A New Month in Boston, the Same Old Arguments

What did the Customs service’s anonymous informer report about Thursday, 1 Mar 1770, 250 years ago today?

He (or she) wrote: “the weekley Exhibition at Jacksons as usual.” Boys were once again picketing William Jackson’s hardware shop, the Sign of the Brazen Head, with signs and effigies. Even after the previous week’s protest led to one boy’s death at the hands of Ebenezer Richardson.

There were two important developments at that shop since 1760, when I left off the Saga of the Brazen Head. First, ten years later, the business was no longer operating under the name of “Mary Jackson & Son.” The widow Jackson had retired.

Second, back in 1760 the Brazen Head sign hung “a few Doors from the Town House,” as the Jacksons’ advertising said. By 1770, after the big fire, William Jackson was in business right across King Street from northwest corner of that government building. Mary Jackson was living a distance away. When William testified about the events of 5 March, he said, “I went to my mothers.”

At her home, Mary Jackson had rented space to at least one British army officer. That man no doubt got to hear his landlady’s side of the non-importation debate—how radical Whigs were condemning her son, picketing and vandalizing his shop. That officer was Capt. Thomas Preston.

Down King Street from the Brazen Head was the Customs office. On 2 March, Customs board secretary Richard Reeve wrote to Boston Gazette printers Edes and Gill with a statement from his bosses, the Commissioners:

that Ebenezer Richardson has never been employed as an Officer or Under Officer, or in any Capacity in the Customs.—That [George] Wilmot was not sent with any Message by the Commissioners, or by any Crown Officer or other Person with the Knowledge or Privity of the Commissioners or any of them.—That he has never been employed in the Service of the Commissioners, unless as a Seaman shipped by the Commander of the Sloop Liberty…

With Richardson and Wilmot in jail for murder, the Commissioners were trying to disavow all connection with them—however ridiculous that claim. Even Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson wrote privately that Richardson was a land-waiter for the Customs service.

Some politicians today deny connections to people as soon as they become embarrassing or even criminal liabilities. In our information-soaked world, that rarely works. Likewise, back in 1770 the Boston Gazette printers followed the message from the Commissioners with their own commentary:

It is well known that this same Richardson not many years past, solemnly swore before a Grand Jury that he acted in a certain riotous affair by a commission or warrant from Charles Paxton, which Paxton was then an officer in the Customs, and is now a Commissioner.

Paxton indeed upon oath denied it, and said that Richardson was a d——d villain: The Grand Jury at that Time chose rather to think that Richardson was the perjur’d person, & thereupon complain’d of him to a Magistrate; and it was currently reported that Paxton was his bondsman. If this is not true, Mr. Paxton is at liberty to set the matter right in the Boston Gazette.

Richardson has for many years been known by the name of THE INFORMER——————And we dare appeal to Mr. Paxton, Whether he has not been known to be an Informer, to the officers of the customs—And whether he himself has not frequently encourag’d him and paid him as an Informer—And if so! How could Mr. Paxton with any face desire us to publish, that “Richardson has never been employ’d in ANY Capacity in the Customs.”

That court case offers another possible reason for Richardson shouting, “Perjury! Perjury!” back on 22 February, as described here.

Thus, as March began, the Whigs were back to enforcing non-importation and blaming the Customs service for everything bad, the town was still full of soldiers, and Ebenezer Richardson was feeling abandoned in the town jail.

TOMORROW: Many ways of looking at a brawl.

(The picture above is William Jackson’s trade card, engraved for him by Paul Revere, courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society. It is now on display at the Worcester Art Museum as part of the “Beyond Midnight” exhibit.)

“Pointing to Mr. Jacksons Shop”

On Thursday, 8 Feb 1770, two and half centuries ago today, the Boston Whigs tried a new tactic in their pressure campaign against shopkeepers who were still selling imported goods.

According to the anonymous witness sending reports to Customs Collector Joseph Harrison:

about 10 oClock in the forenoon, a board was stuck up, on the Town pump, with a Hand painted on it, pointing to Mr. [William] Jacksons Shop and below, the word Importer, in Large Letters.—

Jackson’s braziery, or hardware shop, was on Cornhill, one of the main streets forming the crossroads at the center of town. His shop sign, the Brazen Head, had been a town landmark for decades. I can’t help but think that Bostonians also remembered how their town’s last great fire had started at his shop, which he then co-managed with his mother.

Whether it was his shop’s visibility or something he’d done, the Whig activists seem to have singled William Jackson out for hard treatment. He and they were already trading accusations of arson and planting evidence. Some printer produced the handbill shown above, visible at the Massachusetts Historical Society website. It designated Jackson and his shop by name and concluded:

It is desired that the SONS and DAUGHTERS of LIBERTY, would not buy any one thing of him, for in so doing they will bring disgrace upon themselves, and their Posterity, for ever and ever, AMEN.

But that wasn’t the most notable part of this protest, as the informant continued:

this affair drew the attention of the boys, and Country people, who flock’d about it, in great numbers; the Boys insulting Every body who went in, or out of the Shop, by Hissing and pelting them with Dirt.—

Boston’s five public schools let out early on Thursdays, at 10:00 A.M. That schedule was supposed to allow the boys to attend the Thursday Lecture (an extra sermon that Harrison Gray Otis recalled no classmate ever taking the opportunity to hear). Thus, the Whigs had small but enthusiastic adherents available to reinforce their message not to shop at Jackson’s.

Thursday was also Boston’s big market day, when farmers brought their produce in from the countryside. That produced an extra large crowd of people passing up Cornhill to Faneuil Hall.

According to the anonymous report:

Jackson made several attempts to take it [the pointing hand] Down, but was Repulsed by a Number of Idle people, who were standing by, with Clubs and Sticks in their Hands, however about one oClock it was taken away, by those who put it up, and the Crow’d dispersed first taking care to bespatter, all Jacksons windows over, with mudd and dirt—

During this Exhibition a Number of considerable Merchants Stood at a Little distance, and seemed highly pleased with what was going on, and Mr. M——x took Care to distinguish himself in a particular manner—

“Mr. M——x” was of course William Molineux, the Wolverhampton-born merchant who had made himself the leader of the non-importation movement. He was, people assumed, the strategist behind this new form of pressure.

“The whole Body consisting of about 1000 Men”

On 16 Jan 1770, the Boston Whigs circulated handbills for a new public meeting about non-importation. In Faneuil Hall, no less.

The town’s merchants had launched the non-importation boycott back in 1768, as a response to the Townshend duties, and kept it going all through 1769. However, this meeting wasn’t confined to the merchants—i.e., the men who traded with other ports.

Instead, the gathering on 17 January was open to “the Body of the Trade,” or everyone doing business in Boston. The Whigs’ Boston Gazette said the merchants needed to be “properly supported in their generous, self-denying and patriotic agreement,” so the meeting included “all others who were concerned in or connected with trade.”

The wealthy merchants were now well outnumbered by shopkeepers and craftsmen. A Crown informant attended and reported “the meeting was very numerous, but consisted chiefly of the lower sett of people.” Basically, this event was a town meeting without the name or official sanction—and with double the normal attendance because of public interest.

Business proceeded as in a town meeting. The first act was to elect a moderator: William Phillips, a respected merchant, deacon, and staunch Whig.

The meeting then heard from the “Committee of Inspection” set up to police the boycott. Those men reported that five merchants “had open’d and sold a part of their Goods which they had agree’d to keep in their Stores till the general importation should take place”: John Taylor, Theophilus Lillie, William Jackson, Nathaniel Cary, and Nathaniel Rogers. All five importers declined invitations to join the gathering.

If those men wouldn’t come to the meeting, the body decided, the meeting would go to them. According to the informant, whose report is now among the Sparks Manuscripts at Harvard:

[William] M[olineu]x was chose the person to speak in behalf of the whole. . . . the whole Body consisting of about 1000 Men of the very refuse of the town march’d from Faniuel Hall up King Street to the Shop of Mr. Jackson—they were headed by their chairman Phillips, Jonathan Mason & H[enderson]. Inches both select men, Wm. Dennie & Wm. M—x—

Jackson had previously shut his doors but spoke to them from an upper window. M—x demanded that he should open his doors and admit him and som other Genl. to take possession of his Goods, which he said they had an undoubted right to—

Jackson answer’d that he would not open his door at present nor give up his Goods.

M—x then spoke to him as follows, Sir, do you know that I am at the head of 2000 Men, and that it is beneath the dignity of this committee to be parlied with in the street; and then turn’d about and march’d in the same procession with his retinue to Faniuel Hall as he came from it.

Well, that was productive. I should mention that William Jackson was calling out a window above his hardware shop at the Sign of the Brazen Head.

Meanwhile, back in Faneuil Hall a committee was dealing with good news from acting governor Thomas Hutchinson’s sons, Thomas, Jr., and Elisha, who imported tea:

Capt. [Nathaniel] Greenwood a mast maker at the Northend came into the meeting and told them that he was just come from Mr. Hutchinsons who had authoriz’d him to tell them that they were ready to deliver up what Tea remain’d in their Store, and the cash for what was sold—a committee was immediately order’d to wait on them and take their answer in writing—

The Whigs were excited about the Hutchinsons’ cooperation, “it being universally believ’d that if they stood out [i.e., stopped defying the non-importation movement] all the others would follow their example.”

The Crown informant identified the main speakers at this meeting as “M—x their general, Dr. [Thomas] Young, [Samuel] Adams & two or three others”—radical Whigs rather than merchants. (Molineux had been a merchant, but these days he was making his money mostly by managing properties for Charles Ward Apthorp of New York while running a publicly subsidized spinning and weaving enterprise.)

The informant concluded, “The Sons of Liberty were this evening in high spirits at the victory gain’d over the Hutchinsons.” But “it is said Jackson, Lillie & Taylor sent a message to the Hutchinsons finding fault with their promising to submit to the committee, and at the same time acquainting them that they were determined to stand out.”

TOMORROW: Confrontation in the North End.

The Mysteries of David Province

When George Gailer sued for damages after being tarred and feathered, he named four people from Boston: “David Bradley, Pool Spear, Taylors, and David Provence Infant and Edward Mathews Mariner.”

I’ve come up blank on “Edward Mathews[,] Mariner.” Ordinary sailors don’t leave a lot of records, and this man’s name is too common.

For David Province I have limited information about his childhood. David’s father, John Province, married Sarah Prince in late December 1747. Brattle Street Meetinghouse (shown here) recorded that they had Mary in 1752, Sarah in 1757, and twins Abigail and Elizabeth in 1763. However, there’s no sign of a son named David in those published records.

In 1758 Sarah (Prince) Province’s father, a ship’s captain named John Prince, died. His estate included a house and land on Milk Street, an enslaved man named Jack, and a two-masted, fully rigged boat. But he left only 20s. to his daughter Sarah, saying he had already supported her in life. He left a larger sum—£13.6s.8d.—to her children. That bequest may have been a way to make sure her husband John Province didn’t control much of his estate.

In September 1760 Thomas Hutchinson, in his capacity as a probate judge, assigned John Province to be guardian for his son David Province, who was under the age of twelve. In other words, Province ended up controlling any bequest from his father-in-law to his son anyway, but he had to keep accounts under court supervision.

(I note the possibility that David Province was John Province’s son by another woman, born after his marriage to Sarah Prince. That would be unusual, but could explain the anomalous details. Of course, there might just be gaps in the surviving records.)

The Province family lost their home in the great fire of 1760—the one that had started at the Sign of the Brazen Head. [Whatever happened to that storyline, anyway?] But the Province children were among the fortunate Bostonians who received public support. That September, John Province bought new real estate on Lynde Street.

By 1767 John Province was established securely enough to join the Scots Charitable Society. Later he took in apprentices through the Overseers of the Poor. He died in 1792 at the age of 72, and the Columbian Centinel reported that the funeral would be out of his home in West Boston. His will mentioned two married daughters, one in Nova Scotia and one in Albany, but no son.

Indeed, I found no records of David Province after the 1770 lawsuit, in which he played only a minor [!] part. He was probably the right age to serve in the military during the war, but he’s not listed in Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors… He may have died before 1775.

As to the attack on George Gailer, the most pertinent information about David Province may be that his father was a tailor. That’s stated in both the probate and Overseers records. David may therefore have been an apprentice tailor. Two of the three Boston men in the lawsuit were tailors, the only men not connected with the maritime trade.

Why, I wondered, were tailors so interested in tarring and feathering a sailor for informing on a smuggler? Then I realized that might not be the right question. Out of all the crowd that attacked him, how did Gailer learn the names of two or three tailors? The answer might have something to do with how Gailer “took Shelter in a House” for most of the day before being grabbed. Perhaps workers in a nearby tailor shop kept a watch for him, or something like that.

TOMORROW: Pool Spear and the long arm of the law.

Samuel Phillips Savage: “ye fire fell all around us”

When the Great Fire of Boston broke out in March 1760, merchant Samuel Phillips Savage was one of the town’s selectmen, thus bearing extra civic responsibilities.

Two weeks later, Savage wrote an account of the fire. He heavily revised his draft, crossing out and inserting many phrases and even scribbling a whole new paragraph in between the lines of another.

Savage evidently kept that draft for his records, and it’s now held at the Massachusetts Historical Society. The document doesn’t state the letter’s recipient, but it must be someone who lived nearby because he or she had already heard about the fire.

Savage wrote back:

I am obligd for your Sympathy with the Afflictd Town of Boston on Acct of the late awfull Fire,

I was wak’d with the Cry just after two and when I left the house which was not till I had fully dresd me, I could scarce see any Effects of the Flames but before I got way there the whole house were it began was on fire and by a little after day it had distroyd 345 houses, Warehouses & Shops, never did my Eyes behold so amazing a Scene—

in the hight I happened to be on the top of Fort hill, leading a poor old Woman of 80 just escaped with her life to a Brothers house who had escaped, then I beheld a torrent of Fire, impitously carrying all before it, & would I believe how watered [?], had the town reached 20 Miles farther in yt direction for not one house is left in the exant to leeward of ye Wind.

Once in ye hight of the fire, trembling for fear of the Magazine I went to speak at a fireward who stood in the Midst of fire, then I can say without Exageration that I never in my life was in a greater Storm of Snow or knew it snow faster than ye fire fell all around us.

the Engines then provd useless—their Every attempt provd in vain, the flames had their Commiss’. and tryumphed over, the

And there that page ends.

Here’s the paragraph interlined after “Town of Boston”:

We are really worthy yr pity, you canot have any just Idea of the Calamity, and yet I have not heard One murmering Word. I was out the whole Night and happend abt the hight to be on top of the adjoined hill assisting a aged Woman who had escaped the Flame of her own house and wanted my help to lead her to a friends—the Sight was awfull, I confess at the time the thought of its being a Stroke of heaven absorbd all other Considerations. The loss [?] seemd nothing—but although so many have sufferd and come so greatly yet our Xtian benevolent Neighbors help us.

When transcribing this letter, I struggled with several words, particularly “impitously.” Then I went home and discovered that Savage must have written a variation of “impiteously,” meaning “pitilessly.”

“Watered,” which appears in an inserted phrase written hastily and in small letters, is still a guess. The sentiment is clear—Savage didn’t see any way to stop the fire from going where the wind took it, which fortunately was to the harbor.

(In quoting the letter above, I omitted crossed-out words, didn’t note inserts, and broke the text into shorter paragraphs for easier reading.)

Seeking Out a Statement by “Samuel Savage”

On 21 Mar 1760, Bostonians were assessing the damage from the great fire that had started in Mary Jackson’s shop the night before. So this is a good day to resume The Saga of the Brazen Head.

I’ll start a peek behind the scenes of tomorrow’s posting. I really wanted to find a first-person, close-up account of that fire. I’ve quoted newspaper reports, a broadside, a sermon, and diaries from men in other neighborhoods. But all those descriptions had a distanced quality, produced by either actual physical distance or their collective voice.

I spotted a couple of short quotations in Stephanie Schorow’s Boston on Fire: A History of Fires and Firefighting in Boston (2002) which gave me hope of tracking down more. Schorow’s notes pointed me to the books that she’d (inexactly) quoted from, including Carl Seaburg’s Boston Observed (1971).

And there the trail went dead. Boston Observed is a reader made up mostly of a lot of quotations about Boston from across the centuries, Seaburg noted the sources of those long quotations reasonably well—but not the shorter quotations in his introductory essays. And that’s where the sentences in question appeared.

Seaburg credited certain comments on the 1760 fire to a man he called “Samuel Savage.” He also wrote that the fire had started in “the Brazen Head tavern on King Street.” This whole series of postings started simply because I wanted to correct the misunderstanding (which goes back to a town publication in the late 1800s) that the Sign of the Brazen Head was a tavern rather than a hardware shop. Also, that shop was on Cornhill, not King Street. So I wasn’t completely confident about Seaburg’s quoting.

I made a self-educated guess that “Samuel Savage” was Samuel Phillips Savage (1718-1797, shown above), a Boston merchant and town official in the early 1760s who then moved out to Weston. He came back to chair some of the big public meetings in Old South during the tea crisis. Some of the letters Savage received from his old colleagues and neighbors are valuable sources about what was going on in the big town during the pre-Revolutionary turmoil.

The Massachusetts Historical Society holds Samuel Phillips Savage Papers. In fact, it holds four series of S. P. Savage Papers, apparently because descendants have donated those documents in batches. Unfortunately, the M.H.S. doesn’t have a finding aid for that collection, which would make it easier to look for a particular document, or at all documents from the spring of 1760. Instead, each series has its own chronological sequence.

M.H.S. reference librarian Anna Clutterbuck-Cook helped me understand those nuances of the S. P. Savage Paperses. She also suggested it was worth looking in the Catalogue of Manuscripts of the Massachusetts Historical Society, a nine-volume reference printed in 1969 (with a supplement in 1980). Since Seaburg wrote in 1970, I could probably ignore manuscripts acquired after then.

And that worked! One of the items listed in the printed manuscript catalog was S. P. Savage II’s 3 Apr 1760 “Letter to [unknown] about fire in Boston.” That told me which series of Savage Papers to request in the reading room.

(The manuscript catalogue described another letter in that series this way: “Letter to Mr. Joslyn about young Savage’s conduct,” dated 5 Feb 1756. So of course I made a note to look at that, too. Just a taste: “…it seems a little Strange if they are married, they should be ashamd or afraid to say by whom . . . you have the facts as to his Conduct with Bety Wyre and his Child, whose Care is peculiar and really calls for Pitty—I wish that young Creature may be the only One he has ruined—I should be glad if you would inform me, if Mary Sharrad (for Mary Savage I really believe is not her name), is brought to bed…” Savage conduct indeed.)

TOMORROW: Samuel Phillips Savage at the Great Boston Fire.

“Now they all in Heaps of Ashes lay”

The woodcut image above appeared on another religious response to the fire that started at the Brazen Head: a broadside ballad titled A Poem on the Rebuke of GOD’s Hand In the Awful Desolation Made by Fire in the Town of Boston, on the 20th Day of March, 1760.

Like the Rev. Jonathan Mayhew’s sermon, quoted yesterday, the ballad started with the Biblical verse of Amos 3:6: “Shall there be Evil in a City, and the LORD hath not done it?”

Then came 87 lines of verse. Here’s a sample:

Then can we clear ourselves, a’n’t we to blame
Who sin without Remorse, and cast of Shame
And pay no Rev’rence to his holy Name?—
This is the Cause He sent this Judgment down,
This awful Desolation! on the Town.
The North-west-wind, and Flame he did employ,
Our stately Habitations to destroy.
What spacious Structures stood but th’ other Day,
And now they all in Heaps of Ashes lay,
I know not how to write, or to express
The awful Time, or paint the sad Distress
Of those our Friends who did to Bed retire
And wak’d surrounded by a Flame of Fire!--

This broadside moved on to a long and equally fiery description of the Day of Judgement. Mayhew, who wasn’t an entirely enthusiastic Calvinist, didn’t get to that topic until nearly the end of his sermon.

The broadside was issued by the print shop of Zechariah Fowle and Samuel Draper on Marlborough Street. Two years later Fowle and Draper used the same woodcut to illustrated another broadside about fire: The Dying Confession and Declaration of Fortune, a Negro Man, Who was Executed in Newport, (Rhode-Island) on Friday the 14th of May, 1762, for Setting Fire to the Stores on the Long Wharf.

The block of wood carved to print this image actually survives, and in 2005 Early American History Auctions put it on the market—and on the internet. The firm titled it “The Angel of Death and the Great Boston Fire.” Since no one actually died in the 1760 fire, I think the figure in the sky is more likely one of the “Obsequious Angels” that the poem describes accompanying the Almighty on the Day of Judgment.

There are several mysteries associated with the Rebuke of GOD’s Hand broadside. First, the poem is signed with initials that have been read as “A.F.” and “A.J.”—more likely the latter. Mid-twentieth-century bibliographers guessed that was Andrew Johonnot. There were two genteel men of that name in Boston at the time, father (1705-1760) and son (1735-1804). However, I see no indication that either was in the habit of writing poetry.

Another question is who created the woodcut. Young Isaiah Thomas was apprenticed to Fowle at the time, and he later described learning how to cut such blocks—not well, but as well as anyone else in town. However, it’s always possible that this cut wasn’t made just after the 1760 fire but had been part of the printers’ armament for years.

Finally, in 1900 the city of Boston reproduced a somewhat ragged copy of this broadside in a printed collection of town papers about the fire. William S. Appleton displayed that sheet at a meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society. But that was apparently the only surviving copy, and nobody knows where it is now.

COMING UP: Relief efforts.

“Soon after the fire broke out, he caused his wind to blow”

Given Boston’s religious heritage, the Great Fire of 1760 naturally caused people to ask what God meant by it.

On 23 March, the Sunday after the fire, the Rev. Jonathan Mayhew preached about the calamity at the West Meetinghouse. That sermon said the destruction must be the result of divine will:

When this fire broke out, and for some time before, it was almost calm. And had it continued so, the fire might probably have been extinguished in a short time, before it had done much damage; considering the remarkable resolution and dexterity of many people amongst us on such occasions.

But it seems that God, who had spared us before beyond our hopes, was now determined to let loose his wrath upon us; to “rebuke us in his anger, and chasten us in his hot displeasure [a riff on Psalm 38:1].” In order to the accomplishing of which design, soon after the fire broke out, he caused his wind to blow; and suddenly raised it to such a height, that all endeavors to put a stop to the raging flames, were ineffectual: though there seems to have been no want, either of any pains or prudence, which could be expected at such a time.

The Lord had purposed, and who should disannul it? His hand was stretched out, and who should turn it back [Isaiah 14:27].[”] “When he giveth quietness, who then can make trouble? And when he hideth his face, who then can behold him? Whether it be done against a nation, or against a man only [Job 34:29].”

It had been a dry season for some time; unusually so for the time of the year. The houses, and other things were as fuel prepared for the fire to feed on: and the flames were suddenly spread, and propagated to distant places. So that, in the space of a few hours, the fire swept all before it in the direction of the wind; spreading wider and wider from the place where it began, till it reached the water. Nor did it stop even there, without the destruction of the wharfs, with several vessels lying at them, and the imminent danger of many others.

We may now, with sufficient propriety, adopt the words of the psalmist, and apply them to our own calamitous circumstances, “Come, behold the works of the Lord, what desolation he hath made in the earth. [Psalm 46:8]” So melancholy a scene, occasioned by fire, was, to be sure, never beheld before in America; at least not in the British dominions. And when I add, God grant that the like may never be beheld again, I am sure you will all say, Amen!

In short, this must needs be considered, not only as a very great, but public calamity. It will be many years before this town, long burdened with so great, not to say, disproportionate, a share of the public expenses, will recover itself from the terrible blow. Nor will this metropolis only be affected and prejudiced hereby. The whole province will feel it. For such are the dependencies and connections in civil society, regularly constituted.

At the same time, Mayhew explicitly refrained from casting blame on any particular sinners in Boston and warned his listeners against doing the same. He reminded his congregation of what he said were divine blessings, such as the lack of fatalities and how the war was going so well.

Mayhew’s sermon was quickly printed by Richard Draper, Edes and Gill, and the Fleet brothers together. That pamphlet included footnotes noting that the Massachusetts General Court had already voted to draw “about two thousand two hundred and fifty pounds sterling…out of the public treasury” for disaster relief, and “his Excellency the Governor [was] desired to send briefs throughout the province, recommending a general contribution for the unhappy sufferers.”

Further footnotes made an explicit appeal for charity:

About a thousand pounds lawful money was collected in the several religious assemblies in the town, for the relief of the sufferers by the late fire near Oliver’s dock: A large sum, considering the impoverish’d and declining state of the town, and the greatness of the public taxes. And tho’ the dispo|sition of the people be still the same, and the present occasion much greater, and more urgent than the former; yet it will naturally be remember’d that our ability is now less than it was then. . . .

It is to be hoped therefore, that our friends and brethren who live in the country, where their situation secures them so effectually against calamities of this nature, will seriously consider the present distressed condition of the town and shew their christian benevolence on this occasion agreeably to the Brief which his Excellency the Governor has issued out.

Later in the 1760s, much the same argument about Boston’s situation—that people were already generous, that the economy was declining, that the taxes were too high—would resurface in response to Parliament’s new taxes.

TOMORROW: Another religious response.

“The Fury of the flames is beyond Conception”

I’ve been looking for personal accounts of fleeing or fighting the great Boston fire of 1760, which started in the shop at the Sign of the Brazen Head. Anonymous newspaper reports, however vivid, don’t give us the same experience as an individual’s story.

Naturally, diaries from eastern Massachusetts mention the event, but fewer 1760 diaries have been published than those kept a few years later. Edward Holyoke, president of Harvard College, wrote: “This Morn past two began ye great fire at Boston, beginning at ye Brazen head & burnd to Fort St.” Which shows how even people outside of town knew of the Brazen Head as a landmark and where the fire began.

The merchant John Rowe told a relative on 21 Apr 1760:

we have had a Terrible Fire hapen’d at Boston in which I was a Sufferer at Oliver’s Dock, the Newspapers will fully acquaint you the Situation of what was burnt, such a Melancholy & Dismal Burning was never yet seen in any part of this Continent

The wind blew very hard at North West and the Fury of the flames is beyond Conception

That’s as close to a personal statement as I’ve found, and it focuses on property and weather.

Up in the North End, Deacon John Tudor wrote at more length, but still at a distance, in his diary:

This morning a Terable Fire broke oute about 2 O’Clock in the Morning at the Brazen-head E Side of Corn Hill. Soon after the Fire got to a head the Wind Sprung up Fresh aboute N. W. which communicated the sparks to the S. E. part of the Town as far as Hunts Shipyard and about Fort-hill and in 5 or 6 howers Consumed 349 Buildings. It is impossable to express the Distress of the unhappy Sufferers by the grevos Judgment. The loss to the Sufferers in Houses, Stores, Merchandizes, Furneture &c. was £100,000. Sterling.

Tudor was an Overseer of the Poor, and he went on to discuss the disaster relief effort.

COMING UP: The religious side, and collecting aid.

(The picture above is one of Rowe’s firefighting buckets, dated 1760 and therefore most likely acquired after the great fire showed how important they were.)

“The fire was fast approaching the building”

Returning to The Saga of the Brazen Head, I’ll share some Bostonians’ experiences of the Great Fire of 20 Mar 1760, which began after dark in that brazier’s shop.

At that time David Mason was a decorative painter four days short of his thirty-fourth birthday. He had fought in the Crown forces in the French and Indian War, gaining experience in artillery at Fort William Henry before the enemy captured the site on 8 Aug 1757.

According to the stories that Mason told his daughter Susan, a group of Native Americans held him for days before he escaped to Albany. Eventually he made it back to Boston, where his wife Hannah insisted he not enlist again, even with the promise of a promotion. Instead, Mason became active in the local militia defense system.

Specifically, Mason was in charge of the gunpowder supply for the South Battery, near Fort Hill (shown above). And on the night of the 1760 fire, his daughter wrote:

The fire was fast approaching the building and there was a considerable quantity of powder in the house [at the battery] that was thought might be removed before the fire could reach it. He accordingly went to his house for the key, which was some distance from the fire.

When my mother learnt his intention it threw her into great distress in apprehension of the danger he was going to expose himself, and after he had used many arguments to quiet her mind and had made his way out of the house, she followed him to the door entreating him not to venture upon so dangerous a step, and in the midst of her pleadings the [powder] house blew up, but without injuring as many people as might have been expected.

From a calculation that was made of the time it would have taken him to have gone to his house and returned, had he persued his intention without hinderance, it was supposed he must have been in the house at the time of its blowing up. But his time was not yet come…

If Mason had been killed in that explosion, he could not have founded Boston’s militia artillery company or “train” with Adino Paddock a couple of years later.

The guns of the Boston train, Paddock, and Mason are at the heart of the story I tell in The Road to Concord: How Four Stolen Cannon Ignited the Revolutionary War. So we can imagine an alternative universe in which Mason died in 1760 and I had nothing to write about.

Sufferers from the Great Boston Fire of 1760

The scope of the Boston fire of 20 Mar 1760 really comes out in the list of victims that the newspapers published in the following week.

The list was actually a guess, based on November 1759 property assessment records. The printers acknowledged that “Several Widows and a few others are probably omitted.” And of course the names are the heads of household, not the relatives, servants, and boarders also affected.

In his later account the young printer John Boyle added, “The House of Col. Joseph Ingersol catch’d on Fire, but being Brick it was preserved. Here the Flames ended.” Ingersoll’s house was also the Bunch of Grapes tavern.

Other notices in the newspapers testify to the disruption the fire caused throughout the town.

It is desired by the Inhabitants of the Town, That those who live in the Neighbourhood where the late Fire was, would collect and send to the Town-House, all the Buckets & Bags that belong to any Society, where a Person will receive them for the respective Owners.

The town rewarded the firefighting society which was the first on the scene of a fire, and at the end of the month the selectmen gave that award to the “Master of the Marlborough Engine.”

All Persons who have had any Goods or Household Furniture deposited with them during the late Fire, and are at a Loss to whom to return them, are desired either to send them to Faneuil-Hall immediately, or give Information of the same to the Person who will attend there for that Purpose, and where proper Care will be taken that the right Owners shall have them.

The printers were looking for their own customers:

As several Customers to the Boston Evening-Post are burnt out by the late terrible fire, and the publishers not knowing what part of the town they are in, it is desired they would send for their papers

Even before that newspaper was published on 24 March, some Bostonians were looking accusingly at people living in the house where the fire started—the Sign of the Brazen Head.

COMING UP: Finger-pointing, engraving, and what this all meant for The Road to Concord.

“Then was beheld a perfect torrent of fire”

The 24 Mar 1760 Boston Evening-Post, the first issue after the great fire that started in the Brazen Head, reprinted the Boston News-Letter’s account of how the flames spread. The Fleet brothers then tried to communicate the emotional experience of the blaze:

We have thus mark’d the course of those flames which in their progress consumed near 400 dwelling houses, stores, shops, shipping, &c. together with goods and merchandize of almost every kind, to an incredible value;—but it is not easy to describe the terrors of that fatal morning, in which the imaginations of the most calm and steady, received impressions that will not easily be effaced:

At the first appearance of the fire, there was little wind, but this calm was soon followed with a smart gale from the N.W. then was beheld a perfect torrent of fire, bearing down all before it—in a seeming instant all was flame; and in that part of the town were was a magazine of powder—the alarm was great, and an explosion soon followed, which was heard and felt to a very great distance; the effects might have been terrible, had not the chief part been removed by some hardy adventurers, just before the explosion; at the same time cinders and flakes of fire were seen flying over that quarter where was reposited the remainder of the artillery stores and combustibles, which were happily preserved from taking fire:

The people of this and the neighbouring towns exerted themselves to an uncommon degree, and were encouraged by the preference and example of the greatest personages among us, but the haughty flames triumphed over our engines, our art, and our numbers.—

The distressed inhabitants of those buildings, wrapp’d in fire, scarce knew where to take refuge from the rapid flames; numbers who were confined to beds of sickness and pain, as well as the aged and the infant, demanded a compassionate attention,—they were removed from house to house, and even the dying were obliged to take one more remove before their final one.

The loss of interest cannot as yet be ascertained or who have sustained the greatest; it is said that the damage which only one gentleman has received, cannot be made good with £5,000 sterling. It is in general too great to be made up by the other inhabitants, exhausted as we have been by the great proportion this town has born of the extraordinary expences of the war, and by the demand upon our charity to retrieve a number of sufferers by a fire not many months past; a partial relief can now only be afforded to the miserable sufferers, and without the compassionate assistance of our christian friends abroad, distress and ruin may quite overwhelm the greatest part of them, and this once flourishing metropolis must long remain under its present desolation.—

In the midst of our present distress we have great cause of thankfulness, that notwithstanding the falling of the walls and chimnies, divine providence has so mercifully ordered it, that not one life has been lost, and only a few wounded.

Edes and Gill’s 24 March Boston Gazette added:

The Light of the Fire was plainly seen at Portsmouth [New Hampshire], which is the farthest Place we have as yet heard from; and the Explosion occasion’d by the South Battery’s blowing up, was heard at Hampton-Falls, and other Places, and was tho’t to be an Earthquake.

TOMORROW: The list of sufferers.

[The picture above, courtesy of Colonial Williamsburg, shows the New York fire of 1776, not a Boston fire.]

“A most terrible Fire” Starting at the Brazen Head

The 21 Mar 1760 Boston News-Letter reported two significant fires in Boston in the preceding week and then proceeded to this hastily composed yet lengthy report:

Since the above Accounts were compos’d, for this Paper, a most terrible Fire happened in the Town, suppos’d to be greater than any that has been known in these American Colonies, far exceeding what was generally called, the great Fire, which happen’d here October 2. 1711.—

It began about II [i.e., two] o’Clock Yesterday Morning, Thursday March 20th, and broke out in the Dwelling-House of Mrs. Mary Jackson, and Son, at the Brazen-Head in Cornhill, by what Means is uncertain, tho’t by Accident:

The flames catch’d the Houses adjoining in the Front of the Street, and burnt three or four large Buildings, a Stop being put to it there, at the House improved by Mrs. West on the South, and Mr. Peter Cotta on the North; but the Fire raged most violently towards the East, the Wind blowing strong at N.W. and carried all before it; from the Back Sides of those Houses:—

All the Stores fronting Pudding-Lane, together with every Dwelling-House, from thence, excepting those which front the South side of King-Street, and a Store of Mr. Spooner’s on Water-Street to Quaker-Lane, and from thence only leaving a large old wooden House, and the House belonging to the late Cornelius Waldo, Esq; it burnt every House, Shop, Store, out-House, &c. to Oliver’s Dock:

And an Eddy of Wind carrying the Fire contrary to it’s Course, it took the Buildings fronting the lower Part of King-Street, and destroyed the Houses from the Corner opposite the Bunch of Grapes Tavern, to the Warehouse of Mess’rs. Box and Austin, leaving only the Warehouse of the Hon. John Erving, Esq; and the Dwelling-House of Mr. Hastings, standing; the other Brick-Warehouses towards the Long-Wharf were considerably damag’d.—

On the South-East Part, the Fire extended from Mr. [William] Torrey’s, the Baker, in Water-Street, and damaging some of Mr. Dalton’s new Shops, proceeded to Mr. Hall’s working-House, and from then to Milk-Street, and consumed every House from the next to Mr. [Joseph] Calfe’s Dwelling-House, to the Bottom of the Street, and the opposite Way from Mr. [Joseph] Dowse’s included, it carryed before it every House to Fort-Hill, except the Hon. Secretary [Andrew] Oliver’s, and two or three Tenements opposite; as also every House, Warehouse, Shop and Store, from Oliver’s Dock along Mr. [Benjamin] Hallowell’s Ship-Yard, Mr. Hallowell’s Dwelling House, the Sconce of the South-Battery, all the Buildings, Shops and Stores on Col. [Jacob] Wendell’s Wharf, to the House of Mr. Hunt Ship-builder.—

So that from Pudding-Lane, to the Water’s Edge, there is not a Building to be seen, excepting those on the Side of King-street and those mention’d above, all being in Ashes.—Besides which, a large Ship, Capt. Eddy late Master, lying at Col. Wendell’s Wharf, and two or three Sloops and a Schooner were burnt, one laden with Wood, and another with Stores of a considerable Value.—

COMING UP: More about Boston’s great fire of 1760.

Three Decades of Historical Context

The Saga of the Brazen Head started in 1730 with the first appearance of brazier James Jackson in the Boston newspapers, and it’s reached the year 1759.

What else was happening in New England in three decades? If we look at readily available timelines of Massachusetts history from FamilySearch.org or the World Atlas, we find the answer was: Nothing.

Of course, plenty did happen in those years. There weren’t dramatic changes in political constitutions, empire-ending wars, life-changing inventions, and the like, but there were events for Mary Jackson and her family to worry about and celebrate. So here, after some quick cramming, is the historical context for the saga so far.

The first of those decades occurred under the government of Sir Robert Walpole (1676-1745) in Britain and Gov. Jonathan Belcher (1682-1757, shown here) in Massachusetts. Walpole used European alliances to maintain international peace. That produced a lull in Britain’s wars with France and other Catholic powers of Europe, and thus relatively easy trade, fishing, and frontier settlement for British colonists in New England.

Belcher wasn’t as dominating as Walpole, but he was able to remain governor of both Massachusetts and New Hampshire for over a decade starting in 1729. Being a royal governor was a tough job. One answered to the Crown and its demands while feeling pressure from the colony’s politicians and people to serve their interests instead. And British society being what it was, governors also kept an eye out for their own economic well being.

Belcher had some advantages in being a Congregationalist merchant born in Boston and thus like his most wealthy constituents. But he couldn’t keep everyone happy forever. The royal government thought Belcher should do more to stop people felling New England tree trunks reserved as masts for the Royal Navy. (Some of Belcher’s friends benefited from this harvest.) In addition, the shortage of hard cash produced local pleas for more paper currency while the Crown wanted control over the money supply.

In 1739, Walpole couldn’t hold back the clamor for Britain to enter the War of Jenkins’ Ear. After three further years of declining popularity and military failures, he resigned.

That same war opened an opportunity for William Shirley (1694-1771, shown here), an Englishman who had moved to Massachusetts and become a critic of Gov. Belcher. He recruited troops for an early campaign in the Caribbean and so impressed London that the Crown made Shirley governor of Massachusetts in 1741. (Belcher eventually won the post of governor of New Jersey instead.)

Both Belcher and Shirley had to deal with the local campaign for the Massachusetts Land Bank. In 1740 the General Court overrode their opposition and authorized that private organization to issue bills of credit, which functioned as paper currency. Then Parliament outlawed the bank. With the Massachusetts economy in danger, Shirley and the legislature managed to bring about a soft landing for the former bank’s managers and creditors.

Those developments affected Mary Jackson and some of the people around her. All the dispute over paper money brought in papermaker Richard Fry, of course. And all those bills of credit meant Massachusetts currency was losing value.

Mary’s husband James died in 1735 while returning from a visit to Samuel Waldo’s development in southern Maine, which grew during that peaceful decade. Waldo also had a contract to supply masts to the Royal Navy, so he wanted Gov. Belcher to protect the navy’s exclusive rights. When that didn’t happen, Waldo started promoting Shirley for higher office. However, once war broke out, the Maine frontier became vulnerable to attack from both sea and land, and Waldo’s settlements shrank.

In the early 1740s, Britain’s war with Spain expanded beyond Jenkins’ Ear to become the War of the Austrian Succession or, as North Americans called it, King George’s War. In 1745 Gov. Shirley organized an attack on the French fortification at Louisbourg. The British army and navy gave only lukewarm support to that effort, but it succeeded—Massachusetts’s greatest military triumph. Decades later, the province’s Patriots still pointed to that moment as proof that they could defend themselves against the royal army.

Another effect of King George’s War was the Royal Navy impressing more sailors in Boston. In 1747, Commodore Charles Knowles (shown here) seized dozens of sailors, setting off days of riots. Huge crowds surrounded Gov. Shirley, twice at his house and once at the Town House in central Boston, close to the Brazen Head. He tried to call out the militia against the crowd, only to realize that the militia regiment and the crowd were the same men. The Massachusetts Council had to resolve the crisis, with Knowles releasing the sailors and the crowd releasing the naval officers they had grabbed.

When King George’s War ended in 1748, Britain returned Louisbourg to France. Massachusetts was still trying to get the royal government to reimburse the costs of its military campaign. One of the men who had funded that expedition was Samuel Waldo. He decided that Shirley wasn’t working hard enough to pay back his inflated expenses, so Waldo joined the governor’s political enemies. Among those foes were Dr. William Douglass, who decades before had opposed smallpox inoculation, and young political journalist Samuel Adams, son of a Land Bank director.

In 1749 Gov. Shirley sailed for London in order to deal with Waldo’s complaints. Shortly afterward, a large amount of gold and silver coin arrived in Boston harbor—the Crown had finally reimbursed the province with specie. Thomas Hutchinson, then Speaker of the Massachusetts House, wrote a law to use that hard cash to retire paper currency that had lost value. That put Massachusetts’s economy on a sounder footing. Henceforth, businesspeople like Mary Jackson distinguished between current pounds, which kept close to face value, and inflated “Old Tenor” money.

Gov. Shirley resumed his post as governor of Massachusetts in 1753. He seems to have been happiest as a war governor, and was soon preparing for another fight against France. After the death of Gen. Edward Braddock in 1755, Shirley was even commander-in-chief of British forces in North America for a while. But the Seven Years’ (or French and Indian) War brought the governor no military miracle like the Louisbourg expedition. He feuded with other commanders like Sir William Johnson, his own western campaign failed, and officials in London took against him. In 1756, Gov. Shirley was sacked. (Like Belcher, he did manage to become governor somewhere else—in the Bahamas.)

Also in 1756, hundreds of French Acadians came ashore in Boston, expelled from Nova Scotia. Their ships had actually arrived in the harbor in December 1755, but Gov. Shirley refused to let them land, and half those refugees died on their ships that winter. For the next decade, the population of Massachusetts contained a category of “French neutrals.”

This was also the period of religious fervor in colonial America later dubbed the “Great Awakening.” The Rev. Jonathan Edwards led revivals at his meetinghouse in Northampton starting in 1733 and published Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God in 1741. The Rev. George Whitefield preached up and down the North American coast in 1740, 1745, 1751, and 1754. Many New England Congregationalist meetings were roiled by splits between “New Light” and “Old Light” ministers and congregations. As Anglicans, the Jackson family was probably less affected by those disputes.

In 1757 a new royal governor arrived from London: Thomas Pownall (1722-1805). He had close contacts—i.e., his younger brother John—in the Secretary of State’s office, and a lot of big ideas about how the empire should run. He viewed the British constitution as subordinating the military power to the civil, even in wartime. He wanted to balance imperial needs and local rights. Pownall became a favorite of the Massachusetts merchants and Whigs but had a standoffish relationship with the man appointed lieutenant governor under him—Thomas Hutchinson.

Early in 1759, Pownall led a new campaign to conquer and settle the Penobscot region. Samuel Waldo came along and died that May, back on his Maine holdings. The previous year, British military forces had retaken Louisbourg. In July 1759, Gen. Jeffery Amherst finally took Fort Ticonderoga. In September, Gen. James Wolfe defeated Gen. Montcalm at Québec. Together with British and allied victories at Guadeloupe, Madras, Minden, and Quiberon Bay, these victories made 1759 an “annus mirabilis.” Boston celebrated along with the rest of the British Empire.

TOMORROW: Calamity at the Brazen Head.

A Firmer for Molding Your Square Butts

The Jackson family of the Brazen Head advertised a lot of hardware that was unfamiliar to me—not that I do much metalworking or woodworking.

I looked up a bunch of those terms while confirming my transcription and got curious about others. So here’s what I learned about the unfamiliar inventory at the Brazen Head.

close-stool pans: Close stools were cabinets with chamber pots inside.

coffin bullions: Lumps of metal used to decorate coffins, it looks like.

double and single spring chest locks, stock locks: Edward Hoppus’s Builder’s Dictionary said, “LOCKS for Doors are of various Kinds; as for outer Doors, called Stock-locks; for Chamber-doors, call’d Spring-locks, &c.”

egg nob locks: Apparently locks built with doorknobs shaped like eggs.

H & HL hinges: Door hinges distinguished by their shapes. H hinges looked like the letter H. HL hinges, as illustrated a couple of days ago, looked like an H mashed with an L; some professional guides therefore called them IL hinges instead.

firmers: Merriam-Webster says a “firmer chisel” is “a woodworking chisel with a thin flat blade,” and dates the two-word phrase to 1827. The Jacksons’ ad is considerably earlier, of course. The word comes from the French “fermoir,” meaning to form.

gimblets: Now spelled “gimlet,” a T-shaped tool with a screw-tip for boring holes.

hallow and rounds: The first type often spelled “hollow,” these are planes for molding wood, shown here.

splinter and black pad-locks: A splinter padlock had four springs, according to a nineteenth-century reference. A black padlock was presumably black.

post pepper-mills: The sort of cylindrical pepper grinder we’re used to.

handles & scutcheons: Scutcheons were small metal plates, often shaped like shields (escutcheons), to protect part of a wooden surface from handling.

prospect hinges: These seem to be hinges for the “prospect door” in a desk, which was a “single, hinged portal fashioned with a keyhole,…for private or secret documents.”

brass & iron table ketches: Even Luke Beckerdite’s American Furniture could only guess that a “table Ketch” was “possibly a tea table,” but it sounds like it was part of a table—maybe a metal reinforcement of a table leg or foot.

rule joint table hinges: Diagram of a rule joint for a table leaf here.

square butts, dovetails: I think these were metal pieces to reinforce types of joints for two pieces of wood.

girt web: Usually called “girth web,” heavy canvas straps used to strap on saddles and other things.

jobents: A specialty nail with a thick shank, made for attaching iron straps.

dutch spectacles: Spectacles that perched on one’s nose without earpieces, like pince-nez.

bath metal thimbles with steel tops: Bath metal was an alloy of zinc and copper.

aul-hafts: Handles for awls.

spinnel: Sometimes this is a term for a mineral, more usually spelled “spinel.” The phrase “short spinel” is defined as “bleached yarn” or “unwrought inkle” in nineteenth-century references. But I can’t figure out why the Jacksons would be selling either of those things, and why they would list it between “punches” and “white wax.”

Box Irons, Flat Irons: Flat irons were solid, and box irons had a metal part that could be removed and placed in the fire, then replaced in the hollow of the iron to keep it heated.

And finally…

A Quantity of large brown Paper fit for sheathing Ships: In the 1730s, there were two ways to protect ships’ hulls against shipworm. One was attaching sheets of lead to the hull, which of course didn’t help with buoyancy. The other was to plaster the hull with tar, stick on a layer of hair, and then attach a thin sheath of wood that could be replaced as it was eaten away. It looks like thick rag paper could substitute for or supplement the hair.

(When copper sheathing became standard in the late eighteenth century, paper was one way to keep different metals from touching each other in the salt water and suffering galvanic corrosion. But Mary Jackson’s 1736 ad was too early to refer to that use.)

TOMORROW: Historical context for The Saga of the Brazen Head so far.

The Brazen Head and a Bridge in Newbury

An item one could buy at the Sign of the Brazen Head in 1759, but which Mary Jackson didn’t list in her advertising, was a lottery ticket.

We know that from an ad that appeared in the Boston Evening-Post on 30 April:

The Drawing of Newbury Lottery
(the Second Part) will punctually commence at the Town-House in Newbury, on Thursday the last Day of May next, there being a Subscription for the Tickets then unsold, if any there shall be.———

[pointing hand] Tickets to be had of Ebenezer Storer, Esq; Messrs. Timothy Newell, William Jackson and James Jackson, in Boston; Capt. Bowen and Mr. Chipman in Marblehead; Mr. Pyncheon in Salem; Mr. Symonds in Danvers; Daniel Gibbs, Esq; and Mr. Daniel Sargent in Gloucester; Major Epes, Capt. Staniford, and Mr. William Dodge in Ipswich; James M’Hard Esq; and Mr. Joseph Badger in Haverhill, and of the Managers in Newbury.

Note, But two Blanks to a Prize.

What was all that about? The town of Newbury wanted to build a bridge over the Parker River to replace a ferry that had operated for over a century. In fact, the town had wanted to build such a bridge since 1734, according to John J. Currier’s “Ould Newbury” (1896). In that year the town meeting had voted to approve such a bridge on certain conditions:

• It had to be wide enough for coaches.
• Its main arch had to be tall and wide enough for boats laden with hay to pass through.
• It wouldn’t cost the town of Newbury anything.
• It would be free to use.
• It had to be built within ten years.

It may not be surprising that no one undertook to fulfill all those conditions.

But the idea remained. In 1750 the Newbury town meeting and the Massachusetts General Court again approved of the idea of building a bridge. The legislature was involved because this time the planners proposed financing the bridge with a lottery, and the law needed provincial approval. The development team received authority to raise £1,200 that way.

In 1758 Ralph Cross finished building the bridge. It was 26 feet wide, 870 feet long, and had eight wooden arches. That structure no longer exists, but the present Parker River Bridge, built mainly in 1853 with stone arches, stands at the same spot.

Even after the bridge opened, however, the men behind it were still raising money. In fact, in April 1760 the legislature authorized a second lottery, and in February 1763 a third, to finish paying for the bridge and then to pay for its maintenance. Ads in the Boston newspapers for lottery tickets continued to direct customers who felt lucky to William and James Jackson, especially William.

When managers announced such lotteries, they had to be open about the terms. For example, the 1760 Newbury lottery stated that there were 5,000 tickets costing $2 apiece. One ticket would win $500, four would win $100, five $50, six $40, ten $30, fourteen $20, forty-five $10, seventy-five $8, and 1,495 tickets $4. The remaining 3,345 tickets were “blanks,” meaning their holders won nothing.

In all, just under one-third of all the tickets in the Newbury Lottery gave back more than a ticket-buyer had invested. That’s what the ad above meant by “Note, But two Blanks to a Prize.”

The goal of the 1760 lottery was to bring in $10,000. Of that sum, $9,000 was earmarked for prizes and the rest for the bridge. But raising a full £1,000 meant selling through the whole run of tickets, and that was a challenge. The 1759 drawing advertised above depended on some people promising “a Subscription for the Tickets then unsold.” As of March 1761 there were still unsold tickets for the second lottery, and the Newbury town meeting was asked what the town should do about it.

Today’s state lotteries operate under different rules, but one thing hasn’t changed: the expectation value of a ticket is still less than its price.

TOMORROW: Technical info.

[Above: A 1765 ticket from the long-running Faneuil Hall lottery signed by one of the managers, John Hancock.]

“To be sold by Wholesale and Retail, By James Jackson”

As I research Mary Jackson and her family, I must say it would be a lot easier if they weren’t named Jackson. And if they hadn’t kept choosing first names like James, William, and Mary. But of course they weren’t the only family in eighteenth-century New England who set traps for researchers that way.

As I reported before, James and Mary Jackson had their second son baptized James at King’s Chapel on 8 May 1735. Boys named Jackson were admitted to the South Latin School in 1740 and 1742. Unfortunately, those school records don’t include full names. It’s possible that those boys were William and/or James Jackson, who would have been aged nine and seven respectively. If so, like most boys who started at a Boston grammar school in the 1700s, they never graduated, probably shifting to a writing school for better education in business skills.

This is just a guess based on their later paths, but I suspect William spent his adolescence helping Mama at the Brazen Head while James clerked for another import merchant. I’m even ready to guess that businessman was William Rand (1716-1758), who sold cloth and other dry goods “in Cornhill, The Corner Shop on the North side of the Townhouse,” per the 24 June 1751 Boston Evening-Post. In other words, very close to the Brazen Head.

This shopkeeper William Rand is often mixed with Dr. William Rand (1689-1759), who was an apothecary and a town tax collector. To confound matters further, that doctor had a namesake nephew, who in this period was a Harvard student and medical trainee and later was a counterfeiter. But I digress.

James Jackson came of age in May 1756. Already the town’s ministers were reading a notice that he intended to marry Sarah Rand—possibly the baby sister of shopkeeper William Rand, born in Charlestown in 1729. On 27 May, the couple wed at King’s Chapel. (The record there gives Sarah’s first name as Mary, just to add to the genealogical muddle. But that’s clearly an error, judging by the intention of marriage and later records of the couple.)

James Jackson thus married at an unusually young age, perhaps to a woman six years older. However, there’s no indication Sarah Rand was pregnant when they married, as many New England brides were. Instead, he seems to have been mature for his years.

James and Sarah Jackson had their own little baby James baptized at King’s Chapel on 26 June 1757, with his mother Mary standing as one of the sponsors. Five years later, on 10 Mar 1762, their son William was baptized in the same church; grandmother Mary and uncle William Jackson were sponsors.

On 26 Feb 1759 the Boston Evening-Post ran this advertisement:

Just Imported from LONDON, in the Brigantine Hannah, John Ayers Master, and to be sold by Wholesale and Retail,
By James Jackson,
At his Shop opposite Ebenezer Storer, Esq; and Son’s Warehouse in Union-street, BOSTON, very reasonable for ready Money,

A Great Variety of European and India GOODS, consisting of such a Number of Articles as would be tedious to the Reader. Likewise, a fine Assortment of Cutlery Ware, English Shoe Soles, Writing Paper, Looking Glasses, Raisins, Currants, Starch and Spices.

A similar ad followed in the Boston Post-Boy. Young Jackson had opened his own shop in the North End and was importing from Britain and beyond.

In March, the Boston town meeting elected James Jackson as one of twelve Clerks of the Market, alongside such peers as the silversmith Nathaniel Hurd. That was an entry-level elected position which the community usually gave to a young man seen as reliable and on his way up.

TOMORROW: Taking a chance with the Jackson brothers.