Heading into June 1775 with Confidence

One consequence of the Battle of Chelsea Creek is that by the end of May 1775 the provincial troops started to feel pretty powerful.

The militia mobilization of the Lexington Alarm had done significant damage to the Crown forces. Fortifications were keeping the king’s troops inside Boston.

The Royal Navy was seizing some ships and raiding coasts and islands for food. But three times now the provincial defenses had pushed back. Fairhaven men had recaptured two ships from Capt. John Linzee of H.M.S. Falcon. Hingham and other South Shore companies had forced troops off Grape Island with only a fraction of the hay they wanted.

And the fight over Hog Island and Noddle’s Island was even more impressive. The provincials came away with some livestock, reducing the food supply for besieged Boston. They set fire to hay being grown to feed the army’s horses.

In the fighting that followed, the provincials had deployed artillery for the first time and withstood return fire. They hadn’t lost any men, with four wounded and expected to recover, and reports out of Boston suggested some of the enemy had died. (Two seamen were killed, in fact, but some early reports put the number of Crown casualties as high as thirty.)

From H.M.S. Diana the provincial troops had pulled useful supplies: four four-pounder cannon, twelve swivel guns, the mast, and various bits of fresh rigging—the ship had been launched only the previous year.

And then those troops had actually destroyed the Diana—a Royal Navy warship! True, it was a relatively small vessel that had run aground, but that was obviously a provincial victory and a royalist loss.

Even the most cautious New England commanders and soldiers must have felt they were on a roll when they made the move onto the Charlestown peninsula on the night of 16 June. But the scale of the battle that followed was far beyond any other fight in the Boston campaign.

The Sestercentennial of the Battle of Bunker Hill will be observed on two successive weekends in June:

• Parade, concert, speeches, and other ceremonies in Charlestown on 13–17 June.
• Battle reenactment over similar terrain in Gloucester on 21–22 June.

Make your plans now!

“Lucky for the Town that the Fire broke out in the Day Time”?

Just above its report on the Royal Navy store ship that caught fire in Boston harbor on 29 May 1773 (quoted yesterday), Richard Draper’s Boston News-Letter ran this brief item about another event that same day:

Saturday last being the Anniversary of the Restoration of King Charles II. a Feu de Joy was fired on board the Men of War in this Harbour.

Ordinarily, royal anniversaries like the king’s and queen’s birthdays were celebrated by both civil and military authorities in Boston. In this case, there was a conspicuous absence of cannon salutes, bell-ringing, or toasts inside the town.

New England had generally supported the Parliamentary side in the English Civil War and the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell that followed. Its people and elected officials shielded regicides from Charles II’s retribution. Most British people thought the Glorious Revolution of 1688 was a Good Thing, but New Englanders were particularly convinced that deposing the Stuarts was a necessary course correction as the kingdom sank back into papist tyranny.

Therefore, local forts and authorities didn’t join the Royal Navy in celebrating the Stuart Restoration that May day in 1773. But did the descendants of Puritans begrudge the military’s action?

Of course they did. Thomas and John Fleet’s Boston Evening-Post reported the same event this way:

Saturday last being the anniversary of the Nativity and Restoration of King CHARLES II. the Colours, (as usual on Red Letter Days) were displayed on board the Flag Ship here, and at One o’Clock a Feu de Joy from her and the Gibraltar (being the only Ships of War we had then here to protect us) was all the Notice, as we have yet heard, that was taken to honor the Memory of the execrable Race of the STEUART Family.

Even the newspaper’s use of the phrase “Red Letter Days” was fraught with meaning. Those were the saints’ days on the Anglican calendar, shunned by the Puritans. As late as 1758 Roger Sherman had to explain why he acknowledged those dates in the almanacs he published “to serve the Publick” of Connecticut despite being a devout Congregationalist.

As for the radical Boston Gazette, it didn’t mention the anniversary of Charles II’s coronation at all. But Edes and Gill’s report on the ship catching fire was highly political:

Saturday last about 12 o’Clock at Noon a Fire broke out on board the Britannia, Capt. John Walker, a Store Ship for the Fleet station’d here for the Protection of the Trade and Fishery, lying in the Harbour, and within Gunshot of the Town.

It being reported that there was a considerable Quantity of Powder on board, it put the Inhabitants in great Consternation. Thousands of People seeking Refuge from the falling of Chimneys, &c. in Case of an Explosion. However as it turn’d out, there was no Powder on Board; which if it had at first been ascertain’d, would have sav’d said Ship from being burnt almost to the Water’s Edge. Considerable Stores we hear were not consumed.

It is however some what lucky for the Town that the Fire broke out in the Day Time, and when only the People belonging to the Ship were on board, otherwise it might have been Matter of Representation to the Board of Admiralty at Home to have immediately fitted out a Fleet in order to apprehend certain Persons to be sent beyond the Seas to be tried, as in the Case of the Gaspee Schooner at Rhode-Island.

Be it as it may, this Accident may prove very beneficial to some in settling Accounts.

In this one report the Boston Gazette thus managed to suggest that:

• The idea that Royal Navy warships were in the harbor to protect locals instead of threatening them was laughable.
• Naval administrators were to blame for the slow firefighting response.
• Authorities like Thomas Hutchinson would have been happy to add this fire to their list of false accusations about Boston.
• The royal government was acting unconstitutionally in the Gaspee inquiry.
• Some corrupt officials or contractors would use the fire to cover up embezzling or other crimes.

That was some impressive conspiracy theorizing.

I should note that the fire was seen at noon, the cannon salute to Charles II at 1:00 P.M. So locals couldn’t have set fire to the ship to protest the royalist celebration. On the other hand, navy commanders might have been more eager to salute the Stuart Restoration after seeing their store ship burning out of control in Boston harbor.

“A Fire broke out on board the fine large Store-Ship”

While looking at the diary of Thomas Newell this spring, I was struck by this dramatic entry for 29 May 1773, 252 years ago today:

King’s store-ship burnt in this harbor. The inhabitants greatly surprised, fearing there was a great quantity of gunpowder on board. Thousands retired to the back part of the town, and over to Charlestown, &c.; but no powder happened to be on board.

John Rowe mentioned the same event in his diary, but he was out of town fishing during the panic, so his entry doesn’t preserve the same excitement.

For more detail I turned to the newspapers. Here’s the straightforward report in the 3 June Boston News-Letter:

at Noon, a Fire broke out on board the fine large Store-Ship, (which had been laying in this Harbour for several Months past commanded by Capt. [John] Walker, having Stores for the Navy) which soon communicated to the Masts, Rigging and Turpentine on the Deck, and before any Assistance came, her upper Works were almost wholly in a Blaze; so that little or no Attempt was made to extinguish it:—

The Boats from the Men of War, with some from the Town, towed the Ship over to Noddle’s Island, where, after scuttling her, she was left to burn to the Water’s Edge.—

The Fire, it is said, was occasioned by some Coals falling from the Hearth of the Cabouse on to the Deck, which had lately been pay’d over with Turpentine, and spread with such Rapidity that nothing could be taken out of her:—

The Captain, with his Wife and two Children, who usually kept on board, likewise a Boy (the other People belonging to her being ashore) were obliged to be taken out of the Cabin Windows, without being able to save the least Thing but what they had on:—

A report prevailing at the Time of the Fire, that a large Quantity of Powder was on board, put the Inhabitants in general into great Consternation, for fear of the Consequences that might arise from an Explosion thereof; but being afterwards assured that none was in her, they became perfectly easy, and the Hills and Wharfs were covered with Spectators to view so uncommon a Sight.

Some of the Stores in the Hold, such as Cordage, Cables, and Anchors, which were under Water before the Fire could reach them, will be saved.

A “caboose” was originally a ship’s galley, Merriam-Webster says. Advertisements from eighteenth-century America indicate a “caboose” could be sold separately from a ship, and in 1768 New York a man named Thomas Hempsted was killed by “the Caboose falling on him” as a ship keeled over. So I suspect it also meant the stove and other cooking equipment designed for a ship but not necessarily installed in a dedicated cabin.

The first documented use of the word “caboose” in English was in 1732, and Samuel Johnson didn’t include it in his 1755 dictionary. But everyone reading the Boston newspapers was expected to know what that meant.

TOMORROW: The conspiracy theories.

“The Diana was soon after burnt by the rebels”

Having covered the maritime seizures that took place between Fairhaven and Martha’s Vineyard (14 May 1775) and the exchange of fire over Grape Island off Hingham (21 May), I’ve come back to the skirmishing over Hog Island and Noddle’s Island that’s become known as the Battle of Chelsea Creek.

And just in time for its Sestercentennial! (Well, the Sestercentennial of the second day of the action.)

Here’s a description of that fight from the British perspective, not contemporaneous but within living memory, published in 1804 by former engineer Robert Beatson in Naval and Military Memoirs of Great Britain:

The insurgent Americans, with astonishing perseverance, pursued their avowed design of cutting off every possible supply from the friends of Government, and of destroying what they could not carry away.

On the 27th of May, they burnt a great deal of hay on Hog island; and a few hours after, they landed on Noddles island, with the intention of also burning the hay which had been purchased for the army, and of adding to the conflagration, by laying in ashes a storehouse that had been hired when his Majesty’s ship the Glasgow was on shore, and in which the Admiral [Samuel Graves] had deposited two large cargoes of lumber, until an opportunity should offer of sending them to Halifax.

The storehouse also contained many other articles, which it was of great consequence to preserve, from the impossibility of having them replaced at this juncture. There were likewise on this island six hundred sheep, several milch cows, and a number of horses, mostly private property.

The Admiral, eager to prevent the depredations of the Americans, when he observed that they were landed upon the island, immediately ordered the Diana schooner (newly arrived) to sail between it and the main; and to get up as high as possible to intercept them: and as assistance from the army required time, he directed a party of marines to be landed.

The Diana entered the river between three and four in the afternoon at low water, and proceeded to Hog island, with some interruption from the rebels on all sides. Their numbers on Hog and Noddles islands were computed at seven hundred men. Parties of each occasionally attacked the Diana. They were, however, all obliged to quit Noddles island, without doing the intended mischief.

This being effected; Lieutenant [Thomas] Graves [shown above, later in his career], whom the Admiral had ordered not to remain in the river upon the turn of the tide, began to move off: but being retarded by a calm which unluckily took place, the boats of the squadron were ordered to assist the Diana by towing her along.

The slow progress which she made gave time for the enemy to assemble; and by the close of the evening the whole country was alarmed, and the rebel General [Israel] Putnam had brought two thousand men with field-pieces from Cambridge, with which he lined the shore and greatly annoyed her.

The marines from the squadron were landed on the island, with two three pounders from the Cerberus; and General [Thomas] Gage, the moment it was in his power, sent two pieces of artillery: but it was impossible, though in sight of the fleet, to give the schooner any effectual assistance.

The calm continued; it grew almost dark; the fire of the rebels increased; between eleven and twelve at night, she unfortunately got aground upon the ferry-ways at Winnisimmest, and the tide ebbing fast, rendered every effort to move her ineffectual.

About three in the morning she fell over, and her crew were obliged to abandon her, and go on board the Britannia armed floop, which had been sent to their assistance. The Diana was soon after burnt by the rebels.

The battle was renewed by Lieutenant [John] Graves in the Britannia, and lasted about eleven hours from first to last, in which there were two men killed, and several wounded; the commander, officers, and crew of the Diana schooner were tried by a Court-martial for the loss of the vessel, and most honourably acquitted.

Lt. Thomas Graves of was a nephew of Adm. Samuel Graves, as was Lt. John Graves of the Somerset’s tender Britannia. Other sources say both Graves brothers suffered serious burns when the provincials set the Diana on fire.

This account is based mostly on Adm. Graves’s report to the Admiralty on 7 June. He said almost nothing about this event in his later narrative of the start of the war, most likely because it didn’t reflect very well on the navy in general and his family in particular.

The courts martial that Beatson mentioned were held in Boston, under Adm. Graves’s eye. In their 2013 New England Quarterly article on this fight, Craig J. Brown, Victor T. Mastone, and Christopher V. Maio reported that all the British mariners testifying at Lt. Graves’s trial said the Diana hadn’t gone far upstream, but the archeological record suggests otherwise. In sum, that inquiry might have been a whitewash. Both Graves brothers eventually became admirals.

Of the shoreline fights between Crown and provincials in May 1775, this was the first in which either commander reported any of his own men killed. The two Royal Navy seamen who died were named George Williams and William Crocker. The Rev. John Troutbeck, assistant rector at King’s Chapel, “performed divine Service” at their funeral on board H.M.S. Somerset.

“Surely the most ridiculous expedition that ever was plan’d”

After the exchange of fire over Grape Island on 21 May 1775, both sides of the war claimed to have damaged the other and gotten the best of the day.

Four days after the fighting, the New-England Chronicle stated:

Whether any of the Enemy were wounded, is uncertain, though it is reported three of them were. It is thought that they did not carry off more than one or two tons of hay.

As for the gunfire from the departing Royal Navy vessels, that was “without effect.”

The next day’s Connecticut Gazette was even more positive:

the People…wounded 3 of the Enemy, and drove them off. They had got a Ton and Half of Hay on Board.

And the 3 June Pennsylvania Ledger said:

the regulars returned to Boston, with the loss of eight men killed and several wounded, as the provincials were informed by a gentleman that left Boston the next day.

In contrast, Lt. John Barker of His Majesty’s 4th Regiment wrote in his diary that ”a few of the Rebels were killed, without any loss on our side,” and he estimated the amount of hay removed as up to “7 or 8 Tons.”

Militaries always have a better sense of their own losses and usually exaggerate the enemy’s. If we follow that guideline and accept only what each army said about its own force, then the day ended without any casualties on either side.

The Crown forces had taken away a few tons of needed hay, but the Patriots burned far more—even Barker guessed his comrades had left “about 70” tons behind.

The provincials also burned Elisha Leavitt’s barn on the island. Local tradition held that he treated his neighbors to rum during the day to avert similar violence against his property on shore.

As usual, Lt. Barker saw a lot to complain about:

It was surely the most ridiculous expedition that ever was plan’d, for there were not a tenth part boats enough even if there had been Men enough, and the Sloop which carried the Party mounted 12 guns, but they were taken out to make room, whereas if one of two had been left it would have effectually kept off the Rebels

That might have been echoed in the 26 May Connecticut Gazette: “We hear Gen. [Thomas] Gage blamed the Admiral [Samuel Graves] for sending Vessels that were so small, on this Enterprize.” We should ask how the printers could reliably know such a thing. On the other hand, it may be significant that Graves skipped over this action in his self-serving report narrative of the war.

The reaction on the provincial side was very different. In a follow-up letter to her husband, Abigail Adams had nothing but praise for the locals who took part in the fight, particularly their own relatives:

I may say with truth all Weymouth Braintree Hingham who were able to bear Arms, and hundreds from other Towns within 20 30 and 40 miles of Weymouth.

Our good Friend the Doctor [Cotton Tufts] is in a very misirable state of Health, has the jaundice to a [very gr]eat degree, is a mere Skelliton and hardly able to [ride fro]m his own house to my fathers. Danger you [know] sometimes makes timid men bold. He stood that day very well, and generously attended with drink, Bisquit, flints &c. 5 hundred men without taking any pay. He has since been chosen one of the committee of Correspondence for that Town, and has done much Service by establishing a regular method of alarm from Town to Town.

Both your Brothers were there—your younger Brother [Elihu Adams] with his company who gaind honour by their good order that Day. He was one of the first to venture aboard a Schooner to land upon the Island.

That reflects the general mood on the two sides at this time. The British military was having inter-service quarrels over logistics while the provincials were celebrating solidarity. Even though neither side had accomplished a great deal, or suffered a serious loss.

“Assembled on a Point of Land next to Grape-Island”

Yesterday we left the people of Weymouth and surrounding towns in a panic as three or four vessels full of British soldiers appeared off their north coast early on Sunday, 21 May 1775.

Abigail Adams happened to be writing on her husband’s behalf to Edward Dilly, a British publisher and bookseller sympathetic to the American Whigs. She portrayed the situation like this:

Now this very day, and whilst I set writing the Soldiers provincial are passing my windows upon an allarm from the British troops who have been landing a number of Men upon one of our Sea coasts (about 4 miles from my own habitation) and plundering hay and cattle. Each party are now in actual engagement. God alone knows the Event, to whom also all our injuries and oppressions are known and to whom we can appeal for the justice of our cause when the Ear of Man is deaf and his heart hardned.

At the command of Lt. Thomas Innis of the 43rd Regiment, scores of those redcoats started coming ashore, carrying long, sharp…scythes. They got to work harvesting hay from Grape Island, to take back to Boston to feed the garrison’s horses.

Meanwhile, local militia companies gathered in the towns, eventually augmented by three companies from the provincial army camp at Roxbury. An 1893 Hingham town history assumed that Capt. James Lincoln, commander of a new company of Massachusetts troops, took charge. That history stated: “The old people of fifty years ago, used to tell of the march of the military down Broad Cove Lane, now Lincoln Street.”

Once those local men reached the shoreline, however, they discovered that there was little they could do. As the 25 May New-England Chronicle reported:

The People of Weymouth assembled on a Point of Land next to Grape-Island. The Distance from Weymouth Shore to the said Island was too great for small Arms to do much Execution; nevertheless our People frequently fired.

The Fire was returned from one of the Vessels with swivel Guns; but the Shot passed over our Heads, and did no Mischief.

Matters continued in this State for several Hours, the Soldiers polling the Hay down to the Water-Side, our People firing at the Vessel, and they now and then discharging swivel Guns.

In Scituate, Paul Litchfield recorded in his diary, the Rev. Ebenezer Grosvenor went ahead with the second part of his Sunday sermon as normal.

Eventually the tide came in. Abigail Adams wrote of the shoreline defenders:

At last they musterd a Lighter, and a Sloop from Hingham which had six port holes. Our men eagerly jumpt on board, and put of for the Island. As soon as they [the regulars] perceived it, they decamped. Our people landed upon [the] Island, and in an instant set fire to the Hay which with the Barn was soon consumed, about 80 ton tis said.

The newspaper report offered more details:

The Tide had now come in, and several Lighters, which were aground, were got afloat, upon which our People, who were ardent for Battle, got on board, hoisted Sail, and bore directly down upon the nearest Point of the Island.

The Soldiers and Sailors immediately left the Barn, and made for their Boats, and put off from one End of the Island, whilst our People landed on the other. The Sloops hoisted Sail with all possible Expedition, whilst our People set Fire to the Barn, and burnt 70 or 80 Tons of Hay; then fired several Tons which had been polled down to the Water-Side, and brought off the Cattle.

Lt. John Barker basically agreed with that sequence of events in his diary:

as soon as they [the foragers] landed they were fired on from the opposite shore but without receiving any harm, the distance being too great; the party did not return the fire but kept on carrying the hay to the boats, until at last the Rebels in great numbers got into Vessels and Boats and went off for the Island; the party then embarked and sailed off with what hay they had, and as they were obliged to go along shore they were fired upon, when Lt. Innis who commanded was at last forced to return the fire…

Back to the New-England Chronicle:

As the Vessels passed Horse-Neck, a Sort of Promontory which extends from Germantown [in Braintree], they fired their Swivels and small Arms at our People very briskly, but without Effect, though one of the Bullets from their small Arms, which passed over our People, struck against a Stone with such Force as to take off a large Part of the Bullet.

That ended the crisis. All that remained was for the two sides to tote up gains and losses.

TOMORROW: The bottom line.

“3 Sloops and one cutter had come out”

In May 1775, the people of Hingham and other towns along the South Shore from Boston weren’t really worrying about protecting livestock on harbor islands.

As a 3 May petition from selectmen in Braintree, Weymouth, and Hingham to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress put it, those towns felt “in great danger of an attack from the troops now in Boston, or from the ships in the harbor.”

They worried that the British military would attack the towns themselves, not off-shore pasturage—perhaps to seize food but mostly to punish the rebellious population.

The congress therefore authorized those towns to raise two and a half companies of men for their defense through the end of the year, on the same terms as the provincial soldiers being signed up to keep besieging Boston. In Hingham, James Lincoln took a captain’s commission and started recruiting.

On the morning of Sunday, 21 May, vessels were spotted maneuvering through the islands off the Weymouth shore. Abigail Adams described the response in north Braintree:

When I rose about six oclock I was told that the Drums had been some time beating and that 3 allarm Guns were fired, that Weymouth Bell had been ringing, and Mr. [Ezra] Welds [churchbell in Braintree’s middle precinct] was then ringing.

I immediatly sent of an express to know the occasion, and found the whole Town in confusion. 3 Sloops and one cutter had come out, and droped anchor just below Great Hill. It was difficult to tell their design, some supposed they were comeing to Germantown others to Weymouth. People women children from the Iron Works flocking down this Way—every woman and child above or from below my Fathers.

My Fathers family flying, the Drs. [Cotton Tufts’s] in great distress, as you may well immagine for my Aunt had her Bed thrown into a cart, into which she got herself, and orderd the boy to drive her of to Bridgwater which he did. The report was to them, that 300 hundred had landed, and were upon their march into Town.

The allarm flew [like] lightning, and men from all parts came flocking down till 2000 were collected

In Scituate, Paul Litchfield was home from Harvard College, his senior year cut short by the war. He wrote in his diary:

Just before meeting began in morning, hearing the King’s troops were landing near Hingham, the people in general dispersed, so no meeting.

The 25 May New England Chronicle, newly moved to Cambridge, reported this military response:

Last Sabbath about 10 o’clock A.M. an express arrived at General [John] Thomas’s quarters at Roxbury, informing him that four sloops (two of them armed) were sailed from Boston, to the south short of the bay, and that a number of soldiers were landing at Weymouth.

Gen. Thomas ordered three companies to march to the support of the inhabitants.

But the first newspaper report of the action was the 22 May Newport Mercury:

An express arrived here this morning, from Providence, with advice, that a party of soldiers from Boston had landed at Weymouth, and burnt the town down, and were ravaging the country when the express came away. Troops from all parts of the country were going to oppose them.——The particulars not yet come to hand.

TOMORROW: The particulars of what really happened.

The Islands of Elisha Leavitt

Elisha Leavitt (1713–1790) was a blacksmith in Hingham, and a lot more. He also traded in goods, “engaged in navigation,” and owned part of a fishing company.

In the 1760s Leavitt started to amass a particular sort of real estate: Boston harbor islands. He bought Georges Island in 1765, Lovells Island in 1767, Grape Island just off Hingham, and half of Gallops Island. All told that was over 150 acres of land useful for raising hay and pasturing livestock.

In 1771 Leavitt bought the big old Thaxter house, shown above in a stereograph from the New York Public Library. By that time his son Martin was at Harvard College, preparing to be a doctor. The family was edging into gentility.

A Hingham tradition held that Leavitt was “a bitter Tory.” However, his name doesn’t appear in the newspapers or in Massachusetts Provincial Congress records as a suspected Loyalist. Aside from one election as a constable decades before, he wasn’t politically visible.

Likewise, there’s a tradition that Leavitt let “Nathaniel Ray Thomas and other tories of Marshfield” into his mansion through a “secret door” in September 1774 and hid them until they could make their way to Boston. But no one claimed to have actually seen this hidden room in the Leavitt house before it was demolished. It doesn’t appear to have been an isolated estate, safe from prying eyes. 

I find it hard to believe Leavitt could be well known for supporting the royal government and continue to live peacefully in Hingham from 1774 into 1777 (when his name first appeared in the Boston papers in an advertisement for an until-recently-enslaved man named Primus) and beyond. Massachusetts towns weren’t very forgiving of “bitter Tories” in those years. I suspect Leavitt may have been less militant than his neighbors but was probably more neutral than Loyalist.

In The Islands of Boston Harbor (1935), Edward Rowe Snow wrote: “Realizing that the British officers needed hay for their horses quartered in Boston, [Leavitt] sent word for them to come down to Grape Island and gather the hay.” But Snow offered no documentary evidence for such an offer.

As men like William Harris, Elijah Shaw, and Henry Howell Williams found out in May 1775, the Royal Navy and army was collecting food and forage as they needed, paying owners who cooperated and just taking the supplies otherwise. After all, there was a war on. Given those alternatives, Leavitt may very well have preferred to take the money.

In any event, on 20 May Lt. John Barker of the 4th Regiment inside Boston wrote in his diary:

A Detachment of 1 Subaltern and 30 [men] sent to Crape Island, about 9 miles from Town in the Bay, to bring up hay.

Barker meant Grape Island, Elisha Leavitt’s nearest island property.

TOMORROW: The alarm.

“When the stakes are as significant as life and liberty”

Earlier this week the president of Yale, Marie McInnis, offered inspiration to the graduating class from a work by much earlier graduate.

Here’s an article from the university:

A Yale-trained art historian, McInnis turned to an artwork from the Yale University Art Gallery collection for answers, focusing on John Trumbull’s celebrated painting “The Battle of Bunker’s Hill.” The canvas marks that moment, 250 years ago in June, when a band of American rebels stood their ground on a hillside in Charlestown, then just north of Boston, against the might of the British military.

In Trumbull’s painting, the scene unfolds beneath acrid plumes of smoke as British forces breach the revolutionaries’ lines. Joseph Warren, an American major general, lies mortally wounded in the arms of a comrade. A redcoat tries to bayonet the fallen general — but British Major John Small has stepped in to stop him.

“In that moment, one man preserves the dignity of a dying foe with an unexpected gesture of compassion amid chaos,” McInnis said. “One man, taming the passions of war, chooses mercy. Chooses to see the man who was his friend, instead of the general of an opposing force.”

In highlighting Small’s intervention, McInnis said, Trumbull invites viewers to recognize a frequently overlooked kind of courage: The ability to show compassion to a bitter adversary.

“Compassion, as I suspect Major Small understood, is not the absence of conviction. It is not weakness,” she said. “And it is certainly not retreat. It is, in fact, an act of radical strength in its rarest form. It is the idea that even in our most consequential disagreements — that even when the stakes are as significant as life and liberty — we must find ways to recognize our common humanity.”

And displaying compassion does not mean avoiding conflict or denying differences, McInnis said.

“In a vibrant, pluralistic society, disagreement is inevitable, indeed welcomed,” she said in her speech, titled “Overcoming divides and embracing our shared humanity.”

“But what I would like to impress on you today is that compassion can coexist with our most deeply held beliefs.”

Here’s the full text of President McInnis’s speech.

Historically, I have to point out that Trumbull constructed his scene to convey just such a message. According to Alexander Garden, Maj. Small himself said that the artist “paid me the compliment of trying to save the life of Warren; but the fact is, that life had fled before I saw his remains.”

Also, Trumbull produced multiple copies of this scene with subtle differences. The image shown above from Yale is one of his preliminary studies. The university also owns a finished, full-color version, as do the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Wadsworth Athenaeum. (Notably, the colors aren’t the same on those two canvases, particularly in the flags Trumbull inserted into the scene.)

“Went in pursuit of these royal pirates”

After setting the stage for the fighting over Hog Island, Noddle’s Island, and Chelsea 250 years ago this month, I should catch up on a couple of other shoreline skirmishes in May 1775.

One fight took place in the waters between Fairhaven and Martha’s Vineyard on 14 May. I wrote about that event starting here, and Derek W. Beck went into more detail in this article.

Today I’ll comment on a couple of sources.

First, Peter Force’s 1833 American Archives included an “Extract of a Letter from Newport, Rhode-Island, dated May 10, 1775” about the action.

That letter described that event as starting “Last Friday,” which is probably why Richard Frothingham writing in the mid-1800s misdated the fight by a week. Naval Documents of the American Revolution reprinted the letter from American Archives with the same date.

However, that passage first appeared in the 26 May Pennsylvania Mercury, and there it’s actually labeled as “Extract of a letter from New-Port, Rhode-Island, May 15,” meaning “Last Friday” was 12 May. That matches up with the other sources. The ship-seizing began on 12 May, and the fighting occurred on 14 May.

Second, here’s the report on the fight from Isaiah Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy, published 24 May in Worcester:

The week before last the Falcon sloop of war, was cruising about Cape-Cod, and meeting with a wood sloop, in ballast, seized her, but promising the skipper to release him and his vessel if he would give information of any vessel that was just arrived from the West-Indies with a cargo on board, he at length told the Captain of the Falcon [John Linzee] that there was a sloop at Dartmouth, which had just arrived;

Significantly, the owner of that wood sloop, Simeon Wing, later told Massachusetts authorities that ”an indian Fellow on board” had offered information about the other sloop, not “the skipper”—who was Wing’s son Thomas. Scapegoating a man of color?

whereupon the Captain of the Falcon, instead of releasing the wood sloop, armed and manned her, and sent her in search of the West-Indiaman;

Other sources show that the prize crew put onto the wood sloop consisted of Midshipman Richard Lucas (called in some New England sources as mate or lieutenant), surgeon’s mate John Dunkinson, gunner Richard Budd, eight seamen, and three marines.

they found the vessel lying at anchor, but her cargo was landed; however, they seized her and carried her off after putting part of their crew and some guns and ammunition on board.

Notice of this getting on shore, the people fitted out a third sloop, with about 30 men and two swivel guns, and went in pursuit of these royal pirates, whom they come up with at Martha’s Vineyard, where they lay at anchor at about a league’s distance from each other; the first surrendered without firing a gun, our people after putting a number of hands on board, bore down upon the other, which by this time had got under sail, but the people in the Dartmouth sloop coming up with her, the pirates fired upon them; the fire was immediately returned, by which three of the pirates were wounded, among whom was the commanding officer;

Massachusetts Provincial Congress documents preserved the names of the two wounded seamen as Jonathan Lee and Robert Caddy.

our people boarded her immediately, and having retaken both sloops, carried them into Dartmouth, and sent the prisoners to Cambridge, from thence nine of them were yesterday brought to this town.

Other newspapers say those prisoners of war were sent to the jail in Taunton, but that might have been only overnight. Authorities kept the three wounded men in Dartmouth along with the surgeon’s mate “to dress their wounds.”

Capt. Linzee never recorded losing the wood sloop and his prize crew in the log of the Falcon. But according to a report out of New York, he later told a passing ship’s captain that he understood Midn. Lucas had “lost an arm.” Locals involved in the fracas, quoted here, recalled that Lucas was wounded in the head with buckshot and recovered.

The 15 May letter from Newport printed in Pennsylvania Mercury (cited above) said one of the wounded men was “since dead.” That appears to have been another false rumor since follow-up newspaper stories and government sources don’t mention any dead at all.

After the actual fighting there were protracted disputes on the provincial side. What to do with the prisoners? What to do with the ships? I discussed those debates back here.

“Observing the Rebels landed on Noddles Island”

On 14 May 1775 the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s committee of safety, aware that the British military was buying or confiscating sheep and cattle pastured on the Boston harbor islands, passed this resolution:

as the opinion of this committee, that all the live stock be taken from Noddle’s island, Hog island, Snake island, and from that part of Chelsea near the sea coast, and be driven back; and that the execution of this business be committed to the committees of correspondence and selectmen of the towns of Medford, Malden, Chelsea and Lynn, and that they be supplied with such a number of men as they shall need, from the regiment now at Medford.

That strong opinion apparently didn’t have the effect the committee wanted. It was, after all, recommending that other people undertake a difficult task that wouldn’t normally fall within their responsibilities.

So ten days later the committee resolved:

That it be recommended to Congress, immediately, to take such order respecting the removal of the sheep and hay from Noddle’s Island as they may judge proper, together with the stock on the adjacent islands.

The next day, 25 May, Gen. Thomas Gage wrote to Adm. Samuel Graves (shown above):

I have this moment received Information that the Rebels [intend] this Night to destroy, and carry off all the Stock & on Noddles Island, for no reason but because the owners having sold them for the Kings Use: I therefore give you this Intelligence that you may please to order the guard boats to be particularly Attentive and to take such Other Measures as you may think Necessary for this night.

According to Lt. John Barker, some British troops went onto Noddle’s Island that day “to bring off some hay.” But that was about it.

On the morning of 27 May, about 600 provincial soldiers under Col. John Nixon and Col. John Stark moved from Chelsea onto Hog Island. They began to round up livestock, most likely owned by Oliver Wendell, and set fire to hay and other crops.

In the afternoon, part of that provincial force crossed to Noddle’s Island, burning some structures. The smoke from the fires alerted British commanders. Capt. John Robinson of H.M.S. Preston sent an alert to Adm. Graves, who later wrote:

Upon observing the Rebels landed on Noddles Island, I ordered the Diana to sail immediately between it and the Main[land], and get up as high as possible to prevent their Escape, and I also directed a party of Marines to be landed for the same purpose.

That started the second significant fight of the siege of Boston, which local historians later named the Battle of Chelsea Creek. Rather than recounting the two-day action blow by blow, I recommend Craig J. Brown, Victor T. Mastone, and Christopher V. Maio’s article in the New England Quarterly from 2013 and HUB History’s recent podcast.

On Saturday, 24 May, Chelsea will commemorate the Sestercentennial of the Battle of Chelsea Creek. There will be military drills, artillery demonstrations, and other events at Port Park. The Governor Bellingham Cary House Museum will have an open house. There’s also a boat tour, but that’s sold out (and the Battle of Chelsea Creek wasn’t really a good event for sailing vessels, anyway).

On that same day, East Boston will commemorate the Sestercentennial of the Battle of Chelsea Creek at Condor Street Urban Wild with two battle reenactments at 11:00 A.M. and 3:00 P.M., a boat tour, a walking tour, military music, games, crafts, and the usual activities of modern public festivals.

After the anniversary passes, I’ll discuss a couple of the outcomes of that fighting.

“Permission to pass to & repass from Noddle’s Island”

As discussed yesterday, Henry Howell Williams’s oversaw what was probably the biggest farming operation in Boston harbor in 1775. He was renting Noddle’s Island to raise sheep, cattle, and horses and to grow forage and vegetables.

According to Mellen Chamberlain’s Documentary History of Chelsea, Williams’s “most profitable business had been supplying the King’s troops rendezvoused at Boston, in time of war, and merchant vessels, in time of peace, with fresh provisions from his fields and stock yards.”

That tie to the royal establishment and imperial trade was probably why Williams had signed a complimentary address to Gov. Thomas Hutchinson on his departure for London in June 1774, which quickly became a litmus test for Loyalism.

On the other hand, Williams also had strong ties to the other side of the political divide. He was the son of Roxbury farmer Joseph Williams, and I found hints that that family helped to smuggle cannon out of army-occupied Boston in 1774–75. Williams’s sisters married into Patriot families like the Mays, Heaths, and Daweses. His brother Samuel had moved out to Warwick but then came back east as a Provincial Congress delegate and militia captain.

On 21 April, Williams was in Boston and ran into William Burbeck, who held the Massachusetts government post of storekeeper at Castle William. A year later Burbeck described their interaction:

after some Conoversation with him setting forth my Concern how I should git out of town, Expecting every minute that I should be sent for; to go Down to that Castle—

he told me that he would Carry me over to Noddles Island if I would Resque it that he would Do the same for ye good of his Country; And am Sure that if we had been taken Crossing of water must have been confind. to this Day, or otherway more severly punished. . . . And that the Very next morning after; A party of men & Boat was sent after me And Serchd. my house & Shop to find me—

that after we got to ye Island Mr. Williams ordered one of his men to Carry me over to Chelsea by which means I am now in Cambridge—And that a few Days after I got into Cambridge sent to Mr. Williams Desiring him to Send my millitary Books & plans as also all my instruments which ye Army stood in great Need of. And Could not Do without.

Days after arriving behind provincial lines, Burbeck became the second-in-command of the Massachusetts artillery regiment.

However much Williams wanted to support the Patriot cause, the British military still controlled Boston harbor. So he also made a deal with the royal authorities. On 1 May, Capt. Robert Donkin, one of Gen. Thomas Gage’s aides, issued Williams a pass, shown above courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Head Qrs. Boston 1st. May 1775

The Bearer, Mr. Williams, has the Commander in Chief’s permission to pass to & repass from Noddle’s Island to this place as often as he has occasion; he having given security to carry no people from hence, or bring any thing off the Island without leave from His Excelly or the Admiral—

Rt. Donkin
Aide Camp

NB. his own Servants row him.

Adm. Samuel Graves approved this pass as well. After all, the Royal Navy had at least one storehouse on Noddle’s Island, including a cooper’s shop.

Visiting Henry Howell Williams on Noddle’s Island

For the last third of the eighteenth century, Henry Howell Williams (1736-1802) leased Noddle’s Island in Boston harbor for farming.

Williams married Elizabeth Bell, daughter of the previous lessee, in 1762, and they moved onto the island. They had a large house on the western end.

The Williamses started raising a family there: six children born between 1765 and 1772, and another due to arrive on 6 July 1775.

Henry Howell Williams’s runaway advertisements in the Boston newspapers showed his household sometimes included other people as well: an eighteen-year-old Irish servant named Joseph Sullivan in 1764; a twenty-three-year-old “Negro Girl Servant, named PHILLIS,” in 1778.

Williams periodically advertised a stallion raised on the island as available “to cover.” That horse was named “the Young Barbe.”

In several summers Williams ran ads chastising people for coming onto the island to shoot birds, enumerating the harm they did:

• “killed a Number of my Sheep” (1768).
• “treading down the Grass on the mowing Ground” (1769).
• “to conceal it, throw the [dead] Sheep into the Wells or Pond Holes” (1769).
• “putting my Family in Danger of their Lives” (1770).
• “bringing on Dogs, and driving my Stock from one End of the Island to the other” (1772).

The apex of these complaints appeared in August 1784:

the 9th Inst. as a number of men were mowing, a scoundrel of a gunner fired his piece and covered one of the men with a shower of small shot, which providentially did but little damage

Williams forbade other people from hunting on Noddle’s Island. Of course, the fact that he kept placing the ads meant people kept ignoring his ban.

I didn’t find any notices about hunting from Henry H. Williams in 1773. But the 26 July Boston Evening-Post ran this news item:

Last Saturday…Afternoon, Mr. Henry Knox, of this Town, Stationer, being a Fowling on Noddles Island, in discharging his Piece at some Game, it burst near the Breech, whereby his left Hand was shattered in a very dangerous manner; his little Finger entirely tore away, and the two adjoining ones were obliged to be cut off at the middle Joints, his Thumb and Fore Finger only remaining, and his Hand being otherwise so much hurt that it is feared whether even these will be saved.

I quoted the letter Knox wrote to one of his surgeons in the following March back here.

It’s possible that Henry H. Williams had given Knox special permission to go hunting on Noddle’s Island that July. And it’s possible Williams heard about the young bookseller’s accident and muttered, “Serves him right.”

“What Stock you had upon the Island”

Most islands in Boston harbor weren’t convenient for living on, but some were good for keeping livestock.

Cattle and sheep could graze on the natural grasses, taking in adequate water and salt, and they couldn’t run away.

That meant that as the Revolutionary War began, several islands had a lot of animals on them, as well as pasturage that could feed horses.

As the same time, the British military found itself penned up inside Boston, cut off from the town’s usual supply of food from the countryside.

It would take about six weeks before the government and merchants of London would hear of the outbreak of war, another six weeks before any supply ships they sent in response would arrive at Boston. The royal authorities therefore had to secure their own provisions for the next three months. Of course, that was a concern for Boston’s civilian authorities as well.

Leaders of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress saw the same situation. Recognizing that it was to their advantage to starve out the enemy, the committee of safety told farmers around the harbor not to sell provisions to anyone in the British military. Of course, that was easier said than done.

Boston selectman Oliver Wendell owned animals on Hog Island. “Greatly shocked by the Nervous Disorder,” he had left Boston for Newbury before the fighting broke out. His former apprentice Henry Prentiss therefore was trying to manage Wendell’s assets for him from Charlestown.

Of course, neither of those merchants actually handled the animals; that was the job of an employee named William Harris. On 9 May, Prentiss told Oliver Wendell, “Harris continues [on the] Island and sells to every one that comes.”

That wasn’t entirely voluntary. The next day, a man named Elijah Shaw told the committee of safety that British soldiers had “robbed him of 11 cows, 3 calves, a yearling heifer, 48 sheep, 61 lambs, 4 hogs, and poultry, hay 5 tons, and almost all his furniture.” The military was confiscating valuable provisions from people who wouldn’t sell.

On 12 May, Prentiss sent more details, starting with an inquiry from one of Wendell’s fellow selectmen, Thomas Marshall:

Coll. Marshall sent over here to know what Stock you had upon the Island, upon which I sent Mingo to the Island to bring an account to me.

He tells me Mr. Harris is very uneasy, the people from the Men of War frequently go to the Island to Buy fresh Provision, his own safety obliges him to sell to them, on the other Hand the Committee of Safety have thretned if he sells anything to the Army or Navy, that they will take all the Cattle from the Island, & our folks tell him they shall handle him very rufly.

Mingo was enslaved to Wendell, it appears, and trusted by him. At the start of the month another mercantile partner, Nathaniel Appleton, reported that Mingo had just gotten out of besieged Boston and “will give you more particulars of the Town.” Then the man returned from Newbury to Charlestown, doing this job for Prentiss.

“Commemoration of the 135th anniversary of the battle of Lexington”

As a sort of “guest blogger” entry today I’m running an article that appeared in the 19 Apr 1910 Boston Herald reporting on an anniversary oration in Lexington by Rabbi Charles Fleischer (1871–1942), then of Temple Adath Israel of Boston.

Exercises Begin at Lexington

Rabbi Fleischer Delivers Address on “Americanizing America” and Criticises Conditions Prevailing at Present Here.

“Is America American? Are we as a people, and as individuals, democratic? Are our institutions democratic? Have we made any serious effort to organize our national life on the basis of democracy?” These were the questions asked, and answered in the negative, by Rabbi Charles Fleischer in an address at Lexington last night.

The occasion was the commemoration of the 135th anniversary of the battle of Lexington, at the town hall, by the Lexington Historical Society. Rabbi Fleischer’s address was on “Americanizing Americans.” He said in part:

“Let us see what this process of Americanizing and democratizing America implies. In politics it means, not only war on the machine and on boss rule, but it means an end to discrimination against sex, the actual institution of universal suffrage, female as well as male, this being implied in a political democracy, in which the ballot is the symbol of social status.

“Also it means the elimination of business from politics, the cutting away of that cancerous growth, the corruption of corporate influence, which threatens the integrity of our political democracy. We don’t want the business man as such in politics. Nor, on the other hand, is the tariff to be considered a political question, but an industrial problem.

“The Americanization of America further involves the democratization of industry to the end of distributing more equably (not equally, of course), the fruits of the co-operation between capital and labor. This is demanded by the situation, not only to promote economic justice, but still more is it needed in order to prevent our degenerating into the most corroding type of human society, a soulless plutocracy—already prefigured in our worship of the almighty dollar.[”]

I share this not because it offers information about the Revolutionary War but because it shows what at least some Americans of 115 years ago thought that American history pointed toward.

Charles Fleischer was a Reform rabbi—radical Reform, some might say. He left Temple Adath Israel the year following this address in order to start a non-sectarian movement he called “Sunday Commons.” Here’s a Commentary article about Fleischer written by Arthur Mann in 1954.

“Our tour was about the American Revolution”

Nick DeLuca’s article “When Is History Advocacy?” at the Contingent Magazine site begins like this:

“Excuse me,” a visitor asked as they tapped my shoulder. I was leading a tour group for the National Parks of Boston. We were standing inside Faneuil Hall and just about to hit the Freedom Trail.

Faneuil Hall was the social, political, and commercial heart of colonial Boston. It also was an arena for action and resistance before, during, and after the American Revolution. The visitor inquired, “Is this one of those woke tours?”

I paused. I thought he was joking at first but he waited for a response. “What do you mean?” I replied.

He asked if the tour was “political.” I told him that our tour was about the American Revolution in Boston, so yes.

DeLuca is a longtime seasonal ranger at Boston National Historical Park.

He’s also a longtime student of the political background of the National Park Service, as he discussed years back in this History News Network article.

It’s of course impossible to discuss history without touching on politics, especially at a site that was created for a political purpose and preserved because of political activity. And even if, say, Abolitionism is no longer controversial, its principles and arguments echo in today’s issues.

Furthermore, because the National Park Service is a government entity, it’s inescapably political. The fact that the overwhelming majority of American citizens approve of the agency doesn’t change how it was created through a political process and answers to politicians.

National Parks employees understand the responsibilities that go along with their jobs. They’re very careful to avoid political advocacy—far more so than the politicians above them or than we the people have to. But that can’t mean misrepresenting history or science.

DeLuca’s story of meeting this anti-“woke” visitor ends happily because he did his job. Unfortunately, the current administration has been moving to cut lots of jobs from the National Park Service, and perhaps cut parks as well, in order to reduce taxes on rich people and leave a mark on history. 

“To become a Keeper of the Light House on Bald Head”

Commonplace published David E. Paterson’s article “Jefferson’s Mystery Woman Identified.”

It begins:

Historians have long wondered what prompted President Thomas Jefferson’s cryptic sentence in a note dated January 13, 1807, to Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin: “The appointment of a woman to office is an innovation for which the public is not prepared, nor am I.”

Given Jefferson’s opinion explicitly expressed elsewhere that women were best suited to domestic roles, not to boisterous public political forums, and not as actors in the halls and offices of government, scholars of the early republic and popular authors alike, since at least 1920, have tried to reconstruct the specific context in which the president made this comment. For the last twenty years, the consensus explanation has been that Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin, unable to find enough qualified men to fill federal government jobs, proposed hiring women for those positions.

However, while Jefferson’s statement may reflect his thoughts on women as office holders in general, my recent research in federal records proves that Jefferson wrote the sentence in reaction to Gallatin’s proposal to appoint a specific woman to a specific job.

As Paterson says, Gallatin’s letter to the President and other pertinent documents don’t survive, so he had to work with other sources. One key bit of news:

The Wilmington (N.C.) Gazette of October 21, 1806, reported that five days earlier, a man named Joseph Swain, hunting deer and wild hogs on Bald Head Island, fired at a noise he heard in the bushes—only to find that he had killed his father-in-law, light-keeper Henry Long.

Paterson’s research also indicates that Gallatin; Timothy Bloodworth, the federal Customs Collector at Wilmington; and twelve local men were all willing to see a woman appointed to the office in question. Only President Jefferson deemed that “the public” wasn’t prepared for that.

Nineteen years later, President John Quincy Adams made the opposite call in regard to the same type of federal office.

For additional reading, here’s Kevin Duffus’s article for Coastal Review on the slain lighthouse keeper, Henry Long. It turns out he was born in the Palatinate in 1743. At the age of ten his family emigrated to Maine, the same region where Christopher Seider’s family first settled. His father, a schoolteacher also named Heinrich Lange, was still there in 1767, according to Jasper Jacob Stahl’s History of Old Broad Bay and Waldoboro.

As a young man, Henry Long moved to North Carolina, which had German-speaking Moravian communities. He became a river pilot, married, and had children. Entering his fifties, Long seems to have wanted a more stable job. In 1794 the Hooper family—who also had roots in the Massachusetts colony—recommended him to the federal government to tend the lighthouse off Cape Fear. And that went well for twelve years.

“Willard Gibbs free”?

One ciphered line in the diary of Thomas Newell was still mysterious to me, even after being transcribed and published by the Massachusetts Historical Society.

This entry is dated 30 Sept 1773, and it reads:

Willard Gibbs free

I doublechecked those words with the original pages and the cipher, and they’re accurate. (The transcriber did regularize Newell’s spelling, capitalization, and punctuation, deeming him “illiterate.”)

Figuring out what that meant was hampered by the visibility of Josiah Willard Gibbs, the great engineer at Yale, and his father, a Yale professor of theology. But several other members of the extended family also had that name.

Pushing back far enough, we find the first Josiah Willard Gibbs (1752–1822), not a direct ancestor of those two famous men but an uncle.

The Gibbs Family Papers are at the Clements Library, and its finding aid has a lot to say about that man’s father, Henry Gibbs (1709–1759, shown above courtesy of Geni).

Son of a minister, Henry went to Harvard College and “came into a considerable inheritance from both sides of the family.” He was the college librarian from 1730 to 1734, then settled in Salem as a merchant. His first wife died young, and he then married Katharine Willard (1724–1769), daughter of the province secretary, Josiah Willard.

This marriage further cemented the prominent place of the Gibbs in Salem society but brought comparatively little lucre, and only the fortunate bequest of £500 from a friend, William Lynde, helped the Gibbs maintain their lifestyle and social obligations. A theological liberal and political supporter of the power of the crown and broad colonial obligations, Gibbs held several important local and provincial offices during the next several years, including justice of the peace (appt. 1753), judge, delegate in the House of Representatives (three terms, beginning in 1753), and Clerk of the House (1755-1759). In February, 1759, at what should have been the peak of his career, he contracted measles, leaving five children and an insolvent estate with a meager 10s allotted to each child.

Evidently Katherine Gibbs moved her family back to Boston, where she died on 31 May 1769. At that point her son Josiah Willard Gibbs was sixteen, not yet of legal age. He had a prestigious name and probably little else.

On 14 July, merchant and selectman Timothy Newell became Josiah’s guardian. (The probate judge overseeing this arrangement was Thomas Hutchinson. Newell’s sureties were Richard Clarke and John Amory. The witness to this action was William Cooper. Just showing what a tight little community colonial Boston was.)

It looks like Josiah Willard Gibbs became part of Timothy Newell’s household, probably learning business alongside that merchant’s nephew Thomas (who was three years older). Young Gibbs turned twenty-one on 30 Sept 1773—the day of Thomas Newell’s mysterious line.

Thus, “Willard Gibbs free” meant that Josiah Willard Gibbs had come of age. He could manage his own property and no longer answered to Timothy Newell. As to whether that was cause for celebration or mere acknowledgement, the diary didn’t say.

According to the Memoir of the Gibbs Family of Warwickshire, England, and United States of America (1879), compiled by (naturally) Josiah Willard Gibbs, this Willard Gibbs went on to marry Elizabeth Warner in 1779; she was just about to turn sixteen.

These Gibbses had ten or eleven children between 1780 and 1801. Their son George was born in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1793, and the family settled in Philadelphia. Josiah died in that city in 1822, Elizabeth in 1842. Their son Josiah Willard Gibbs was a merchant there. His son Josiah Willard Gibbs went out to Sacramento in the Gold Rush and died in 1850.

Thomas Newell and “that Detestable Tea”

Thomas Newell’s diary makes clear that he opposed Parliament’s tea tax in 1773, as most Bostonians did. On 2 December, for instance, he wrote about James Bruce bringing in the Eleanor with “116 Chest of that Detestable Tea.”

But what did Newell do to support that stance?

On 17 November the young man made clear he didn’t participate in the attack on the Clarke family’s warehouse, discussed back here: “This evening a number of persons assembled before Richard Clarke’s, Esq., one of the consignees of tea; they broke the windows, and did other damage. (I was at fire meeting this evening.)”

On 2 December, the same day Capt. Bruce arrived, Newell’s diary contains one of the longer bits of cipher in the diary. The word “Junr” is legible among the little symbols, and a squiggle that doesn’t fit the cipher turns out to be “St.” What was Newell hiding?

Not a whole lot, it turns out. Once deciphered, the line reads: “This Eving. was at St. Andrew’s Lodge, I was chosen Junr Deacon of said Lodge.” Well, good for Thomas Newell.

Some people credit that lodge of Freemasons with being at the heart of the anti-tea operation. (None give it more credit than the lodge itself.) And indeed Newell got more involved the next night.

On 3 December, Newell recorded: “This evening I was one of the watch on board of Captain Bruce (with twenty-four more), that has tea for the Clarkes & Co.” That patrol was to keep the tea from being landed so the tax could be collected.

Finally, here’s Thomas Newell’s account of 16 December:

Town and country sons mustered according to adjournment. The people ordered Mr. [Francis] Rotch, owner of Captain [James] Hall’s ship, to make a demand for a clearance of Mr. [Joseph] Harrison, the collector of the custom house (and he was refused a clearance for his ship). The body desired Mr. Rotch to protest against the custom-house, and apply to the governor for his pass for the castle. He applied accordingly, and the governor refused to give him one. The people, finding all their efforts to preserve the East India Company’s tea, at night dissolved the meeting. But behold what followed the same evening: a number of brave men (some say Indians), in less than three hours emptied every chest of tea on board the three ships, commanded by Captains Hall, Bruce, and [Hezekiah] Coffin (amounting to 342 chests), into the sea.

Was Newell among those “brave men”? I’d guess not. But he surely knew some of them.

A couple of details struck me Newell’s writing about the Boston tea protesters. First, he consistently referred to the people meeting in Old South Meeting-House as ”sons of liberty.” He didn’t worry about calling them the “body of the people.”

Second, in Newell’s telling the crowd that afternoon was trying “to preserve the East India Company’s tea.” By having it shipped back to Britain, that is. Would be a shame if anything else happened to it.

TOMORROW: A mystery name.