“Eads escaped out of town last night”
I got interested this week in how printers exited Boston around the start of the war because of a question from a Boston 1775 reader about Benjamin Edes.
The standard understanding of Edes’s departure goes back to the 1901 biography of his son, Peter Edes, Pioneer Printer in Maine. Samuel Lane Boardman wrote:
But Edes’s journey was more complicated than that. Let’s start with a letter from Peter Edes that Boardman reprinted later in his biography, the same letter that I quoted a couple of days ago in regard to the Tea Party.
Writing to a grandson in 1836, Peter Edes said his father:
That detail matches a couple of contemporary reports from south of Boston, both sent to John Adams.
First, on 7 May Abigail Adams told her husband:
Edes must have landed somewhere off the south shore, given how Patriots in Braintree heard about his arrival within a day. Did Warren tell Adams, or did Adams tell Warren?
Then Edes made his way back toward the siege lines, settling in Watertown to be close to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, its news, and its printing jobs.
Edes’s partner, John Gill, didn’t get out of Boston. Instead, in the wake of the Battle of Bunker Hill he and the teen-aged Peter Edes were arrested and held in the Boston jail for several weeks.
COMING UP: Under one roof.
The standard understanding of Edes’s departure goes back to the 1901 biography of his son, Peter Edes, Pioneer Printer in Maine. Samuel Lane Boardman wrote:
In the spring of 1775, the town of Boston being in possession of the British troops, Mr. Edes contrived to evade the vigilance of their guards and went to Watertown with an old press and one or two imperfect fonts of type. The escape was made by night in a boat up the Charles river.We know Edes reestablished the Boston Gazette in Watertown on 5 June 1775, and the shortest distance between Boston and Watertown is indeed up the Charles River.
But Edes’s journey was more complicated than that. Let’s start with a letter from Peter Edes that Boardman reprinted later in his biography, the same letter that I quoted a couple of days ago in regard to the Tea Party.
Writing to a grandson in 1836, Peter Edes said his father:
made his escape by disguising himself as a fisherman, and getting on board a fishing boat; and when they were a few miles from town he was landed on one of the islands, from which he made his escape to the main land.To escape from Boston on a fishing vessel and to land on an island meant heading out into the harbor or beyond, not up the Charles River.
That detail matches a couple of contemporary reports from south of Boston, both sent to John Adams.
First, on 7 May Abigail Adams told her husband:
Poor Eads escaped out of town last night with one Ayers in a small boat, and was fired upon, but got safe and came up to Braintree to day. His name it seems was upon the black list.On the same day James Warren wrote to his friend:
By the way I have Just heard that Edes has stole out. I wish his partner was with him. I called on Mrs. Adams as I came along. Found her and Family well.Thus, Benjamin Edes left Boston in disguise on the night of 6 May. He may have brought out printing equipment, though these early sources don’t say that. I’d love to identify “Ayers,” but I’m not even certain of that spelling.
Edes must have landed somewhere off the south shore, given how Patriots in Braintree heard about his arrival within a day. Did Warren tell Adams, or did Adams tell Warren?
Then Edes made his way back toward the siege lines, settling in Watertown to be close to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, its news, and its printing jobs.
Edes’s partner, John Gill, didn’t get out of Boston. Instead, in the wake of the Battle of Bunker Hill he and the teen-aged Peter Edes were arrested and held in the Boston jail for several weeks.
COMING UP: Under one roof.
2 comments:
Try looking at JOSEPH EAYRES [Ayers]. He was a longtime member of the Sons of Liberty like Benjamin Edes and one of the volunteers on guard aboard the tea ship "Dartmouth" on the night of November 30, 1773. He was a house wright on Essex Street, in 1789.
Yes, Joseph Eyres is a definite possibility. In late June the Massachusetts committee of safety recommended he be appointed “Overseer of the Artificers” for the artillery regiment. Which indicates he (a) had the Patriot leaders’ trust and (b) was out of Boston by that date.
I read “Ayers” to be the fisherman in charge of the boat that carried Edes out, but it’s possible they were both passengers escaping Boston on a third man’s boat.
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