“Elizabeth went from hence with the said Leonard Brown”

Elizabeth Otis was born in Boston on 28 Mar 1757, the oldest child of James Otis, Jr., and his wife, the former Ruth Cunningham. Betsy was a small child when her father broke with Massachusetts’s “court party” and the royal patronage system in favor of championing Boston’s Whig merchants through electoral politics. She was twelve years old when her father had his first serious bout of insanity.

As I discussed way back here, Ruth Otis remained politically Loyalist. And as her husband became non compos mentis, she naturally took an even bigger role in raising the children. Ruth and Betsy Otis remained in Boston during the siege while James was outside under doctor’s care.

On 25 Feb 1776, Betsy Otis married Lt. Leonard Brown of the King’s Own (4th) Regiment. According to an inscription in the church in Pinchbeck, Lincolnshire, Brown was born in 1749. He might have been in the Battle of Lexington and Concord, and he was definitely wounded at Bunker Hill.

Boston town records of this marriage identify Brown as a gentleman (“Esq.”), but not an officer. The officiating minister was the Rev. Moses Badger, not one of Boston’s pastors but perhaps acting as a Royal Navy chaplain. Badger was a Harvard graduate from Haverhill who had converted from New England Congregationalism to the Anglican Church years earlier.

According to family traditions, Ruth Otis supported Betsy’s marriage, but James Otis was upset when he learned about it. Within a month, the couple evacuated with the royal army to Halifax. During the war, Brown was promoted to captain and reportedly “placed in command of one of the fortresses on the coast of England.”

In 1782, Betsy’s cousin Harrison Gray Otis later recalled, he brought James Otis down from his asylum in Andover to Boston, “at a period when my father [Samuel Allyne Otis] and his friends thought he was recovered.” During this journey, James Otis shared “delightfully instructive” observations about the law and as an exercise for his nephew started to compose his will.

That will, completed the next year, had little to offer his oldest child:

whereas the said Elizabeth went from hence with the said Leonard Brown at the evacuation of Boston to Halifax & thence for England & with him settled at Steaford [actually Sleaford] in Lincolnshire, and as I hear he has left his wife & joined the British Arm[y] again, and the last I hear is that she was in a consumption I give the said Elizabeth five shillings if alive.

James Otis died later in 1783, leaving the rest of his property to his widow, who had remained in Massachusetts, and his younger daughter, Mary, who married a son of Gen. Benjamin Lincoln. But what about Betsy?

TOMORROW: Can this marriage be saved?

Channell on “Revolutionary Sailors” in Quincy, 3 Sept.

On Wednesday, 3 September, the Thomas Crane Library in Quincy will host a talk by Fred Channell on the topic “Discover Historic New England: Revolutionary Sailors.” The event announcement says Channell “will present his research about his family members who fought in Boston Harbor during the Revolutionary War.”

It looks like Channell is a descendant of the subject of this item in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register from 1859:

Death of an Aged Man.—Abram Fitz-John Channell died at Georgeville, C.E., on the 9th instant, aged about one hundred and ten years. He was born in Shefford, Bedfordshire, Eng., and was apprenticed to Harris Varden, tailor, Whitehorse Yard, Drury lane, London. At eighteen years of age he was impressed, and made one or more cruises on board an English man-of-war. He then engaged in the merchant service, and in the course of a few years found himself in Chebaco Parish, Ipswich, Me., where for many years he successfully carried on the business of tailoring and hotel keeping. He resided for many years in that part of Ipswich now called Essex. From Essex he removed to his late residence in Canada. He was a man of great activity, energy and enterprise, and his uniform habits of temperance doubtless contributed many a year to his long life. He had descendants of the fifth generation whom his own eyes have looked upon, and whom his arms have held.—Journal, January 21, 1858.

According to cemetery records, Channell died at the age of 107, meaning he was probably born in 1750. Later American sources said he fought on the Continental side in the Battle of Sullivan’s Island in June 1776 and the Rhode Island campaign the next year. But that information didn’t make this Canadian obituary.

Fred Channell published a book about his ancestor last year called The Immortal Patriot. In addition to the lives of Revolutionary-era sailors, it’s said to discuss “grave robbing, lake monsters, strange religions, and smuggling.” His event is scheduled to last from 7:00 to 8:30 P.M.