“Walk’d with Mr: English, as clerk of the market”

For evidence of what the job of clerk of the market in Boston actually entailed, we need to find a man not only conscientious enough to accept that job but also dedicated to write down and preserve his daily activities.

Fortunately, in 1792 the Boston town meeting elected “John Q. Adams” to be a clerk of the market.

Adams was then twenty-five years old, a young lawyer. He had seen a lot of Europe as a teenager working for his father and Francis Dana, the U.S. of A.’s minister to Russia. His father was now Vice President. He had just started to serve on town committees. And it was time for him to inspect bread.

Adams was not one of the twelve men chosen as clerks of the market in the first session of Boston’s big town meeting on 12 March. But some of those men begged off, and he was elected last among five new men on the afternoon of 27 March.

Adams didn’t record that election in his diary. In fact, he wasn’t even in town, having ridden out that morning to Worcester. (“Dined at How’s Marlborough. Singular couple he 6 1/2 feet long. She as much round.”) So I have no record of how he took the news. Maybe he was chosen because he wasn’t present to object.

Nonetheless, John Quincy embarked on his civic duty. The first mention appeared in his diary for 23 April:

Walk towards Eveg: Clerks of the market met at Coleman’s [tavern], but were interrupted by a cry of fire. Adjourned till to-morrow. fire soon extinguished.

The next day he wrote:

At Court all day. No business of much consequence done. Met the clerks of the market as by adjournment. Agreed upon our proceedings. To walk with Mr: [Thomas] English.

This tells us a couple of things. First, it took almost a month after election for the new clerks of the market to get organized. Second, they paired off to “walk,” or patrol the Faneuil Hall Market and the area surrounding it.

Adams made his first patrol on Tuesday, 1 May, and it was eventful:

Walk’d with Mr: English, as clerk of the market at 6. A.M. before breakfast, and again at 11. Seized a quantity of bread. A busy forenoon.

Clerks of the market were empowered to seize loaves of bread they deemed underweight for their prices. Sometimes this led to conflicts, as in this notice in the selectmen’s minutes for 29 Nov 1769:

Mr. [Joseph] Barrel, [Joseph?] Calf & [Benjamin] Andrews, a Committee from the Clerks of the Market Complain of Mr. Harris the Baker & his Servant Robert Davis, as having abused Mr. Barrel & Andrews, by charging the former with stealing their Bread & other ill Language & also Mr. Sircombs man named Cook—abused Mr. John Bernard.

The selectmen summoned all three of those bakers and presumably admonished them. (John Bernard was the son of the highly unpopular departed governor, but he was also a duly chosen town officer.)

John Quincy Adams didn’t record such friction. It’s tempting to think he and English took strict action on their first day to make sure the bakers understood their authority.

Adams never mentioned his market duty again until 2 November:

Eve & supper with Clerks of the market. Dull time.

And then on Wednesday, 28 November:

Snow almost gone. Walk’d with [Simon] Elliot as Clerk of the Market. 

Such sporadic references suggest that a clerk of the market didn’t patrol every day or even every week. Of course, it’s possible Adams did walk by the market stalls more regularly, but he was pretty thorough in recording his daily activities.

In March 1793 the Boston town meeting chose twelve new men to be clerks of the market for the following year. Again, John Quincy Adams didn't mention that election in his diary. His next remark about the position suggests that a year later he felt a little nostalgia for it, enough to attend an event on 28 March 1794:

Dinner of the Clerks of the market. Convivial; but too numerous; attended electioneering meeting.— returned to C[oncert?]. Hall. Stayed not long there. 

But only a little nostalgia.

Advertising-Supported

I”m sorry I didn’t spot this blog when it was running. In December 2013 and January 2014, the “Begs leaves to acquaint his subscribers” blog reproduced advertisements from the Boston Gazette for the corresponding weeks in 1771 and 1772.

The anonymous blogger not only transcribed the ads but took care to present them typographically similar to the way they first appeared, includong the long S. Thus:

Benjamin Andrews was later killed by his friend Benjamin Hichborn.

Alas, this excursion into long-ago marketing stopped when 1772’s Leap Day meant the Monday dates no longer aligned.

(Hat tip to Steve Rayner for spotting this.)

“He was an awful sight as I ever saw.”

Here are some more reports of gun accidents from the Revolutionary War. I found these through the advanced research method of searching Google Books for the words “accidental,” “shot,” and “Revolutionary.” I’m sure there are more incidents to be found.

From the diary of Capt. Thomas Rodney, spending 4 Jan 1777 in Pluckemin, New Jersey:

Here Sergeant McKnatt was accidentally shot through the arm by one of our own people, who fired off his musket to light a fire and as there was not one surgeon in the whole army I was forced to dress it myself and the next day got one of the prisoners to do it.

Asa Fitch wrote home to his father from Ticonderoga on 23 June 1777:

There was one man shot himself accidentally as he stood talking with his brother, and had the gun before him leaning his chin on it, she accidentally went off, and the ball, together with the whole charge of powder went into his head and tore it all to bits. He was an awful sight as I ever saw.

Here’s the 23 Aug 1779 entry from the journals of Lt. Col. Henry Dearborn:

a Soldier very accidentally discharg’d a musket charged with a ball & several buckshot, 3 of which unfortunately struck Capt. Kimbal of Colo. Cilleys Regt. Who was standing at some distance in a tent with several other officers, in such a manner that he expired within 10 or 15 minutes. . . . one of the shot wounded a soldier in the leg who was setting at some distance from the tent Capt. Kimball was in.

Away from the front, there’s the 9 Jan 1779 incident involving Benjamin Andrews, Benjamin Hichborn, and a pair of pistols, told back here.

Out on the early American frontier, more men used guns for their subsistence, but that didn’t mean they avoided firearms accidents. One of the earliest memories of Davy Crockett (1786-1836) was the aftermath of his uncle Joseph Hawkins shooting a neighbor while hunting. George Hunter wounded himself in the hand and face during an expedition for President Thomas Jefferson on 22 Nov 1804. Meriwether Lewis was shot while hunting during a similar expedition on 11 Aug 1806, as narrated here. Three years later, of course, Lewis apparently shot himself to death.

Benjamin Andrews’s “Death by Misfortune”

Last week I mentioned Benjamin Andrews, who helped investigate the Boston Massacre. I can’t resist that opening to share one of Revolutionary Boston’s juiciest bits of gossip, the circumstances of Andrews’s sudden death on 9 Jan 1779, at the age of thirty-eight.

This anecdote comes to us from his sister’s son, Samuel Breck:

Benjamin Andrews, Esq.,...was well educated, active, useful, beloved; in short, a very distinguished citizen. Mr. Benjamin Hichborn, his friend, and a lawyer subsequently of eminence, was with my uncle assisting him to prepare for a journey that was to commence the next day.

While Mr. Andrews was writing, Hichborn was trying a pair of pistols and putting them in order for the journey. He had snapped them against the chimney-back, he said, and, supposing them to be unloaded, was in the act of handing one of them to my uncle when it went off, hit him with the wad in the temple and killed him on the spot.

The Boston Gazette account of Andrews’s death was:

Sitting in his Parlour with Mrs. Andrews and aFriend—He had been comparing an elegant Pair of Pistols which he had bought the preceding Day with a Pair which he had had some Time before, and which were supposed to be unloaded—upon one of these Mr. Andrews observed some Rust in a Place left for the Engraver to mark the Owner’s Name upon—his friend undertook to rub it off—having accomplished it he was returning the Pistol to Mr. Andrews, who was sitting in a Chair at the Table by the Fireside—

Unhappily as he took it from his Friend he (Mr. Andrews) grasp’d it in such a Manner as brought his Thumb upon the Trigger, (which happened to have no Guard) and it instantly discharged its Contents into his Head near his Temple, and he expired in less than Half an Hour—

It is remarkable that, a few Minutes before, he had taken the Screw Pins from both these Pistols, and one of them almost to Pieces, and had handled them without any Caution, and in every Direction against his own Body, and those who were in the Room with him.

This report ended with the detail that a “Jury of Inquest” had already met and determined that Andrews “came to his Death by Misfortune.” Hichborn was already a prominent lawyer—he’d delivered the town’s Massacre oration in 1777—and the Gazette kept his name out of the news.

But locals must have started gossiping about Hichborn’s actions again in March 1780. Here’s Samuel Breck with the rest of the story:

My aunt was a fine-looking, well-bred woman, fond of dress and fashionable dissipation. She had five or six children and an indulgent husband. Suddenly she saw herself a widow overwhelmed with consternation and dismay.

This affair has always appeared mysterious, and made a great noise at the time; and, very strange as it may seem, Hichborn proposed as a remedy and atonement the only measure that could be adduced as a motive for the commission of murder. “I have been guilty,” said he, “of this unintentional manslaughter; Mr. Andrews was my friend; by my instrumentality his children are left fatherless. I will be a parent and protector to them; the best amends I can make is to marry the widow.”

He did marry her, and during a long life he was to her and her children a kind and generous friend, father and husband.

The marriage took place on 2 Mar 1780. Hichborn killed Andrews, married Andrews’s widow, and was admired for it. That would indeed make “a great noise.”

(The picture above shows the Pierce-Hichborn House, now part of the Paul Revere House operation. At the time of this story, it was the home of Benjamin Hichborn’s brother Nathaniel. They were both cousins of Revere on his mother’s side.)

Edward Payne: genteel shooting victim

On 6 Mar 1770, the day after the Boston Massacre, acting governor Thomas Hutchinson wrote a letter to his superiors in London explaining what they would want to know about the event:

I found two persons killed a third mortally wounded since dead, a fourth dangerously wounded & a fifth, Mr Payne a Merchant of the Town, shot in his arm and the bone splintered as he stood at his door.

Who was “Mr Payne,” and why did he warrant being the only shooting victim the governor named?

Edward Payne (1722-1788) was the only person shot on King Street who came from the genteel class rather than being a craftsman or sailor. That’s why he warranted attention from royal officials. He was also the only man shot on his own property, rather than on the street—though that was apparently a matter of inches.

Benjamin Andrews filed a report for the town on where the soldiers’ musket balls lodged in Payne’s house. He described a “bullet hole in the entry door post..., which grazed the edge of the door before it entered the post where it lodged, two and a half inches deep” and a “hole made by another musket ball through the window shutter of the lower story of the same house, and lodged in the back wall of the shop.” The first ball had gone through Payne’s arm before ending up in that post.

Payne’s testified to the town’s investigating committee about his experience. After describing reports of fights between soldiers and townspeople, he said:

That this deponent then went home, and stood upon the sill of his entry door, which is nearly opposite to the east end of the Customhouse, where he was soon joined by Mr. George Bethune [1720-1785], and Mr. Harrison Gray [Jr.] (c. 1735-1830), that the people round the sentinel were then crying out “Fire, fire, damn you, why don't you fire,” soon after, he perceived a number of soldiers coming down towards the sentinel, with their arms in a horizontal posture, and their bayonets fixed, who turned the people from before the Custom-house, and drew up before the door, the people, who still remained in the street and about the soldiers, continued calling out to them to fire.

In this situation they remained some minutes, when he heard a gun snap, and presently a single gun fired and soon after several others went off, one after another, to the number, of three or four, and then heard the rammers go into the guns as though they were loading; immediately after which, three or four more went off in the same manner; at which time, a ball passed through the deponents right arm, upon which he immediately retired into the house.

The report noted that Payne signed his deposition “with his left hand” because of the injury to his right. Later he testified at the soldiers’ trial, telling much the same story.

William Tudor’s mention of Payne in The Life of James Otis (1823) is probably less accurate, but vivid and amusing:

Among the persons wounded was Edward Payne, Esq. a respectable merchant, who having been attracted by the noise in the street, was standing as a spectator at his own door, at the corner of Congress street when he received two balls through his arm, that afterwards lodged in the door-post.

This gentleman’s mild manner of expressing his vexation, when he found himself wounded, excited a smile among his friends. “I declare,” he said with emphasis, “I think those soldiers ought to be talked to.”

I love the phrase “with emphasis.”

Tudor added, “These balls are now in the possession of his son William Payne, Esquire, and may be considered an interesting relic of the revolution.”

Indeed they are. The two balls now belong to the Massachusetts Historical Society, though this photo of them comes via the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library & Museum website. The labels say the one on the right went through Payne’s arm, the one on the left straight into his house.

After my posting on Monday about soldiers probably double-loading their guns, some Boston 1775 readers commented about the importance of the weight and metal content of the musket balls. I don’t know if anyone’s studied these bullets in that regard. I suspect, given where they ended up, that they came from the same gun.

One more anecdote about Edward Payne and the Massacre comes from Peter Oliver, one of the judges who presided over the trials at the end of the year. As a bitter Loyalist in England in 1783, he wrote this anecdote about the gentleman wounded in the shooting (who must be Payne) and the Rev. Dr. Charles Chauncy:

[The minister] had heard that a Gentleman was wounded, on that unhappy Night when the Soldiers had fired. He waited upon the Gentleman, & asked him, whether he did not design to prosecute Capt. [Thomas] Preston in damages [i.e., file a civil suit against him for assault]?

The Gentleman replied, “No Sir! It will be of no Advantage. Capt. Preston is to be tried for his Life. If he should be convicted he will suffer Death, & then I cannot recover any Damages; & if he is acquitted I shall be in the same Circumstances”: to which this hoary headed Divine…said—“if I was to be one of the Jury upon his Trial, I would bring him in guilty; evidence or no Evidence.”

After the siege of Boston, Payne gave up trading goods and started selling insurance. He died on the anniversary of the Massacre in 1788. Payne’s son William took over the house, office, and business at what became 15 State Street. Edward Payne’s daughter Rebecca married Christopher Gore, one of Hutchinson’s successors as governor of Massachusetts.