Knowing Your Enemy by Name

The two pieces of testimony I quoted over the last two days have something in common besides how they both described violence between locals and soldiers near the ropewalks in central Boston.

In both cases the person describing the 3 Mar 1770 fight, putting all the blame on those nasty people on the other side, could also name one of those opponents.

Archibald McNeal wasn’t just menaced by unknown grenadiers, identifiable only by the wings on their uniforms. Rather, he referred to “One of the grenadiers, named Dixson.”

Pvt. John Rodgers didn’t say he was attacked by three anonymous Bostonians. He fingered one of them as Joseph Shed, whom we can identify as a carpenter.

That pattern reflects the extensive ties between soldiers and civilians that Serena Zabin explores in The Boston Massacre: A Family History. Since late 1768 soldiers had been living in Boston, a town of only 16,000 people. People saw each other on the streets, in taverns, in churches. In some cases soldiers worked part-time alongside locals. Their wives boarded with local homeowners. More than a few redcoats wooed or married Boston women.

As a result, some civilians knew some soldiers as individuals, and vice versa. They may not have liked each other, but their relationships went deeper than simply redcoat and local.

Another example of this phenomenon that Zabin highlights is the case of James Bailey, a sailor who was at the 3 March ropewalk confrontation and at the Massacre two days later.

At the ropewalk, Bailey was a bit of a provocateur, asking young McNeal why he didn’t answer the grenadiers’ taunts. (And then, not having a weapon to counter the soldiers’ bludgeons either, Bailey shut up.) But he could also be friendly to a soldier.

On King Street, Bailey testified, he spotted Pvt. Hugh White standing guard outside the Customs office and being badgered by angry boys. [Rightly so, I’d say, but that’s another story.] “I went up to him because I knew him, and to see what was the matter,” the sailor said—i.e., what was all this ruckus about?

When I first went up to him, I said, what is the matter? He said he did not know. The boys were throwing pieces of ice at him, and after I went to him, they threw no more; I stood with him five or six minutes.

Bailey was actually “standing along with the Sentry, on the Custom-house steps,” in effect shielding White from attack. During that time, the sailor recalled, “He said very little to me, only that he was afraid, if the boys did not disperse, there would be something very soon, he did not mention what.”

Pvt. White, in turn, looked out for Bailey. When more soldiers arrived from the main guard, one of them was Pvt. John Carroll. Bailey recognized him from the ropewalk a couple of days before, and it’s quite possible Carroll recognized him. Bailey stated:

When the soldiers came down, Carrol came up to me and clapt his bayonet to my breast, and White said do not hurt him. . . .

Montgomery…was the very next person to me, close to me. When White told him not to hurt me, he took his hand and pushed me right behind him.

Bailey was one of the witnesses who said Pvt. Edward Montgomery fired the first shot after being hit, though he disagreed with other witnesses on what happened just before that. Bailey had such a close-up view of the shooting because Pvt. White perceived him as friendly.

“There is one Soldier a Coming, knock him down”

Here’s another piece of testimony about the spillover brawls on 3 March.

John Rodgers was a private in His Majesty’s 29th Regiment of Foot. In July 1770 he testified to a magistrate in New Jersey about the fight, signing his deposition with a mark.

According to Rodgers:

on the Third of March Last as he was walking From the Grenadier Barracks, to General [John] Pomeroys, Barracks opposite to the Rope Walks, There was four or five Men standing together one of whom said, there is one Soldier a Coming, knock him down, upon which Joseph Shed, an Inhabitant and two more Men Came out of a House Opposite the Rope walk’s with Faulchins in their Hands & Knock’d this Deponent Down, Fractur’d his Scull, & Broke his Arm, without any the least provocation and one of the Same Men cryed out, Damn him Kill him,

this Deponent knowing he should get no Redress, made no further Complaint,

“Faulchins” appears to mean “falchions,” which were either curved swords, like scimitars, or billhooks, the non-lethal weapon that Boston watchmen sometimes carried. Either way, Rodgers blamed locals for an unprovoked violence.

The assailant Rodgers identified was Joseph Shed (1738–1812), a carpenter whose name doesn’t otherwise come up in the record of the Boston Massacre. However, in the earliest published list of men involved in the Boston Tea Party from 1835, the second name is Joseph Shed. After the war he was a prosperous grocer in Boston said (by his family) to be close to Gov. John Hancock. Pvt. Rodgers’s deposition appears to be the first document to tie Shed to the resistance against the Crown.

Was Rodgers involved in the confrontation described by Archibald McNeal (as I quoted yesterday)? McNeal was quite clear that three grenadiers came to his father’s ropewalk looking for a fight, though the actual violence might have been short-lived. In that case, Rodgers’s description was misleading.

But perhaps Rodgers was unlucky enough to walk through the same neighborhood after that fight, without companions or bludgeons, and thus became prey to Shed and his friends seeking revenge.

Or perhaps the confrontation Rodgers described took place earlier in the day, and the three grenadiers went to the ropewalk neighborhood looking for revenge on Shed and company but couldn’t find them, so they threatened young McNeal.

According to Rodgers, he made it back to his barracks with a fractured skull and a broken arm, yet didn’t lodge any complaint. Surely injuries that extensive would have mattered to his officers? Did he exaggerate his pains for Crown officials months later and hundreds of miles away, when there might pressure to do so and little fear of contradiction?

I don’t think we can answer those questions definitely, but these two accounts of the fight on 3 Mar 1770 show how the stupid argument that started between two men, ropemaker William Green and Pvt. Patrick Walker, kept sucking in more people.

TOMORROW: Naming names.

Back to the Ropewalks

In 2020 I presented five men’s perspectives on the fight between soldiers and ropemakers at John Gray’s ropewalk on 2 Mar 1770.

The next day, there was another, smaller fight as a follow-up. So here’s another, smaller post about that fight.

Revolutionary Boston contained more than one man named Archibald McNeil or McNeal. One was a baker who became a Loyalist. Another owned a ropewalk. A third was the second man’s son, a second-generation ropemaker born in 1750, thus not of legal age when the king’s regiments came to town.

Nonetheless, the younger Archibald had learned most of the art and mystery of ropemaking, and he was the boss’s son and heir, so he probably wielded some authority in the shop. Here’s how he described the events of 3 March:

Archibald McNeil, jun. of lawful age, testifies and says, that on Saturday the third instant, about half an hour after four in the afternoon, the deponent with two apprentices were spinning at the lower end of Mr. McNeil’s ropewalk, three stout grenadiers, armed with bludgeons, came to them, and addressing the deponent said, You damn’d dogs, don't you deserve to be kill’d? Are you fit to die?

The deponent and company being quite unarmed gave no answer. James Bayley, a seafaring young man, coming up, said to the deponent, &c. Why did you not answer?

One of the grenadiers, named Dixson, hearing him, came up to Bayley and asked him if he was minded to vindicate the cause?

Bayley also unarmed did not answer till James Young came up, who, tho’ equally naked [i.e., weaponless], said to the grenadier, Damn it, I know what a soldier is.

That grenadier stood still, and the other who had threatened the deponent came up and struck at him, which Young fended off with his arms, and then turning aimed a blow at the deponent, which had it reached might probably have been fatal.

Patrick ——, Mr. Winter Calef’s journeyman, seeing the affray, went into the tan-house, and bringing out two batts gave one to a bystander, who together with Patrick soon cleared the walk of them

“James Bayley, a seafaring young man,” was the sailor named James Bailey who testified at length at the soldiers’ trial about what he saw at the Massacre two days later. At the end of that testimony he added that he’d seen defendant John Carroll “at the Rope walks in the affray there, a few days before the 5th March”—which of course confirms Bailey was there, too.

Ebenezer Winter Calef (b. 1729) was a tanner in Boston. He and his brother Joseph had lost a lot of property in the great fire of 1760, and a family history credits Winter Calef, a bachelor and thus apparently able to devote all his energies to business, with maintaining the family fortunes. (Joseph’s son, also named Ebenezer Winter Calef, became an officer in the Continental Navy.)

I wondered if Patrick, “Calef’s journeyman,” might be Patrick Carr, the leather breeches–maker fatally wounded at the Massacre, but he worked for John Field.

TOMORROW: More fighting on that Saturday.

Ripples from the Boston Massacre

Normally around the 5th of March I write about the Boston Massacre, the events that led up to it and its aftermath. But I’ve been recounting a criminal trial from 1785 which is unconnected—or is it?

Several of the figures in that burglary trial have links to the Massacre, showing the small size of pre-industrial Boston and the big impact of the violence on King Street.

Robert Treat Paine, the Massachusetts attorney general in 1785, was a special prosecutor in the Massacre trials. The town of Boston hired him when the royal attorney general, Jonathan Sewall, was looking reluctant.

James Lovell, the victim of the 1784 robbery, was the first man invited by Boston to orate on the Massacre, in April 1771. (Dr. Thomas Young had spoken on the anniversary of the killing at the Manufactory, but that was unofficial. The town took up the idea and ran with it until 1783.)

Defense attorney William Tudor was one of John Adams’s clerks during the Massacre trials. He delivered the anniversary oration in 1779.

Bartholomew Broaders was an elected constable in 1784 who helped to investigate the burglary. Back in 1770, he was one of the barber’s apprentices who got into an argument with Pvt. Hugh White in front of the Customs office, the incident that ballooned into the shooting.

Archibald McNeal, a witness to the burglary in 1784, might also have been a witness to the events of 1770. An Archibald McNeil, Jr., testified for the town report:

that on Saturday the third instant, about half an hour after four in the afternoon, the deponent with two apprentices were spinning at the lower end of Mr. McNeil’s ropewalk, three stout grenadiers, armed with bludgeons, came to them, and addressing the deponent said, You damn’d dogs, don’t you deserve to be kill’d? Are you fit to die?

However, there was at least one other Archibald McNeal in pre-Revolutionary Boston, a baker who evacuated with the British troops in 1776, so this may not be the same man.

As for shopkeeper John Fullerton, also burglarized in 1784, he was one of the victims of the Great Fire of 1760. (Yes, I’ll get back to that story, too.)

Questioning the Suspects

Yesterday we watched three men—William Scott, Thomas Archibald, and Nero Faneuil—burgle the home of James Lovell in the early morning of 23 Nov 1784. Then they split up, Scott and Archibald taking the coins while Faneuil took care of the paper currency.

Scott and Archibald had talked about laying low outside of Boston. A man named John Vicker testified that they showed up at his house—I can’t tell where—about daybreak on 24 November. The men “wanted liquor,” three pennies worth, and “asked me to let them lay down 3 hours.” Vicker thought they seemed “worried in mind.” They also “ask’d for a Sling,” presumably to carry something away.

Thursday, 25 November, was a Thanksgiving holiday in Massachusetts, so nothing much happened.

Archibald and Scott were back on Boston on Friday, 26 November. Somehow Archibald provoked the suspicion of a man named Goodbread. John Ingersol, perhaps a tavern keeper, took both Goodbread and Archibald to the Lovells’ house.

As James Lovell recalled, Goodbread accused Archibald of the burglary. The suspect insisted “he lay in a Haybarn with a N. Engld. man Tuesday night.” But he couldn’t provide details about ”when he breakfasted, where he worked.” He mentioned how a ”Negro had helped him to work.”

Lovell fetched others. His neighbor Archibald McNeal came, looked at Archibald, and “took him to be the man” he’d seen during the nighttime robbery. Bartholomew Broaders, an elected constable, searched Archibald and “found a bag of 1/2 Crowns” in his footwear. Archibald insisted “he brought ’em from Phila[delphia].” But he gave inconsistent answers about how long he’d been in Boston. Broaders reminded the suspect “he had said he had no money wn. he came to Town.” Archibald then changed his story to say ”a blk man lent him the money.” That was all suspicious enough for the authorities to commit Archibald to jail.

That evening, Broaders “catched [William] Scot tapping at Nero [Fanueil]’s window 11 oClock.” John Middleton Lovell, the Continental agent’s son (shown above in a later portrait by Ralph Earl), and a man named Benjamin Homans recalled spotting Scott behind Faneuil’s house that afternoon as well.

The authorities found coins on Scott and questioned him. At first he too insisted that he had brought the money from Philadelphia. He said he “had pd. for a W[eek’]s. board, brough 6 or 7 doll[ar]s into Town, & had been 2 or 3 Women parted the value of 4 or 5 dolls out of his Fob 5 1/2 Crowns.”

But Scott got too clever. As Broaders kept questioning him, Scott “said he would not tell unless he could be an Evidence [i.e., witness] and then he would bring out the whole.” John M. Lovell recalled “he would not tell any thing unless he cd. receive some advantage.” Instead, Scott went into the jail for the night, too.

The next morning, it appears, James Lovell went to the jail and demanded that the suspects tell him where his papers were. He heard Scott answer that “the negro was the only person who could give me informn. of my papers.”

The Lovells visited Nero Faneuil, who recalled that “Mr. Lovel told me if I wd. Confess I should be a Witness.” So Faneuil started to cooperate. According to the younger Lovell, “Nero carried me to the place where the money was & confessed he took it.” The case was solved.

John M. Lovell also reported, “Scot found fault that he was not called out instead of the Negro”—which sounds like he regretted not cooperating at the first opportunity. Both Archibald and Scott tried to point the authorities to Faneuil, a black man, but he had the advantage of being known in town.

The following Monday, according to the newspapers, officials found evidence from the robbery of John Fullerton’s shop and charged Nero Faneuil with that crime. It’s conceivable that Faneuil had confessed and told people where to find the stolen goods. Curiously, Fullerton was also a witness at the trial for the robbery of Lovell’s house, testifying about finding coins on one of the suspects.

The state brought Archibald and Scott to trial on 3 March 1785.

TOMORROW: A last-ditch defense.

“If I would go with them to commit this Robery”

As I said yesterday, the only reason we know more than perfunctory details about the trial of two men for stealing a chest from James Lovell in 1784 is because Massachusetts attorney general Robert Treat Paine took notes.

Those notes aren’t word-for-word transcriptions of the testimony, and they leave lots of mysteries. Which makes me all the more grateful for the scholars behind the Massachusetts Historical Society’s publication of Paine’s papers. I mean, just look at the handwriting in his notes from a 1780 trial.

Here’s my best recreation of how the burglary took place, based on the testimony at the February 1785 grand jury session and the 3 March trial.

Thomas Archibald and William Scott appear to have been strangers to Boston. A woman named Flora Fanueil testified that “abt. a Week before the Theft they were at our house.” This was probably Nero Faneuil’s wife, and her remark shows that the black couple had their own residence.

About seven o’clock on the evening of Monday, 22 November, James Lovell made an accounting of the Continental notes and loan certificates entrusted to him. He filed those papers in a large chest, a yard long and weighing 168 pounds. Then he “threw in money half Crowns French” and his pocket book. Mary Capen, likely a maid in the Lovell house, said, “I barr’d that window where the chest was & locked it, I went to bed abt. 11 oClock.”

Meanwhile, Archibald and Scott had returned to Nero and Flora Faneuil’s house, as confirmed by witnesses Prince Hitchborn and Jack Austin. Hitchborn had probably been enslaved by the Hichborn family. There was also a rich white family in Boston named Austin, and Jack Austin might have served them—or he might have been unrelated. About eight o’clock, Flora Fanueil said, Archibald and Scott went away.

Nero Faneuil testified:

they asked me if I would go with them to commit this Robery, they said they would come again at 11 oClock or 12. I went to bed abt. 11; got up & saw them about the house: at 12 oClock we were by Mr. Lovels & it struck 12.

Archebald opned the Window as high as he could lift, he pressed & found the bar, he pushed it in with his foot he pulled off his shoes & got in, Scot came to the Window and told Scot to come in, Scot pulld off his Shoes & got it, the Clock struck one…

A neighbor named Archibald McNeal, living about “170 yds. off,” reported that “abt. 2 oClock [he] heard a strange noise like stroks of a Maul.” Looking outside, he saw men “kept coming & going.” When “sparks of fire” threw light on the scene, he could make out one person who “had no hat on & short hair [and] chest thick.“

Archibald, Scott, and Faneuil carried the heavy chest away “to the new house,” the latter said. Then ”Archiebald got my ax [and] pryed open the chest.” Inside the men found some “hard money,” which Scott put “into his hat.” As for the papers, Archibald and Scott “said they would Separate the Bank bills & burn the rest.” According to Faneuil, his confederates

told me to take care of them [the bills] till the noise was over, they wd. go to Providence stay 2 or 3 mo. & then come back again

they tarried at my house till the Clock struck 6. they then went off.

On the morning of 23 November, Lovell stated, “abt. 7 oClock I found my Window open Shutters on the floor.” He was struck by the fact that “my plate was in the room, [but] they did not touch it.”

Outside, it appears, McNeal came across more evidence of the crime: ”next morning before sunrise I saw the Letters, Baggs marked wth. Mr. Lovells Name & the Chest marked.” But the money and, more important to Lovell, the official papers were missing.

TOMORROW: Returning to the scene of the crime.