The Jury for the James Caldwell Inquest

As I wrote yesterday, I now lean toward housewright Thomas Crafts, Sr., being one of the Suffolk County coroners who responded to the Boston Massacre rather than his namesake son.

In fact, Thomas Crafts was apparently the first coroner to act. His date on the inquest into the death of James Caldwell is “the Fifth Day of March” in 1770. In other words, his jury convened, examined the evidence, and issued their determination in the immediate hours after the shooting.

Decades later, Benjamin Bussey Thacher interviewed the shoemaker George Robert Twelves Hewes about how the crowd on King Street had carried away Caldwell’s body:

Caldwell, who was shot in the back, was standing by the side of Hewes at that moment, and the latter caught him in his arms as he fell, and was one of those who bore him up to Mr. [Alexander] Young’s, the Jail-House in Prison Lane. He…was at this time second mate of a vessel commanded by Capt. Morton. This man lived in Cold Lane, and Hewes ran down directly to his house, from Young’s, and told him what had happened. The corpse soon followed him. . . . Morton…looked upon the dreadful object, and shouted like a madman for a gun, to run out “and kill a regular”…

The 12 March Boston Gazette reported that Caldwell was buried out of Faneuil Hall alongside Crispus Attucks as a “stranger,” a detail later histories repeat. But the 19 March issue said: “In the account of the funeral procession in our last, it should have been said, James Caldwell was borne from the House of Capt. Morton in Cold-Lane, instead of Faneuil Hall.”

Way back in 2006, the first year of this blog, I identified that sea captain as Thomas Morton. (Over a decade later came the Boston Massacre Sestercentennial commemoration in the Old South Meeting House. That was a weird event, on the lip of the pandemic shutdown when we were all wondering whether we should gather at all. But the weirdest moment for me was hearing a speaker identify Caldwell as Capt. Thomas Morton’s mate and flashing back to when I’d drilled down to find that name.)

I was therefore struck by seeing Thomas Morton’s signature among the members of the coroner’s jury examining James Caldwell’s body. Clearly he was emotionally involved in that death. Nonetheless, coroner Crafts made him part of the inquest. Maybe that was a way to calm Morton down, letting him respond to the young man’s killing in a productive way.

Other members of this jury were prominent Bostonians. The foreman was town treasurer David Jeffries. His son, Dr. John Jeffries, was a juror, months before he testified as a defense witness for the soldiers. William Dorrington, keeper of the smallpox hospital, was another.

Other members of this coroner’s jury included:

• Samuel Gridley. In his testimony for the Short Narrative report, the apothecary Richard Palmes said he “followed Mr. Gridley with several other persons with the body of Capt. Morton's apprentice, up to the prison house.” Did that “Mr. Gridley” stay around to serve on the inquest jury?
• Nathan Spear, whose younger brother Pool Spear was in the crowd on King Street and offered testimony against the soldiers.
• Samuel Franklin (1721–1775), cutler. On 8 June, his first cousin once removed Benjamin Franklin wrote from London: “I received your kind letter of the 23d of March. I was happy to find that neither you, nor any of your family, were in the way of those murderers.” 

The verdict those fourteen men delivered to coroner Crafts: Caldwell was “murdered by a Musquet Ball shot thro’ his Body, & another Ball lodged in his Shoulder.” At first the men said the culprit was unknown, but then they revised the form to read “the Murderer a Soldier to us unknown.”

Another Boston Town Meeting, “all in very good order”

On 15 May 1770, 250 years ago today, Bostonians convened in Faneuil Hall for another town meeting session.

That gathering was meant to finish up some business from the week before, as discussed starting here, and the year before.

The first order of business was to hear from the school committee. At this time Boston didn’t have a regularly elected or appointed school committee. Instead, the seven selectmen invited a long list of leading gentlemen to accompany them as they visited the town’s five schools in early July, at the end of the regular school year.

In 1769 the committee included eight members of the Council, the four General Court representatives, the twelve Overseers of the Poor, ten ministers, and twenty-four other men, as shown here.

That committee probably watched the grammar school boys recite in Latin and/or Greek and observed the writing school boys’ handwriting samples. I don’t know whether all fifty-odd gentlemen went to each school or whether they broke out into teams.

That committee reported back to the town at this May meeting—ten months later, and a week after the town had approved the schoolmasters’ salaries. They told the citizens at Faneuil Hall that the gentlemen had

found the South Grammar School had 142 Scholars; the North Grammar School 60 Scholars; the South Writing School 203 Scholars; the North Writing School 253 Scholars; the Writing School in Queen Street 251 Scholars; all in very good order.

As I discussed back here, the system educated slightly over 200 grammar-school boys and more than 700 writing-school boys, but the town paid the masters of the grammar schools significantly more.

The town meeting then moved on to financial matters. A committee reported on its review of town treasurer David Jeffries’s accounts. Another committee reported on the accounts of the Overseers of the Poor. The meeting voted to raise £4,000 for poor relief in the coming year—a major expenditure, but not as large as in other years.

Then the big guns came out. The committee to instruct the town’s newly elected representatives to the Massachusetts General Court delivered its report of what issues those politicians should raise with the royal governor. Although the first man named to that committee was justice Richard Dana, a manuscript of its report survives in the handwriting of member Josiah Quincy, Jr., indicating that the young lawyer drafted the report. That was just weeks after Quincy had defended Ebenezer Richardson, and he was on the defense team for the Boston Massacre trials as well.

The document started by saying there was “great reason to believe, that a Deep laid & desperate plan of Imperial despotism has been laid, and partly executed, for the extinction of all civil liberty.” More specifically, the problems were “holding the General Court at Harvard College” (an ongoing that merited several long paragraphs of precedents and argument), “The despicable situation of our provincial militia,” and “the unwarrantable practise of ministerial instructions to the Commanders in Chief of this Province.”

As solutions, the committee sought measures “to increase population, incourage industry and promote our own manufactures”; a “firm and lasting union of the Colonies”; and an “endeavor to revive the antient method of appointing the Attorney General,” presumably not leaving that choice up to the royal governor.

The town meeting unanimously approved that lengthy report and asked that it be printed in the newspapers, confirming that it was a document for public consumption.

Finally, one of the Overseers of the Poor elected in March, Thomas Tyler, had died. This meeting quickly elected Samuel Abbott as a replacement. Then the citizens adjourned, thinking that they had done all the work they needed for a long while.

Scraps of Women’s Lives Online

The Bostonian Society’s online exhibit of “From Baby Caps to Mourning Rings: The Material Culture of Boston’s Eighteenth Century Girls and Women” is now open for virtual visitors. It has a snazzy opening interface. My favorite item is this embroidered map of Boston harbor, sewn by Lydia Withington at the school of actress-novelist Susanna Rowson.

Another new online resource on eighteenth-century women is this biographical website about Martha Washington, created by the Center for History and New Media and sponsored by Mount Vernon. This is designed for educators to use, with lots of teaching materials.

Lastly, the Massachusetts Historical Society has posted a letter from Rachel Revere to her husband, Paul, dated 2 May 1775. It says in part:

I cannot say I was please’d at hearing you aplyed to Capt Irvin for a pass as I shou’d rather confer 50 obligations on them then recive one from them

I am almost sure of one as soon as they are given out

I was at mr Scolays yesterday and his son has been here to day and told me he went to the room and gave mine and Deacon Jeffers name to this [sic] father when no other person was admited

Okay, what’s going on here? Paul was outside besieged Boston, and Rachel wanted to get herself and the kids out, too. I think “Capt Irvin” refers to George Erving, son of John Erving, a former militia colonel who leaned toward the royal government. Rachel then went to John Scollay, a selectman who was closer to the Whigs. “Deacon Jeffers” is probably David Jeffries, the town treasurer and deacon at Old South.

TOMORROW: Was someone else secretly working to get Rachel Revere a pass out of town?