Commemorating the Suffolk Resolves in Milton, 31 Aug.

On 6 July 1774, sixty men from towns in Berkshire County met in Stockbridge as a county convention.

On the colony’s western end, that gathering was far from the royal governor’s troops, and also beyond the powerful Loyalists of the Connecticut River valley.

I don’t think those men had been elected by their towns, so this might have been a self-appointed group of activists. They endorsed the Solemn League and Covenant boycott, and they provided a model for a new form of resistance.

County conventions thus became another way to protest Parliament’s Coercive Acts. Like court closings, they moved from west to east, moving closer to Boston and the redcoats.

The Massachusetts Government Act arrived during that time, putting new restrictions on town meetings. But that law said nothing about county meetings because there hadn’t been any before.

On 16 August 1774, men from “Every Town & District in the County of Suffolk, Except Weymouth, Cohasset, Needham & Chelsea” met at Thomas Doty’s tavern in Stoughton. (That part of town later became Canton.) At that time Suffolk County included not only Boston but also all of modern Norfolk County extending to the Rhode Island border.

However, those men decided not to proceed formally “as Several Towns Had not Appointed Delegates for the Special Purpose of a County Meeting.” Instead, they issued a call for all towns to send such delegates to a meeting “at the House of Mr. Woodward Innholder in Dedham on Tuesday the Sixth day of September.”

The owner and likely manager of that inn was actually Richard Woodward’s wife, formerly Mrs. Deborah Ames. She had run the place as a widow from 1764 to 1772, and would run it again after she and Woodward divorced in 1784.

On 6 September, the Suffolk County delegates convened and named a large committee headed by Dr. Joseph Warren, one of the several Boston delegates, to write its resolutions. Warren was a practiced newspaper essayist, and he could also build on the resolutions adopted by Berkshire, Worcester, and Middlesex Counties.

On 9 September, the Suffolk County Convention met in Milton “at the house of Mr. Daniel Vose”—another tavern. The delegates unanimously approved the resolutions Dr. Warren had drafted.

Warren then had Paul Revere carry Suffolk County Resolutions to Samuel Adams and his other colleagues in Philadelphia. There the Continental Congress had been startled by the “Powder Alarm” scare, and its members no doubt welcomed Revere’s confirmation that Boston wasn’t in ashes and was still resisting. They endorsed the resolutions, elevating that document above the other Massachusetts county declarations.

Of the three taverns associated with the Suffolk County Convention, only the Vose house survives, albeit in a different place. It’s now headquarters of the Milton Historical Society and is called the Suffolk Resolves House. 

On Sunday, 31 August, the Milton Historical Society, the Massachusetts Freemasons, and the Dr. Joseph Warren Foundation will commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Suffolk Resolves with guided tours of the Vose house, speakers, and reenactors. This event is scheduled to run from 9:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. Tickets are $10 per adult, $20 for a family of two adults and children under eighteen. Proceeds will benefit the Milton Historical Society.

Stories from Old Homes

This month the Boston Globe published a couple of articles in its local sections that might be of wider interest for folks interested in eighteenth-century history.

From Plymouth came word of an archeological dig that might include evidence about the lives of enslaved people of African descent:

An excavation this summer in a small shed and nearby grounds on North Street has yielded more than 30,000 artifacts dating back 1,000 years. But the prized finds have been the bits and pieces that “might point to an African origin and [dwellers’] desire to maintain a physical, spiritual, and [m]ental connection with their origins,” said archeologist Craig Chartier. . . .

The project began in April, with a $15,000 Community Preservation Fund grant spurred by historian Rose T. Briggs’s typewritten reference to Colonel George Watson’s slave house in a 1967 Massachusetts Historical Inventory Form that she submitted on behalf of the Pilgrim Society. . . .

In addition to slaves named Cuffee and Esack, the household had Quassia, said to be “full of fun and drollery.” His owner, Judge Peter Oliver of Middleborough, had been driven out of town by residents for his Tory sympathies, according to a passage in Thomas Weston’s “History of the Town of Middleborough,” written in 1906.

From the western suburbs came a story about people living in historic houses as caretakers, to maintain them and their furnishings.

It is an arrangement played out in historic houses across the state, one that can benefit both caretakers, who pay little or no rent, and the groups that own the properties but have little money to pay for upkeep.

In Milton’s Suffolk Resolves House, Steve Kluskens walks past a letter from Thomas Hutchinson, a Colonial-era governor of Massachusetts, on his way to the kitchen every morning. When he types on his Macintosh laptop, it sits on a 200-year-old table, near an 1823 Springfield musket propped up against a wall.

As caretakers, Kluskens and his wife, Sheila Frazier, eat at a table beside a display of delicate dishes that were ordered from China in 1775. The house also holds a 1641 Bible written in classical Greek, a Jacobean oak chest more than 300 years old, and assorted dour portraits of prominent, but deceased, Milton residents.

Kluskens and Frazier, like other caretakers in historic houses, cannot change the house to fit their lives. They don’t remodel or paint or add media rooms. They must adapt themselves to fit in the house.

“It gives you a unique perspective on how short a life span is,” said Kluskens, who is also curator. “We’re just passing through this house.”

The Suffolk Resolves House, owned by Daniel Vose in 1774, is shown above.

Mrs. Russell: paper customer

[This posting was updated to reflect newer research on Ezekiel Russell and his wife.]

Last week I posted a couple of entries about Sarah Russell, wife of Boston printer Ezekiel Russell. Boston 1775 reader Peter Hopkins, unofficial chronicler of the Crane Paper Company, sent me additional information:

The Crane & Co. founder’s father—Stephen Crane—was a partner in The Liberty Paper Mill in Milton with Daniel Vose and (we believe) John Lewis. The Liberty Paper Mill operated from 1770 to 1793, and the Crane Museum of Papermaking holds the mill’s ledger book. . . .

In addition to Paul Revere, Isaiah Thomas, Henry Knox, etc., there is an entry on April 26, 1771, that shows that Mrs. Russell purchased 2 double reams of crown printing paper for 15 pounds.

On another page is the account for Ezekiel Russell, who bought paper from time to time from that date to March 3, 1779.

The “Mrs. Russell” noted in April 1771 was probably not Ezekiel Russell’s wife and successor Sarah since they didn’t marry until 1773. But it could have been the wife of his older brother John, who had trained Ezekiel in printing. Such a large purchase of paper strongly suggests that this Mrs. Russell was conducting business, not just buying a personal supply.

Hopkins offers a look at the signatures of Revere, Thomas, and Knox from that ledger. Each of those men needed paper for a different reason. Knox was a young bookseller, Thomas a young printer, and Revere printer of engraved banknotes for Massachusetts.

When Vose, Crane, and Lewis named their business the Liberty Paper Mill, they were acknowledging their product’s political side. Manufacturing paper within the colony meant people could import less, and the Whigs were trying to get people to boycott goods from Britain until Parliament repealed the Townshend duties.

The Liberty Mill’s senior partner, Daniel Vose, hosted the final session of the Suffolk County Convention on 9 Sept 1774, at which town delegates adopted the Suffolk Resolves. He was also a captain in the Milton militia on 19 Apr 1775, though as best I can tell his company was too far south to see any fighting. Instead, their big accomplishment was to deliver bread and chocolate (milled in a subleased part of the paper manufactory) to the troops who camped around Boston.