newman’s cancer treatment. To be sure, he was seventy-two.

TOMORROW: More cases.

Friday, January 10, 2025

“He has by him a large Quantity of Patent Medicines”

Yesterday’s posting introduced the character of John Newman, a doctor from Rhode Island who came to Salem in 1790 to treat cancer patients.

The earliest glimpse of this man that I’ve found is from 1777, when he bought land in Newport. In the following years, Newman built a house on that land, which in 1782 he sold to the William Terrett, a British-born maker of leather breeches and gloves.

As of 2003, the Magazine Antiques stated that that house still stood, albeit at a different location in Newport. But Google Street View is showing me a vacant spot at that address.

It’s significant that when Newman bought and built his house, the British military held Newport.

Our next sighting of the man is an ad in the 13 July 1782 Newport Mercury:
Dr. JOHN NEWMAN,
Living in Ferry Wharf Lane, informs the Public, that he has by him a large Quantity of Patent Medicines, such as

GENUINE Turlington’s Balsam of Life, Elixir Salutis, Hill’s Balsam of Honey, Hooper’s Pills, Anderson’s Scots ditto, the Essence of Pepper Mint, best of Rose’s Teeth Powder, with Brushes, and Essence of Pearl for cleaning the Teeth and preventing the Scurvy; also, an elegant Assortment of Perfumery for the Ladies, with a variety of other Articles too tedious to be enumerated in a News Paper.

N.B. Said Newman extracts Teeth with giving but very little Pain; also cures the venereal Disease, by a Method lately found out, without the Patient’s altering his or her way of living, or taking any Mercury, and the cure perfected in a very short Time.
Those medications had been invented in Britain. Hooper’s Female Pills and Turlington’s Balsam, for instance, had received their royal patents in 1743 and 1744, respectively. Dr. John Hill was still active in Britain, marketing his Balsam of Honey.

Since the U.S. of A. was still at war with Britain 1782, how was Newman obtaining “GENUINE” supplies of all these medications?

In September, the state charged Newman with leaving Newport on 1 August without authorization and going to British-occupied New York. He was “convicted of an illicit correspondence with the enemy, and sentenced to be fined and imprisoned.”

TOMORROW: Pleading his cases.

Thursday, January 09, 2025

“Capt Chever who submitted to the Plaster of the Cancer Doctor”

Here’s another glimpse of cancer and its treatment from Massachusetts in 1790.

On 28 April, the Rev. William Bentley of Salem wrote in his diary:
A Mr. Newman has appeared, who is celebrated for his success in Cancers. The Physicians allow that he has wrought strange effects upon a Mrs. [Sarah] Sheheen, & he has undertaken for Capt S. Chever, & others. He allows merit in his own way to Mr. [John] Pope of Boston, is a man of years, & belongs to Rhodeisland. The Physicians encourage his experiments.
This visiting doctor was John Newman of Newport—more about him tomorrow. The patient was probably Samuel Chever. There were a lot of Che(e)vers in Salem at this time, but one appears to have been consistently given the title of captain.

Unfortunately, only two days later Bentley reported:
Capt Chever who submitted to the Plaster of the Cancer Doctor mentioned p. 191. was by the violent pains of a second experiment lasting 20 minutes, so shocked that he has since been speechless, & is supposed, paralytic. As his family have been sufferers in the same way, we can only say, his disorder followed this operation.
On 2 May, the minister recored a request for prayers from “S. Chever & Wife for him dangerously sick.” He also wrote, “Saml. Chever. Paralytic.” (Much of Bentley’s diary in this stretch was taken up with recording deaths, illnesses, and crimes.)

The next day, the situation looked better:
This evening I sat through the night with Capt Chever, who seems upon the recovery. A blister on the throat assists him to articulate better, than he ever has done.
This “blister” doesn’t appear to have been a natural phenomenon. Rather, someone applied a plaster with substances on it to inflame the skin or even used a suction cup to create a blood blister—either way, the idea was to pull blood away from the real trouble spot.

In late June, Bentley and Cheever rode to Danvers together, so the captain was more clearly on the mend.

Finally, on 4 Feb 1791 Bentley recorded:
Last Wednesday Capt. S. Chever submitted to an amputation on account of a cancerous humour which had resisted every method of cure.

In the summer there came along from Rhode island a Mr. ——, a Quack who pretended cures of Cancers. He applied to an inveterate Cancer on the breast of Mrs. Shehane, wife of him lately deceased [Daniel Shehane, died on 28 January]. Beyond all expectation he succeeded and at present the patient is free from complaint.

Capt. S. Chever being long indisposed, on various accounts applied to this Adventurer, & submitted to his operations. They were caustic, & after 20 minutes extreme pains they occasioned paralytic affections very violent, & of which the patient has not recovered. But as he has been recruiting the Cancer has become more troublesome.

He consented at last with great reluctance, & Dr [John] Warren of Boston performed the amputation.
I can’t tell what was actually amputated.

Assuming I’ve identified the right Samuel Chever, this patient lived for another twenty-three years, until 1814, dying at the age of seventy-six. His gravestone appears above, courtesy of Find a Grave.

(That webpage assigns Chever two wives whose lifespans overlap each other. I suspect Deborah Osborn married a younger Samuel Chever; the intention gives him the label of “3d.”)

Wednesday, January 08, 2025

Cancer Curers in Boston in 1790

Today we think about cancer at a cellular level. In the eighteenth century, cancers were visible growths, usually breaking out of healthy skin.

I don’t know if doctors would consider all such growths as cancers today, but I have no doubt many cases of what we call cancer went undiagnosed back then.

It’s interesting to see that cancer medicine was already a specialty. Indeed, there were doctors who appear to have treated those growths and nothing else.

Osgood Carleton wasn’t even the only Bostonian offering both arithmetic lessons and a cancer cure in the 1790s. John Pope, a Quaker, had been advertising those services since 1779, and after he died in 1796 his wife Hannah took over on the cancer practice.

Toward the end of his career John used the title “Dr.” in his ads. Hannah listed herself as a “cancer doctor” in the 1800 town directory. The Popes’ sons also offered the family cancer cure in other New England towns, as I discussed back here.

To promote his cancer treatment, as quoted yesterday, Osgood Carleton shared testimonials from two women in Haverhill, where he had lived before settling in Boston. In his 1995 article on Carleton, David Bosse suggested that he might have learned this cancer treatment from John Pope, perhaps being the Haverhill agent for that cure.

I think that’s unlikely since Carleton declared that he offered “a Powder, of his own manufacturing,” and never mentioned the more established Pope as a mentor. Indeed, once Carleton moved to Boston, the men were in competition in two fields. I expect there wasn’t much love lost between them.

Unfortunately, cancer specialists like the Popes and Carleton kept their methods secret. That makes it hard to compare their cures, understand how these cures were supposed to work, and assess if they did.

However, the vital records of Haverhill do tell us more about the women who signed those certificates for Carleton in 1787. Elizabeth Lecount, daughter of James and Mary (Davis) Lecount, was born on 14 Sept 1729 and died 23 Mar 1829, or more than forty years after applying Carleton’s powder.

Eunice (Stuard) Cass, widow of William, died 18 Sept 1820. Her birth is not listed in those records, but she and William had children from 1758 to 1775, suggesting she was in her fifties in 1787 and in her eighties when she died. It’s possible the person who signed this certificate was that woman’s teen-aged daughter Eunice, born in 1770; she married Asaph Kendall in 1794 and lived to 1808. Either way, considering the awful symptoms the certificate described, that looks like a success.

TOMORROW: Cancer treatment in Salem in 1790.

Tuesday, January 07, 2025

Osgood Carleton’s Cancer Cure

Mathematics lessons, schoolbooks, almanacs, maps, and surveying and design services weren’t all that Osgood Carleton advertised to the good people of post-Revolutionary Boston.

For three weeks in early 1790, Carleton ran this ad in the Herald of Freedom newspaper:
CANCERS CURED.

MANY Persons have by Cancers, died a painful and lingering death; some of which might have been cured or cut out, but the operation being attended with some pain in cutting, and generally much more in curing without cutting out, has detered many from attempting to save their lives by either, But,

A more simple and easy cure than any formerly practiced is now discovered, as will appear by the following certificates.

Haverhill, June 30th 1787.
I, THE Subscriber certify, that I had a hard lump in the fleshy part of my leg, for more than a year, which was very painful, and was said by persons of skill to be a Cancer near breaking out; on applying a powder I had of Mr. Carleton, it was soon cured, without putting me to any pain, except a very trifling smart at first.
ELIZABETH LE COUNT.

Haverhill, June 30th, 1787.
I, THE Subscriber do certify, that I had a sore on my face, which the physicians called a Rose Cancer, and which for a long time baffled his skill in attempting to cure; it had so far affected my health, as to render me unfit for any kind of business, and greatly affected my eye sight, it emitted such a stench as rendered the room I was in disagreeable to others, and deprived me of my appetite, on applying Mr. Carleton’s powder, my appetite was soon restored, my health recovered, and in a little time the Cancer cured; this was done about a year since, I still remain in perfect health, without any signs of the Cancer breaking out again.
EUNICE CASE.

Many other cures have been effected by this powder, it is now using for a very bad Cancer with prospects of success. It may be had by applying to OSGOOD CARLETON, at Oliver’s Dock, Boston.
A few months earlier, Carleton had included in his almanac for the year 1790 (shown above) the news:
A Cure for CANCERS.—Apply to OSGOOD CARLETON, in Boston, who has a Powder, of his own manufacturing, which, if properly and seasonably applied to a Cancer, has never failed of succress, without putting the patient to any pain.
He promoted this offering again in 1800, adding to his usual text on schooling and surveys in the 12 December Massachusetts Mercury: “CANCERS cured by OSGOOD CARLETON, without cutting or putting the patient to pain.” This treatment wasn’t a major part of his work, but he kept at it for at least a decade.

TOMORROW: Assessing the cancer business.

Monday, January 06, 2025

“He lost some of the country dialect”

Osgood Carleton, the cartographer mentioned yesterday, advertised a lot in Boston newspapers between 1787 and 1808.

In those years he had his school of mathematics and navigation to promote. He had almanacs and other books to sell for a while. Then he sold his maps. He sold design services, and more.

The man’s oddest newspaper notice appeared in the Herald of Freedom in 1790:
Osgood Carleton,
HAVING been frequently applied to for a decision of disputes, and sometimes wagers,* respecting the place of his nativity, and finding they sometimes operate to his disadvantage: Begs leave to give this public information—

that he was born in Nottingham-west, in the State of New-Hampshire—in which state he resided until sixteen years old; after which time, he traveled by sea and land to various parts, and being (while young) mostly conversant with the English, he lost some of the country dialect, which gives rise to the above disputes.

* Several Englishmen have disputed his being born in America.

BOSTON, AUGUST 20, 1790.
In an article for the Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, David Bosse tentatively linked Carleton’s accent with a statement in a 1901 profile: as a teen-aged soldier he became a clerk for John Henry Bastide, the British military engineer. If Carleton indeed spent his late adolescence in a British household, his might have ended up with more England than New England in it.

Bosse documents that Carleton lived in Liverpool, Nova Scotia, from 1763 to 1768, marrying there before returning to his home province. Again, that would have exposed him to more British natives than living on a farm in Nottingham, New Hampshire.

But why was it important to make this public pronouncement? One possibility is that being thought British made a man vulnerable to naval impressment. However, the Royal Navy wasn’t at war in 1790, and Carleton wasn’t traveling.

Another is that Carleton understood his potential customers were looking for an American, especially so soon after the war. But Bostonians were quite friendly to British ex-pats in this period, usually welcoming them as converts to republicanism. In a field like cartography, being able to claim European training was probably a plus.

Significantly, Carleton’s ad pointed to “Several Englishmen” disputing or even betting on his background. That might be a way to avoid criticizing local customers, or it might reflect the truth: the men insisting Carleton was British were English themselves.

Carleton was a former Continental Army officer, having enlisted as a regimental quartermaster with the rank of sergeant in May 1775 and risen to lieutenant in January 1777. At the end of 1778 he asked to be listed in the Corps of Invalids for health reasons. Carleton still served until April 1783, taking on administrative tasks like moving money around. After the war, he joined the Society of the Cincinnati.

British visitors to Boston might have heard Carleton speak of those experiences in his British-sounding voice and hinted that he was disloyal—and he might not have liked that. But those visitors weren’t his customers. 

In the end, I suspect that Carleton decided to declare the facts about his birth simply because they were facts. As a teacher, cartographer, and surveyor, he valued precision. He was already a regular advertiser in the Herald of Freedom, so it would have been easy to run this announcement for a week.

Carleton’s singular notice might have arisen from the same impulse depicted in the famous xkcd cartoon: “Someone is wrong on the internet!”

Sunday, January 05, 2025

Mapping Boston in 1795

ARGO (American Revolutionary Geographies Online) offers a new article by John W. Mackey titled “Practical Knowledge and the New Republic.”

It begins:

Perhaps what is most visually striking about Osgood Carleton’s recently rediscovered 1795 map of Boston is its sheer size. At approximately seven feet by six and a half feet, this wall map dwarfs many other Boston maps of the late eighteenth century, including Carleton’s own 1797 work, which until recently was considered the largest Boston map from this period known to be extant in a collection.
This isn’t a printed map but a drawing. The Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association donated it to the Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library in 2021. Based on a cartouche dedicating the map “To the Select-Men of the Town of Boston,” curators deduced it was originally town, then city property.

Indeed, volume III of a report on Documents of the City of Boston, for the Year 1879 (published 1880) had an appendix listing “Plans of Boston in the City Surveyor’s Department,” and that included:
Boston, 1795.—An original map. Surveyed by Osgood Carleton for the Select-men.
As for the cartographer:
Osgood Carleton was born to a New England farming family in 1742 and had little schooling. At age 16, he began military service in Nova Scotia during the Seven Years’ War, and he later served in the Continental Army during the American Revolution. While he was born in New Hampshire and appears to have lived for a time in Haverhill, Massachusetts and in Maine, it was in Boston that Carleton made his mark and built the bulk of his career. Armed with mathematical skills presumably gained during his military service, Carleton earned his living putting these skills to practical use: he became a surveyor, a contributor to the ubiquitous almanacs of the era, and the leading cartographer in Massachusetts during his lifetime. . . .

he also left a legacy in his role as a teacher of young men in the City of Boston. . . . he offered on an array of practical mathematical skills from navigation to surveying and mensuration to gunnery, bookkeeping, and the projection of spheres and maps.
Mackey’s article discusses and displays Carleton’s maps of Massachusetts, one of which was eventually printed with state approval, as discussed back here.
The 1795 Boston map captures the town’s post-war transition. Carleton marked the place for the “New State-house” on “State Land.” That new government building would be dedicated that year.

Mackey also discusses how this map didn’t label Oliver’s Dock, though Carleton had used that as a landmark in advertising his school. By 1795 he may have moved to “an unfinished building in Merchant’s Row,” where Robert Bailey Thomas remembered studying under him. Nonetheless, “Oliver’s Dock” was still the official name of that location, preserving the memory of the unpopular royal appointee Andrew Oliver.

Saturday, January 04, 2025

Off to a Great Start

Yesterday, after being chosen Speaker of the House by the minimally required 218 members, Rep. Mike Johnson delivered a speech that included these lines about a ceremony earlier in the day:
I was asked to provide a prayer for the nation. I offered one that is quite familiar to historians and probably many of us. It said right here in the program, it says right under my name, ‘it is said each day of his eight years of the presidency, and every day thereafter until his death, President Thomas Jefferson recited this prayer.’

I wanted to share it with you here at the end of my remarks. Not as a prayer per se right now, but really as a reminder of what our third President and the primary author of the Declaration of Independence thought was so important that it should be a daily recitation.
You can no doubt see where this is going.

Monticello’s Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia discusses this prayer among many other spurious quotations attached to the third President’s name with no evidence.

This text is called a “National Prayer for Peace,” and the historic site’s research staff says:
We have no evidence that this prayer was written or delivered by Thomas Jefferson. It appears in the 1928 United States Book of Common Prayer, and was first suggested for inclusion in a report published in 1919.
In other words, this text appears to date from the Woodrow Wilson administration, either the “he kept us out of war” period or the “we need a League of Nations” period, and was then officially adopted by a particular denomination of Protestant Christianity. The primary author of the Declaration of Independence did not know this text, nor make it a “daily recitation.”

Monticello also notes that Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was Episcopalian, used this text in his Thanksgiving Day address in 1930. Johnson could thus have connected his speech with a major U.S. President. But of course Roosevelt was a Democrat who expanded the federal government to help Americans during an economic crisis and then helped lead the global fight against fascism. Johnson is serving an ideology and a President with different goals.

As Monticello points out, folks who know anything about Thomas Jefferson’s ideas on religion should quickly doubt any claim that he composed a public prayer like this. Jefferson considered religion a private matter. He was proud of authoring a Virginia law that ended the establishment of religion and guaranteed freedom of thought. As President he broke from his predecessors’ precedents and declined to issue Thanksgiving proclamations.

Here’s a real Jefferson quote on the latter matter. In 1808 the Rev. Dr. Samuel Miller, a Presbyterian minister then based in New York, wrote asking him “to recommend…a day of Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer.”

The third President replied:
I consider the government of the US. as interdicted by the constitution from intermedling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises. this results not only from the provision that no law shall be made respecting the establishment, or free exercise, of religion, but from that also which reserves to the states the powers not delegated to the US. . . .

I do not believe it is for the interest of religion to invite the civil magistrate to direct it’s exercises, its discipline or its doctrines: nor of the religious societies that the General government should be invested with the power of effecting any uniformity of time or matter among them. fasting & prayer are religious exercises.
It would be hard to find a U.S. President more opposed to a “National Prayer” of any kind than Jefferson.

Friday, January 03, 2025

A New Edition of The Power of Sympathy

As a self-proclaimed propagator of unabashed gossip from Revolutionary New England, I have to note the recent publication of a new edition of The Power of Sympathy.

William Hill Brown published this novel pseudonymously in 1789. Most readers quickly recognized that it was based on a recent sex scandal in the top echelon of Boston society: rising attorney Perez Morton had impregnated his wife Susan’s sister, Fanny Apthorp.

In 1787 that affair led to a baby and parental rejection. In 1788 came a challenge to a duel from a Royal Navy officer and months of newspaper innuendo. Finally, Fanny committed suicide. Brown’s novel presented her character sympathetically—but was the book another layer of scandal?

This edition has been assembled by Prof. Jennifer Harris at the University of Waterloo and Prof. Bryan Waterman at New York University. It includes not only Brown’s The Power of Sympathy but also his play Occurrences of the Times, exploring some of the same incident as farce, and another closet drama, Sans Souci, alias, Free and Easy, digging into the sensitive spots of upper-class Boston.

Appendices reprint Fanny Apthorp’s final letters, which circulated at the time, and her sister Sarah Wentworth Morton’s poems; newspaper coverage of the case; newspaper essays on the place of women in the new republic; and letters from Mercy Warren and Abigail Adams about proper behavior for young republican gentlemen.

(Early on, people speculated that Sarah Wentworth Morton herself had written The Power of Sympathy, and that Mercy Warren had written the San Souci play. Warren was exasperated by that suggestion, Morton probably humiliated. I find it significant that both women eventually discarded their early anonymity and published under their own names, establishing how they wanted to be remembered as writers.)

The publisher of this new edition, Broadview Press, is based in Ontario. The book appears to have been published in Canada last month, but is scheduled to officially appear in the U.S. of A. this summer.

Thursday, January 02, 2025

The Many Books of James Kirby Martin

This week brought the news that James Kirby Martin has died at the age of eighty-one.

Earning his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin, which used to have a huge American history department, Martin taught at Rutgers before moving to the University of Houston.

In 2018, more than thirty years later, he retired as the Hugh Roy and Lilli Cranz Cullen University Professor of History. He’d held visiting appointments along the way, of course.

When I started researching the actual war part of the Revolution, I knew I was going to use James Kirby Martin’s books. His biography Benedict Arnold, Revolutionary Hero: An American Warrior Reconsidered is an excellent scholarly dig into well-trodden ground, and his edition of Joseph Plumb Martin’s memoir, titled Ordinary Courage, is probably the best.

Martin and Mark Edward Lender wrote A Respectable Army: The Military Origins of the Republic, 1763-1789, as well as Drinking in America: A History, 1620-1980, and they edited Citizen Soldier: The Revolutionary War Journal of Joseph Bloomfield.

Then I found Martin was also coauthor with Joseph T. Glatthaar of Forgotten Allies: The Oneida Indians and the American Revolution. Collaboration seems to have been one of his skills.

And those are just some of his books. His oeuvre extends from Men In Rebellion: Higher Governmental Leaders and the Coming of the American Revolution to Insurrection: The American Revolution and Its Meaning, as well as edited collections. One of his retirement projects was a novel written with Robert Burris about an entirely different period of history.

At the time of his death, Martin was still working. His Revolutionary War projects included a book about Fort Ticonderoga and a study of just war theory. I hope collaborators can complete those projects.

It wasn’t till after I’d read some of James Kirby Martin’s books that I had the pleasure of meeting him at a conference produced by America’s History, L.L.C. Later I also saw him at the Fort Plain Museum conference. Because he studied the actual war part of the Revolution, Jim Martin knew that his work attracted a lot of interest outside the academy, and he was happy to chat with readers and researchers from all walks of life. We’ll miss him.

Wednesday, January 01, 2025

“Hardships only make him firmer”

On 1 Jan 1775, 250 years ago today, young Joseph Cree went out into the streets of New York City with copies of the New-York Gazetteer, published by James Rivington, and a handbill asking for tips.

Joseph’s handbill read:
VERSES
Addressed by JOSEPH CREE,
To the
Gentlemen and Ladies,
To whom he carries the
NEW-YORK GAZETTEER.
January 1, 1775.

KIND SIRS, a young and bashful Boy,
Now comes, with Heart brimful of Joy,
To see, if you by some small Favor,
Will please t’encourage such a Shaver---
Though small, he has strove to do his Duty,
And hopes that he did always suit ye;
Through Frost and Snow and scorching Heat,
He has gone with News from Street to Street;
Without a Whimper or a Murmur,
For Hardships only make him firmer.
And now he thinks there’s some Pretence,
T’ obtain of you a few good Pence;
Or something that his Heart will cheer,
And make him merry this NEW-YEAR.
This is a sample of “carrier verses.” It’s unusual in two ways. It makes no mention of current events, possibly because the politics of 1775 meant any comment would offend someone. And it specifies the name of the printer’s boy distributing it; though some other surviving examples did that, most didn’t.

Cree family historian Gary L. Maher has stated that Joseph Cree was born in 1765, which would make him nine years old as he delivered those newspapers. If so, he probably didn’t write or set this verse himself, as some older printing apprentices did. The lines definitely emphasize how little he was.

However, Maher has also found a Joseph Cree enrolled in the New York militia in 1779, and a fourteen-year-old wouldn’t have been enrolled in the militia. So perhaps Joseph was older.

Cree started to work as a printer for Shepard Kollock’s New-Jersey Journal in Elizabeth, New Jersey, about 1783, the same year that Rivington gave up his newspaper in New York. Cree married a woman named Ann Crissey or Creesy, and they had children. City and county records show him living in Elizabeth in the 1790s.

While newspaper owners’ names appeared in their pages regularly, the employees who printed those pages usually remained anonymous. Cree’s name didn’t appear in any newspaper until the 18 Sept 1798 New-Jersey Journal:
DIED.
On Sunday night [16 September], in this town, of the yellow fever, which he caught in New-York, JOSEPH CREE, Printer, for fifteen years a journeyman with the Editor of this paper.—He has left a worthy woman and four small children to deplore his loss.
Cree was buried in the graveyard of Elizabeth’s First Presbyterian Church, twenty-three years after he passed out his greeting for the new year.