“General Folsom proposes also to retire”

On 30 June 1775, Gen. Artemas Ward received word of his new commission as major general in the new Continental Army.

Ward immediately wrote back to John Hancock, chair of the Continental Congress, accepting the post. He also warned that “the Appointments in this Colony [Massachusetts]” might “create Uneasiness.”

They did, along with those for Connecticut generals, as I wrote last month.

And what about Nathaniel Folsom, who’d just solidified his authority over the New Hampshire colonels at the siege? His letter dated 1 July indicates no one had told him about the Continental Congress’s commissions yet.

As I’ve stated, the New Hampshire Provincial Congress had named Folsom as the colony’s general officer in April, and then reaffirmed that choice in May.

Yet New Hampshire’s delegates to the Continental Congress apparently didn’t pass on that news. Nor did those men, John Sullivan and John Langdon, suggest that the senior New Hampshire officer already at the siege, John Stark, be made a brigadier general.

Instead, they apparently looked around and told their colleagues in Philadelphia that the very best choice of a general from New Hampshire was…John Sullivan.

Sullivan (shown above, nominally) didn’t have any military experience from the last war, unlike Folsom, Stark, and the next two colonels, Enoch Poor and James Reed. He was younger than all those men. But Sullivan was in Philadelphia, and he was enthusiastic. So on 22 June he got the nod.

Gen. George Washington left Philadelphia the next day and arrived in Cambridge on 2 July, carrying commissions for his subordinates. His first general orders, issued the next morning, acknowledged the presence of “General Falsam.” But the conversations were probably awkward.

Sullivan arrived in Massachusetts a week later. So far as I know, there are no documents preserving his interactions with Folsom and the colonels.

On 20 July, Washington told Hancock and the Congress that “General Folsom proposes also to retire.” The older man returned to New Hampshire. On 24 August, its provincial congress “Voted That Nathaniel Folsom; Esqr. be the General Officer over the Militia in this Colony.” So he got to keep the rank of general.

Folsom remained active in New Hampshire politics, and he also served a second stint in the Continental Congress from 1777 to 1780. He presided over his state’s constitutional convention in 1783. And then, because that constitution forbade plural office-holding, he resigned his post as militia general in favor of being chief judge of his county.

Nathaniel Folsom exercised unchallenged command of New Hampshire’s army from 24 June to 3 July 1775, or a little over a week. He oversaw New Hampshire’s wartime militia for eight years.

Who Wants to Be a General Anyway?

Here are a couple more wrinkles in how the Rhode Island legislature commissioned Nathanael Greene to lead its troops in 1775 which I haven’t seen discussed elsewhere.

First, the colony named Greene its brigadier general. That was one rung lower than the rank still held by Simeon Potter, major general.

At the same time the legislature commissioned Greene, it also promoted Potter into its upper house, the Assistants.

Those actions might have kept the hot-tempered man content that he was still being respected. The colony still wanted his cooperation (and his cannon).

At the siege of Boston, Greene was the youngest general and had the least seniority. But he was still lumped in with the other generals. In June, Nathaniel Folsom reported back to New Hampshire: “Mr. [Artemas] Ward is Capt. General, Mr. [John] Thomas Lieut. General, and the other Generals are Major Generals.” That was their practical pecking order, not their formal ranks.

In July, the Continental Congress listed Greene as a brigadier general, alongside Thomas, William Heath, Joseph Spencer, John Sullivan, and others. In the summer of 1776 Greene became a Continental major general, and that remained his official rank throughout the war.

Here’s another possible factor in Rhode Island’s choice of Greene to command its army in 1775: Nobody else wanted the job.

The army of observation was designated as 1,500 soldiers, smaller than the other three New England colonies. Whoever commanded that contingent was bound to be low man on the totem pole around Boston. And in practice Greene was able to collect only about a thousand men.

For a Rhode Island man of military ambition, it might have seemed more promising to stay home and organize the coastal defense against British naval raids. At least you’d be the biggest fish in the pond.

What’s more, prospects might have looked even more promising at sea. Rhode Island was a maritime society. Many of its leading men were merchant captains who in wartime commanded or invested in privateers. As the example of Simeon Potter showed, that form of warfare could be the path to a life-changing windfall. Even naval captains had a chance at wealthy prizes.

On 12 June, Rhode Island became the first rebellious colony to commission its own navy, making Abraham Whipple the commander over two armed vessels. Whipple seized the Diana, a tender of H.M.S. Rose, off Newport three days later.

In October, Rhode Island’s delegates to the Continental Congress pushed for the creation of a Continental Navy. Ultimately delegate Stephen Hopkins’s brother Esek was appointed the first commander in chief of that branch.

That fall, the Rhode Island assembly (having given up on Simeon Potter) had appointed Esek Hopkins a brigadier general for defense of the colony. But the man jumped at the opportunity to go to war at sea. Because that was probably where he and his neighbors saw the real prestige and money.

In sum, Nathanael Greene might have become a general because senior men in Rhode Island didn’t view that job as important. Nobody foresaw what Greene would make of it.

COMING UP: The New Hampshire army.

Rhode Island’s “vote for raising men”

As soon as he heard about the shooting at Lexington, James Warren, delegate from Plymouth to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, passed the news on to Patriots in Rhode Island.

On 20 April the elite militia company called the Kentish Guards mustered and marched toward Massachusetts.

Before those men reached the border, a message arrived from Gov. Joseph Wanton (shown here), ordering the unit to stand down.

Four members continued on horseback, three of them being Nathanael Greene and his brothers. But once those men heard that the British troops were back inside Boston and the emergency had passed, they went home to Rhode Island to sort things out.

The colony’s first step came quickly. On 22 April the assembly passed an act to raise 1,500 men

properly armed and disciplined, to continue in this colony, as an army of observation, to repel any insult or violence that may be offered to the inhabitants. And also, if it be necessary for the safety and preservation of any of the colonies, to march out of this colony and join and co-operate with the forces of the neighboring colonies.

The Massachusetts Provincial Congress had also used the phrase “army of observation” in early April, implying a purely defensive force. Once the fighting began, however, it dropped that phrase entirely. Even as the Rhode Island assembly called its new troops an “army of observation,” it was clearly opening the door to sending those men off to help Massachusetts in its war.

Top officials in the colony resisted. Though Gov. Wanton had been crucial to stymieing the Crown’s Gaspee inquiry a couple of years before, he filed a protest against the legislature’s vote. Deputy Governor Darius Sessions joined him along with two members of the Council of Assistants (the upper house), Thomas Wickes and William Potter. On 25 April they declared their opposition to the new army

Because we are of opinion that such a measure will be attended with the most fatal consequences to our charter privileges, involve the Colony in all the horrors of a civil war, and, as we conceive, is an open violation of the oath of allegiance, which we have severally taken upon our admission into the respective offices we now hold in the Colony.

Coincidentally, Rhode Island’s charter called for a new legislative session to start on the first Wednesday of each May. In that spring’s annual election, Sessions, Wickes, and Potter all lost their seats. (Potter would recant and apologize in June, and then return to the Council of Assistants.) Nicholas Cooke became the new deputy governor.

Rhode Island’s freemen reelected Joseph Wanton as governor, but on 2 May he sent a letter to the assembly saying, “indisposition prevents me from meeting you.” Instead he enclosed what Lord Dartmouth, the British Secretary of State, considered a conciliatory offer. Wanton thought that was a more promising route to resolving the crisis. He told the legislators:

The prosperity and happiness of this colony, is founded in its connexion with Great Britain; “for if once we are separated, where shall we find another Britain to supply our loss? Torn from the body to which we are united by religion, liberty, laws and commerce, we must bleed at every vein.”

That passage quoted from John Dickinson’s Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania. (Some authors miss the quote marks and attribute those words to Wanton himself.)

On 5 May the legislative speaker, Metcalf Bowler, tried to force the governor’s hand. He sent a blank commission for an officer in the new army and asked Wanton whether he would sign such a form. The governor replied:

I cannot comply with it; having heretofore protested against the vote for raising men, as a measure inconsistent with my duty to the King, and repugnant to the true and real interest of this government.

At that point the assembly bypassed Gov. Wanton and started treating Nicholas Cooke as the colony’s chief executive. Wanton wouldn’t be officially replaced until November, but he could no longer stand in the way of Rhode Island’s army.

TOMORROW: Finding a general.

“The Colony of Connecticut must raise 6,000”

As I quoted last week, on 23 Apr 1775 the Massachusetts Provincial Congress resolved to raise an army of 30,000 men, 16,400 of them coming from outside the province.

In this Journal of the American Revolution article from last year, I discussed how early in 1775 the congress had set up liaisons with the governments of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire in case war broke out.

The Massachusetts Patriots had alerted their colleagues in those colonies about the fighting on 19 April. And now they asked for troops.

In Connecticut, Gov. Jonathan Trumbull supported the Patriots. As soon as he heard the news from Lexington, he agreed to call the legislature into session to take official action. On 21 April, William Williams, the Connecticut assembly speaker and Trumbull’s son-in-law, wrote with two other politicians to the Massachusetts congress:

Every preparation is making to Support your Province— . . . the Ardour of Our People is such that they can’t be kept back;—The Colonels are to forward part of the best men & most Ready, as fast as possible; the remainder to be ready at a Moments warning

Some militia officers were already on the move. Israel Putnam was in Concord on 21 April as the Massachusetts congress met. He wrote back:

I have waited on the Committee of the Provincial Congress, and it is their Determination to have a standing Army of 22,000 men from the New-England Colonies, of which, it is supposed, the Colony of Connecticut must raise 6,000, and begs they would be at Cambridge as speedily as possible, with Conveniences; together with Provisions, and a Sufficiency of Ammunition for their own Use.

Col. Benedict Arnold and his volunteers left New Haven on 22 April and arrived in Cambridge one week later. On 23 April a letter from Wethersfield to New York said:

We are all in motion here, and equipt from the Town, yesterday, one hundred young men, who cheerfully offered their service; twenty days provision, and sixty-four rounds, per man. They are all well armed, and in high spirits. . . . Our neighbouring Towns are all aiming and moving. Men of the first character and property shoulder their arms and march off for the field of action. We shall, by night, have several thousands from this Colony on their march. . . .

We fix on our Standards and Drums, the Colony Arms, with the motto, “qui transtulit sustinet,” round it in letters of gold, which we construe thus: “God, who transplanted us hither, will support us.”

On 27 April the Connecticut legislature voted to enlist 6,000 soldiers—six regiments of about a thousand men each. Joseph Spencer was appointed general of this army with Putnam next in seniority. (David Wooster remained in Connecticut to oversee defending its coast or New York as needed.)

Notably, Connecticut asked men to enlist in its army only until 10 December, not the end of the year as other New England colonies did. That became a problem when December rolled around and lots of Connecticut companies wanted to leave early (as Gen. George Washington viewed it) or on time (as their enlistment papers said). I discussed that conflict back here.

TOMORROW: Rhode Island’s observers.

“To submit myself to all the orders and regulations of the army”

On 21 April 1775, two days after fatal fighting began, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s committee of safety adopted this oath for men enlisting in the provincial army:

I, A. B. do hereby solemnly engage and enlist myself as a soldier in the Massachusetts service, from the day of my enlistment to the last day of December next, unless the service should admit of a discharge of a part or the whole sooner, which shall be at the discretion of the committee of safety; and, I hereby promise, to submit myself to all the orders and regulations of the army, and faithfully to observe and obey all such orders as I shall receive from any superior officer.

Most men were already required to serve in the militia, but the committee was now thinking about “the army.”

It took until 1 May before another committee of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress came up with language for an officer’s commission:

THE CONGRESS OF THE COLONY OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY.

To                 Greeting:

We, reposing especial trust and confidence in your courage and good conduct, do, by these presents, constitute and appoint you, the said                 to be                 of the regiment of foot                 raised by the Congress aforesaid for the defence of said colony.

You are, therefore, carefully and diligently to discharge the duty of a                 in leading, ordering and exercising the said                 in arms, both inferior officers and soldiers, and to keep them in good order and discipline; and they are hereby commanded to obey you as their                 ; and you are yourself to observe and follow such orders and instructions as you shall, from time to time, receive from the general and commander in chief of the forces raised in the colony aforesaid, for the defence of the same, or any other your superior officers, according to the military rules and discipline in war, in pursuance of the trust reposed in you.

By order of the Congress,                 the                 , of A. D. 1775.

The congress ordered a thousand copies of that form to be printed.

The Massachusetts Historical Society shares the image of one of those forms, given to Lt. Gamaliel Whiting of Great Barrington on 19 May.

The provincial congress listed Whiting as an ensign when it issued commissions for Col. John Fellows’s regiment on 7 June. It looks like “Ensign” was scraped off and the word “Lieutenant” inserted in three places, and by August the province did list Whiting as a lieutenant.

Someone added a note to this document about an “officer resigning and leaving the company at Springfield on the march to Boston,” allowing/necessitating Whiting’s promotion. Contrary to that note, there’s no evidence he achieved another promotion to captain before the end of the year. So I think family members recalled him stepping in for another man, but they mistakenly thought that happened after this commission rather than before.

(Until recently, the webpage for this document identified it as “Appointment as lieutenant in Massachusetts militia,” but now it correctly says, “Appointment as lieutenant in Massachusetts Bay Colony Regiment of Foot.” That reflects the misconception I discussed back here, that until Gen. George Washington arrived the Americans at the siege of Boston were all militia men. We’re all working on getting that transition right!)

TOMORROW: In the neighboring colonies.

“Alarmed that the Regulars were advancing towards Our Entrencment”

Among the presentations at this Saturday’s commemoration of Gen. George Washington’s arrival in Cambridge is a talk by Longfellow House archivist Kate Hanson Plass on the diary of Moses Sleeper.

Hanson Plass and her team have recently shared the diary online: transcription with annotations and illustrations, plus a link to page images on Archive.org.

The introduction explains:

In the museum collection of the Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site is a diary written by a soldier who participated in the early days of the American Revolution. No one knows how the diary got to the house, though it seems likely that a collector in the Longfellow family acquired it for its Revolutionary War connection in the early 20th century.

The book itself is small (5” by 8”), pocket size; its cover and the first and last three pages are missing. There is no indication of the identity of the writer of the diary; at first reading it seems to be anonymous. Using clues inside the diary – references to family members and locations of military service – the author has been established as Corporal Moses Sleeper of Newburyport, Massachusetts, who served for 19 months in Colonel Moses Little’s Regiment (later the 12th Continental Regiment).

Sleeper and Sgt. Paul Lunt of the same regiment obviously shared their diaries since many of their entries are the same. They weren’t keeping private, personal notes but making a record of their military service for people back home and in the future.

Cpl. Sleeper’s surviving pages start right before the Bunker Hill battle, which his regiment wasn’t involved in. Here’s his terse account of those days:

Friday 16 our Men went to Charlestown and Intrenched on a hill beyond Bunker hill they fired from the Ships and Copps hill all the time.

Saturday 17 1775 the Regulars Came out upon the Back of Charlestown and Set fire to It & burnt It down & Came to our Entrenen[?] forced It with the Loss 896 of the Regulars and about 50 of ours The fire began at 3 o Clock and held till 6

Sund 18 we Entrinched on prospect hill alarmed that the Regulars were advancing towards Our Entrencment but found It to be false Returned to Quarters

Mondy 19 Wee killed Some of there Guard

T 20 Went upon Picquet

W 21 past musters

Thirsday 22 Received our month pay

You wouldn’t know from those entries that Capt. Benjamin Perkins’s company, including Cpl. Sleeper, went onto the Charlestown peninsula on 17 June and saw combat. I’ve quoted later recollections of the Bunker Hill fight from other men in that company: Lt. Joseph Whitmore and Pvt. Philip Johnson.

Sgt. Lunt’s description of the battle offered a little more detail:

Saturday, 17th. - The Regulars landed a number of troops, and we engaged them. They drove us off the hill, and burnt Charlestown. Dr. [Joseph] Warren was lost in the battle: the siege lasted about three hours. They killed about 50 of our men, wounded about 80: we killed of the king’s troops 896, - 92 officers, 104 sergeants.

Both Sleeper and Lunt listed an exact number of enemy casualties—a piece of intelligence it usually takes days or weeks to acquire. In Sleeper’s case, we can see that number was written right into the entry, not inserted later. That suggests these provincial soldiers didn’t write their diary entries on the evening after the battle but after time had passed, they had recovered, and they might have had less to do.

“In full compensation of the damage he sustained”

For more than a week now I’ve traced Henry Howell Williams’s quest for compensation after the Battle of Chelsea Creek in May 1774 destroyed his estate on Noddle’s Island in Boston harbor.

In 1788, the Confederation Congress’s board of treasury sent him back to Massachusetts. After all, those commissioners said, his livestock had been taken and his farm burned before the Continental Army legally existed. This was a state matter.

I don’t have access to Massachusetts legislative journals from that period, but Williams must have submitted a petition during the session that started in May 1789.

On 23 June, Gov. John Hancock and state secretary John Avery signed off on this resolution passed by both houses of the General Court:

Resolved, that the Treasurer of this Commonwealth be and he hereby is directed to issue his note in behalf of the Commonwealth in favor of Henry Howell Williams, for the sum of two thousand pounds and interest thereon from date of the same in full compensation of the damage he sustained from having his stock and other property taken from him or destroyed in consequence of orders given by the commanding officer of the Massachusetts troops [Artemas Ward] in the month of May, 1775, and that the same be charged to the United States.

Williams would get £2,000. That wasn’t all he’d asked for, but it was more than half, and more than his own estimate of the value of the livestock he said the army had confiscated.

Massachusetts would supposedly try to get reimbursed for that payment from the federal government. I doubt it ever saw money back, but I don’t know how to track that now that Williams’s name was probably no longer attached to the request.

Williams had been seeking such compensation since the summer of 1775. He had asked each of these bodies for money:

• Massachusetts Provincial Congress.
• Massachusetts General Court under the provincial charter, seeking relief.
• Massachusetts General Court, seeking a loan.
• Congress of the U.S. of A. under the Articles of Confederation, through its agent.
• Congress of the U.S. of A. by direct petition.
• Massachusetts General Court under the constitution of 1780.

Some men might have been satisfied with £2,000. But not Williams.

Three years later he went back to Massachusetts legislators and asked if that “full compensation” from the state meant he couldn’t also ask the new federal government for money. Five members of the committees that had considered his claim in 1789 signed off on a document dated 14 Feb 1792 saying their resolution was

by no means and in no sense to preclude any further grant, Which The Federal Legislature, or any other government, May think proper to make said Williams.

So Williams sent yet another petition off to the new national capital of Philadelphia.

TOMORROW: In the room where it didn’t happen.

Henry Howell Williams as a Quartermaster?

In his 1858 History of East Boston, William H. Sumner wrote, “I think [Henry Howell Williams] was a quartermaster-sergeant in the army” during the siege.

To research that book, Sumner relied on Williams family sources. He wrote favorably of Williams and included the portrait of the man shown here. So that impression probably came from descendants.

In fact, the Continental Congress didn’t establish the rank of quartermaster sergeant until July 1776.

As for the possibility that Williams helped in supplying the Continental Army around Boston less formally, I’ve found no contemporaneous documentation for that. Unless, of course, we count how the Massachusetts government commandeered his livestock for the public benefit.

Adm. Samuel Graves did claim that the destroyed property on Noddle’s Island belonged to “a notorious Rebel then in Arms.” But there’s no evidence for Williams joining the Massachusetts or Continental army. We shouldn’t rely on Graves’s self-justifying account for what was happening on the other side of the siege lines.

Sumner linked Williams’s alleged work for the army to how he obtained some property from the Continental authorities after the siege:

In partial compensation for this destruction of private property was the gift of the barracks at Cambridge, after the army quitted it, by General [George] Washington, to Mr. Williams. . . . The barracks were removed to the Island, and part of them used for a house, which Mr. Williams erected over the old cellar, to be used as tenements for his workmen, and for barns and sheds for the sheep and cattle, at the westerly slope of Camp hill.

Again, I’d like to see contemporaneous evidence for such a gift. Gen. Washington was careful to work with the Continental Congress and local governments in managing public assets, so such a grant should have left a paper trail. The documents I’ve found suggest another story.

[The search function for Founders Online has slowed down considerably in the past month. On 19 May the U.S. government issued an acknowledgment of “periodic degraded performance owing to extreme spikes in traffic caused by excessive website crawling, associated with content scooping from AI platforms and other indexers.” This slowdown coincided with the D.O.G.E. takeover of federal government computer networks. Given that new agency’s faith in A.I. programs, that could be related to the “scooping.”]

TOMORROW: The barracks on Noddle’s Island.

“Your poor memorialist is stripped almost naked”

Within two weeks of seeing the provincial army destroy his house and farm on Noddle’s Island during the Battle of Chelsea Creek, Henry Howell Williams petitioned the rebel government for support.

On 12 June 1775 he told the Massachusetts Provincial Congress (as transcribed in American Archives):

That your memorialist hath, for eleven years last past, dwelt on an island in Boston Bay, commonly called Noddle’s Island, at a very high rent, and in order to pay the same was obliged to keep a large stock of horses, cattle, sheep, &c.; and that during all the years aforesaid hath paid very large taxes for said island, stock, &c., for the support of Government; and hath always endeavoured faithfully to discharge his duty, as a good member of society, towards all men, and all that was theirs.

That on Saturday, the 27th day of May last, a number of armed troops, commonly called Provincials, came on to said island, by way of Hog Island, and did then and there kill or carry away eight horses and three cows, part of the aforesaid stock, and also burnt and destroyed one dwelling-house and barn, with all the household goods therein contained, wearing apparel, &c.

That on Monday, the 29th of May, the same or another number of said armed troops, came again on to said island, and then and there did burn and destroy two other dwelling-houses, goods, &c., and three barns; and at the same time did take away and drive off from said island about five hundred old sheep, and about three hundred and forty lambs, with between thirty and forty head of horned cattle, the property of your memorialist, together with a further number of horses, hogs, &c., &c.

And that on Tuesday, the 30th day of May aforesaid, they entered again on to said island, and then and there proceeded and burnt your memorialist’s mansion house, with all the barns, corn-houses, and store houses, stores, provisions, goods, house furniture, wearing apparel, liquors, and utensils of all sorts, to a very considerable amount and value:

And on Saturday, the 10th day of June, instant, entered again, and burnt and destroyed the warehouse, the last building on said island, by which means your poor memorialist is stripped almost naked, and destitute of any place to lay his head, with a very large family of children and servants, to the amount of between forty and fifty in number, that are destitute of any business or supplies but from your memorialist.

These are therefore to request your Honours will take his most distressed circumstances into your wise consideration, and make such order thereon as in your wisdom shall seem meet…

That number of forty to fifty dependents probably included everyone Williams employed at harvest time, not his year-round staff. But he was trying to make the case that his personal loss was a societal problem that justified spending scarce public funds.

It looks like Williams had given up hope of having the congress help retrieve his livestock. In fact, the rebel government was already assigning horses from Noddle’s Island to the war effort. The sheep, cattle, and hogs went toward feeding the troops. Figuratively, it was too late to close that barn door.

Then the Battle of Bunker Hill happened five days later, giving the Provincial Congress a lot of other things to deal with.

TOMORROW: Animal tracks.

“Every thing I had, to amount of Seventy pounds”

Yet another outcome of the Battle of Chelsea Creek was the destruction or removal of various agricultural resources on Hog Island and Noddle’s Island: hay, livestock, and buildings.

Provincial soldiers removed all the animals they could and destroyed the rest to prevent the British military from using it.

Alexander Shirley was a longtime resident of Noddle’s Island, as attested to by Isaiah Tay of Chelsea. In March 1776 Shirley told the Massachusetts legislature that its troops had “set fire to my Hous, & Destroyed all my substance, goods, & provisions, & every thing I had, to amount of Seventy pounds, Lawfull Money, at least.” He had “a large family of Children” to support.

That wasn’t a large estate, and Shirley didn’t claim to have lost crops or animals. That’s because, while he probably tended the island’s livestock and worked the harvest, he didn’t own the farm. He worked for Henry Howell Williams.

Boston vital records show that Alexander Shirley married Eleanor McCurdy in 1750, when he was in his thirties. They had children baptized at Christ Church in the North End. In 1774 Alexander Shirley married Molly King, so Eleanor had probably died.

Alexander Shirley appears to have actually been part of the Chelsea company of provincial soldiers who fought on Noddle’s Island in May 1775. Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War lists both Alexander Shirley of Chelsea and Alexander Shirley, Jr., of Chester, New Hampshire, in Capt. Samuel Sprague’s company, along with other men named Shirley—quite possibly related.

After the war, the older Alexander Shirley and his wife went back to living on Noddle’s Island, still working for Williams. In old age he gained the nickname “Governor Shirley” (since William Shirley was no longer using it).

On 17 Feb 1800, Alexander Shirley died “aged eighty-three, an inhabitant of the Island for upwards of fifty years.” The funeral took place the next day from the house of John Fenno, described as “at Winnisimmet-Ferry.” Shirley was buried in the Copp’s Hill cemetery after one last trip across the water.

TOMORROW: The big loser.

More Talks on the Battle of Bunker Hill and Its Aftermath

Here are more upcoming talks that look ahead to the Sestercentennial of the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Tuesday, 10 June, 6:00 P.M.
Courage and Resolve in Nation and Institution Building
Massachusetts General Hospital and online

Major General Joseph Warren’s death at the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775, secured his legacy as a Revolutionary War hero. Lesser known is his role as an advocate for organized healthcare for the poor and needy. Both he and his brother John advanced American medicine during the Revolutionary and Early Republic eras. In the early 1800s, John’s son Dr. John Collins Warren would build upon those ideals through his own role in co-founding the Massachusetts General Hospital. Biographer Dr. Samuel Forman explores the lives of these three men and their continued influence on current health care.

This free event will take place in the hospital’s Paul S. Russell, M.D., Museum of Medical History and Innovation at 2 North Grove Street. Register for a seat or a link here.

Thursday, 12 June, 5:30 P.M.
General James Reed and the Battle of Bunker Hill
Main Street Studios, 569 Main Street

The Fitchburg Historical Society says, “Join us for fun discussion,” part of a series on “Local Stories from the American Revolution.” It looks like society officials will provide the basic information.

Continental Army general James Reed (1722–1807) lived in Fitchburg when it was part of Lunenburg and again in the last decade of his life. He was born in Woburn, however, and starting in 1765 led a settlement in Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire. After war broke out, Reed returned to Massachusetts as colonel of a New Hampshire regiment and fought alongside Col. John Stark at the rail fence. In mid-1776 Reed was assigned to the Northern Department, helping the retreat from Canada. He contracted smallpox, lost his sight, and retired from the army.

Friday, 13 June, 10:00 A.M.
Rebels, Rights & Revolution: Battle of Bunker Hill
Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston

Join Chief Historian Peter Drummey for a gallery talk on the exhibition, “1775: Rebels, Rights & Revolution,” which charts major Massachusetts events in the first year of the American Revolution. Drummey will discuss the impact of the Battle of Bunker Hill using items on display. Visitors are invited to explore the rest of the exhibition and ask questions.

“To turn his back sullenly on his General”?

As discussed yesterday, on 19 July 1775 Gen. Joseph Spencer arrived back in the camps of what was now the Continental Army, bringing a letter from the governor of his home colony of Connecticut, Jonathan Trumbull.

Trumbull asked Gen. George Washington to understand how Spencer was miffed at seeing Israel Putnam promoted to major general over him. And merely because Putnam had led troops in the Battle of Chelsea Creek.

Delivering that letter was probably the first time Spencer had met Washington. And I imagine the discussion was as stiff and cold as the new commander-in-chief could be. As Maj. Samuel Blachley Webb (shown here) wrote on 11 July, Spencer’s departure “without leave or license from Gen. Washington,…displeased him much.”

Indeed, Spencer’s hissy fit had damaged his standing even among his own officers. He’d asked his subordinates to sign a protest on his behalf, and Webb reported:

I have since been to Roxbury, and find the officers, many of them, heartily sick of what they have done, in particular, Maj. [Return Jonathan] Meiggs,—who says he was forced to sign what the others did—to keep peace; and says he had rather serve under Putnam than Spencer.

You’ll find Generals Washington and [Charles] Lee, are vastly more fond, and think higher of Putnam, than any man in the army; and he truly is the Hero of the day. . . . Better is it for us to lose four Spencers than half a Putnam.

News of Putnam’s higher rank “gave universal satisfaction,” Webb added.

Webb was sending these observations to his stepfather, Silas Deane. On 20 July, Deane told his wife how the Continental Congress was responding to Spencer’s behavior:

You can be at no loss to infer what opinion is formed of him from this conduct, in doors and out. Suffice it to say, the voice here is, that he acted a part inconsistent with the character either of a soldier, a patriot, or even of a common gentleman. To desert his post in an hour of danger,—to sacrifice his Country, which he certainly did as far as was in his power,—and to turn his back sullenly on his General, a General, too, of such exalted worth and character,—will, I can assure you, unless he take the most speedy and effectual measures to atone, draw upon him the resentment of the whole Continent.

Neither Deane nor fellow Connecticut delegate Eliphalet Dyer ever pushed Spencer for promotion again. (He was made a major general in the fall of 1776 as part of a general wave of promotions.)

On 21 July, Gen. Washington reported to the Congress that Spencer had agreed to “serve under Puttnam, rather than leave the Army intirely.” The men’s relative ranks would not change.

The next day, Gen. Washington announced a new organization for the Continental Army around Boston. With three major generals under him, he put Artemas Ward in charge of a brigade on the southern side of the siege lines, Lee in charge of the northern wing, and Putnam in charge of the center.

Among the brigadier generals, he assigned Spencer to the southern wing under Ward. Thus, Spencer would answer to a general he’d already acknowledged as senior, not to Putnam. Gov. Trumbull had suggested a similar way of keeping the two Connecticut officers apart. Which wasn’t the sort of issue Washington wanted to face.

Spencer served the rest of the siege, making no distinct contribution at all. He never gained Washington’s trust, and after an unsuccessful Rhode Island campaign he left the army.

“General Spencer’s uneasiness, &c., at being overlooked, &c.”

According to the young Connecticut officer Samuel Blachley Webb, when Gen. Joseph Spencer learned the Continental Congress had ranked Israel Putnam over him, “He began to speak very freely; and finally, persuaded the officers, to remonstrate to the Assembly of Connecticut; and he set off immediately for home.”

Spencer was older than Putnam. He had raised a company for King George’s War in the 1740s while Putnam’s vaunted military career began in 1755. The Connecticut legislature had granted Spencer seniority, and he wanted to keep that status.

Forty-nine Connecticut officers signed a letter to their legislature that praised Spencer’s “exemplary life, good conduct, prudence, and courage.” It said:

You are sensible it will be with great reluctance our Troops at Roxbury could see their General superseded by an officer in previous lower command. We have no objection to the appointment of Generals [George] Washington and [Charles] Lee, and shall endeavour to preserve the good order and submission to their government as hath before distinguished this part of the Connecticut Troops whilst under General Spencer’s command; but the late arrangement so far removes General Spencer from his former command, that he cannot and will not continue in the service under this arrangement.

In his home colony, Spencer seemed to get the support he was after. In Lebanon on 13 July, Gov. Jonathan Trumbull showed his Council a draft letter to Gen. Washington about the issue. The official record of that meeting says the letter was

hinting at General Spencer’s uneasiness, &c., at being overlooked, &c., and that it was beside our expectations, &c., and proposing, &c., that said General Spencer may remain stationed at Roxbury with the body of Connecticut Troops now there, &c.; which are approved, though a small alteration was made in the Letter to gratify Gen. Spencer after he came in, &c.

Two politicians, Samuel Huntington and William Williams (the governor’s son-in-law and speaker of the assembly), went to the tavern where Spencer was staying to hear him out about “his dissatisfaction, &c.” They tried to “reconcile him cheerfully to pursue the service.”

That afternoon, Gov. Trumbull and the Council invited Spencer to join their meeting. They

had a long conference with him on the subject matter of his being superseded by the General Congress, in putting Gen. Putnam above him &c., which he thinks very hard of and resents &c., and is at length persuaded to return to the army and not at present quit the service as he proposed; and Genl. Spencer set out on his return to camp with the letters to Genl. Washington.

Trumbull’s letter to Gen. Washington said that “Generals [David] Wooster and Spencer will think they have reason to complain” about their ranking relative to Putnam and suggested a “Method to obviate the difficulties that are apprehended”:

The Army before Boston is necessarily thrown into two Grand Divisions. General Spencer with a Number of Our Troops hath hitherto been at Roxbury, and General Putnam at Cambridge —That Destination continued and Observed, may prevent uneasy Competition; preserve good order, and promote the public Service.

Spencer arrived back on the siege lines around Boston on 19 July.

TOMORROW: A triumphant return?

“Genl. Putnams fame ran so high”

Another consequence of the Battle of Chelsea Creek was that it raised the profile of Israel Putnam (1718—1790).

Putnam was already well known in North America. He’d fought for several years in past wars. He served in Maj. Robert Rogers’s rangers, on the Crown’s naval expedition against Havana in 1762, and even in Pontiac’s War.

People also passed around a story of Putnam crawling into the den of a wolf on his farm, so his personal bravery and strength were beyond doubt.

Around the start of 1775, a Pennsylvanian wrote to London to refute the idea that the Americans would need Charles Lee to command an army. That letter said:

the colonies are not so wrapped up in Gen. Lee’s military accomplishments as to give him the preference to Col. Putnam and Col. [George] Washington,—men whose military talents and achievements have placed them at the head of American heroes. There are several hundred thousand Americans who would face any danger with these illustrious heroes to lead them.

Then in early June 1775 reports of the fighting on and off Noddle’s Island reached Philadelphia. Those reports noted that Putnam, now a Connecticut general, had led the New England troops in the field. And successfully! (In fact, this was the only time Putnam would be present at a significant American victory for the rest of the war.)

Noddle’s Island was the latest news when the Continental Congress decided to adopt the New England army as the Continental Army in mid-June, appointing Washington commander-in-chief and commissioning more generals to serve under him. The Congress chose these men as major generals, in order: Artemas Ward, Lee, Philip Schuyler, and Putnam. Nine more men were given the rank of brigadier general.

As Connecticut delegate Eliphalet Dyer wrote, “Genl. Putnams fame ran so high as Induced the Congress to give him the Preference” over other candidates for the higher rank. Indeed, Putnam was the only general besides Washington whom the Congress elected unanimously.

Unfortunately, the Connecticut legislature had appointed its generals in this order: David Wooster, Joseph Spencer, and then Putnam. Spencer was on the lines in Massachusetts, thinking he had seniority over Putnam.

On 23 June, Roger Sherman told Wooster that he’d tried to convince his fellow delegates in Philadelphia to stick to the Connecticut ranking:

I informed them, of the arrangement made by our Assembly which I thought would be satisfactory, to have them continue in the same order; but as General Putnam’s fame was spread abroad, and especially his successful enterprise at Noddle’s Island, the account of which had just arrived, it gave him the preference in the opinion of the Delegates in general, so that his appointment was unanimous among the colonies.

Wooster was assigned to the Canada campaign under Schuyler, so he wouldn’t be serving under Putnam. Spencer, on the other hand, faced the prospect of taking orders from a man he’d just outranked. On 10 July, Washington wrote to the Congress:

General Spencer was so much disgusted at the Preference given to General Puttnam, that he left the Army without visiting me, or making known his Intentions in any Respect.

TOMORROW: Rank feelings.

Heading into June 1775 with Confidence

One consequence of the Battle of Chelsea Creek is that by the end of May 1775 the provincial troops started to feel pretty powerful.

The militia mobilization of the Lexington Alarm had done significant damage to the Crown forces. Fortifications were keeping the king’s troops inside Boston.

The Royal Navy was seizing some ships and raiding coasts and islands for food. But three times now the provincial defenses had pushed back. Fairhaven men had recaptured two ships from Capt. John Linzee of H.M.S. Falcon. Hingham and other South Shore companies had forced troops off Grape Island with only a fraction of the hay they wanted.

And the fight over Hog Island and Noddle’s Island was even more impressive. The provincials came away with some livestock, reducing the food supply for besieged Boston. They set fire to hay being grown to feed the army’s horses.

In the fighting that followed, the provincials had deployed artillery for the first time and withstood return fire. They hadn’t lost any men, with four wounded and expected to recover, and reports out of Boston suggested some of the enemy had died. (Two seamen were killed, in fact, but some early reports put the number of Crown casualties as high as thirty.)

From H.M.S. Diana the provincial troops had pulled useful supplies: four four-pounder cannon, twelve swivel guns, the mast, and various bits of fresh rigging—the ship had been launched only the previous year.

And then those troops had actually destroyed the Diana—a Royal Navy warship! True, it was a relatively small vessel that had run aground, but that was obviously a provincial victory and a royalist loss.

Even the most cautious New England commanders and soldiers must have felt they were on a roll when they made the move onto the Charlestown peninsula on the night of 16 June. But the scale of the battle that followed was far beyond any other fight in the Boston campaign.

The Sestercentennial of the Battle of Bunker Hill will be observed on two successive weekends in June:

• Parade, concert, speeches, and other ceremonies in Charlestown on 13–17 June.
• Battle reenactment over similar terrain in Gloucester on 21–22 June.

Make your plans now!

“The Diana was soon after burnt by the rebels”

Having covered the maritime seizures that took place between Fairhaven and Martha’s Vineyard (14 May 1775) and the exchange of fire over Grape Island off Hingham (21 May), I’ve come back to the skirmishing over Hog Island and Noddle’s Island that’s become known as the Battle of Chelsea Creek.

And just in time for its Sestercentennial! (Well, the Sestercentennial of the second day of the action.)

Here’s a description of that fight from the British perspective, not contemporaneous but within living memory, published in 1804 by former engineer Robert Beatson in Naval and Military Memoirs of Great Britain:

The insurgent Americans, with astonishing perseverance, pursued their avowed design of cutting off every possible supply from the friends of Government, and of destroying what they could not carry away.

On the 27th of May, they burnt a great deal of hay on Hog island; and a few hours after, they landed on Noddles island, with the intention of also burning the hay which had been purchased for the army, and of adding to the conflagration, by laying in ashes a storehouse that had been hired when his Majesty’s ship the Glasgow was on shore, and in which the Admiral [Samuel Graves] had deposited two large cargoes of lumber, until an opportunity should offer of sending them to Halifax.

The storehouse also contained many other articles, which it was of great consequence to preserve, from the impossibility of having them replaced at this juncture. There were likewise on this island six hundred sheep, several milch cows, and a number of horses, mostly private property.

The Admiral, eager to prevent the depredations of the Americans, when he observed that they were landed upon the island, immediately ordered the Diana schooner (newly arrived) to sail between it and the main; and to get up as high as possible to intercept them: and as assistance from the army required time, he directed a party of marines to be landed.

The Diana entered the river between three and four in the afternoon at low water, and proceeded to Hog island, with some interruption from the rebels on all sides. Their numbers on Hog and Noddles islands were computed at seven hundred men. Parties of each occasionally attacked the Diana. They were, however, all obliged to quit Noddles island, without doing the intended mischief.

This being effected; Lieutenant [Thomas] Graves [shown above, later in his career], whom the Admiral had ordered not to remain in the river upon the turn of the tide, began to move off: but being retarded by a calm which unluckily took place, the boats of the squadron were ordered to assist the Diana by towing her along.

The slow progress which she made gave time for the enemy to assemble; and by the close of the evening the whole country was alarmed, and the rebel General [Israel] Putnam had brought two thousand men with field-pieces from Cambridge, with which he lined the shore and greatly annoyed her.

The marines from the squadron were landed on the island, with two three pounders from the Cerberus; and General [Thomas] Gage, the moment it was in his power, sent two pieces of artillery: but it was impossible, though in sight of the fleet, to give the schooner any effectual assistance.

The calm continued; it grew almost dark; the fire of the rebels increased; between eleven and twelve at night, she unfortunately got aground upon the ferry-ways at Winnisimmest, and the tide ebbing fast, rendered every effort to move her ineffectual.

About three in the morning she fell over, and her crew were obliged to abandon her, and go on board the Britannia armed floop, which had been sent to their assistance. The Diana was soon after burnt by the rebels.

The battle was renewed by Lieutenant [John] Graves in the Britannia, and lasted about eleven hours from first to last, in which there were two men killed, and several wounded; the commander, officers, and crew of the Diana schooner were tried by a Court-martial for the loss of the vessel, and most honourably acquitted.

Lt. Thomas Graves of was a nephew of Adm. Samuel Graves, as was Lt. John Graves of the Somerset’s tender Britannia. Other sources say both Graves brothers suffered serious burns when the provincials set the Diana on fire.

This account is based mostly on Adm. Graves’s report to the Admiralty on 7 June. He said almost nothing about this event in his later narrative of the start of the war, most likely because it didn’t reflect very well on the navy in general and his family in particular.

The courts martial that Beatson mentioned were held in Boston, under Adm. Graves’s eye. In their 2013 New England Quarterly article on this fight, Craig J. Brown, Victor T. Mastone, and Christopher V. Maio reported that all the British mariners testifying at Lt. Graves’s trial said the Diana hadn’t gone far upstream, but the archeological record suggests otherwise. In sum, that inquiry might have been a whitewash. Both Graves brothers eventually became admirals.

Of the shoreline fights between Crown and provincials in May 1775, this was the first in which either commander reported any of his own men killed. The two Royal Navy seamen who died were named George Williams and William Crocker. The Rev. John Troutbeck, assistant rector at King’s Chapel, “performed divine Service” at their funeral on board H.M.S. Somerset.

The Short Military Career of Lt. Col. Thomas Williams, Jr.

The Journal of the American Revolution just published Tim Abbott’s article about Lt. Col. Thomas Williams, Jr. (1746–1776), of Stockbridge.

Williams left behind an engraved powder horn, now in the collection of the Stockbridge Library Museum and Archives. It shows Boston landmarks.

(This is different from the Dr. Thomas Williams powder horn recorded by Rufus Alexander Grider in 1888 and now lost.)

The siege lines around Boston contained some professional horn carvers selling their work to men who wanted souvenirs of military service. I suspect the Williams horn is one like that. As an officer and as a lawyer in civilian life, he probably didn’t have the time or inclination to do his own carving.

As Abbott’s article recounts, Williams was one of two minute company captains who responded to the Lexington Alarm from Stockbridge. The other company included a score of men from the town’s Native community and thus gets more attention.

As the troops besieging Boston organized themselves into an army enlisted through the end of the year rather than an emergency militia force, Williams became part of Col. John Paterson’s regiment. In September he volunteered for Col. Benedict Arnold’s expedition through Maine to Québec.

However, Williams was in the rear guard led by Lt. Col. Roger Enos (1729–1808), who in late October decided to turn back. That was controversial. Enos was tried and acquitted in a court-martial. He was probably lucky to go through that procedure before the army at Cambridge received “Colonel Arnolds evidence,” as Gen. George Washington reported.

Williams left Paterson’s regiment at the end of 1775, but on 9 Jan 1776 he became lieutenant colonel of a new regiment under Col. Elisha Porter to be sent up to Québec along Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence River. This time Williams made it to the outskirts of the city, but smallpox was weakening the Continental forces.

Those Americans were trying to inoculate and fight the war at the same time. Abbott writes:

The timing for the deliberate exposure of Porter’s Regiment to smallpox could not have been worse. The inoculation process required effective quarantine for three to four weeks, during which the men were both weak and contagious. Even for those under treatment, severe cases could still develop and mortality rates under the best conditions still ran 1 to 2 percent. Porter’s men had no more than three days in hospital after they were inoculated before the siege was dramatically lifted by the arrival of a British fleet on May 6 and the American forces were soon driven back upriver in full retreat. Not only were they exposed to physical stress while they developed smallpox symptoms, but they became a significant vector for the spread of the disease to others in its more deadly form.

The American commander, Gen. John Thomas, died on 2 June. Lt. Col. Williams led his men back to Crown Point, New York, before falling ill. He didn’t make it home to Stockbridge.

Williams doesn’t appear to have left behind his own diary or letters—his powder horn might have been his only personal record of military service, and it probably wasn’t his own creation. Abbott has therefore done the work of reconstructing his career by weaving together official records and other officers’ accounts.

Two Revolutionary Symposia Coming Up in New York

The month of May brings two gatherings of Revolutionary War researchers in upstate New York, just a scenic drive away from Boston.

Saratoga 250 will host its fourth annual Turning Point Symposium in Schuylerville on 3 May with these speakers:

• Dr. Phillip Hamilton – “Washington’s Artillerist: Henry Knox Commands the Continental Guns”
• Matthew Keagle – “My Dinner with Andre?: Henry Knox Arrives at Fort George on Lake George”
• Dr. Bruce M. Venter – “Irascible Ethan Allen: He Cared Little About Ticonderoga’s Guns”
• Michele Gabrielson – “American Calliope: The Writings of Mercy Otis Warren and Her Friendship with Henry Knox”
• Dr. Mark Edward Lender – “The Woman at the Gun Reconsidered: Molly Pitcher’s Legendary Performance at Monmouth”

Registration for that day is $89 and includes two meals.

The following day, 4 May, Hamilton will conduct a bus tour of the “Sled Tracks of Henry Knox.” That has a separate registration cost.

At the end of the month, the Fort Plain Museum convenes its annual American Revolution Conference in Johnstown. This year’s presenters include:

• Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson – “The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780”
• Maj. Gen. Jason Q. Bohm, U.S.M.C. (Ret.) – “The Birth and Early Operations of the Marine Corps: 250 Years in the Making”
• Alexander R. Cain – “We Stood Our Ground: 250th of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, April 19, 1775”
• Abby Chandler – “Choosing Sides: North Carolina’s Regulator Rebellion and the American Revolution”
• Gary Ecelbarger – “The Mammoth of Monmouth: George Washington’s 1778 Campaign in New Jersey”
• Michael P. Gabriel – “Richard Montgomery and the Other Invasion of Canada”
• Shirley L. Green – “Integrating Enslaved and Free: Rhode Island’s Revolutionary Black Regiment”
• Don N. Hagist – “Marching from Peace into War: British Soldiers in 1775 America”
• Patrick H. Hannum – “The Virginia Campaign of 1775-76: Kemp’s Landing & Great Bridge”
• Wayne Lenig – “The Mohawk Valley’s Committee of Safety in 1775”
• James L. Nelson – “Bunker Hill: The First Battle of the American Revolution”
• Eric H. Schnitzer – “Breaking Convention: How a Fussy Detail about British Uniforms Doomed Burgoyne’s Army to Captivity”
• William P. Tatum III, Ph.D., the James F. Morrison Mohawk Valley Resident Historian – “‘To Quell, Suppress, and Bring Them to Reason by Force’: Combatting the Loyalist Threat in New York during 1775”
• Bruce M. Venter – “‘It is infinitely better to have a few good men than many indifferent ones’: Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys Take Fort Ticonderoga”

This program extends from the afternoon of Friday, 30 May, to the morning of Sunday, 1 June. Registration for people not already members of the museum costs $160 and includes lunch on Saturday.

The Fort Plain conference also offers a bus tour—in this case beforehand, on Thursday, 29 May. Alex Cain will guide attendees along the Battle Road in Middlesex County, Massachusetts. So that would be a busman’s holiday for folks coming from the Boston area.

William Browne, John Glover, and a Farmhouse in Swampscott

Save the Glover is a campaign by several historic organizations in Swampscott and neighboring towns to preserve an eighteenth-century farmhouse.

The house was originally built in the third quarter of the 1700s by William Browne (1737–1802), a wealthy and respected lawyer. It was his country estate since he already owned a mansion in Salem, as well as part of a family seat in what’s now Danvers.

Browne was elected to the Massachusetts General Court in 1762. Though he joined the Customs service in 1762 as collector for the port of Salem, he favored local merchants enough to keep getting reelected—until he voted to rescind the Circular Letter of 1768.

After that, Browne was firmly on the side of the royal government. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson rewarded him with appointments: as colonel of the Essex County militia, as judge in the county court, and eventually as the last royal appointment to the Massachusetts superior court in 1774. That same year, the London government named him to the mandamus Council.

Refusing to resign from the Council made Browne unpopular locally. Dozens of militia officers refused to serve under him. He moved to Boston late in 1774, to Britain in 1776, and to Bermuda as royal governor in 1781. The state of Massachusetts confiscated Browne’s real estate, including that country house and land.

Gen. John Glover (1732–1797) of the Continental Army bought the property and moved in with his second wife in 1782. He lived there for the rest of his life, welcoming fellow veterans and serving in local offices.

In 1793 the Rev. William Bentley recorded how “the general received us with Great Hospitality” when a committee came through to settle the boundaries of Marblehead, Salem, and Lynn. Glover evidently felt he still lived in Marblehead, but surveyors determined that his house stood in a narrow splinter of Salem which later became part of Swampscott.

The property remained a farm through the nineteenth century. The photo above shows how it looked about 1910. In the twentieth century, the original house became the core of a larger inn and then restaurant, both named, in fine Colonial Revival fashion, for Gen. Glover. For the last thirty years or so, however, that complex has been abandoned.

Originally the Save the Glover campaign sought to preserve the house from being taken down for a new residential development (to be called Glover Residences, naturally). However, the developer has scrapped that project. Now weather and decay are the biggest dangers to the Glover house.

“He lost some of the country dialect”

Osgood Carleton, the cartographer mentioned yesterday, advertised a lot in Boston newspapers between 1787 and 1808.

In those years he had his school of mathematics and navigation to promote. He had almanacs and other books to sell for a while. Then he sold his maps. He sold design services, and more.

The man’s oddest newspaper notice appeared in the Herald of Freedom in 1790:

Osgood Carleton,
HAVING been frequently applied to for a decision of disputes, and sometimes wagers,* respecting the place of his nativity, and finding they sometimes operate to his disadvantage: Begs leave to give this public information—

that he was born in Nottingham-west, in the State of New-Hampshire—in which state he resided until sixteen years old; after which time, he traveled by sea and land to various parts, and being (while young) mostly conversant with the English, he lost some of the country dialect, which gives rise to the above disputes.

* Several Englishmen have disputed his being born in America.

BOSTON, AUGUST 20, 1790.

In an article for the Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, David Bosse tentatively linked Carleton’s accent with a statement in a 1901 profile: as a teen-aged soldier he became a clerk for John Henry Bastide, the British military engineer. If Carleton indeed spent his late adolescence in a British household, his might have ended up with more England than New England in it.

Bosse documents that Carleton lived in Liverpool, Nova Scotia, from 1763 to 1768, marrying there before returning to his home province. Again, that would have exposed him to more British natives than living on a farm in Nottingham, New Hampshire.

But why was it important to make this public pronouncement? One possibility is that being thought British made a man vulnerable to naval impressment. However, the Royal Navy wasn’t at war in 1790, and Carleton wasn’t traveling.

Another is that Carleton understood his potential customers were looking for an American, especially so soon after the war. But Bostonians were quite friendly to British ex-pats in this period, usually welcoming them as converts to republicanism. In a field like cartography, being able to claim European training was probably a plus.

Significantly, Carleton’s ad pointed to “Several Englishmen” disputing or even betting on his background. That might be a way to avoid criticizing local customers, or it might reflect the truth: the men insisting Carleton was British were English themselves.

Carleton was a former Continental Army officer, having enlisted as a regimental quartermaster with the rank of sergeant in May 1775 and risen to lieutenant in January 1777. At the end of 1778 he asked to be listed in the Corps of Invalids for health reasons. Carleton still served until April 1783, taking on administrative tasks like moving money around. After the war, he joined the Society of the Cincinnati.

British visitors to Boston might have heard Carleton speak of those experiences in his British-sounding voice and hinted that he was disloyal—and he might not have liked that. But those visitors weren’t his customers. 

In the end, I suspect that Carleton decided to declare the facts about his birth simply because they were facts. As a teacher, cartographer, and surveyor, he valued precision. He was already a regular advertiser in the Herald of Freedom, so it would have been easy to run this announcement for a week.

Carleton’s singular notice might have arisen from the same impulse depicted in the famous xkcd cartoon: “Someone is wrong on the internet!”