“Prisoners in Boston Goal” in February 1777

On 18 Feb 1777, deputy jailer Joseph Otis wrote down “A List of Prisoners in Boston Goal,” transcribed and published by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts.

This document says:

Doctṛ̣ [Benjamin] Church for holding a Tratirus Correspondence with the Enemy

John Hill for being Enemical to the States

Thoṣ̣ Mews for ditto

Thoṣ̣ Edwards for ditto

Crean Brush for ditto

Benjạ̣ Davis for ditto

Hopestill Capen for ditto

Miss [Elizabeth?] Hill & Daughter for attempting to Carry Intillegence to the Enemy

John Dean Whitworth A prisoner of War

Seven Men & two Women prisoners of War taken Near fort Cumberland

Richḍ̣ Luby for theft Sentens’d

Mary Young Sentens’d

Mary Voax Sentens’d

John Lovell for theft not had his trial

Five Debtors

It’s no surprise that Dr. Church headed this list. But it is surprising to see Brush listed fifth, given his notoriety. But perhaps the order reflects their cell assignments or some other factor.

I’ve just written about how John Hill was jailed in May, and his wife and daughter arrested in October. Those two women were the only ones explicitly locked in Boston’s jail for actions to aid the enemy, as opposed to being prisoners of war or criminals.

As for the other political prisoners, Thomas Mewse was an English “wollen-manufacturer,” as the Massachusetts Spy once put it. William Molineux had recruited him into a public-works scheme that ended with the two men suing each other. Aside from that, I know no reason to think him “Enemical.”

Thomas Edwards is usually identified as the 1771 Harvard graduate and former Braintree schoolteacher who became suspect because he apprenticed in law to a Tory. Within a couple of years, however, that Thomas Edwards was a high-ranking Continental Army officer, and he went on to a long political career. I have yet to see any contemporaneous sources describing that man as a suspected Loyalist. So I wonder if there might have been two Thomas Edwardses.

Benjamin Davis and Hopestill Capen were merchants who had sided with the Crown. Davis was captured while sailing from Halifax to New York in June 1776. Capen had stayed in Boston after the evacuation was undoubtedly regretting that decision. I may discuss them, as well as Lt. John Dean Whitworth of the Queen’s Rangers, at more length in the future.

By the time Joseph Otis wrote out this list, John Hill had been imprisoned for nine months, his wife and daughter for four. It looks like they were held separately. And it would be several more months before their situation changed.

COMING UP: An exchange.