“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.

This Year’s Pulitzer Winners on the Founding Era

This week Columbia University announced the Pulitzer Prizes for 2026. In journalism, the big trend was big exposés of big abuses by the current administration in Washington.

The awards for books reflected this Sestercentennial year more mildly, though of course that anniversary has meant authors and publishers produced more books about the Founding era. Here are two winners.

In History, the prize went to We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution, by Jill Lepore. The judges called it “A lively and engaging narrative that investigates why the Constitution is so difficult to amend, including a review of noteworthy failed amendments proposed by marginalized groups.”

In Biography, the winner was Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution, by Amanda Vaill.

This was described as: “A lively and detailed biography of two daughters of wealthy and influential Dutch landowners who colored our nation’s history, using present tense to tell their story and past tense to chronicle the dramatic sweep of the American Revolution.”

Upcoming Talks in Woburn and Stoneham

As April started, I planned to spend just a few days on the capture of the Elizabeth, one of the Loyalist evacuation fleet.

I expected to focus on that brig’s two most prominent passengers, Crean Brush and William Jackson, and then sail on.

But then other passengers—the Wheatons, the Hills—turned out to have their own stories, which hit some of my prime interests: espionage, mythmaking, and other suspect behavior.

So here it is early May, and I haven’t even gotten to the legal wrangling around the Elizabeth and its cargo, which took months to settle in 1776 and could take many days to recount.

But I’ll break off from that topic to announce a couple of public talks next week (speaking of espionage, mythmaking, and other suspect behavior).

Tuesday, 12 May, 6:30 to 8 P.M.
Before He Was Count Rumford: Benjamin Thompson’s American Youth
Woburn Public Library, Fireplace South Gallery

Even as a teenager and young man, Woburn’s own Benjamin Thompson was intelligent, ambitious, and full of trouble. This talk tracks the future count through his failed apprenticeships (he blew himself up only once) to his youthful marriage, dealings with royal governors, and first known affair. The outbreak of war in Massachusetts presented young Thompson with bigger dangers—and opportunities.

This talk is free to the public. Register for a seat here. There are no plans to record this talk.

Thursday, 14 May, 7 to 8:30 P.M.
George Washington’s Spy—and Stoneham’s Minister?
Stoneham Historical Society and Museum

Twelve days after arriving in Massachusetts as the new commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, George Washington paid a man to go into Boston and secretly report on British “movements & designs.” For two centuries that person’s name remained hidden. Recent research reveals that he was John Carnes, a grocer with an unusual past: he had started his career in the 1750s as Stoneham’s minister. This talk uncovers Carnes’s background, his role in the first Continental spy network, and what happened to him when the British commander had his own spy among the Massachusetts Patriots.

This event is free, with donations welcome. Doors will open at 6:45 P.M. for museum viewing, and there will be a brief historical society business meeting at 7:15 before the presentation at 7:30. Again, I don’t think this talk will be recorded. [UPDATE: There are now plans to record this talk for sharing later on StonehamTV.]

The Hill Brothers Settle in Canada at Last

On 27 Apr 1782, Elizabeth Hill died, “greatly lamented by her Family and Neighbours,” the New-York Gazette reported two days later.

In that news item her husband, John Hill, had “Esq.” after his name, a genteel reflection of his service to the Crown inspecting the Brooklyn ferry.

Also by that time, the Americans had won the war. Gen. Guy Carleton was about to be appointed commander of the British forces, charged with holding things together till the end. Gen. George Washington’s Continental Army was pressuring New York City, but not trying anything too risky. Lt. Col. Benjamin Thompson was getting his combat experience by leading dragoons on Long Island. But basically people were waiting for the final peace terms to be settled.

John’s brother Richard led one of the first contingents of Loyalists to leave New York, embarking in June 1783. He was in Carleton, Nova Scotia (which would become St. John, New Brunswick), in September when he wrote back to John about a ship captain named John Mason who had tried to make off with the vessel under his command.

Richard Hill was described as the first Loyalist to build a frame house in the town of Digby, Nova Scotia. He became a justice of the peace and a vestryman.

John Hill and his family evacuated New York late in 1783, eventually joining his brother in Digby. By the next year, John had remarried. His household consisted of him, his wife, a child over age ten, and three “servants” over age ten.

In 1786 the Loyalists Commission held hearings at Halifax. John Hill applied for “half pay, as a Quarter Master, but was told by their Honors that Pensions, and Half Pay, was to be Settled in England.” Four years later he was in London, petitioning for support for himself and his brother. Returning to Digby, he managed a store and was first treasurer of the local Freemasons’ lodge.

People think that Richard Hill died around 1803, three years after his wife Jane (her gravestone shown above).

John died on 23 Nov 1817—forty years after he had been released from the Boston jail, accused of helping to loot the town during the evacuation.

“When passing at Brooklyn Ferry was strictly examined”

In October 1776, as recounted here and here, John Hill’s wife Elizabeth (?) and his daughter were stopped at New London and found to be carrying secret messages to the royal authorities on Long Island.

Ironically, a few years later John became inspector at the Brooklyn Ferry, charged with detecting deserters, smugglers, and spies.

That brings me to a letter that Abraham Woodhull wrote on 19 May 1781, after a visit to New York, as quoted by Morton Pennypacker in George Washington’s Spies on Long Island and in New York:

Your very pressing letter of the 3d inst. came to hand. And it is a matter of grief to me that I cannot completely execute your request. When at New York myself, together with Culper Junior [Robert Townsend] almost racked our invention to point out a proper person and made several attempts but failed—no person will write.

The enemy have got some hint of me for when passing at Brooklyn Ferry was strictly examined and told some vilian supported a correspondence from this place. I do assure you am greatly alarmed—and wished to be relieved from my present anxiety. I shall not think it safe for me to go to New York very soon—and can only supply you with verbal accounts as hath been the case for some time.

If that will answer let me know as shall continue as heretofore until I hear from you. . . .

In haste am Yours Sincerely,
Saml. Culper.

John or Richard Hill, or both, had put the scare into the leader of the Culper Ring. We don’t know if Woodhull was right to suspect those inspectors of suspecting him. But of course he had to be careful.

Other members of that cell, such as Austin Roe, were still getting information out of New York City, but Woodhull stuck to Long Island for a time.

TOMORROW: A second evacuation.

“Inspector of all Boats, Letters, Goods and Passes”

In the fall of 1777, as recounted yesterday, John Hill and his family were released from captivity in Boston as part of a prisoner exchange.

I haven’t been able to find more about that deal—who arranged it, what prisoners of the Crown went free, and so on. To the Hills, those details probably didn’t matter.

Soon John and Elizabeth Hill and John’s daughter were inside British-held New York City. Before the war, they had run an inn there. Had that building survived the fire of 1776? Was it awaiting their return?

Later, in describing his services to the Crown, Hill simply said that he joined a volunteer militia company commanded by David Mathews, the city mayor.

But his major service began, he said, in July 1779 when he “was appointed Inspector of the Ferry, at Brooklyne; near New York, a place of great Trust, and received 10 shillings New York Currency, per Day.”

The Royal Gazette announced that appointment on 14 August:

JAMES PATTISON, Esq; Commandant of the city of New-York and Major General of his Majesty’s Forces in North-America, has been pleased to appoint JOHN HILL, Inspector of all Boats, Letters, Goods and Passes, at Brooklyn-Ferry.

John’s brother Richard, another evacuee from Boston, held the same post, perhaps earlier. In May 1780, Richard broke his thigh bone and had to use crutches, but he appears to have continued in the job.

On 10 Nov 1779, John Hill’s daughter (unnamed) married “Lieut. Cunningham, of the Legion,” at Brooklyn. As I wrote before, this officer might have been Ralph Cunningham, killed the next year in South Carolina.

As ferry inspector, John Hill ran periodic notices in the newspapers announcing lost property. For example, on 11 Dec 1779 he put a notice in the Royal Gazette that he was holding “a Vellice with a Marque, marked Capt. Knight, 43d regiment, with some small articles.” That was presumably Henry Knight, by then major in the 45th.

Hill also sold Richard Speaight’s “Royal Bitter Tincture, for the Fever and Gue,” that franchise being arranged “For the conveniency of the Inhabitants of Long-Island.”

But Hill’s main job was to keep watch for deserters and spies.

TOMORROW: Counterespionage.

”No other Crime, but retaining their Allegiance to the King”

We left John Hill, his wife Elizabeth (?), and his daughter in the Boston jail in February 1777, suspected of “being Enemical to the States” and “attempting to Carry Intillegence to the Enemy.”

The next trace of Hill that I’ve found is from John Noble’s article “Some Massachusetts Tories” for the Colonial Society of Massachusetts in 1900:

At the July [court] Term, 1777, John Hill of Boston recovers judgment in a plea of the case against Crean Brush for £2.8s.10d lawful money, and costs.

Did Hill sue Brush, his employer during the evacuation from Boston, for some loss? Or was this another John Hill?

There’s firmer information from John Howe’s Newport Gazette, published in the British-occupied city on 20 Nov 1777:

By Mr. JOHN HILL, who left Boston the 15th of October, we learn, that Dr. [Benjamin] Church, Mr. John Dean Whitworth, of the Queen’s Rangers, and a Number of others, are yet confined in Boston; Dr. [Mather] Byles is confined in his own House; and upwards of 70 Persons, who can be charged with no other Crime, but retaining their Allegiance to the King, and Attachment to that happy Constitution under which they were born, and from which they have enjoyed the most solid and inestimable Blessings, are now confined on board a Prison Ship in that Harbour.—

He also adds, that almost every Goal in New England is filled with these unhappy People.

Mr. Hill has also favoured us with the current Prices, in Lawful Money, of the following Articles, at the Time he left it:
Beef, — — 0.1.3
Mutton, — — 0.1.6
Butter, — — 0.4.0

And so on through a list of other meats and foods, alcohols, sugars, teas, and cordwood to shoes for men (£2.2/pair) and women (£1.10/pair).

Presumably Howe was making the point about price inflation in Continental-governed areas, but we’d have to find pre-war costs for comparison.

Years later John Hill told the Loyalists Commission, as recorded by Todd Braisted:

That on the 17th of March 1776, he left Boston, with the Royal Army; but was taken at Sea, by the Rebels, . . . himself, his Wife, & Daughter was carried back to Boston, and he confined in Prison 19 months; they were all tried For their lives, but not Condemned.

In November 1777, they were Exchanged, went to Halifax, and afterwards to New York…

Hill’s memory was off by just a few weeks. It’s possible he didn’t remember the port his family came through, or that the Hills went from Newport to Halifax. Adding to the confusion on that point, on 16 Oct 1777 the Independent Chronicle reported that “a Cartel” ship “with upwards 130 Prisoners on board” had sailed the previous day from Boston for Halifax. 

By whatever route they left New England, John Hill, his wife, and his daughter eventually returned to New York, the city he’d been chased out of in the spring of 1775. But now it was held by the British military.

TOMORROW: Inspector Hill.

“Now in his majesty’s Goal in Boston” in January 1775

Yesterday I illustrated a posting that quoted Boston jailer Joseph Otis’s list of prisoners with a small image of such a list.

However, that picture didn’t show the list I quoted from 1777, which is reportedly at the Boston Public Library. I couldn’t find a digital image of that document.

Instead, I ran an image of Otis’s list of prisoners from 3 Jan 1775, in the collection of the Newberry Library in Chicago.

That list includes Samuel Dyer, whom I wrote about in these articles, so I was eager to see if this source said anything more about him. It says he was being held for assault and battery, though he had clearly tried to murder two British army officers. 

But before I got to Dyer my eye fell on the top of the list.

The first prisoner was “John Bell,” held for “Breach of Peace.” I’m taking that personally.