Looking Back on the Winter of 1774–75

On Sunday, 1 February, I’ll join Rob Orrison from the Emerging Revolutionary War team in a live online conversation about the winter of 1774–75.

In recent weeks I’ve been looking up what happened on each date 250 years ago. One big lesson I took away from that task is how big an impact the seasonal climate had on people’s lives.

In winter, people just didn’t go out as much, especially in New England. There were fewer town meetings. The Massachusetts Provincial Congress and Continental Congress were adjourned. Not as many ships were crossing the Atlantic with news from London. And of course the courts in Massachusetts were closed.

John and Abigail Adams were at home together, which I’m sure they enjoyed, but that means no letters between them for us to enjoy. Without the courts, John wasn’t noting travel or interesting law cases in his diary. That gave him more time to compose his “Novanglus” essays, but I prefer a good anecdote.

In London, Benjamin Franklin had interesting conversations with politicians like the Earl of Chatham and the Howes, but it must have been clear those Whigs had very little sway in the king’s government. Josiah Quincy, Jr., was there, too, but he’d had his audiences with top ministers, left them unimpressed, and had nothing else to do.

Of course, behind closed doors and after dark people were doing a lot in the winter of 1774–75, and events started to speed up at the end of February. Gov. John Wentworth had lost control of New Hampshire. The Boston Patriots were smuggling cannon out of town to colleagues in the countryside. Timothy Bigelow was gathering cannon in Worcester, and David Mason was doing the same in Salem.

In February, Gov. Thomas Gage managed to get Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr., to start supplying sensitive information on those weapons. That led to Capt. William Brown and Ens. Henry DeBerniere’s spying mission to Worcester and Lt. Col. Alexander Leslie’s expedition to Salem, both on the same weekend.

By that time, copies of the Earl of Dartmouth’s 27 January instructions to Gen. Gage were being carried across the Atlantic. That dispatch was couched in caveats and conditionals since the colonial secretary knew circumstances might have changed greatly between Gage’s last reports and when he saw this letter. Nonetheless, Dartmouth left no doubt that the government and the monarch thought it was time to make some arrests.

That push from London led to the events of April 18–19, discussed in the Emerging Revolutionary War book A Single Blow, written by Phil Greenwalt and Rob Orrison with a foreword by me. But that wouldn’t happen until the spring, when people in New England could spend extended time outside again.

The Emerging Revolutionary War conversation is scheduled to start on Sunday at 7:00 P.M. Boston time. The best place to listen in live will be on the Emerging RevWar Facebook page. Later it can be viewed on YouTube.

Lincoln’s Sestercentennial Series

The town of Lincoln is observing the Sestercentennial with a series of exhibits at the library and a series of events.

The January exhibit was about Lincoln’s vote to send delegates to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress 250 years ago this month. The February exhibit will be on the theme “Enslaved in the American Revolution.”

Here are the presentations and other events announced so far.

Thursday, 30 January, 7:00 P.M., online
Causes of the American Revolution
Dane Morrison

Increasing taxation created dissent in Massachusetts. In 1774, Great Britain issued more punitive measures to suppress dissent and restore order, such as the revocation of the Massachusetts Bay Colony Charter of 1691. Former Salem State Professor Dane Morrison will discuss Lincoln at the beginning of the Revolution, exploring why an inland agricultural village would feel threatened by the new royal and Parliamentary initiatives. Register here.

Sunday, 2 February, 12:30–4:00 P.M., in and around Bemis Hall
The Lincoln of 1775
Co-hosted by the Bemis Free Lecture Series, the Lincoln Historical Society, the Lincoln Minute Men, the Middlesex County 4-H Fife & Drum, and Lincoln250

What was life like for families 250 years ago in Lincoln? Talk with reenactors about the attire, the food, and the amusements of family life of the day. The event will include musket demonstrations and music. At 2:00 P.M., a dance party will begin with instruction for all who wish to join. Refreshments will be served.

Thursday, 27 February, 7:00 P.M., online
Entangled Lives, Black and White in Lincoln, Mass.
Don Hafner

In the 18th century, the town of Lincoln had dozens of Black residents, enslaved and free, who helped the town thrive. They plowed the fields, hoed the gardens, and harvested the food. They did the cooking, they did the laundry, they cared for the children, they tended the sick and the elderly. They worked the blacksmith shops and the sawmills, made the nails and cut the boards for Lincoln’s first meeting house and houses that still stand. More than a hundred white residents of Lincoln lived in a household with an enslaved person. Come hear what we know about their entangled lives with historian Don Hafner. Register here.

Saturday, 8 March, 2:00 P.M., at the library
Meet Abigail Adams
Sheryl Faye

Lincoln250 celebrates Women's History Month! All ages are invited to Sheryl Faye’s engaging portrayal of Abigail Adams, wife of second President John Adams and sister of Lincoln Minute Men captain William Smith. Ms. Faye will portray Abigail as an adult and a child as she navigates life in colonial New England and stands up for the rights of women during the turbulence of War for Independence. All ages welcome. No registration necessary.

Thursday, 13 March, 7:00 P.M., at the library
Women in the American Revolution
Audrey Stuck-Girard

While the experiences of individual women during the American War of Independence have been largely left out of the historical record, they were nonetheless active participants of the cultural shift known as the American Revolution. Rural Massachusetts women in 1775 managed household budgets and property while being legally barred from owning any of that property. As the primary influence and educators of young children, they instilled moral and cultural values and ethics to the first generation of independent Americans. And when many of the men in their lives were away serving or killed in the war, women endeavored (with varying levels of success) to fulfill both male and female roles in their absence. Register here.

Talks on Bullet Strikes and Women Printers

Sestercentennial talks are starting to come fast. I’ll have some of mine to announce soon, and here are two happening tonight and tomorrow.

Wednesday, 29 January, 7:00 P.M., at the Acton Town Hall and livestreamed
“‘Dreadful Were the Vestiges of War’: Bullet Strikes from the First Day of the American Revolution”
Joel Bohy

Bohy, historic arms & militaria specialist at Blackstone Valley Auctions and Estates, will discuss the arms and ammunition used by both British and provincial forces on April 19, 1775, as well as the battle damage that remains. Modern shooting-incident reconstruction, archaeology, live fire studies, and new research sheds new light on the heavy fighting along the route of the British retreat back to Boston.

This free event is an Acton 250 program, and a recording will be available through Acton TV.

Thursday, 30 January, 7:00 P.M., at the Westford Museum
“In the Margins: Women Printers in the 18th Century”
Michele Gabrielson

In the 18th century, newspapers and pamphlets were crucial in spreading information and stoking the fires of conflict during the revolutionary period. Although printing was primarily seen as a masculine profession, women—such as widows, wives, and daughters—stepped up to embrace the responsibilities of a free press. These women not only set the type but, in some cases, also owned and managed their own printing businesses. This lecture will lay out the essential contributions of women in the printing industry leading up to the American Revolution.

Gabrielson is an award-winning educator, a historical interpreter, and secretary for the recently formed Mercy Otis Warren Society.

The suggested donation for this event is $10 per person.

(The picture above shows the broadside “A Bloody Butchery, by the British Troops,” issued after the 19th of April by Ezekiel Russell, whose wife Sarah helped run the print shop.)

“Lost Bunker Hill Cyclorama,” 29 Jan.

On Wednesday, 29 January, the National Parks of Boston and Boston Public Library will present a free online presentation about “Boston’s Lost Bunker Hill Cyclorama.”

The event description says:

The Battle of Bunker Hill is one of the most mythologized moments in American history, and the events of June 17, 1775, have inspired artists for more than two centuries.

The most monumental work of art dedicated to the battle was “The Battle of Bunker Hill Cyclorama.” In an era before IMAX blockbusters, audiences in the 1800s visited cycloramas; 360-degree paintings displayed within enormous circular structures. When “The Battle of Bunker Hill Cyclorama” was unveiled in Boston 1888, it was considered the most accurate depiction of the battle yet seen, yet a few short years later was discarded.

This program explores the history and legacy of the greatest work of art ever lost in Boston.

This event is scheduled to start at 6:00 P.M. To attend, people must register through Zoom.

Folks can also explore the National Parks of Boston’s webpage on the cyclorama, which offered a “Diorama of the Boston Tea Party” as an appetizer. Only a few two-dimensional traces of the installation survive.

In addition, Jake Sconyers’s HUB History podcast explored the earlier cyclorama of the Battle of Gettysburg in this episode.

“In the afternoon there was a sham fight”

Back in 2011, guest blogger Roger Fuller quoted Albert W. Bryant’s recollection of watching a reenactment of the 1775 fighting on Lexington common that took place “on the 19th of April, 1822.”

Since Bryant shared that recollection at an 1890 meeting of the Lexington Historical Society, well over half a century after the event, I thought it was worth looking for evidence he got the date right.

And indeed, the 23 Apr 1822 Salem Gazette carried this item:

The 19th of April was noticed at Lexington by a military parade. In the afternoon there was a sham fight between the inhabitants of Lexington and its vicinity and the military corps, in imitation of the important event, which took place on the same day, in 1775.

An address on the occasion was delivered by the Rev Dr Stearns, of Lincoln.

That matches exactly with Bryant’s memory except he mistakenly recalled the minister coming from Bedford.

The Rev. Dr. Charles Stearns was sixty-eight years old when he delivered this address. According to a family history, he “preached his last sermon the first Sunday in July, 1826,” which was the 2nd. Living through the fiftieth anniversary of American independence, he died on the 26th.

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) recalled being told as a boy that the “bulky” Stearns had published a poem in 1797 called “The Ladies’ Philosophy of Love.” Holmes wrote: “How I stared at him! He was the first living person ever pointed out to me as a poet!” Holmes wrote his own first poem at age thirteen, the same year as the commemoration in Lexington.

The Latest Stamp Act

The United States Postal Service just announced some of its plans for new stamps in 2025.

Among the subjects are “Battlefields of the American Revolution,” as shown above:

Marking the 250th anniversary of the start of the Revolutionary War, this pane of 15 stamps invites us to witness and remember five turning points in the fight for American independence. Watercolor paintings depicting scenes of five battles appear alongside photographs of sites involved in each battle. Derry Noyes, an art director for USPS, designed the stamps with art by Greg Harlin and photographs by Jon Bilous, Richard Lewis, Tom Morris, Gregory J. Parker and Kevin Stewart.

I like the juxtaposing of history painting and travel photography. And it’s interesting to see how Harlin tackled the challenge of his artwork needing to work by halves.

But which battles are commemorated?

• Lexington and Concord (1775).
• Bunker Hill (1775).
• Trenton (1776).
• Saratoga (1777).
• Yorktown (1781).

That’s an even more limited presentation of the Revolutionary War than usual. Of course, featuring only American victories and moral victories cuts down the list of possible battles considerably. But this series suggests that only one fight mattered during the last five years of the war and in any state south-southeast of New Jersey. 

Hiring Freeze in National Parks May Curb 250th Events

Yesterday National Parks Traveler reported that the new administration has ordered the National Park Service to rescind seasonal job offers made to up to 1,400 people.

Per the Washington Post, the new administration’s hiring freeze was explicitly not supposed to include “seasonal employees and short-term temporary employees necessary to meet traditionally recurring seasonal workloads.”

The Park Service has long depended on seasonals and interns, as everyone in the federal government knows. Every year the agency hires more people to cover the busiest months. Even so, its staffing level is pretty skeletal.

The Post story, filed by an environmental reporter, focuses on the big nature parks like Yellowstone and Yosemite. But a hiring freeze will also affect the historic parks, which get less attention.

Here in Massachusetts, we have several Sestercentennial anniversaries coming up. Local governments and organizations are planning events for their communities and expecting large influxes of tourists. In most cases, those events involve or require fully staffed national parks.

The Salem Maritime National Historic Site will have an exhibit on “Leslie’s Retreat,” due to open on 15 February, to complement events around the city.

Minute Man National Historic Park offers a full slate of events about the Battle of Lexington and Concord, running from presentations on spies on 22 March through a Battle Road Anniversary Hike on 21 April—with the big military reenactment in between on 19 April, of course.

The weeklong series of events in Charlestown to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill on 17 June will of course be centered around the Monument, under the care of the National Parks of Boston. Even before then, the parks are sharing events like this 27 February talk on how Boston harbor helped to shape that battle.

Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site in Cambridge is preparing to commemorate the anniversary of the arrival of Gen. George Washington in July.

Looking further ahead, we’re all eagerly awaiting the reopening of the Dorchester Heights Monument to people visiting that crucial site in the siege of Boston.

I don’t know how much each of those initiatives depends on seasonal hires. But I know some parks absolutely need augmented staffing to handle their ordinary schedules, much less special events for larger crowds in an anniversary year.

Nobody in Washington is saying how long this hiring freeze will last. Hopeful N.P.S. managers have told people who’d received offers for seasonal jobs only to see those yanked away that the positions might open up again. But of course those managers thought they’d finally gotten through the federal hiring process and found qualified and eager staffers, only to have to pull back. As of this evening, the only N.P.S. job openings at USAJobs.gov are in security, firefighting, and other public-safety departments.

The Ongoing Story of Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery

In 2016, Harvard University president Drew Gilpin Faust stated publicly:

Harvard was directly complicit in America’s system of racial bondage from the College’s earliest days in the 17th century until slavery in Massachusetts ended in 1783, and Harvard continued to be indirectly involved through extensive financial and other ties to the slave South up to the time of emancipation.

A historian of America’s antebellum South, Faust established a committee to investigate that history further, building on various faculty members’ work. Caitlin Galante DeAngelis, Ph.D., led much of the new research, producing an internal report for the administration.

In 2022, the university issued a public report on how the institution had benefited from slavery. This initiative followed similar efforts at Brown, Georgetown, and many other old American universities, not only to uncover that history but to seek ways to repair the damage of past slaveholding today.

Brown is named after a transatlantic slave trader, and profits from that business helped to endow the university. Georgetown received an infusion of funds in the 1830s from the Maryland Province of Jesuits’ sale of more than 200 people to Louisiana planters. Harvard was actually founded before Massachusetts made chattel slavery legal, but the college undoubtedly benefited directly and indirectly from coerced labor in the following centuries.

Among other responses, the university’s 2022 report recommended creating “a public memorial for the enslaved people who helped shape the institution.” A committee started to solicit ideas from artists, but in May 2024 the committee chairs resigned, saying that university administrators were rushing the process and not consulting enough with descendant communities.

That disagreement appeared to be only the most visible sign of trouble. In September, the Harvard Crimson published a story about the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery project that began:

A $100 million University initiative intended to make amends for Harvard’s ties to slavery has been hamstrung by infighting, high staff turnover, and senior University officials seeking to limit the project’s scope, multiple current and former staff members told The Crimson.

This long article described various forms of dysfunction, including interpersonal friction, but the problem underlying everything else seemed to be disagreement on the scope and purpose of the project.

As to the scope, one issue is whether the Harvard Slavery Remembrance Program’s research should cover people enslaved by “members of the Harvard Corporation and Board of Overseers…in their personal homes.” In colonial Massachusetts, those governing board members tended to be ministers or wealthy men—the classes of people most likely to own other people. As with any board, some were more involved in the working of the college than others.

The month after that story, the Harvard Slavery Remembrance Program’s director, Richard J. Cellini, published his own opinion essay in the Crimson, reiterating one detail:

Last year, I formally notified the Office of the President and the Office of General Counsel that a small number of senior University administrators pressured me not to find “too many descendants” and not to do my job “too well.”

Obviously Cellini was challenging the university to keep the scope of the program wide.

On 17 January, the college newspaper reported:

Members of the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery initiative met with Prime Minister Gaston A. Browne and Governor General Rodney E.L. Williams of Antigua and Barbuda on Wednesday after the initiative’s research team determined that “several hundred people” had been enslaved by Harvard affiliates in the island nation between the 1660s and 1815.

That article said researchers had identified four “four Harvard-affiliated enslavers” with property on Antigua. However, it didn’t say how the program had defined those “affiliates.” Antigua was where Isaac Royall, a Harvard overseer and benefactor, derived most of his wealth.

Members of the initiative at that meeting included Cellini, his program’s senior research fellow, and Vincent A. Brown, Charles Warren Professor of History and Professor of African and African-American Studies. Brown’s 2020 book Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War won the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, James A. Rawley Prize, and Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for non-fiction.

Yesterday, six days after the Crimson reported on that meeting on Antigua, the university suddenly laid off the Harvard Slavery Remembrance Program’s staff. The genealogical work will reportedly be outsourced to American Ancestors (the New England Historic Genealogical Society). The program itself has not been formally ended, though it’s unclear how many people remain and what they’re assigned to do.

No doubt there will be more drama to come.

“To regulate the collection of duties”

As the U.S. House of Representatives discussed its first significant law, establishing import tariffs, the members took up two closely related challenges:

• how to actually collect those duties.
• a “tonnage” tax on ships entering American harbors.

On 21 April the House took up the latter question as a committee of the whole with James Madison proposing “a duty of six cents per ton on all vessels built in the United States” or owned by U.S. citizens as “necessary for the support of light-houses, hospitals for disabled seamen, and other establishments incident to commerce.”

That was a pretty low tax, but the legislators went on to consider vessels owned or partly owned by foreigners, whether those foreigners were from countries allied to the U.S. of A., and so on. These ships were to be charged five to eight times more. A bill was proposed on 7 May and approved on 29 May.

As to collecting the new taxes, the House as a committee started discussing that on 18 May. Members noted that the federal government’s approach had to be equal in all states. The next day, Elias Boudinot proposed establishing executive branch departments including a “Secretary of Finance,” soon changed to a Treasury. By British precedent, the collection of duties would fall under that department.

On 27 May, Rep. Thomas Fitzsimons of Pennsylvania presented his committee’s proposal “to regulate the collection of duties.” The House got down to details on 2 June, listing U.S. ports of entry (skipping Narragansett Bay since Rhode Island wasn’t yet participating in the federal government). A week later, the House agreed that the government should appoint a collector, naval officer, and surveyor for the nine biggest ports.

On 29 June Rep. Benjamin Goodhue (1748–1814, shown here) of Massachusetts reported that the committee had “prepared an entire new bill” to incorporate all the proposed changes.

On the first day of July, the House voted 31–19 in favor of the tonnage bill. The Senate concurred on 7 July. The House approved the bill on collecting duties on 14 July, the Senate two weeks later. Those bills went to President George Washington, who signed them on 20 and 31 July, respectively.

Disregarding the initial law that established oaths of office, those were the second and fourth laws of the new U.S. government. (The third established a Department of Foreign Affairs.)

Thus, the collection of revenue from goods imported into the U.S. of A. was the first substantive action of the first Congress, the first meaningful law signed by the first President. The U.S. government has been collecting tariffs on imported goods for over two centuries. There’s a system in place.

The current President appears ignorant of that history, ordering that three Cabinet officers “investigate the feasibility of establishing and recommend the best methods for designing, building, and implementing an External Revenue Service (ERS) to collect tariffs, duties, and other foreign trade-related revenues.”

Of course, that current President has long shown ignorance of how tariffs work. As the New York Times reported, “Trade experts said that, despite the name ‘external,’ the bulk of tariff revenue would continue to be collected from U.S. businesses that import products.” The members of the first U.S. Congress, having gone through a war with its roots in a conflict over tariffs, understood how those taxes worked.

“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.

“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.

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.]

“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.)

“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?

“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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

“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.

“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.

“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.

“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.”)