“Declaring Independence: Declaration to Constitution” in Boston, 1 June

On Monday, 1 June, the Massachusetts Historical Society will host a panel discussion titled “Declaring Independence: Declaration to Constitution.” The guiding question will be whether the promises of the Declaration of Independence shaped the Constitution.

The event description says:

America’s founding documents have echoed throughout global history and culture for more than two centuries. Join us to learn more about how these two documents are related—and how they differ. Why did revolutionaries like John Adams and his peers draw on the past as they drafted the Declaration and crafted the Constitution? What ideas shaped the United States’ working definition of liberty, and how did that translate to audiences abroad? Explore how “we the people” imagined a new political vocabulary to interpret the American experiment, which we continue today.

The panelists will be:

• Emily Sneff, author of When the Declaration of Independence Was News
• Mary Sarah Bilder, professor at Boston College Law School and author of Madison’s Hand
• Sara Georgini, series editor at the Adams Papers, moderator

For in-person attendees, the evening will start with a chance to view the exhibit “1776: Declaring Independence” and a reception starting at 5:30 P.M. The conversation and its livestream will begin at 6 P.M.

Register from this page. Attending in person costs $10, free for M.H.S. members and Card to Culture participants. Listening in online will be free, and the society usually posts recordings of its events on YouTube a few days afterward.

“How the Shooting Began in 1774” in Hampstead, N.H., on 2 June

On Tuesday, 2 June, I’ll be at the Hampstead, New Hampshire, public library, speaking to the Hampstead Historical Society about “How the Shooting Began in 1774: The Start of the Revolutionary War in New Hampshire.”

Here’s our event description:

Officially the Revolutionary War began with the Battle of Lexington and Concord in April 1775, but the first exchange of fire between the king’s government and the Patriots came the previous December in New Hampshire. The bloodless fight over Fort William & Mary in Portsmouth harbor was one stage of a months-long “arms race” as New England’s royal governors and political resistance vied to seize cannon and other artillery supplies in preparation for a war. This talk explores the mass demonstrations, armory break-ins, shadow governments, and espionage that brought on the war.

I’ll be drawing on The Road to Concord and more recent research to pander to the local audience speak bold truths about the start of the Revolutionary War—a story that starts months before the 19th of April and involves events hundreds of miles apart.

This free event is scheduled to take place from 6:30 to 8 P.M. at the library.

This talk is made possible by New Hampshire Humanities, N.H.P.B.S., and the Cogswell Benevolent Trust. It’s part of the “By the People: Conversations Beyond 250” series of community events developed by the Federation of State Humanities Councils and the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.

Meeting the Real Samuel McClellan

Yesterday’s post introduced Samuel McClellan (1730–1807) of Woodstock, Connecticut, the captain of a militia troop of horse in 1774.

McClellan was a shopkeeper and landowner in his small town. After the Revolutionary War he became a brigadier general in the state militia.

The McClellans remained locally important, and one of his great-grandsons was Gen. George B. McClellan of the Union Army and the 1864 Presidential race.

As often happens in that situation, Samuel McClellan’s descendants were influential enough to get their understanding of his role in the Revolution into local histories and biographical profiles when primary sources were hard to consult. For example, the 1902 National Cyclopedia of American Biography said:

On Oct. 13, 1773, he was commissioned captain of a fine troop of horse, raised in the towns of Pomfret, Woodstock, and Killingly, and led it Boston on receipt of the news of the battle of Lexington. He passed through the battle of Bunker hill uninjured, and in commemoration of that his wife planted three elm trees in front of residence, which attained great size and were standing when Gen. George B. McClellan visited Woodstock in 1884.

Ellen Douglas Larned’s History of Windham County, Connecticut: 1760–1880 says there were originally four elms.

The latest version of that lore is Samuel McClellan’s Wikipedia page, which as of this week says:

In 1775 Major Samuel McClellan led 184 men at the Battles of Lexington and Concord. He played a prominent role in the Battle of Bunker Hill, and after achieving the rank of lieutenant colonel in 1776, colonel in 1777, and brigadier general of the 5th Brigade in 1779, his regiment of the Connecticut Militia was stationed near New Jersey. McClellan was solicited by General George Washington to join the Continental Army and was offered a commission, but his domestic and business affairs compelled him to refuse.

That overstates the facts in multiple ways, starting with how McClellan wasn’t commissioned a major in the militia until October 1775.

News of the outbreak of war in Massachusetts didn’t reach Woodstock until 20 April, after the fighting was over, so there was no way men from that town were “at the Battles of Lexington and Concord.” Col. Israel Putnam was one of the first men from Connecticut to respond. On 21 April he wrote from Concord to say that the Massachusetts Provincial Congress hoped that Connecticut would send 6,000 men for “a standing Army.”

Putnam added as a postscript: “The Troops of Horse are not expected to come until further notice.” But Capt. McClellan had already led his 184 mounted men north into Massachusetts. That’s shown by Connecticut records of militia service, as tabulated here.

However, those same records also show that McClellan was paid for only eight days of service. Like most of his neighbors, he went home when it was clear the emergency had passed. Some men stayed or returned and enlisted in what became the New England army. McClellan didn’t.

There’s no evidence putting McClellan at the Battle of Bunker Hill or on the siege lines around Boston at the time. That undercuts the claim he “played a prominent role” in the battle, but it does explain how he remained “uninjured.”

Later in the war McClellan did mobilize with his militia regiment for short assignments in the Northern Department. He also served in the Connecticut assembly and as a commissary. In that last capacity his name comes up in Washington’s papers, but there’s no direct written solicitation from the commander for McClellan to join the Continental Army.

McClellan apparently left a fowling-piece, made by the Massachusetts gunsmith Joel White, equipped with a bayonet mount and bearing the initials “SMC.” That’s been displayed as a weapon from the Battle of Bunker Hill. McClellan may well have carried it during the Revolutionary War, but not at that fight.

“Specimens of Indian Insult”

I’ve quoted a couple of accounts of mock battles on Boston Common during militia musters, as reported proudly in the local newspapers. On those occasions, half the local unit provided an enemy by portraying the French.

Here’s a report from the 12 May 1774 Norwich Packet, describing a different scenario in Woodstock, Connecticut, a town on the border with Massachusetts:

NORWICH, May, 12.

A Correspondent from Woodstock informs us, that on Monday the 2d. Inst. the Three Military Companies of that Town met upon the Parade, in the First Society, where they performed the Manual Exercise with a Spirit and Activity that did Honour to their Officers and themselves.

At Eleven o’Clock a Troop of Horse, under the Command of Capt. Samuel McClellan, came upon the Parade; which, for elegance of Dress, goodness of the Horses, and suitable Furniture, were judged, by the numerous Spectators present, to be inferior to no Troop in America.

At Three o’Clock the Foot and Troop feigned a Skirmish with each other, which they conducted with Propriety and Order: Suddenly a Company of Aborigines appeared, who made Captives of some of the Children present, and gave other Specimens of Indian Insult to the Foot and Horse: Their Depredations roused the New-England Spirit in the Troop, who, with seem Fury, attacked and drove them yelling off the Field, to the great Joy of the Spectators.

The good Order that was observed, not only by the Troop and Foot Companies, but also by the Spectators, was remarkable.----No Injury was sustained by any One present. The Day and Evening Entertainments, were concluded with strict Sobriety and Decency.

The Captain of the Troop gave an elegant Dinner to his Company and a Number of Gentlemen, as also did Capt. [Benjamin?] Lyon, and the Colonel of the Regiment honoured the Day with his Presence.

I’ve found this event mentioned in a local history but not quoted in full. It offers an example of what Philip J. Deloria called “playing Indian” in American culture. This moment was a few months after the Boston Tea Party, a few months before the Patriot press began to share fearful speculations that the Crown government might recruit Natives and French Canadians to attack resistant colonies.

Ironically, the town of Woodstock contains the site of Wabaquasset, a Native American “praying town” from the mid-1600s. That community was split and depopulated by the King Philip’s War. Englishmen from Roxbury then settled the land. The town’s seal now depicts Native and English men standing on either side of a heraldic shield.

Uncovering Boston Jersey

Earlier this month the Guardian reported on how researchers had unearthed new information about a figure in this portrait.

For hundreds of years, he was known only as “Jersey”, an enslaved boy of about 11 rendered in oil on canvas by the great 18th-century portrait painter Sir Joshua Reynolds. . . .

The painting, thought to have been completed around 1748, shows the boy and his “master”, the naval officer and MP Paul Henry Ourry. While Ourry looks out into the distance authoritatively, the enslaved child gazes up at the officer tentatively. . . .

Scouring admiralty records, letters, muster books (ships’ registers) and captains’ logs, [Mark] Brayshay and Katherine Gazzard, a curator at Royal Museums Greenwich, found him named as “Boston Jersey” on ships that Ourry was attached to.

They believe he may have been given the surname Jersey because Ourry was born in the Channel Islands. It is possible he had his first name because he once lived in Boston, Massachusetts.

The researchers discovered Jersey was baptised as George Walker (possibly a name he had been known by earlier in his life) on 30 July 1752, probably in a chapel in Westminster.

The article has a little more to say about George Walker and much more about the restoration of the painting.

This discovery led to the quick creation of a Wikipedia page about Boston Jersey/George Walker.

“Environmental History & the War of Independence” in Boston, 27 May

David Hsiung is the Dr. Charles R. and Shirley A. Knox Professor of History at Juniata College in Pennsylvania.

For several years he’s been working on the problem of how the enviroment affected the American Revolution, how the Revolution affected the environment, and how it’s possible to study those interactions with the data we have.

That is, of course, a huge topic, so part of the historiographical challenge is, I’m sure, to narrow down and define the questions in a manageable way. In the meantime, I’ve been enjoying his articles and lectures, which always open my eyes to new ways of seeing this history.

On Wednesday, 27 May, David Hsiung will be at the Massachusetts Historical Society for a conversation with Joyce A. Chaplin of Harvard, author most recently of The Franklin Stove: An Unintended American Revolution.

The description of “Curious & Complex Connections: Environmental History & the War of Independence” says:

Many of us give only a moment’s thought about the environment when considering the War of Independence: the slope of Breed’s Hill, the ice-choked Delaware River, and diseases such as smallpox. But what might we gain by connecting biology, ecology, and geology to the thinking and actions of soldiers and civilians? Rebels and British soldiers acquired and used energy in the form of food, fuel, and work animals, which shaped people’s lives, the course of the war, and the direction of environmental change.

This is a hybrid event starting at 6 P.M., with a reception in the preceding half-hour for people attending in person. Attendance costs $10, but is free to M.H.S. members and Card to Culture participants. Listening in online is free. Register for either form of access through this page.

Folks can also take in these talks from Prof. Hsiung:

• Via the Charles River Museum and GBH, “A Revolutionary Problem: Making Saltpeter During the War of Independence.”
• Via Fort Ticonderoga and C-Span, “Energy, Geography, and Geology in the Saratoga Campaign – 1777.”
• At the American Revolution Institute in Washington, “Environmental Legacies: How the War of Independence Affected the Natural World in Predictable and Surprising Ways.” (Another version of this lecture is available through the Fraunces Tavern Museum in New York.)

“The services of their father in repairing certain cannon”

Preserved Clap was born in Hadley, lived in the part of that town which became Amherst, and ultimately died at age eighty up the Connecticut River in Claremont, New Hampshire.

His headstone appears here courtesy of Find a Grave. His wife Eunice’s stone is nearby.

Clapp probably had earlier ties to that region. The Preserved Clap listed as serving in 1775 in a provincial company recruited largely from Bolton was said to come from Charlestown, New Hampshire, next to Claremont.

There’s also this curious anecdote related by Jaazaniah Crosby in his History of Charlestown in New Hampshire (1833):

On the 18th of June, 1756, while Lieut. Moses Willard was endeavoring to extinguish the fire, which had been kindled in his fence, he was attacked by the Indians, and killed behind the barn of the late Capt. John Willard, and near the academy. At the same time, his son Moses was wounded in the hip by a spear, which is said to have remained in the wound till after his retreat into the fort. It is further said that a Mr. Preserved Clap carried the same spear into the revolutionary war.

Preserved and Eunice Clap’s son Roswell was living in Claremont by 1790, per the first U.S. Census.

Dr. Clap’s children followed in his footsteps in at least one way: asking to be paid for his inventions during the Revolutionary War.

In 1837, the U.S. Senate took up “the petition of Roswell Clapp and Charlotte Reed, children and heirs of Preserved Clapp, praying compensation for the services of their father in repairing certain cannon belonging to the United States.” That referred to work sixty-one years before, just after the siege of Boston.

And the Clap family kept up that plea until 1841, thirty years after the doctor had died.

“Acquainted with the conduct of Doctor Preserved Clap”

I lose track of Dr. Preserved Clap after 1776 until 5 Feb 1781, when the Continental Congress referred a petition from him to its board of war.

On 20 February, board members Richard Peters of Pennsylvania and Ezekiel Cornell of Rhode Island met and formulated a response to that petition:

The Board having considered the reference with which they were honored on the memorial of Preserved Clap, beg leave to observe, That it appears from his memorial and General [Henry] Knox’s letter that he hath been with the Army as a volunteer for eighteen months without pay or any emolument.

That it farther appears by General [Benjamin] Lincolns and Knox’s letters that Mr Clap was sole inventor of stocking the Cannon that were supposed to be rendered useless by the enemy at Boston, and in the vicinity, in the spring of 1776; from which the Continent at large received a real benefit; for which he received no emolument but barely day wages.

From the foregoing state of facts it may be proper for Congress to resolve,

Resolved, That the supreme executive of the State of Massachusetts examine into the merit and services of Preserved Clap, and order payment on the account of the United States, for such sum as they think he may justly deserve; provided it shall not exceed one thousand dollars in bills of the new emissions:

That Preserved Clap be informed, that Congress cannot employ him in public service, consistent with their arrangements.

The Congress approved that response the next day. Clap’s petition, which might include the letters from Knox and Lincoln, is preserved in the Congress’s files but not published.

There is, however, a second published letter from Henry Knox on the doctor. On 13 March, Gen. John Sullivan wrote to Knox about him, and on 22 March the artillery commander replied:

I received your favor of the 13th instant, requesting a certificate from me, & such of my officers who were best acquainted with the conduct of Doctor Preserved Clap, & how he employed himself in the Army.

The result of my knowledge & information is that the said Preserved has great mechanical abilities, & that he joined himself to the Army in ’79, as a volunteer, ready to do any kind of work in his power, either for officers or soldiers, sometimes with & sometimes without pay.

When the Continental troops were principally withdrawn from West Point last August, the Doctor attached himself to the Post, but he declined to the best of my remembrance to be enrolled as an artificer, & apply himself to public work entirely.

Sometime in November he applied to me for a letter to Mr. Hodgson [Samuel Hodgdon, shown above], D[eputy].C[ommissary].G[eneral].M[ilitary]. Stores, the intent of which he informed was to procure assistance or permission to work with the artificers’ tools at Philadelphia to execute some design of a machine to destroy shipping, which he intended to present to Congress or the Board of War.

But I had not the least idea of his intending to claim pay for the time he had been with the army.

This looks like the second time Dr. Clap threw himself into devising equipment for the army without arranging an official rank or contract, and without discussing pay. Not the wisest way to operate, especially when good money was scarce.

The Congress referred Clap’s case to Massachusetts, where the “supreme executive” was now Gov. John Hancock. The state archives might therefore contain more sources on Dr. Clap. However, I’ve found no evidence of pay for him on either state or national level.

TOMORROW: Last traces.

“The consideration of the Petition of Preserved Clap”

In the spring of 1776, Dr. Preserved Clap was forty-five years old. He had a wife and young children back in Amherst. And in Boston he was being hailed as a “Genius” for his idea of how to put damaged cannon back to work. So he stayed.

Though he used the title ”Doctor” and was identified by the Rev. Samuel Cooper as “a Country Surgeon,” I haven’t come across any example of Clap performing medicine. But he threw himself into mechanical tasks.

The authorities put Clap in charge of a team to salvage as many of the artillery pieces the British left behind as they could. Those men appear to have worked into the summer, and then Clap petitioned the Massachusetts General Court for pay.

On 16 September that legislature put into its record:

MEMORIAL of PRESERVED CLAP Overseer. of the Men employed in opening, and stocking the Cannon at Boston, and Castle William.
setting forth
That he and the Men attended that service, for the term of Time specified, for which he, nor they have received any pay therefore the memorialist prays, that the Honorable Court would give him an Order upon the Treasurer for the State aforesaid for the Amount of his Account. or otherwise relieve him as shall seem meet.

The Committee to whom was referr’d the consideration of the Petition of Preserved Clap, have attended that Service, and beg leave to Report by way of Resolve.

several other Accounts exclusive of said Clap’s accompanying this petition, the Committee did not take into consideration as said Clap had no orders to receive the amount of the same,

said Committee do not know of any further service for said Clap.

Resolved that there be paid out of the Publick Treasury of this state to Preserved Clap Forty Three Pound one shilling & Tenpence in full for his within account

and whereas Said Clap Says that he has envented a machine for Boreing Cannon, which may be improved to the grate advantage of this State, therefore

Resolved, That if Said Clap will exhibet a Plan, or Modle of Said Machine, to Hugh orr Esqr and others, a Comtee. for Casting Large Cannon So as to Satisfy them of its Superior utility, upon their report thereof to this Court there Shall then be granted to him Such a Sum for his envention as may appear to be adequate to its Superior usefulness.

Hugh Orr (1715–1798) had come to Massachusetts from Scotland in 1737, settling in Bridgewater after a couple of years. There he built a forge and the first known trip-hammer in British America. Though Orr’s main product was farming implements, at times of war he shifted his works toward making weapons, including muskets in 1748.

In 1776, Orr was representing Bridgewater in the General Court and working to set up a cannon manufactory. Naturally, the legislature set Dr. Clap to him. However, there’s no evidence anything came of that.

Two months later, on 14 November, the Independent Chronicle newspaper ran this notice:

BOSTON, November 11, 1776.

THIS may certify, that Doctor Preserved Clap, has opened the cannon at Castle-William that were spiked up by the enemy; and is the real inventor of a carriage, whereby the cannon that had their trunnions broken off, by this new invented carriage the guns are rendered serviceable, which otherwise would have been useless.

Attest, RICH. GRIDLEY, Chief Engineer.

I looked to see if there was any competing claim to have invented that method of mounting guns in 1776, but I couldn’t find one. Dr. Clap really wanted public credit for his ideas.

TOMORROW: Making a national case.

A Long Line of Preserved Claps

Dr. Preserved Clap, the man who stepped forward to render Boston’s broken cannon useful again in the spring of 1776, came from a long line of Preserved Claps.

According to The Clapp Memorial (1876), the doctor’s ancestors Roger Clapp and Joanna Ford arrived in Massachusetts in 1630, settling in Dorchester.

(This genealogy preferred the spelling “Clapp,” even changing how the name appeared in the period sources it quoted.)

Those Clapps named their first children Samuel, William, and Elizabeth, but then went full Puritan for most of the rest: Experience, Waitstill, Preserved, Hopestill, Thanks, Desire, Thomas, Unite, and Supply.

Preserved Clapp (1643–1720) moved to Northampton and had a son named Preserved Clapp (1675–1757), who likewise had a son named Preserved Clapp (1705–1758). That last man moved to Hadley. He married Sarah West in August 1730, and they had their first son the following May: Preserved Clap (1731–1811).

Histories of Northfield and Deerfield say that in the fall of 1754 our Preserved Clap was in charge of a small force—nine or ten men—guarding the settlement of Huntstown, now Ashfield.

The genealogy above didn’t have this information, but more recent researchers have found that in 1756 this Preserved Clapp married Eunice Atherton of Lancaster, and they started having children by 1760. His name appears a couple of times in the Amherst town records in the following decade.

On 1 Jan 1770 the Connecticut Courant of Hartford ran this notice:

CLOCKS and Watches made in the best Manner, by
PRESERVED CLAP
of Amherst.

Likewise all Kinds of Instruments in Surgery.

That’s the first surviving sign that the latest Preserved Clap had ambitions to be more than a country farmer.

The Colonial Society of Massachusetts published the image of a clockface above in an article about the engraver Thomas Johnston (1708–1767). At the top it says: “Preserved Clapp / New England.”

Did Clap order this plate from Johnston for a clock he planned to build, or for one he planned to own? And did he pay for it? Johnston kept that sheet of copper and used the other side to engrave a musical score for his publication of Daniel Bayley’s A New and Compleat Introduction to the Grounds and Rules of Musick (Boston, 1766).

Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War records that in 1775 a man named Preserved Clap served a few months as a private in the company of Capt. Benjamin Hastings of Bolton. I haven’t found anyone else named Preserved Clap of military age at the time. But it seems unusual for a forty-three-year-old man with military experience, social ambition, and some connection to medicine to serve in the ranks. In any event, Hastings’s company saw action at Bunker Hill.

The next time Preserved Clap surfaces in the records I’ve found is the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper’s 29 Apr 1776 letter to Samuel Adams, which refers to him as “a Country Surgeon in our Army.” By this time he was evidently using those “Instruments in Surgery,” not just making them. However, I haven’t found any record of Clap being surgeon for a Continental regiment. Perhaps he had taken that role in one of the militia regiments that Massachusetts raised in early 1776.

TOMORROW: Claiming credit.

“A Genius has appear’d lately”

In his 29 Apr 1776 letter to Samuel Adams, the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper described the man who came forward with a solution for cannon with damaged trunnions:

It was judg’d by…all here, at first, that they could never again be made useful: But a Genius has appear’d lately, a Country Surgeon in our Army, an obscure Man till now, who has hit upon a Method of mounting them, without Trunnions, so as to render them it is tho’t, serviceable as ever.

I can only give you some general imperfect Idea of this Method. He first sinks the Cannon to its Centre, in a strong wooden Sock, like the Barrell of a Musket in it’s Stock: He braces it with three iron Clasps to prevent it’s leaping out of this Stock; and yet so as not to obstruct any Movement necessary to it’s use.

The Cannon in this wooden Bed, is mounted on a Carriage, and by rounding the lower side of the latter like the Foot of a rocking Cradle, Provision is made for the Elivation & Depression of the Cannon.

He has compleated one or two already in this Manner; and if Experience proves it, to be, what some good Judges have already pronounc’d it, the Invention will do Honor to our Country & ought to be immortalise the Name of the Man, which is Clap.

It will give us an hundred fine Cannon for the Defence of our Harbor, which a few Days ago were given up as entirely useless.

To my surprise, I find that this is the first time in more than twenty years that Boston 1775 has mentioned Dr. Preserved Clap.

Dr. Clap did make a short appearance in The Road to Concord, in which I posited that his method was how the New Englanders mounted damaged artillery pieces in 1775.

In Old Landmarks and Historic Fields of Middlesex (1895), Samuel A. Drake included this picture, saying it showed Dr. Clap’s carriage as drawn “by an officer of artillery present at the siege.” I haven’t located that original drawing or the officer’s name.

Cooper’s letter is the earliest mention of Dr. Clap and his invention that I’ve found, as well as the most detailed description of it. The wording suggests that Clap came forward with his method only in the spring of  1776, not during the siege. And Cooper’s description really doesn’t match the drawing. So I have questions.

TOMORROW: Who was Preserved Clap?

“Entirely useless by breaking off the Trunnions”

Yesterday I started quoting a 29 Apr 1776 letter from the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper to Samuel Adams about Boston’s defenses soon after the British military left.

That letter goes on to say:

The Enemy employ’d no little Time in…destroying the Guns: The Trunnions of all of which, except 8 or so, they entirely knock’d off, besides spiking up the Touch holes in the most effectual Manner.

“Trunnions” was a term technical enough not to appear in Dr. Samuel Johnson’s dictionary. Merriam-Webster now defines them as the pivots on which something can be rotated or tilted, particularly the “two opposite gudgeons on which a cannon is swiveled.” (And it defines “gudgeons” as pivots.)

This overhead view of a cannon might convey the information better.

A gun carriage held a cannon by the two horizontal trunnions. They provided the fulcrum that allowed gunners to point the cannon up or down. A cannon without its trunnions was a heavy metal tube, very hard to mount and impossible to aim. Or, as Gen. George Washington deemed the broken guns left behind in Boston, “entirely useless.”

British artillerists broke trunnions to keep the rebels from having useful weapons. In Concord on 19 Apr 1775, Ens. Henry DeBerniere reported, “Capt. [Mundy] Pole of 10th regiment…knock’d the trunnions off three iron 24 pound cannon and burnt their carriages.”

With little other choice, the Continental Army still tried to use such damaged artillery pieces. Dr. James Thacher reported that the army started out with “a few old honey-comb iron pieces, with their trunnions broken off.” The doctor was pleased when Capt. John Manley and Col. Henry Knox brought in some intact guns.

Given that expertise, and necessity, on 24 March Washington expressed hope that Boston’s broken and spiked cannon “may be made serviceable again.” But how?

TOMORROW: A genius appears.

“They talk of sinking Hulks by the Castle”

On 29 Apr 1776, one week after writing the letter to John Adams that I quoted yesterday, the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper wrote to Samuel Adams:

this Town…is now in some better Posture of Defence, but the Works proceed slowly. I must repeat what I said to you in my last, There is an absolute Necessity of some able active Commander here, such as [Nathanael] Green, [John] Sullivan, [Israel] Putnam &c upon other Accounts besides fortifying, tho this is of extreme Importance in our Situation— . . .

We have some good Lines, excellent Cannon at Fort Hill; this is all our Defence at present, except the Works thrown up at Dorchester Point which are said to be good—We are now going to erect Works at the Castle, & hope to have a Line of Guns well defended, on the Eastern Point; & are preparing to sink Hulks, between the Rocks of Castle Island, & the lower middle Ground.

The Enemy employ’d no little Time in ruining all the old Works there, and destroying the Guns…

Cooper still wanted someone besides Gen. Artemas Ward to supervise the defense of Boston, but his description of the town’s defenses was a little advanced from the previous week.

A 22 April letter from Boston quoted in the Connecticut Gazette of New London also said: “Tomorrow they talk of sinking Hulks by the Castle.” Those hulks were the keels of old ships, meant to impede Royal Navy warships from sailing easily into the inner harbor.

Of course, those same obstacles would also be a problem for merchant vessels, or American warships. On 30 April James Warren told John Adams: “No hulks as yet sunk; the people of Boston seem much against it; and whether it will be done or not I can’t say.” After all, Warren was merely the speaker of the Massachusetts house.

On 9 May that legislature directed its harbor defense committee “without delay to sink the Hulks.” But on 23 May the Boston town meeting voted (unanimously, it was later said) against that measure. The General Court on 5 June suspended the operation, though empowering the committee to proceed “upon any sudden Alarm or appearance of danger.”

Soon enough, fear of British warships invading Boston waned. No hulks were sunk in the harbor.

“In what a defenceless State we still remain”

I was preparing to write about a document from the Samuel Adams Papers at the New York Public Library, digitized as “Letter from John Scollay” dated 22 Apr 1776.

But after taking a closer look, I realized that only the first two four pages at that link come from a letter by selectman John Scollay. And the first two pages of Scollay’s letter are at this link, called “Letter from William Davis”—which is indeed accurate for the first two of four pages there.

The file called “Letter from John Scollay” also contains a two-page letter from the Rev. Samuel Cooper, dated 29 Apr 1776. His signature is abbreviated, but the handwriting matches Cooper’s other letters in this collection.

The Cooper letter closes by saying he’d recently written to John Hancock and John Adams. The letter to Hancock isn’t listed in the John Hancock Papers project, so it probably hasn’t survived. But the Adams Papers does offer a 22 April letter from Cooper matching the style and concerns as the letter to Samuel Adams.

In particular, Cooper told John Adams he was worried about Boston’s defenses:

After so many Weeks Possession of this Town you would be surpriz’d to see in what a defenceless State we still remain. The Business of Fortifying has lain between Genl. [Artemas] Ward and a Committee of the General Court: Between them both, little or nothing has yet been done. We have but 7 or 8 Guns mounted on Fort Hill. Nothing yet done on any Island in the Harbor.

A British Ship of 40 or 50 Guns with two or three small arm’d Vessells are in Possession of King Road and Nantasket. They take or drive away almost all supplies coming to us by Water; and (would you believe it!) with this inconsiderable Force the Harbor has been, and is now effectually block’d up. Two or three Ships of War have had it in their Pow’r ever since the Evacuation of the Town to come up and cannonade it.

That warship’s primary mission was to stop other British ships from going into the harbor unaware that it waw now in rebel hands. But of course Cooper and other Bostonians couldn’t be sure it wouldn’t attack.

Ward complains that too small a Force, but 5 Regiments not full, were left him. The Court blame him for Inactivity, and He them. I was pleas’d to see your Letters and others from Gentlemen of the Congress mentioning the Importance of putting this Harbor into the best State of Defence. Pray write again and again to press this Matter.

There is a Report here that Ward has desir’d to resign. I wish from my Heart He would do it. He is a good Man, a thoro N. England man, and dispos’d to do us ev’ry Service in his Power. But He certainly wants Decision and Activity. It is of absolute Necessity that some General Officer of the best Qualities be sent to this Department immediately. Pray let [Nathanael] Green or some other be plac’d here.

We are in the utmost Hazard, should the Enemy return, of loosing in this Quarter much more than we have gain’d, by the Departure of the British Forces. Had there been a Man here, at the Head of the Military who would have discern’d at once what was proper to be done; and stated it to the Court, we might have been in a good Posture of Defence Weeks ago.

Ward had indeed put in his resignation on the grounds of ill health, then asked to remain so he could help Massachusetts rebuild. Cooper wasn’t the only local to say Ward moved too slowly. When the minister wrote this letter, however, it had been less than three weeks since Gen. George Washington had departed and left Ward in charge. It therefore doesn’t seem fair to suggest Boston could have been fortified against ocean attack “Weeks ago.”

“There is something off about this sword”

Earlier this year the Sandwich Enterprise shared a story by Cearra O’Hern about the identification of an artifact at the Pilgrim Hall Museum.

The article focuses on Michael L. Welch, Jr., who uses first-person interpretation of Revolutionary figures in teaching history at the Sandwich Middle School.

The article explains:

Welch primarily portrays Major General James Warren, a leading revolutionary in Massachusetts who also served as president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress during the American Revolution. Welch heard that the Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth had Warren’s sword…

“I connected with the curator, who was very helpful in lining up a time to go in and look at the sword,” Welch said. “I was given the attribution of the sword, how the sword was passed down through the Warren family and donated. I photographed it extensively, I scanned it, I made a 3D rendering of it, and the whole time I am looking at this sword, I am like, ‘There is something off about this sword.’”

Welch had seen a sword like Warren’s before, which was believed to date back to 1764-1765. As he continued to examine its pommel, guard and counter-guard, Welch determined the sword was not a general’s sword; it was a mass-produced sword made much later, after the American Revolution.

Welch identified the sword as a Model 1796 Hanger carried by British sergeants, a discovery that “broke his heart,” as he did not want to say anything to the Pilgrim Hall Museum.

The photo above, which the museum shared on social media a few weeks before this article appeared, may show one of those awkward moments when Welch looked at the sword and wondered about sharing doubts with curator Anne Mason.

After confirming his assessment with an expert, Welch did indeed discuss those findings with Mason and her colleagues. The museum will add that information to its files and assess how it displays the hanger. As Welch points out in the article, the fact that this sword was made in 1796 doesn’t mean it wasn’t owned by James Warren; his son James, Jr. (1757–1821), a Continental Marine officer who lost a limb in 1781; or another member of the family. It just doesn’t go back as far as the Revolution.

“To Vax or Not to Vax” walking tour in Boston, 17 May

On Sunday, 17 May, the Partnership of Historic Bostons is offering a walking tour titled “To Vax or Not to Vax: Smallpox in Early Boston.”
The organization says:

The subject of our newly revised walking tour is smallpox, one of the great killers of the 17th century. This European disease found fertile ground in the growing colonies in New England, with the most devastating effects suffered by Native Americans who had no immunity. Up to 90% of the Massachusett Tribe, whose land included Boston and Charlestown, perished, their villages lying empty and providing English colonists with unoccupied land for reasons that Puritans saw as providential.

English colonists had some immunity but, even so, successive generations suffered wave after wave of deadly smallpox outbreaks. . . .

During the tour, we will investigate how the colonists saw smallpox and tried to contain it, and how smallpox roiled their society in a number of ways. Had God handed the Shawmut peninsula over to them by clearing out the Native population, or was he punishing them with the same pestilence for not sufficiently following His word? Could smallpox be successfully treated by medical methods practiced since the time of the Romans, or would new, more radical methods (some employed by Africans, including Cotton Mather’s enslaved African Onesimus, and Turks) prove more effective?

This tour is led by Michael Prochilo. It will start outside of Park Street Station at 2:30 P.M. and is scheduled to last 90 ninety minutes. Because of construction projects, the route is not wheelchair-friendly. Participants are reminded to bring water [Sunday might bring our first 80°F. days this year] and wear comfortable shoes.

“Revolutionary Narratives” Panel in Boston, 18 May

On Monday, 18 May, the Massachusetts Historical Society will host a panel discussion on the timely topic “Revolutionary Narratives: From Broadsides to Hollywood.”

The event description says:

The American Revolution has been contested since its very beginning. During the Revolution, contemporaries looking to understand what independence meant had to sift through disinformation and journalism rife with as many opinions as today.

In the war's aftermath, narratives of the Revolution went through continuous reinterpretations in response to political and social changes. From the Civil War to the Cold War and newsrooms to Hollywood, Americans looked to the Revolutionary era to debate and define what it meant to be an American, with often divisive results.

Now, during the 250th anniversary of the Revolution, Jordan E. Taylor and Michael D. Hattem will examine commentary in Revolutionary-era newspapers and broadsides, consider how understanding of American independence has changed over time, and reflect on how the public sees the nation’s founding today.

Taylor is Digital Content Manager for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. In Misinformation Nation: Foreign News and the Politics of Truth in Revolutionary America he argues that the American Revolution was based largely on false premises and misperception.

Hattem is the author of Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution and The Memory of ’76: The Revolution in American History. He is assistant director at the Yale-New Haven Institute.

The conversation will be moderated by Debra Adams Simmons from GBH.

The in-person reception at the M.H.S. will start at 5:30 P.M., and the program will begin 6. Register to attend in person for $10, free to M.H.S. members and Card to Culture participants. Register to attend virtually for free.

Twenty Years of Boston 1775

Twenty years ago today, on 14 May 2006, I posted my first item on this blog.

That post was a link to an article I’d written for the magazine then called New England Ancestors, now American Ancestors, published by the New England Historical and Genealogical Society.

The original link broke. A subsequent link from 2012 broke. But Boston 1775 is still here.

That article described how a message from Dr. John Homans to his mentor, Dr. Joseph Gardner, in the first days of the Revolutionary War was detoured by the duplicitous Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr.

Last August I revealed other messages that Dr. Church diverted into the files of Gen. Thomas Gage, from Boston magistrate Edmund Quincy to his daughter Dorothy and her fiancé, John Hancock.

Tonight I’m speaking in Stoneham about how Dr. Church managed to infiltrate Gen. George Washington’s network for sneaking intelligence out of besieged Boston before the Continentals realized their surgeon-general as a spy.

One way to look at this situation is that after twenty years of daily blogging I’m still working the same ground.

Another is that Dr. Benjamin Church’s treachery is an endless source of revelations and fun.

“Stimuli to induce him to be useful to this Country”

One of the questions asked after yesterday’s talk on young Benjamin Thompson’s life in America was whether he interacted with any representatives of the U.S. of A. during his European career.

For example, did the former Woburn farmboy, royal government undersecretary, and British cavalry officer cross paths with John Adams, minister to Britain in the 1780s?

It appears that the two men never met since the first letters they exchanged, in 1796, show no personal acquaintance. By then Thompson had become the celebrated Count Rumford, and he was sending Adams a volume of his scientific papers and a large sum to endow a prize through the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Rumford continued sending volumes to Adams through the Rev. William Walter.

In 1799, Abigail Adams wrote of “Rumfording our Chimney’s, which I shall be for trying. I am persuaded half the expence of fuel may be saved, and Rooms kept equally warm.” The Woburn native had become famous enough to be a verb.

In 1820, John Adams sent off multiple letters pursuing the theory that “the late learned ingenious scientific public Spirited and benevolent Count Rumford” was a descendant of “the well known Rev. William Tompson of Braintree.” (He was not.)

But the most striking intersection between Rumford and Adams arose in June 1799, when Adams’s secretary of war, James McHenry, wrote about inducing the count to offer his talents to the U.S. Army:

I think it was mentioned to you, some time last winter, by the Secretary of State [Timothy Pickering], in consequence of a letter he had just received from Mr. [Rufus] King [minister to Britain 1796–1803 and 1825–26], that Count Rumford intended to visit his native country, at which you seemed pleased, and expressed yourself favourably of his talents.

Mr. King has renewed the subject to the Secretary of State, and in a letter to me, which I have the honour to inclose. As the reference of the subject to me, can only be meant so far as it respects the military department, I beg leave to submit for your consideration, whether it would not be to the advantage of the United States to make such a proposal to the Count, which if accepted, would ensure to the army the full benefits of his skill and experience.

There is still a vacancy of Lt. Colonel, to be filled for one of the Regiments of Artillerists & Engineers. . . .

1. He may be offered the vacant commission of Lt. Colonel and be made also Inspector of Artillery. Or if he prefers it. 2d. He may be invited to accept of the office of Engineer…

As I consider him to be less of an Engineer than an Artillerist, altho in this I may be mistaken I should think it most adviseable to give a preference to the first proposition. If he accepts of it, he can also superintend the establishment of a military academy which the laws so far contemplate, as to have made provision for books, instruments, and teachers.

At any rate, if the Count should refuse himself to either office, the offer cannot be otherwise than grateful, and if he wanted any stimuli to induce him to be useful to this Country, to the extent of his talents, it might have its effect.

Adams had no idea that back in 1775 Thompson had been slipping secret intelligence to Gen. Thomas Gage—a fact that would probably have changed his admiration for the man.

As for Rumford, it’s hard to imagine that a man who had administered an entire country in Europe could be swayed by the prospect of being a lieutenant colonel in America. He never did come back.

Finding Mary Fowle of Londonderry

Yesterday I cited Jane Merrill’s Sex and the Scientist: The Indecent Life of Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford (1753–1814), the latest and frankest biography of the scientist, statesman, soldier, and seducer.

That book quotes testimony from Mary Fowle of Londonderry, New Hampshire, about how Thompson had an affair with Mary (Dill) Thomas, first wife of the Boston printer Isaiah Thomas.

Merrill distinguishes that woman from the Mary Fowle whom Isaiah Thomas married in 1779, whom she identifies as both the printer’s cousin and the widow of his old master, Zechariah Fowle.

Isaiah Thomas’s second wife named Mary was indeed a cousin, having been born Mary Thomas on 9 June 1750, according to genealogy published in “The Portraits of Isaiah Thomas” by Charles Lemuel Nichols.

However, that cousin Mary didn’t marry Zechariah Fowle. Her mother, Rebecca (Bass) Thomas, did. The older printer died in Portsmouth in 1776. Rebecca (Bass Thomas) Fowle, twice widowed, died in Worcester in 1803 and was buried in her son-in-law’s family tomb.

So who was Mary Thomas’s first husband? Boston vital records show that the Rev. John Lathrop married Isaac Fowle and Mary Thomas on 11 May 1769. The Thomas and Fowle family genealogies say they had two daughters, who both died young:

• Rebecca T[homas?]. (4 Feb 1770–6 Dec 1773 in New York)
• Dorothea Whitmarsh (5 Nov 1771–10 Sept 1772)

Isaac Fowle reportedly died in 1777 while serving in the Continental Army.

That same year, Isaiah Thomas leased his financially stressed press and newspaper to his come-of-age apprentice, Anthony Haswell, and moved with his children to “a small farm in Londonderry, New Hampshire,” according to the biography published with the second edition of his History of Printing in North-America. He also initiated a divorce from his first wife.

A couple of years later, Isaiah came back and took over the print shop again. Worcester’s vital records state that on 26 May 1779 Isaiah Thomas married “Mary Fowle of Londonderry” in Boston. Since 1777 he had been a divorcé with three children, his cousin Mary had been a childless widow, and there was a war on. Mary might well have been keeping house for Isaiah in New Hampshire even before they married.

Thus, the Mary Fowle of Londonderry who provided testimony for Isaiah Thomas in his divorce case in 1777 was:

• his cousin
• a stepdaughter of his former master
• his future wife

Isaiah and Mary (Thomas Fowle) Thomas had no children. She died at Worcester in 1818, and he remarried again the next year. The picture above is the pastel portrait of Mary in the collection of the American Antiquarian Society.

“Not playing cards but fondling and kissing each other”

In preparation for tomorrow’s talk about Benjamin Thompson’s early years, I’ve been reviewing the evidence of his affair with Mary (Dill) Thomas, wife of printer Isaiah Thomas.

When Isaiah moved to divorce Mary in 1777 by petitioning the Massachusetts Council, he submitted testimony from several people who had seen his wife traveling with the militia major from New Hampshire in February 1775, behaving like man and wife.

The printer’s file also offered an affidavit from Mary Fowle of Londonderry, New Hampshire, who had stayed with the Thomases in Boston from 20 Sept 1774 to 16 April 1775.

In Sex and the Scientist, Jane Merrill quotes Fowle describing how “Major Thompson [was] then a refugee in Boston who borded in a house opposite.” Mary Thomas started visiting him several times a day even though (or because) she had two children under the age of three.

One Saturday the printer’s wife “dressed herself, shifting her Linen, which I knew was not her custom,” said her house guest. Mary Thomas came home with “a small piece of parchment, on which a Lady’s face had been drawn with a black lead pencil. . . . the Major had taken much pains with it.”

Soon Mary Thomas visited Thompson’s ”bed-chamber, where they staid the whole afternoon and part of the evening.” Fowle stated, “I could not but think there was more intimacy between them than I before tho’t of.” She observed the couple “kissing each other, laying in each others laps, speaking fondly of each without regarding me.”

One day Isaiah came home from business after his wife had gone to play cards with Maj. Thompson. Mary Fowle and a household servant went across to fetch her. They found the couple “not playing cards but fondling and kissing each other, she often laying her head on the Major’s shoulder, and their arms round each other.”

As if that wasn’t clear enough, in February 1775 Mary Thomas insisted on taking that trip to Newbury with Maj. Thompson, first having her hair “in the greatest taste much powdered.” Later the printer gathered testimony from several innkeepers about that journey. At the time, however, he just seems to have felt trapped.

On one Sunday, Isaiah Thomas and Mary Fowle went to church. When they came home, his daughter Mary Ann, who turned three years old that March, showed them a “copper” that Maj. Thompson had given her to go into another room. Fowle stated the little girl said, “The major kissed her Mama and felt her bosom.” In response, little Mary Ann’s mother told her she was lying and threatened to whip her.

Isaiah finally demanded that Mary admit to what was going on. She acknowledged having a sexual affair. And when did it start? True to Benjamin Thompson’s character, he first got into Mary Thomas’s bed right after writing a letter to his own wife back in Concord, New Hampshire.

I won’t bother asking if these marriages can be saved.

TOMORROW: Who was Mary Fowle?

Thetford’s Most Famous Son

Thomas Paine was born in Thetford, England, in 1737.

In 1964 the town erected a statue of him, over the objections of a councilor who actually resigned after the vote.

Even so, I can’t help but wonder if the statue truly matches Paine’s ideas.

“What do you mean? We set it in a place of honor—on King Street, outside King’s House.”

“King Street? How does that reflect Paine’s views of monarchy?”

“Oh, we still have total respect for Thomas Paine and his writing.”

“Okay, good.”

“Why, back in 2020 we gilded him!”

(Now, to be fair, the Thomas Paine Society itself helped to pay for this gilding.)

Declarations of Independence around Boston—Collect Them All!

To commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, multiple institutions in greater Boston have collaborated to lay out a Declarations Trail—exhibits of different significant copies of that document.

The Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library has opened “Declarations: Printing a New Nation” with eight printings from broadsides and newspapers, along with maps showing the spread of that news. It will be up through 13 September. Shown here is the library’s copy of the Declaration as printed by Ezekiel Russell for the newly independent Massachusetts government.

The Boston Athenaeum exhibit “Imagined Nation” displays early printings in the context of such items as George Washington’s copy of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, maps of the young republic, and World War II–era posters. That runs through November.

The Massachusetts Historical Society’s “1776: Declaring Independence” display, up through December, includes “handwritten copies of the Declaration by John Adams and Thomas Jefferson as well as multiple early printings, including a rare Dunlap broadside.” That was the first official presentation of the text, commissioned from printer John Dunlap by the Continental Congress in July 1776.

In Cambridge, three parts of the Harvard University library system are creating linked displays. The university archives is offering “Harvard and the American Revolution.” Next week the Harvard Map Collection will open “Charting Independence.” And starting on 18 May the Houghton Library will host “War of Words,” a display assembled by curator John Overholt to feature “the posters, pamphlets, newspapers, and images that brought news of the American Revolution to those who lived through it.”

In addition to the sites on the Declarations Trail, the Commonwealth Museum regularly displays Mary Katherine Goddard’s official reprinting of the Declaration signed by John Hancock and sent to the state in 1777.

And the “The Road to Revolution: Massachusetts and the Independence Movement” exhibit in Revolutionary Spaces’s Old State House, drawing on material from the M.H.S., includes a “rare 1776 Boston broadside printing of the Declaration of Independence.”

Most of those exhibits are free to the public. Many have special tours, talks, and workshops scheduled as well.

In a parallel initiative, five Revoloutionary-era institutions with admission fees—the Paul Revere House, Old State House, Old North Church, Old South Meeting-House, and King’s Chapel—have combined to offer visitors the Boston 250 Pass with a 10% on regular adult admission.

“The only ‘emancipation’ relevant to this site was Ona Judge’s own”

On 21 April, the Philadelphia Inquirer shared an opinion piece about the President’s House exhibit by Sharon Ann Holt, a public historian recently retired from Penn State Abington.

Holt was previously director of education and interpretation at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and director at the Sandy Spring Museum in Maryland. She’s the author of Freedom Pay: North Carolina Freedpeople Working for Themselves, 1865–1900.

The web headline for Holt’s essay is “We can’t give in to the Trump administration’s attempts to make the history of slavery invisible in Philadelphia.” I don’t know if it appeared in the newspaper’s print edition, and the webpage now behind a paywall unless one has a guest link. So here’s an extended extract:

The digital images posted on the Park Service’s website make it clear that, under Donald Trump, the first priority of the Park Service seems to be to make enslaved people and slavery itself as invisible as possible. Panels that discussed the lives of urban enslaved people, Philadelphia’s free Black community, the Washingtons’ enslaved “family,” fugitives from enslavement (and the laws Washington signed to reclaim them) have all disappeared. The rich biographies of Christopher Sheels, Hercules, Richmond, Austin, Giles, Ona Judge, Joe Richardson, Moll, and Paris have shrunk to single sentences. . . .

So what stories are they telling? George and Martha’s determination to flout Pennsylvania’s six-month limit on holding people in slavery is reframed as a lovely gift of theatre tickets rather than their cynical move to get enslaved people across the river to New Jersey, thus restarting the six-month residential countdown. I’m surprised the Park Service left out the Washingtons’ “kind” willingness to let enslaved workers visit their families left behind in Virginia, which worked the same trick.

If Park Service bureaucrats value relevance, I challenge them to explain the transformation of the story about 18th-century slavery at the President’s House into a puzzling evocation of the Emancipation Proclamation of the 19th century and the Civil Rights Movement of the 20th century. Is it that, to them, all stories having to do with African Americans belong in the same place? They must think so, because they have randomly added completely irrelevant references to Frederick Douglass, the Civil War, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Underground Railroad, and Abraham Lincoln to the history of the President’s House.

Worse, the Park Service has embraced sentimental claims that Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison all “had their doubts” about slavery from the beginning.

None of those “doubts” persuaded the Founders to end slavery when they could have, either in our founding documents or in their own personal lives. None of the 19th- and 20th-century stories that the Park Service has shoehorned into their new panels ever involved the President’s House at all. The only “emancipation” relevant to this site was Ona Judge’s own self-liberation — the very story the Park Service has all but erased.

Speaking of irrelevance, the opening panels are even more laughable. Park Service interpreters have decided to feature discussions of the 1876 Centennial, the 1926 Sesquicentennial, and the 1976 Bicentennial, all of which happened long after the President’s House had been remodeled into oblivion or entirely demolished. . . .

If the judges choose these new panels to replace the ones taken down earlier this year, they will disparage millions of Americans who have struggled since 1776 to improve on the shaky foundations the founders laid. The President’s House should honor those struggles, alongside the nine people enslaved there by George and Martha Washington.

While Holt directs her critique at the National Park Service, which produced this revised signage, it’s clear that agency was working under directives from the White House. Based on what sort of historical presentations the White House has produced on its own, N.P.S. historians undoubtedly worked hard to drag this material into the realm of historical fact, even if it’s far from complete and relevant.

A Closeup Look at the President’s House in Philadelphia

I’ve been following the story of the President’s House site within Independence National Historical Park.

That structure marks the residence of George Washington and John Adams before the District of Columbia was built and also memorializes the people enslaved to the Washingtons who lived and worked there.

In September, we first learned that White House policy was putting pressure on the park to change the signage on that site. In January, the signs were taken down.

In February, after the city of Philadelphia filed a lawsuit, a judge ordered the signs be put back up. But then a higher judge halted that process while also requiring those signs already restored to remain. The U.S. Circuit Court has upheld that stasis.

Last month I traveled to Philadelphia for the Pursuit of History’s weekend examining the creation of the Declaration of Independence. One morning I walked through the President’s House.

Most of the frames for signs are empty; the few panels that have been restored appear to be almost random. In some of the blank spaces people had posted small images of the missing signs. While I was there, a local taped a large sheet of paper in another space along with two markers, inviting people to share their own thoughts on the controversy. I presume those unofficial displays are taken down each evening and replaced each day.

In April the National Park Service unveiled new draft signage, created (by people unknown) to please the White House. Those panels now appear on the webpage for the President’s House Site. WHYY reported:

The new panels include references to slavery, the Underground Railroad and figures like Frederick Douglass. Like the previous panels, they also make mention of the nine enslaved people held by Washington while he was president and living in Philadelphia.

However, they would have changed the overall tone of the site, softening and significantly reducing references to slavery, and shifting the focus toward the “anti-slavery sentiments” of the slave-owning Founding Fathers. For example, text on one notes that the U.S. Constitution did not contain the word “slavery,” and another one argues that Washington had “doubts” about the institution.

Local critics called that revision “whitewashing” and “maliciously outrageous.”

TOMORROW: A historian’s take.