“Plundering of Houses &c. Increasing”

By 12 Mar 1776, the British military’s evacuation of Boston was dissolving into chaos in the eyes of merchant John Rowe, and the cannon were going off again:

A Continual Fire from Both sides this night

They are hurrying off all their Provisions & destroying & Mangling all Navigation

also Large Quantitys of Salt & other things they heave into the Sea & Scuttle the stores

I din’d & spent the Evening at home with—
The Revd. Mr. [Samuel] Parker Mr. [Jonathan] Warner & Richd. Green also Mrs. Rowe & Jack Rowe—

The Inhabitants are greatly terrifyed and Alarm’d for Fear of Greater Evils when the Troops Leave this distressed Place

I got Crean Brush Rect. for the Goods taken from Mee, but dont expect much Good from it tho severall Gentlemen Say they will be my Friend in this affair

By “be my Friend” Rowe meant those gentlemen would testify about his losses—though now he had a receipt as well.

Rowe dated his next entry “13 March Wednesday,” getting the date wrong—a sign of his distress:

I have Staid at home most part of this day—

The Confusion still Continues & Plundering of Houses &c. Increasing

Genl. [James] Robinson paid Me a Visit & Eat a Morsell of Provisions together with Richd. Green Mrs Rowe & Jack Rowe

The Sailors from the Ships have Broke Open my Stores on my Wharff & plunderd them— this was done at Noon this day—

This morning A house was burnt at the North End, whether Set on Fire on Purpose or from Accident Seems Uncertain—

a Considerable Number of Cannon fir’d in the night from Both Sides—

The Country People throwing up more Entrenchments &c on Dorchester Neck—

(I dind at home with Genl. Robertson—Mr. Richd. Green Mrs. Rowe & Jack—) and spent the Evening at home with the Revd. Mr. Saml. Parker Mr. Warner Mr. Richd Greene & Mrs. Rowe

On Thursday, 14 March, Rowe realized he’d made the dating error and corrected himself. This day brought “Snow & Sleet” and a cold wind:

This night much damage has been done to Many houses & stores in this Town & many valuable Articles stolen & Destroyed—

Stole out of Wm. Perrys Store a Quantity of Tea Rum & Sugar to the value of £120 Sterling

Mr. Saml. Quincys house broke & great Destruction The Revd. Mr. Wm. Walters also the Revd. Dr. [Henry] Caners & many others

Samuel Quincy had left Boston months before, so his house was vulnerable. But the ministers had stayed out the siege and presumably didn’t have mercantile goods to carry away.

The picture above shows the Rev. William Walter, Anglican minister at Boston’s Trinity Church (1767–1776) and Christ Church (1791–1800). It was sold at auction in 2021.

TOMORROW: The expected departure date.

“They Stole many things & plunder’d my Store”

John Rowe reported that Monday, 11 Mar 1776, brought “Gloomy heavy Weather,” and his mood wasn’t any better.

The day before, as quoted yesterday, Gen. William Howe issued a proclamation requiring everyone with “Linnen and Woolen Goods” to turn them over to the evacuating army lest they fall into Continental hands.

That proclamation promised that the New York merchant Crean Brush (shown here) “will give a Certificate of the Delivery, and will oblige himself to return them to the Owners.” But if people didn’t comply, they risked being treated as rebel sympathizers.

Rowe appears to have been surprised that this proclamation applied to him, too. His 11 March diary entry says:

This morning I Rose very Early and very Luckily went to my Warehouse

when I Came there I found Mr. Crian Brush with an Order & party from the Genl. who were just going to Break Open the Warehouse which I prevented by Sending for the Keys & Opening the Doors—

They took from Mee to the Value of Twenty Two hundred & Sixty Pounds Sterling According to the best Calculation I Could make in Linnens Checks Cloths & Woollens—

This Party behaved very Insolently & with Great Rapacity & I am very well Convinc’d exceeding their orders to a Great Degree They Stole many things & plunder’d my Store. Words cannot Describe it

This Party consisted of Mr. Blasswitch who was one of the Canceaux people [i.e., an officer on H.M.S. Canceaux] Mr. Brush the Provost Mr. [William] Cunningham A Refugee Mr. [James or Peter] Welch The Provost Deputy—A Man nam’d [William] Hill & abo. fifteen Soldiers—with others—

I Remained all Day in the store but Could not hinder their Destruction of my Goods This day I Got a piece of Bread & one Draft of Flip

I Spent the Evening at home with Mr. [Samuel] Parker Rich’d Green Mr. [Jonathan] Warner of Portsmouth who assisted Mee very much with Mrs. Rowe & Jack Rowe

They are making the Utmost Speed to get away & carrying Ammunition Cannon & every thing they Can away taking all things they meet with never asking who is Owner or whose Property making havock in Every house & Destruction of All kinds of Furniture—

There never was Such Destruction & Outrage committed any day before this Many other People have suffer’d the Same Fate as Mee— Particularly—
Mr. Saml. Austin Mr. John Scolly Capt. [Samuel] Partridge Capt. [Samuel] Dashwood Mr. Cyrus Baldwin The Widow [Mary] Newman

In May 1776, Austin, Scollay, Partridge, Dashwood, and Rowe petitioned the Continental Congress to speak up for them about their confiscated goods. But there was a war on.

Nine years later, in 1785, Rowe, Partridge, Dashwood, and Austin sought help from Gov. James Bowdoin and American minister John Adams in gaining redress from Britain. (I don’t know why Scollay dropped out; he was still alive at the time.)

Responding to a similar claim from Dr. Thomas Bulfinch, Adams wrote back on 13 Oct 1786:

I have not yet presented any of these Claims at Court, because there is not even a Possibility of their being regarded— . . . I frankly own I do not think, that the Dignity or the faith of the United States ought ever to have been compromised in these Matters—

If those Boston merchants had left with the British military, they might have regained their property after landing in Halifax. But they did, after all, show themselves to be rebel sympathizers.

TOMORROW: A receipt, and more disorder.

“Utmost Endeavors to have all such Articles convey’d from this Place”

Here’s merchant John Rowe’s diary entry for Sunday, 10 Mar 1776:

Capn. Dawson is Returnd with Two Vessells—he has had a severe Brush with four Privateers.

George Dawson commanded H.M.S. Hope, a schooner with four guns and thirty crewmen. On 30 January he had nearly caught or killed the first Continental naval hero, John Manley, as described here.

Rowe seems to sympathize with Dawson rather than the Patriots on the two ships he had captured, or the four “Privateers” that had tried to capture him. He went on:

I staid at home all Day—

A Proclamation came Out from Genl. How this day a very severe one, on Some People

In writing he stayed home, Rowe meant he didn’t go to church, though he did have the Rev. Samuel Parker over that evening.

That proclamation from Gen. William Howe appears here at the Journal of the American Revolution:

As Linnen and Woolen Goods are Articles much wanted by the Rebels, and would aid and assist them in their Rebellion, the Commander in Chief expects that all good Subjects will use their utmost Endeavors to have all such Articles convey’d from this Place:

Any who have not Opportunity to convey their Goods under their own Care, may deliver them on Board the Minerva at Hubbard’s Wharf, to Crean Brush, Esq; marked with their Names, who will give a Certificate of the Delivery, and will oblige himself to return them to the Owners, all unavoidable Accidents excepted.

If after this Notice any Person secretes or keeps in his Possession such Articles, he will be treated as a Favourer of Rebels.

So now we know what happened to the Minerva, the ship that Rowe had noted the army had impressed the day before.

When Rowe called Howe’s proclamation “very severe…on Some People,” he was downplaying how that could be severe on him. As a merchant, he owned a lot of cloth. But perhaps he thought he could get away with keeping most of it.

The general’s order not to leave any cloth in Boston sheds light on the rest of Rowe’s diary entry for 10 March:

John Inman Went on board this day—with his Wife he has in his Possession three Watches of mine & Sundry Pieces of Checks which was to be made into Shirts—

Jos Goldthwait Mrs. Winslow went on board this day—he has Carried off Capn. Linzees horse witho. Paying for him

John Linzee was a captain in the Royal Navy who had married Rowe’s niece and remained a good friend. Goldthwait wasn’t just a horse thief; he was commissary for the king’s troops, and undoubtedly wanted to preserve that animal from the rebels as well.

TOMORROW: A brush with Brush.

More Woes for Cyrus Baldwin

Guest blogger Chris Hurley finishes up his look at the merchant Cyrus Baldwin.

This series so far has revolved around one incident: how Cyrus Baldwin’s 26 pounds of (technically non-odious) Bohea tea was stolen from his brother’s cart near Winter Hill on 4 Jan 1774 and dumped in the river by some who “tho’t it an Insult to be sent through their Town.” The Charlestown Committee of Correspondence refused to involve themselves in the matter.

Baldwin continued to have difficulties as the war approached. His 24 Oct 1774 ad in the Boston Gazette carried a postscript assuring people he was “neither Addresser, Protester, nor Roman Catholick”—suggesting some were saying he was a Loyalist or worse. A 6 Mar 1775 ad in the same newspaper saw him distressed, selling his English and Scotch goods at “50 per cent from the Sterling Cost.”

On 2 May 1776, after the siege of Boston, Baldwin’s ad in the New-England Chronicle indicates that his Boston shop had been looted by the evacuating British troops (and Crean Brush likely). It said that “he once more requests all those who are indebted to him on note, book or otherwise to make speedy payment to him at Woburn, where”—being the indefatigable merchant he was—he was selling sugar, rum, coffee, and “sundry other articles.”

But those setbacks were nothing compared to what Cyrus Baldwin suffered back at Winter Hill in 1784. That was still a sparsely settled stretch on the road between Charlestown and Medford, all but unavoidable if one was traveling to Woburn. Boston’s Continental Journal of 29 July reported:

Mr. Cyrus Baldwin of Woburn, crossing Winter Hill, was attacked by three foot pads who robbed him of his watch and money and, after abusing him very much, made off.

Boston’s Independent Ledger for 26 July had more detail. In addition to robbing Baldwin of 14 shillings and his pinchbeck watch—which this article described very thoroughly—the criminals had beaten Baldwin badly:

during the greatest part of the time they were stripping him, one of the villians was dealing very heavy blows with a club on the left side of his head, and cut his scalp in several places: ’tis hoped they will not prove mortal

The wounds did not prove mortal. And in a stroke of good luck for justice, the theives were apprehended after a subsequent unsuccessful attack on another man. The Continental Journal stated:

At the house where they were concealed was found the watch, purse, pocket-book, &c. of which Mr. Baldwin was robbed.

This time, unlike 1774, the law prosecuted the attack on Winter Hill. The 23 Nov 1784 Connecticut Courant of Hartford reported:

Boston, November 15. Thursday next Barrack and Sullivan, who robbed Mr. Cyrus Baldwin on Winter-hill, and who attempted to rob Major John Swan on Boston neck, as lately mentioned, are to be executed at Cambridge—

(The 27 July Salem Gazette and other Massachusetts papers had reported the second victim was James Swan, shown above.)

The 24 November Massachusetts Spy confirmed the sentence was carried out:

On Thursday last were executed at Cambridge, pursuant to their sentence,…Richard Barrack and John Sullivan for highway-robbery.

Six years later, Cyrus Baldwin died of drowning in Dunstable; that day, 5 Nov 1790, was his fiftieth birthday.

Samuel Thompson of Woburn wrote in his diary two days afterward: “Cyrus Baldwin, Esquire’s, corpse brought to Woburn.” In all the news items and advertisements examined for this story, I never saw Cyrus Baldwin honored with the sobriquet “Esquire” until his death. But that was how the Herald of Freedom reported him on 9 November:

Died]—at Dunstable, the 4th inst. CYRUS BALDWIN, Esq. formerly of Boston.—His funeral will be this afternoon, at two o’clock, from the house of his brother Loammi Baldwin, Esq. at Woburn—where the friends and acquantence of the deceased are desired to attend.

And thus ends the luckless story of Cyrus Baldwin. Thanks for sharing his ups and (mostly) downs, Chris Hurley!

Escaping Tories Captured at Sea

While the British army and navy sailed away from Boston on 17 Mar 1776, they didn’t go far at first. Capt. John Barker reported the long departure in his diary:

After remaining 2 or 3 days at King Road and blowing up the Castle, the fleet fell down the Harbour to Nantasket; the Centurion left at King Road, the Rebels brought Guns [and fire]d at her without effect. The Fleet preparing for Sea, taking in Water, &c.

A naval officer patrolling the area wrote on 23 March:

The bay swarms with American privateers, but we hope to protect the transports, which are daily expected from the West Indies, and to send them safe to Halifax.

Inevitably, some of the evacuating merchant ships became separated from the main fleet and vulnerable to those New England privateers. Boston businessman and court official Ezekiel Price, still at his refuge in Stoughton, recorded this news on 6 April:

Ed. Quincy…came from Boston, and says that Captain [John] Manley was in Boston, and told there that he had taken out of the fleet a brig laden with Tories and Tory goods, and other effects, which they plundered in Boston. Among the Tories is Bill Jackson.

According to the 8 April Boston Gazette, William Jackson was the new owner of the ship Manly had captured, a prize estimated to be worth £35,000 with the goods aboard. A brazier, or maker and seller of brass goods, Jackson had become notorious for defying the Whigs’ nonimportation boycott in 1769-70. He may have been unpopular even before then since the fire that destroyed the center of town in 1760 had started in his store, the sign of the Brazen Head. However, Jackson had not held appointments under the royal government, and therefore the new authorities couldn’t convict him of anything. After getting out of jail, he tried to settle back into life in Boston.

Three days later, Price added:

At noon, a traveller from below says that he heard Captain [Adino] Paddock and Captain [John] Gore were among the Tories taken in the transport brig by Captain Manley. Afterwards several other travellers from below passed; but they did not hear of Paddock or Gore being in that vessel, and no other of note but Bill Jackson and Crane Brush.

Yesterday the remains of Dr. [Joseph] Warren were re-interred in Boston with every mark of honor and respect that was possible to be exhibited.

Paddock and Gore, two militia officers who had sided with the king, indeed avoided capture. They landed safely at Halifax, then sailed on to London, where they roomed together. Paddock eventually settled on the Isle of Jersey while Gore came back to Boston in the late 1780s.

Also on board that ship, according to the Gazette, were “a number of others, women and children,...besides a Serjeant and 12 privates of the king’s own [4th] regiment, who are made prisoners.”

But the really big prize was Crean Brush, who had been appointed by Gen. Thomas Gage to take charge of goods that might be useful to the military. The Patriot authorities clapped him in Boston jail and kept him there over a year, even though they were unable to convict him for looting because he’d had government authority.

I’ll have more to say on Jackson and Brush’s ultimate fates. You can track the story of Dr. Warren’s remains here. The engraving of Capt. Manly above comes from the Surface Navy Association’s Hall of Fame.

Crean Brush in “Very Distressed Times”

On 10 Mar 1776, Boston selectman Timothy Newell described a new development in the British authorities’ evacuation of Boston:

Lord’s day P M. Embarking orders are given to deliver Creen Brush esqr. all the woolen and linen goods—

Some persons delivered their goods, others he forced from them, to a great value. Shops, stores, houses, plundered, vessels cut to pieces &c. &c. Very distressed times.

Gen. William Howe had issued this order:

AS Linnen and Woolen Goods are Articles much wanted by the Rebels, and would aid assist them in their Rebellion, the Commander in Chief expects that all good Subjects will use their utmost Endeavors to have all such Articles convey’d from this Place:

Any who have not Opportunity to convey their Goods under their own Care, may deliver them on Board the Minerva at Hubbard’s Wharf, to Crean Brush, Esq; mark’d with their Names, who will give a Certificate of the Delivery, and will oblige himself to return them to the Owners, all unavoidable Accidents accepted.

If after this Notice any Person secretes or keeps in his Possession such Articles, he will be treated as a Favourer of Rebels.

Brush had been the British governors’ designated collector of valuable goods since 1 Oct 1775, when Gen. Thomas Gage issued this proclamation:

To CREAN BRUSH, Esquire.

WHEREAS there are large Quantities of Goods, Wares, and Merchandize, Chattels, and Effects, of considerable Value left in the Town of Boston, by Persons who have thought proper to depart therefrom, which are lodged in Dwelling-Houses, and in Shops, and Store-Houses adjoining to, or making Part of Dwelling-Houses.

AND WHEREAS, there is great Reason to apprehend, and the Inhabitants have expressed some Fears concerning the Safety of such Goods, especially as great Part of the Houses will necessarily be occupied by His Majesty’s Troops and the Followers of the Army, as Barracks during the Winter Season; To quiet the Fears of the Inhabitants, and more especially to take all due Care for the Preservation of such Goods, Wares, and Merchandize:

I have thought fit, and do hereby authorize and appoint you the said CREAN BRUSH, to take and receive into your Care, all such Goods, Chattels, and Effects, as may be voluntarily delivered into your Charge, by the Owners of such Goods, or the Person or Persons whose Care they may be left in, on your giving Receipts for the same; and you are to take all due Care thereof, and to deliver said Goods when called upon, to those to whom you shall have given Receipts for the same.

For Americans who found that Brush had taken their stuff, receipts or no, he became one of the most unpopular Loyalist officials of the war. Perhaps because of that unpopularity, it’s not easy to find solid information about him, especially about his family life. Americans were primed to believe the worst.

But this seems to be the most reliable information, collected by John J. Duffy and Eugene A. Coyle in their 2002 article “Crean Brush vs. Ethan Allen: A Winner’s Tale” in Vermont History (available as a P.D.F. download). Crean Brush was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1727. He became a lawyer, a militia officer, a husband, and, in short order, a father and a widow. Leaving his young daughter with relatives, Brush set out for the colony of New York, arriving by 1762.

Over the next few years Brush accumulated grants for an estimated 50,000 acres in the part of New York that was also claimed by New Hampshire—i.e., what became Vermont. In 1770, he moved to Westminster, where he was the local grandee and royal officeholder. From 1773 to 1775 he represented the town in the New York legislature, firmly supporting the royal authorities. In March 1774, a law Brush helped to draft offered rewards of £50-100 for the capture of Ethan Allen and other men resisting New York control over what they called “the New Hampshire grants.”

After the war began, Brush made his way to Boston and offered his services to Gen. Gage. In January 1776, he proposed to raise a regiment of 300 men to patrol the land between the Connecticut River and Lake Champlain for the Crown. But his main activity was collecting goods, which to some looked like pillaging under the cover of military law. As to why Howe and Brush were so eager to confiscate “Linnen and Woolen Goods,” cloth was relatively rare and expensive before the invention of spinning and weaving machines.

More about Crean Brush’s adventures in Boston to follow. The portrait above of him as a young man appeared in Benjamin H. Hall’s History of Eastern Vermont, copyrighted in 1857.