The Short Life of Thomas Hawkshaw

When I was writing about Lt. Thomas Hawkshaw earlier this month, I kept wishing I had more individual information about him, and I kept being styimed.

There were multiple Thomas Hawkshaws in the British military in the late eighteenth century. Modern genealogical websites offer information, but it’s contradictory and conflated.

This week I lucked out in finding a reliable source: the monument Hawkshaw’s widow paid to install inside St. Fechins Church in Termonfeckin, County Louth, Ireland. It reads:

To the memory of Thomas Hawkshaw, late of the 5th regt of foot who died 22d Jan 1793 aged 42 years.

Also to the memory of his son John William, Lieut in the 90th regt. Born 11th Octr 1785, and died 14th Novr 1812. And of his son Thomas, who was born 9th Decr 1788 and died in 1802. And of his son Wallop Brabazon Hawkshaw, late Lieut of the Vigo man of war, who was born 30th June 1790, and died 30th Septr 1813.

Captain Thomas was son to the Revd. John Hawkshaw of the Co. of Monaghan. His widow Vincentia, daughter of Wallop Brabazon Esqr, has erected this monument to the memory of her husband and all her offspring.

Also to the memory of Vincentia, Widow of the above Captain Hawkshaw. She died 1st Feby 1825, aged 78.

That source in turn helped me to find more, so I can fill out the life of Thomas Hawkshaw.

After growing up in Dublin, John Hawkshaw graduated from Trinity College in 1734 and took an M.A. three years later. Taking holy orders in the Church of Ireland, he was vicar at Clontibret, then rector at Monaghan starting in 1740. Three years later, he married Elizabeth Madden, a daughter of the Rev. Samuel Madden, D.D.; she was seven years his senior. The couple started having children. Thomas was born in 1751 and named after a paternal uncle.

From 1759 to 1762, the Rev. John Hawkshaw was the rector at Dromore, County Tyrone. He then accepted a calling at Tydavnet, back in County Monaghan, and remained the rector there for the rest of his life.

Some of the Hawkshaw brothers followed their father into the clerical profession while others, including Thomas, joined the British military. He was still in his early twenties when he was so gravely wounded on 19 Apr 1775. During the war he rose to the rank of captain.

According to Evelyn Hawkshaw Rogers’s Descendants of John Hawkshaw of Louisburgh, County Mayo, Ireland, Capt. Hawkshaw retired from his company in Belfast in 1786. He married Vincentia Brabazon, and they started their own family, including sons John William, Thomas, and Wallop Brabazon (named after his maternal grandfather).

Thomas Hawkshaw’s mother died in 1787. The death of one of Thomas’s younger brothers is recorded by an inscription in Chester Cathedral:

Adjacent lie the remains of
George Hawkshaw Esqr
a native of Ireland and
Sixteen years a Lieutenant in
His Majesty’s Marine Forces

Returning after a long voyage
to an aged Father
and expecting friends
He was arrested here
by the hand of God
the ninth day of May
MDCCXCII [1792]
in the xxxivth year of his age.

Hugh Hawkshaw and Robert McCleverty two of his numerous friends sensible of his worth and many Virtues Pay this humble but most affectionate tribute.

The Rev. John Hawkshaw died later that same year.

Capt. Thomas Hawkshaw passed away in early 1793, only forty-two years old, having lived more than sixteen years after being shot in the throat. As the top inscription shows, one of his sons joined the army, another the navy, and both those men died in their twenties. Capt. Hawkshaw’s widow Vincentia lived on until 1825.

One more detail: Capt. Hawkshaw’s grandfather invented time-travel literature.

TOMORROW: Back to the future.

Johnny Tremain on the Screen and the Page

Esther Forbes’s Johnny Tremain remains the foremost American novel on the Revolution, its coming-of-age story for the title character mirroring how the society around him moves toward independence.

In the next week some North End institutions will celebrate the cultural heritage of that book.

Friday, 12 September, 7 to 9:30 P.M.
A Revolutionary Movie Night
Christopher Columbus Park

Join the Paul Revere House and the Friends of Christopher Columbus Park for a free movie night in honor of the 250th anniversary of Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride. Come meet Paul Revere, enjoy 18th-century tunes on the Fife and Drum, and then watch an outdoor screening of Thomas Edison’s silent short movie “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere” followed by the iconic Disney classic Johnny Tremain. Popcorn will be provided by Joe’s Waterfront; bring your own seating for the lawn.

Wednesday, 17 September, 7 to 8:30 P.M.
Book Chat: Johnny Tremain with Patrick O’Brien
On Zoom through Old North Illuminated

Written in 1943 by Esther Forbes, Johnny Tremain is among the best-selling children’s books of the 20th century. Intended for middle schoolers, the novel’s protagonist is 14-year-old Johnny Tremain, an apprentice silversmith working in Boston in the 1770s. When Johnny’s dreams of becoming a silversmith are dashed by a tragic accident, he takes a new job as a horse-boy, riding for the patriotic newspaper the Boston Observer and as a messenger for the Sons of Liberty. Soon, Johnny is involved in the pivotal events of the American Revolution, from the Boston Tea Party to the first shots fired at Lexington, while he encounters historical figures like John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and Dr. Joseph Warren. The book won the 1944 Newbery Medal and was adapted as a Disney film in 1957.

Patrick O’Brien, a history professor at the University of Tampa, will deliver a short presentation on the historical context surrounding the novel and then lead a discussion exploring themes from the book and what it means today as we approach America’s 250th anniversary. The discussion will be kind of like a virtual book club! This event is perfect for anyone who remembers reading Johnny Tremain as a child and for teachers and educators who would like to teach this novel with their students.

Register for this online discussion here while making a donation to Old North Illuminated for any amount. You’ll receive a Zoom link for the event.

Here are a couple of observations of my own. First, Johnny Tremain is certainly accessible to middle-school readers, and it won the Newbery Medal for best children’s book of the year. However, it was explicitly published as “A Novel for Old & Young.” That line has been dropped from the title page of more recent editions. [I have three copies of the book, in case you wonder.]

I don’t recall how it happened, but Johnny Tremain came up in my online talk for Old North Illuminated back in June. At the end of the novel the newly independent Johnny learns that his father was a Frenchman, and he experiences an emotional reconciliation with his departing Loyalist “cousin” even though her father cheated him. Symbolically, I observed, Forbes was bringing together American, French, and British—right in the middle of World War 2.

As for the movie, it’s definitely the “Disney version” of the novel. It made Johnny more admirable at the outset and his injury less long-lasting. It focused on rousing group politics and left out the deaths of some major characters. The movie also falls neatly into two halves because it was produced to be two episodes of The Wonderful World of Disney, though the studio did give it a cinema release. Folks can enjoy the movie for nostalgia, but shouldn’t miss out on the greater depth of the novel.

Here are more of my ramblings over the years on Johnny Tremain, the book (mostly) and the movie.

Call for Papers on “Finance and the American Revolution”

The Program in Early American Economy and Society at the Library Company of Philadelphia is planning a symposium on the topic “Finance and the American Revolution, 1763-1794,” to take place in Philadelphia on 24–25 September 2026.

Organizers are now inviting scholars to propose papers for that symposium, to be circulated to attendees and then discussed in panels. They say, “We are broadly interested in papers that speak to public and private finance, credit, trade, and exchange in political and social contexts.”

The call for papers continues:

We are interested in thinking capaciously about finance and the American Revolution. To give a sense of some, but by no means all, possible topics:

• British fiscal policy in the coming of and prosecution of the war
• US diplomatic efforts on behalf of trade, credit, and financial assistance
• Free trade, free ports, smuggling, privateering, and the role of merchants
• Monetary policies and institutions, including currency, credit, banks, and insurance
• Trade, gift-giving, and plunder relating to Native nations
• Dispossession, speculation, and landownership
• Taxation and populist resistance
• Inflation, scarcity and price-fixing, price-gouging
• Slavery, the slave trade, and their relationships with finance
• Women and finance on the homefront and after the war
• Loyalists, property seizures, and post-war claims

To propose a paper, researchers should submit a 300-word abstract and a two-page CV to peaes@librarycompany.org with the subject line “Finance and the American Revolution Workshop” by 25 October 2025. The papers should be about 25 pages long, and drafts will be due in August 2026. Eventually the University of Pennsylvania Press will publish a volume of articles developed from this event.

“Swelled to three times his size, black as bacon”

Here’s another account of anti-epidemic measures from the Adams family papers, this one a 17 Apr 1764 letter from John Adams to his fiancée, Abigail Smith.

John had gone into Boston to be inoculated with smallpox under the care of Dr. Nathaniel Perkins, and he reported:

Messrs. Quincy’s Samuel and Josiah, have the Distemper very lightly. I asked Dr. Perkins how they had it. The Dr. answerd in the style of the Faculty “Oh Lord sir; infinitely light!” It is extreamly pleasing, says he, wherever we go We see every Body passing thro this tremendous Distemper, in the lightest, easiest manner, conceivable.

The Dr. meaned, those who have the Distemper by Inoculation in the new Method, for those who have it in the natural Way, are Objects of as much Horror, as ever.

There is a poor Man, in this Neighbourhood, one Bass, now labouring with it, in the natural Way. He is in a good Way of Recovery, but is the most shocking sight, that can be seen. They say he is no more like a Man than he is like an Hog or an Horse—swelled to three times his size, black as bacon, blind as a stone. I had when I was first inoculated a great Curiosity to go and see him; but the Dr. said I had better not go out, and my Friends thought it would give me a disagreable Turn.

My Unkle [Dr. Zabdiel Boylston?] brought up one [John] Vinal who has just recoverd of it in the natural Way to see Us, and show Us. His face is torn all to Pieces, and is as rugged as Braintree Commons.

This Contrast is forever before the Eyes of the whole Town, Yet it is said there are 500 Persons, who continue to stand it out, in spight of Experience, the Expostulations of the Clergy, both in private and from the Desk, the unwearied Persuasions of the select Men, and the perpetual Clamour and astonishment of the People, and to expose themselves to this Distemper in the natural Way!—

Is Man a rational Creature think You?—Conscience, forsooth and scruples are the Cause.—I should think my self, a deliberate self Murderer, I mean that I incurred all the Guilt of deliberate self Murther, if I should only stay in this Town and run the Chance of having it in the natural Way.

Smallpox continued to spread well into the age of photography, so there’s graphic documentation of how victims look when the blisters break out. I don’t recommend it.

“Our House is an hospital in every part”

On 8 Sept 1775, 250 years ago today, Abigail Adams had serious news for her husband John, who was heading back to the Continental Congress:

Since you left me I have passed thro great distress both of Body and mind; and whether greater is to be my portion Heaven only knows. You may remember [hired boy] Isaac [Copeland] was unwell when you went from home. His Disorder increasd till a voilent Dysentery was the consequence of his complaints, there was no resting place in the House for his terible Groans. He continued in this state near a week when his Disorder abated, and we have now hopes of his recovery.

Two days after he was sick, I was seaz’d with the same disorder in a voilent manner. Had I known you was at Watertown I should have sent Bracket [a farm hand] for you. I sufferd greatly betwen my inclination to have you return, and my fear of sending least you should be a partaker of the common calamity. After 3 day[s] an abatement of my disease relieved me from that anxiety.

The next person in the same week was [servant girl] Susy. She we carried home, hope she will not be very bad.

Our Little Tommy [Thomas Boylston Adams] was the next, and he lies very ill now—there is no abatement at present of his disorder. I hope he is not dangerous.

Yesterday [servant girl] Patty was seazd and took a puke. Our House is an hospital in every part, and what with my own weakness and distress of mind for my family I have been unhappy enough.

The Adams Papers editors noted: “Patty, who was probably a relative of JA or AA and had lived four years in the Adams household, died after a protracted and grisly illness early in October.”

The letter went on to list other neighbors who were ill. Abigail and John also both knew that his brother Elihu had died of the same disease in early August.

Two days later, Abigail resumed her letter:

As to my own Health I mend but very slowly—have been fearful of a return of my disorder to day but feel rather better now. Hope it is only oweing to my having been fatigued with looking after Tommy as he is unwilling any body but Mamma should do for him, and if he was I could not find any body that is worth having but what are taken up already with the sick. Tommy I hope is mending, his fever has abated, his Bowels are better, but was you to look in upon him you would not know him, from a hearty hale corn fed Boy, he is become pale lean and wan.

Isaac is getting better, but very slowly. Patty is very bad. We cannot keep any thing down that she takes, her situation is very dangerous. Mr. Trot and one of his children are taken with the disorder.

As discussed back here, George Trott was a politically active jeweler from Boston, and Abigail had taken in the Trott family as refugees.

The epidemic that Abigail’s letter described was “camp fever,” a bacterial dysentery. It spread among provincial soldiers and then to their families and neighbors because, basically, people didn’t yet realize they had to wash their hands and clothing thoroughly to avoid spreading germs. Women and servants caring for the sick thus became vectors for the disease to themselves or others.

All this time, Abigail was also worrying about smallpox, a viral disease that spread more slowly but was more deadly. She wrote:

The small pox in the natural way was never more mortal than this Distemper has proved in this and many neighbouring Towns. 18 have been buried since you left us in Mr. [Ezra] Welds parish [of Braintree]. 4, 3 and 2 funerals in a day for many days. Heitherto our family has been greatly favourd.

Looking ahead, Abigail asked John to send her medical supplies:

By the first safe conveyance be kind eno to send me 1 oz. of turkey Rhubub, the root, and to procure me 1 quarter lb. of nutmegs for which here I used to give 2.8 Lawful, 1 oz. cloves, 2 of cinnamon. You may send me only a few of the nutmegs till Bass [another family servant] returns. I should be glad of 1 oz. of Indian root. So much sickness has occasiond a scarcity of Medicine.

Many modern American parents can easily sympathize with Abigail having to care for a child like Tommy. But the number of sick people in the household and the neighborhood, and the specters of serious illness and death, are worries we’ve usually been spared. This sort of document is a reminder of the danger of rolling back proven health measures.

“The only two Gentlemen of the Town who have visited Lieut. Hawkshaw”

Alongside Lt. Thomas Hawkshaw’s declaration of what he’d said about the first shots of the war, quoted yesterday, Lt. Col. William Walcott collected a signed statement from two gentlemen inside Boston.

That undated document is also in the Thomas Gage Papers at the Clements Library. It says:

Mr. Lewis Gilbt. De Blois & Doctor Byles who were the only two Gentlemen of the Town who have visited Lieut. Hawkshaw since his being brought into Boston, both declare That,

Neither of Them had any the least Conversation with Lt. Hawkshaw upon the Subject of the affair of Wednesday last the 19th. April; & particularly that They nor Either of them ever heard Lt. Hawkshaw say that the King’s Troops had fired first upon the Country People

Gibert Deblois
Mather Byles

Gilbert Deblois (shown above, in a portrait made by John Singleton Copley a few years later) was a Loyalist merchant. Evidently Col. Walcott didn’t know him well enough to distinguish him from his brother Lewis.

The Rev. Dr. Mather Byles was one of the few Congregationalist ministers in Massachusetts siding with the royal government.

These two witnesses were thus inclined to be more friendly to the army and Gen. Thomas Gage than the average Bostonian. But what Patriot would be admitted to Lt. Hawkshaw’s sick chamber?

In an article for Common-place, Edward M. Griffin asked, “Could anyone believe that when Byles and Deblois had visited him [Hawkshaw] they simply passed the time in pleasant conversation without ever discussing the previous week’s armed confrontation between British troops and rebellious locals?”

I think the state of Hawkshaw’s health does make that plausible. He probably felt weak, had trouble speaking, and expected to die soon. I can imagine a scenario in which the lieutenant was renting a room from Deblois, who could think of nothing more helpful than bringing in the Rev. Dr. Byles to provide religious comfort. And the men kept their conversation brief.

When Edmund Quincy wrote that Hawkshaw “Call’d Several Credible persons to him & told ’em as a dying man…that the first Action of ye Whole at L. was done by the Kings troops,” he said that he’d heard that from “Capt. [John] Erving, at his house yesterday,” and that Erving said it was “proved to him at ye No: End yesterday to be real.”

The British mercantile economy ran passing on rumors like that because hard information was so hard to come by. In this case, Quincy or Erving or both were probably sucked in by wishful thinking. Or perhaps some Patriot propagandist thought it would be effective to attribute a confession to an officer on his deathbed.

So far as I can tell, no newspapers or other sources outside Boston picked up on the rumor about Hawkshaw, though Salem printer Ezekiel Russell did learn about his life-threatening wound. Perhaps the documents that Lt. Col. Walcott collected helped to quash the whispers. Perhaps they were so wispy to start with (who were these “Several Credible persons”?) that they dissipated on their own.

As I wrote before, Lt. Hawkshaw proved more durable. He recovered. In November 1777 he attained the rank of “Captain Lieutenant and Captain” as officers in the 5th moved up because another captain had “died of his wounds.” A year later, Hawkshaw was promoted to full captain in place of Capt. John Gore, the officer he had first spoken to on the evening of 19 April when he was brought back, bleeding, to Boston.

“He Lieut. Thos. Hawkshaw did affirm this to be the Fact & Truth”

On 23 Apr 1775, Lt. Thomas Hawkshaw of the 5th Regiment was lying near death.

He’d been shot through the throat during the Battle of Lexington and Concord. He’d lost a lot of blood, not only from that wound but from supposedly therapeutic bleeding. He was suffering spasms of pain. He had trouble swallowing pain relief, much less solid foods.

And his commander-in-chief, Gen. Thomas Gage, had just intercepted a letter from justice Edmund Quincy to the Patriot leader John Hancock saying Hawkshaw had been heard saying that British troops had fired first and started the war.

Hawkshaw’s regimental commander, Lt. Col. William Walcott, and other officers came to speak to him. They went away with this document, now in Gage’s papers. It said:

Boston, 23d. April 1775

Lieut. Thos. Hawkshaw of the 5th: Regt. of Foot, declares in the most solemn Manner to Lt. Col. Walcott, in the Presence of Capt. Smith & Lieut. Ben. Baker All of the same Regimt.,

That, he, Lieut. Thos. Harkshaw, never did say to any Person whatsoever, that, the King’s Troops gave the first Fire upon the People of this Country in the Affair which happened between the said Troops & the said Country People on Wednesday last the 19th. April;

that, so far from knowing or believing that the Troops were the first who fired, he, Lieut. Thos. Harkshaw, knows & believes that the Country People did fire first upon His Majesty’s Troops, & that he Lieut. Thos. Hawkshaw did affirm this to be the Fact & Truth to Lt: Col. [Francis] Smith of the 10th: Regt. of Foot who commanded the Grenadiers & Light Companies, upon the Spot, and that he, Lt. Thos. Harkshaw, did again upon his being brought into Boston, make the same Declaration to Capt. [John] Gore of the 5th. Regt. of Foot, That, to the best of his Knowledge & Belief, the Country People fired first upon His Majesty’s Troops.

Thomas Hawkshaw
Lieut 5th Regt. Foot

Wm: Walcott, Lt: Col. 5th. Foot.
John Smith Capt: 5th. Foot
Ben Baker, Lt. & Adjt. 5th. Foot

The regiment contained lieutenants named Benjamin Baker and Thomas Baker, so they used first names to sort out those men. The handwriting of the document looks like Walcott’s.

The detail about Hawkshaw telling Lt. Col. Smith (shown above) that the provincials in Lexington had fired first suggests the lieutenant was on or near the common during that shooting while Smith was still back with the grenadiers.

However, the document doesn’t add any detail about what Hawkshaw actually heard or saw there, and Gage was collecting such detail from other officers at this time. That makes me think Hawkshaw had passed on what he’d heard from other officers. (If Hawkshaw turns out to have been a light-infantry officer, then that’s off.)

In any event, from his sickbed Lt. Hawkshaw was insisting that he’d consistently blamed the provincials for shooting first.

TOMORROW: Corroborating witnesses.

“Lt. Hawkshaw yesterday near expiring thro. his bad wounds”

During the British army withdrawal on 19 Apr 1775, Lt. Thomas Hawkshaw of the 5th Regiment was shot in the side of his face.

As recorded by his regiment’s surgeon, blood gushed from his nose and mouth as well as his wound. Some of the affected tissue became inflamed. He had trouble swallowing.

People thought Lt. Hawkshaw was lying on his deathbed. And according to legal and popular understandings of the time, that meant he couldn’t lie in another way. After all, a person wouldn’t utter a falsehood just before meeting his maker, right?

Or, as a legal maxim quoted in 1700s reference books said: Nemo moriturus præsumitur mentiri. A dying person is not presumed to lie.

Usually that “dying declaration” doctrine allowed testimony from a dead victim that would otherwise be ruled out as hearsay. Thus, Patrick Carr’s doctors could report his remarks about the soldiers holding back before the Boston Massacre in 1770. To discredit such strong evidence, Samuel Adams had to resort to sneering that Carr “in all probability died in the faith of a roman catholick.”

The same thinking made “deathbed confessions” convincing. In the case of Lt. Hawkshaw, word went around that as his life slipped away he blamed the army for starting the war. Justice of the peace Edmund Quincy wrote to John Hancock on 22 April:

Here they say & swear to it all round, in excuse of ye Regulars, proceeding at Lexinton—that they were attack’d first & I doubt not many oaths of Officers & men are taken before J. G—ley [Justice Benjamin Gridley], to confirm it—but among others who contradict ’em—Lt. Hawkshaw yesterday near expiring thro. his bad wounds——Call’d Several Credible persons to him & told ’em as a dying man—that he was obliged in Conscience to confess—that the first Action of ye Whole at L. was done by the Kings troops—wr. they killd & wounded eight men—but doubtless you have sufficient proof of ye Fact & every Circumstance attending near at hand— . . .

Capt. [John] Erving, at his house yesterday Gave me ye Account of Hawkshaws Confesso.-proved to him at ye No: End yesterday to be real

As discussed here, Quincy gave that letter to Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr., who slipped it to Gen. Thomas Gage. Which meant Lt. Hawkshaw’s commander read that he was contradicting the official army line.

TOMORROW: A quick response.

“The blood continued to dribble, for two days after”

In 1805, Henry St. John Neale published the second edition of his Chirurgical Institutes, Drawn from Practice, on the Knowledge and Treatment of Gun-shot Wounds.

In another book Neale identified himself as “formerly surgeon to the Duke of Northumberland’s regiment, of fifth battalion of infantry, and the Royal Hospital at Chatham.”

The Duke of Northumberland was previously Earl Percy, colonel of the 5th Regiment. The 1781 Army List names Neale (rendered as “St. John Neill”) as surgeon of that regiment, appointed November 1780. He may have previously been a surgeon’s mate, or he may have drawn from his predecessors’ accounts of what they did earlier in the war.

Chirurgical Institutes contains a description of Lt. Thomas Hawkshaw’s condition and treatment by the 5th’s medical staff after he was wounded on 19 Apr 1775.

Neale’s section labeled “History of the wound of the gallant Captain Hawkshaw.” reported:

The most remarkable wound in the neck, which happened during the American war, was that of Captain Hawkshaw, of his Majesty’s 5th regiment of infantry, This gallant officer was wounded in the neck, by a musquet ball, which entered the coraco hyoideus muscle, on the right side, passing through and through behind the gullet, which it grazed in its passage.

The sufferings of that brave soldier, in the course of his cure, is far above my abilities to express, which he bore with the greatest fortitude. The instant after he received his wound, the blood gushed out in torrents from his mouth and nostrils, and the wound also bled profusely. At first it was feared that the large blood vessels had suffered, but they fortunately escaped from the blow: although the ball had passed within a hair’s breadth of the COROTID ARTERIES.

An external dilatation [stretching] was soon made, as much as the situation of the parts would admit, a soft dressing applied, and as soon as was possible, his neck covered with an emollient poultice. Soon after he was bled copiously, although he had lost a large quantity from the wound, and the blood continued to dribble, for two days after, from his mouth and nostrils.

In the evening he had a clyster [enema], and towards bed time, a few drops of laudanum, which was got down with great difficulty. He spent a restless night, and as we were fearful of a hæmorrhage, a surgeon was constantly with him. The next day all his powers of deglutition [swallowing] were impeded, so that he could scarcely get down fluids into his stomach, which was contrived to be conveyed through a small tube by suction: and the same method was used for his anodyne [painkiller] at night. The second and third night was something better than the first, but attended with considerable spasms at intervals.

On the third morning the dressings were removed, which came off with ease, from the suppuration which had taken place, and the wound dressed with warm balsamic digestives. The inflammation of the surrounding parts, was very considerable, which had communicated to both the larynx and pharynx.

From the third to the twentieth day, matters went on (all circumstances attending this extraordinary wound being considered) as well as could be expected. He was supported solely by fluids, which he sucked down through the small tube above mentioned, for the space of thirty days, sometimes cows milk, at other times panada [bread soup], with now and then a spoonful of wine.

About the end of this period, he was enabled to swallow spoon meat, but was reduced to great weakness. The peruvian bark [quinine] was now administered copiously, and in three weeks more he was enabled to get down solid food.

In another fortnight his wound was perfectly healed, and in every respect he was restored to his pristine health, to the great joy of all who were acquainted with the great merit of this brave officer.

Thomas Hawkshaw was a lieutenant when he was wounded, but he was promoted to be a captain-lieutenant in the 5th Regiment in November 1777 and then captain in November 1778. Neale probably knew him by that rank. There was certainly no other officer named Hawkshaw in the regiment.

It’s striking how these eighteenth-century military surgeons decided that a patient who just had blood gushing from his mouth, his nostrils, and a wound in his neck really needed to be “bled copiously.” And it’s a testament to Lt. Hawkshaw’s constitution that he survived.

TOMORROW: A deathbed admission?

“Wounded in the cheek, and it is tho’t will not recover”

Lt. Thomas Hawkshaw went out of Boston with his soldiers in the 5th Regiment of Foot on 19 Apr 1775.

He came back wounded. The always helpful Lt. Frederick Mackenzie recorded that Hawkshaw was wounded on the cheek.

Almost half a century later, provincial militiaman Joseph Thaxter recalled this rumor:

Lieutenant Hawkstone, said to be the greatest beauty of the British army, had his cheeks so badly wounded that it disfigured him much, of which he bitterly complained.

That looks like a memory of Lt. Hawkshaw. But I can’t find any British source inside Boston that includes a handsome lieutenant’s lament. That’s the sort of thing fellow officers would be likely to mention or remember.

If Hawkshaw was indeed handsome, that might be why Bostonians remembered him being at disputes and couldn’t identify the other officers with him. That might also make it more appealing for Patriots to imagine him grieving his lost beauty.

I don’t think Thaxter is a reliable source here. Not only did he recall the lieutenant’s name imperfectly, but he described the man being wounded at Concord’s North Bridge, and he wasn’t. Hawkshaw was probably hit between Lexington and Charlestown.

Ezekiel Russell’s “A Bloody Butchery, by the King’s Troops” broadside offered readers outside Boston another significant detail:

Lieutenant Hawkshaw was wounded in the cheek, and it is tho’t will not recover.

For at least the first week, many people expected the lieutenant to die.

By 6 May, that medical prognosis had improved. David Greene wrote from Boston of “Hawkshaw, of the 5th, badly wounded, but like to recover.”

TOMORROW: How bad was Lt. Hawkshaw’s wound?

“This Hawkshaw drew his sword upon us”?

Last week I wrote about some letters entrusted to Dr. Benjamin Church on 21–22 Apr 1775 which ended up in the files of Gen. Thomas Gage.

We have evidence that Gage or his staff actually read those letters for the intelligence they contained—because they got someone in trouble.

Thomas Hawkshaw was a lieutenant in the 5th Regiment of Foot, having served at that rank since 1771. He was involved in or witness to several conflicts in the first months of 1775.

In late January, Don Hagist reminded me, Lt. Col. George Maddison presided over an army court of inquiry into the actions of Lt. William Myers of the 38th. Myers testified that on 20 January two local men had baited him by calling, “The General was a Rascal” and even “The King was a Rascal.” After Myers “knocked down the man who had spoke in this manner,” the town watch showed up, bringing on a bigger confrontation.

Lt. Hawkshaw was among the witnesses in that inquiry. So, however, were more than twenty other army officers, a former army officer, seven enlisted men, two watchmen, and two civilians. That inquiry ended without apparent action on 28 January.

Four days later, on 1 February, Benjamin Alline and Philip Bass filed a complaint to Lt. Col. William Walcott of the 5th about Lt. Hawkshaw. According to Bass, he was escorting a young woman south of Liberty Tree about 9:30 P.M. the previous night, and Hawkshaw and another officer accosted them. After that confrontation, Bass went to an apothecary for a cut on his arm.

Lt. John Barker wrote in his diary for that day: “Lieut. H–ks–w of the 5th put under Arrest for having been concerned in a Riot yesterday evening, in which an Inhabitant was much wounded by him; it is supposed He will be brought to a Court Martial.”

Hawkshaw insisted, however, that he’d been in bed by 9:00 P.M. There’s no record of a formal army inquiry, so perhaps he found witnesses to confirm that and the locals had to let the matter drop.

Years back Prof. Gene Tucker of Temple University sent me transcriptions from the reminiscences of a Revolutionary War veteran named Samuel Cooper (1757-1840). He recounted several anecdotes about conflicts in Boston, but the details don’t match contemporaneous accounts, suggesting that Cooper was working with secondhand knowledge and faulty memory.

One incident stands out because Cooper said he was personally involved in it:

A party of young men, consisting of Benj. Eustis, his brother Geo[rge]., Jno. Cathcart, Ben Hazzard, Tim Green, Jim Otis, & myself had assembled about 9 o[’]cl[oc]k in the even[in]g at the corner of one of the streets, when we were approached by several officers, among them was a Lt. Hawkshaw of the 5th. We were comm[an]d[ed]. to disperse & go home & on our declining to do so this Hawkshaw drew his sword upon us but he had hardly time to raise it before he was disarmed by some of our party & the sword broken over his head; the rest of his associates withdrew.

Cooper didn’t specify when this happened, and frankly I doubted it happened as he described. In some of these fights an officer might lose his sword, as Ens. Henry King did in the January fracas. But this quick Yankee triumph sounds too good to be true, and no other report matches it.

Lt. Hawkshaw seems to have been very visible during those months in Boston. People complained about him by name while not identifying other officers who were with him. Or possibly Hawkshaw had become unpopular with the locals because of his testimony in the Myers inquiry, so people were eager to cast blame on him. But he was never brought to a court-martial.

In early April the lieutenant testified in the army inquiry about the dispute between his regimental commander, Lt. Col. Walcott, and Ens. Robert Patrick, discussed here.

And then came the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

TOMORROW: Shot in the face.

Colonel Louis, Caesar Marion, and More

Here are a couple of new online resources exploring aspects of the first months of the Revolutionary War in New England.

The Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site has posted Dr. Benjamin Pokross’s article “General Washington in the Native Northeast.” It begins:

It had been ten days since the Caughnawaga Mohawk men had arrived at the camp in Cambridge with their wives and families, and George Washington was still not sure what he was going to do. This was the second time that one of their leaders, Atiatoharongwen (also known as Col. Louis Cook), had come to Cambridge, and he had again made it known that he could raise four or five hundred men to fight for the colonists if he was given a commission in the Continental Army. But Washington was unsure how he would pay for all these additional soldiers if Atiatoharongwen did what he said, and even more apprehensive about the idea of engaging Indigenous allies at all. At least it had stopped snowing on the clear, cold, morning of January 31, 1776; this was the day Washington had promised to meet the Mohawk delegation outside.

Washington’s “Out-Door’s Talk”, as he called the subsequent conversation in a letter to General Phillip Schuyler, would be the most extensive of several interactions with Indigenous people he had had while he lived in the Vassall House. These visits did not result in decisive alliances or enduring treaties. They matter, however, for two reasons. The first is that they emphasize how the Revolution—normally thought of as a conflict between American colonists and the British—occurred on Native land, in areas that had long been stewarded by Indigenous communities and where Native people continued to find ways to survive in spite of colonial upheaval. Secondly, these visits highlight the unsettled and transitional character of the very early days of the Revolution. For both Washington and the Native diplomats who came to visit him, this was a moment of experimentation, of exploring what a possible relationship between the Continental Army and Indigenous Nations could look like.

At the HUB History podcast, Jake Sconyers shared an episode on “The Well Known Caesar Marion.”

In this somewhat brief episode, we’re going to look at why Mr. Marion was thrown into Boston’s notorious jail 250 years ago this week, and then we’ll compare his treatment inside British-occupied Boston with the experience of Black volunteers in the Continental Army outside Boston, once Virginia enslaver George Washington took command.

Both Pokross and Sconyers explore moments when Washington was pushed out of his comfort zone by encounters with men of color. And in both cases, while he never stopped being a planter with aristocratic ambitions, Washington was able to shift his habits and show respect for allies.

(Hearing the podcast also reminded me that I broke off a short series about Marion, promising more was “COMING UP,” nine years ago. I won’t get back to that story this week, but it’s back on my to-do list.)

“He died with the Effects of the Measles”

Henry Marchant (1741–1796, shown here) was a rising young lawyer in Rhode Island.

Born on Martha’s Vineyard, Marchant grew up in Newport and attended the College of Philadelphia (one of the schools that became the University of Pennsylvania in 1791).

In 1771 Marchant was appointed to be Rhode Island’s attorney general. He set sail for London to observe judicial practices there. His notes on James Somerset’s freedom case are an important document of that episode.

Marchant headed home in November 1772. On arriving in Boston, he received a boatload of bad news, as he told Benjamin Franklin in a letter. One loss was particularly close:

Mr. [Tuthill] Hubbart next informed me of the Death of my Third and only Son a Child of Three years old. He died with the Effects of the Measles, the Day after I left London. My two Daughters had been very ill with the same Disorder but are since happily recovered.

Measles was a common disease in colonial America. Martha Washington and other people at Mount Vernon caught it in 1760, and some of her enslaved workers in 1773. Benjamin Franklin’s grandson Benny caught measles in 1772, like little William Marchant. In 1788 Henry Knox reported that he had five children going through the disease.

In 1783 Abigail Adams reported that her son Charles had came down with the measles, adding: “it has proved very mortal in Boston. Tis said 300 children have been buried since last March.” Abigail’s sister Mary Cranch included a cousin’s descriptions of his symptoms in a letter in 1790:

I know you Will rejoice to hear that cousin Tom has got comfortable through the Measles. He caught them at Cambridge the day he arriv’d from new york— He came here the Monday after & told me he thought he had them but return’d the next day—promising to return as soon as he felt the Symtoms The Monday following his cousin William brought him home in a close carriage but he did not break out till Wednesday.

he was pretty sick but not very bad till they came out. He had Several faint turns before & sometimes felt as if he did not weigh a pound after they broke out— The rash came first but the measles soon follow’d thick enough, his cough was troublesome & his Fever pretty high but upon the whole I think he has had them light to what people in general have or to what you & I had. There are many People Who have them now extreamly bad & many have died with them—

Measles was overshadowed by smallpox, another disease that produced fever and spots, because smallpox was much deadlier. On the other hand, measles is much more contagious—spreading far more quickly and easily than Covid-19, H.I.V., and other viruses we’ve faced in recent decades.

We don’t have to worry about measles as much as past generations did because in 1954 medical scientists developed a vaccine. Cases in the U.S. of A. dropped precipitously after the government approved regular immunizations in 1963.

Unfortunately, the Trump administration’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert Kennedy, Jr., has cockamamie ideas about vaccines. In fact, Kennedy was chosen for his cockamamie ideas—he has no other connection to health services. In particular, experts blame Kennedy for promoting a measles epidemic in American Samoa in 2019.

During his confirmation hearings Kennedy made noises about believing in vaccines, pointing out that all his children have been immunized. But as soon as he was in office and a media outlet gives him free rein to talk, Kennedy returned to spouting all sorts of lies about the nature of the vaccine, its effectiveness, and its side effects.

This past month, Kennedy demanded that the Centers for Disease Control adapt to his anti-vaccine beliefs, cancel highly promising research, and curtail the availability of Covid-19 boosters for Americans. When the head of the C.D.C. refused to go along, Kennedy and Trump forced her out, prompting the next level of managers to resign in protest.

There are many ways the Trump administration is harming people and causing deaths around the globe. The effects of Kennedy’s anti-vaccine crusade, if not stopped, will be among the most damaging. Parents will once again be feeling the same grief as Henry Marchant for no good reason.

Hic incipiat

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts’s Seal, Flag, and Motto Advisory Commission started meeting in July 2021, blowing past its original deadline but gaining approval last year to change those state symbols.

Earlier this year, the commission invited citizens to suggest designs for a new commonwealth seal, flag (no longer necessarily just showing the seal), and motto.

This week it unveiled the results—more than a thousand responses (some repeated), which anyone can thumb through in this download.

The commission sent “23 seals, 48 flags, and 32 mottos” to a second round. (For some reason, those are shared as a PowerPoint file.)

The whole collection includes lots of allusions to Revolutionary history, as we might expect. Some are obvious, like Minuteman figures, messengers on horseback, a pair of lanterns (or just one), lots and lots of pine trees, anachronistic teabags, even a Crispus Attucks.

One person suggested simply returning to the seal carved during the Revolutionary War by Paul Revere, with a figure of a Minuteman. Others combined a Minuteman with an Indian, as on the early colony and later state seals. Several proposed versions of the “Bunker Hill” or “New England” flag with a pine tree canton over the English cross.

Some allusions to the Revolutionary era are more subtle. At least a couple of designs used the nine vertical red and white stripes of the “Sons of Liberty flag.” I don’t think that’s an authentic Revolutionary relic, but I do like the idea of the state acknowledging the political activity of Samuel “Rat-trap” Adams.

Since 2005 Massachusetts’s official state colors are blue, green, and cranberry, and those show up in lots of designs, but many more people used the blue, white, and gold of the current flag. To me the gold looks awfully buff, recalling the “buff and blue” of the British Whigs and thence the Continental Army uniform modeled by Gen. George Washington.

Many of the flag designs include five-pointed stars, like the one on the current seal/flag, but the number of those stars varies widely. Six stars was the most common count. I was baffled by what that number represented. Usually stars refer to the number of things making up an entity, as with the fifty states of the union, and I didn’t think Massachusetts has six of anything.

Then I read that six stars refer to Massachusetts being the sixth state to ratify the Constitution. But that ratification was not, as many submitters believed, when Massachusetts joined the United States. The country had been formed a few years earlier as states signed onto the Articles of Confederation, and Massachusetts was the ninth state to do so.

Of course, the commonwealth has a lot more history than the Revolution. The proposed designs also include lots of Mayflowers, both the ship and the flower. Many nod to the state’s educational, technological, and maritime heritages. At the commission’s urging, lots of designers incorporated animals, plants, or landscapes that have some connection to Massachusetts.

The commission’s top three choices in each category are on this page. I don’t like any of the seals, and I don’t love any of the flags. In the larger group, nothing stood out for me as obviously right either, but I thought some worked better than those selected. (Massachusetts also has an official governor’s flag and an official naval ensign, so there’s room for runners-up.)

I did think a few people came up with the right motto: “Let it begin here.” It’s punchy and understandable, forward-looking enough to evoke innovation. It nods to the state’s false claim to be the real start of the American nation and its more arguable claim to provide the cradle of liberty. It definitely derives from a story of the fight at Lexington.

Unfortunately, that proposed motto didn’t get past the first round. The commission evidently wants something in Latin. (One submitter did translate the words attributed to John Parker into Latin: Hic incipiat.)