“Pray the God of Armies to restrain Man”

John Hancock wasn’t the only person Edmund Quincy wrote to on 22 Apr 1775, just after the start of the Revolutionary War, as quoted yesterday.

Justice Quincy couldn’t very well write to Hancock and ignore the man’s fiancée, Dorothy Quincy, could he? After all, she was his daughter.

Thus, we have this second, shorter letter written inside “Boston (a Garison’d town)”:

Dear Dolly—

I’ve an opporty (unexpected) by Doctr. [Benjamin] Church, Just to tell you, that I’m kept from my intended Journey to L[exing]ton & [Lene’y?] by restraint of Princes—endeavors are using to obtain an opening but how soon, none know!

It’s ye. will of Heaven, that it should be thus—!—To His Will, let us learn Submission, thro’ all the Changing Scenes of a Short uncertain Life—I pray God we may all learn this profitable Lesson, that we may be reaping the advantage at all times, especially in a time of Sharp trials, to wch. we are in every State more or less liable

We are generally in good health—but as generally under great sorrow, for the loss of so many humane lives, Wednesday last: pray the God of Armies to restrain Man, from further Attempts of a Similar kind—

Your Bror. & family propose removal—to Providence—if the Gates are opened to us—your Trunk is here—if mine go, yours will also—

I condole with Madm. [Lydia] Hancock, & you, under present & late Circumstances of things—I hope to see you soon, if it please God

Interim recommending you to his protection, with. all your near-Connexions in this devoted Town—I am with my Sincere regards to Madm. H. Mr. [Jonas] Clark & Lady—, Dear Child, Your Affectionate Father & Friend
Edm: Quincy

[Postscript:] Your S[iste]r. [Esther] Sewall distress’d, with ye View she has of things

[Postscript vertical along left margin:] I hope Mr. H. is well on is Journey—you are happy in yo. being out of this town—tho’ ye. Govr. Speaks Fair He is much troubled himself

Esther Sewall was another of Edmund Quincy’s daughters, married to royal attorney general Jonathan Sewall. She evidently had a close-up “View” of the administration of Gen. Thomas Gage and was “distress’d” at what lay ahead.

TOMORROW: The letter carrier.

“No Carriage from L. & if there was—no permiso. to pass”

On 22 Apr 1775, three days after the Battle of Lexington and Concord, the Boston merchant and magistrate Edmund Quincy sat down to write a letter to John Hancock.

Quincy wasn’t just a colleague of Hancock in the Boston Patriot movement. He was also the father of Dorothy Quincy, Hancock’s fiancée (shown here).

Earlier that month, Dorothy had taken the family carriage out to Lexington and then used it to flee with Lydia Hancock from the regulars on 19 April. That left her father stuck inside Boston as the siege began.

Justice Quincy wrote to Hancock:

Dear Sir,

Referring you to a Ltr. wrote the 8th. currt: [i.e., of this month] I’m now to enclose you one I had this day out of [ship captain John] Callihan’s bag:—32 days fro. Lond: into Salem pr young Doct. [John] Sprague—who tells me [captain Nathaniel Byfield] Lyde sail’d 14 days before them wth. Jo. Quincy Esq & other passengers—that some of ye Men of War & transports sail’d also before Callihan. As to ye times [?] at home—ye Doctr. is little able to inform us—youl probably have Some papers via Salem.—————

As to my Scituation here ye unexpected extraordy. event of ye 19th: of wch. Ive wrote my thots—) now & for days past impedes my leaving town[.] No Carriage from L[exington]. & if there was—no permiso. to pass ye lines—The people will be distress’d for fresh provisions—in a Short time—

The Govr: & Genl.—is very much concern’d about ye Provl. troops without—wch. probably will be very numerous ’ere long if desired—Dorchester hill—I’m just now told, is possess’d by our provls—& I hope its true, for Ive reason to believe, ye Genl. had ye same thing in Contemplation——

Here they say & swear to it all round, in excuse of ye Regulars, proceeding at Lexinton—that they were attack’d first & I doubt not many oaths of Officers & men are taken before J. G—ley [Justice Benjamin Gridley], to confirm it—but among others who contradict ’em—Lt. [Thomas] Hawkshaw yesterday near expiring thro. his bad wounds——Call’d Several Credible persons to him & told ’em as a dying man—that he was obliged in Conscience to confess—that the first Action of ye Whole at L. was done by the Kings troops—wr. they killd & wounded eight men—but doubtless you have sufficient proof of ye Fact & every Circumstance attending near at hand—

my advice is that the Whole Matter—be forwarded at ye province expence or otherwise wth. the Greatest dispatch—that so your Advices may be in London as early as GG’s——

If the people of G:B: are not under a political Lethargy—The Account of ye late Memorable Event, will excite them to consider of their own Close Connexion wth. America; and to Suppose at length, that ye Americans especially N. Englanders will act as they’ve wrote, & engag’d—A Blessed Mistake our prudent G[ag]e has indeed made, & ye Sensible part of his Officers & Soldiers own it—& are vastly uneasie—

I had been at L— days to pay my real regards to yr. good Aunt & Dolly—but wn. we shall have ye passage clear I dont [know] we are in hopes of effecting soon. But ye Gl. is really intimidated & no wonder wn. he hears of 50.000 men &c.—Much is Confess’d of ye intripedity of ye provinls. Im much Surpriz’d to hear that the Regulars abt. 1700—were drove off & defeated by near an Equal Corps only.—

Capt. [John] Erving, at his house yesterday Gave me ye Account of Hawkshaws Confesso.-proved to him at ye No: End yesterday to be real, he also says that from all he can gather from ye Circumstances of the people of Gt. Bn. they are by this day in a State of fermentation—if we could be so happy, as to get speedily home, the necessary advices—I doubt not a Flame would soon appear—& ere its quench’d, may it burn up ye heads of the Accursed Faction fro. whence ye present British Evils spring

Genl. Gage is thrown himself into great perplexity—Ld. Percy is a thorn in his side & its said has menaced him Several times, for his late imprudence—a Good Omen

I cant nor ought I to add, but my best regards—& Love respectively & that I am
Dr. Sir Your most affecto: Friend
& H. Servt.
Ed. Quincy

youl excuse erro. for Ive not time to correct em

There are a lot of interesting bits of intelligence in this letter—Gen. Thomas Gage hoping to seize the heights of Dorchester, Col. Percy criticizing his Concord mission, Lt. Hawkshaw saying the British soldiers had fired first. Quincy urged Hancock and his colleagues to send the Patriot side of events to London as quickly as possible.

How did John Hancock respond to seeing this letter? In fact, he never saw it.

TOMORROW: Diverted mail.

Esther Sewall and “the female Connections”

In the fall of 1774 and winter of 1775, Massachusetts attorney general Jonathan Sewall appears to have worked as an advisor to the royal governor, Thomas Gage.

With the courts closed by crowds and Gage’s authority confined to Boston, there wasn’t much else for Sewall to do.

There’s a renewed debate about whether Sewall wrote the “Massachusettensis” essays published in those months. Patriots of the time believed he did, but his former law trainee Ward Chipman described copying them out for another Loyalist lawyer, Daniel Leonard. In 2018 a team led by Colin Nicolson reported in the New England Quarterly that their linguistic analysis pointed the finger back at Sewall.

In early April 1775, a dispatch from Lord Dartmouth brought instructions to arrest the leaders of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. Gen. Gage might well have discussed the legalities of such arrests with his attorney general.

The president of that congress was John Hancock. His fiancée, Dorothy Quincy, was the sister of Esther Sewall, the attorney general’s wife. On 7 April, James Warren wrote to his own wife:

The Inhabitants of Boston are on the move. H[ancock] and A[dams] go no more into that Garrison, the female Connections of the first come out early this morning and measures are taken relative to those of the last.

Dorothy Quincy was soon staying with Hancock and Samuel Adams at the parsonage in Lexington.

As discussed yesterday, though Esther Sewall was married to a leading Massachusetts Loyalist, she was still emotionally attached to her family, friends, and neighbors on the Patriot side. She might have heard her husband talk of Hancock and Adams being arrested. Any military operation to do that could put her sister in danger.

Esther Sewall therefore had a motive and possible means to be the “daughter of liberty, unequally yoked in point of politics,” who sent a warning that British soldiers might arrest Hancock and Adams, as the Rev. William Gordon later wrote. When I first discussed that question, I didn’t see how Esther would have had access to inside information. Jonathan’s work with Gov. Gage offers a possible answer. (And, we must remember, this “daughter of liberty” did not have information on Concord as Gage’s real target.)

A few months into the siege of Boston, Jonathan and Esther Sewall sailed for London. They remained yoked together for the rest of his life. But neither of them was happy. For most of those years Jonathan was seriously depressed, often confined to his bedroom. Esther was terribly homesick. Jonathan blamed Esther for his difficulties. Yet she stayed with him.

Esther Sewall made two trips back to Massachusetts, first in 1789 and then in 1797, the year after she became a widow. Her grown sons Jonathan and Stephen became important lawyers in Canada, and she settled in Montreal.

In 1809, Esther sued in Massachusetts court for her dower property, confiscated thirty years before as part of Jonathan’s assets. Though she didn’t live to hear about it, the state’s highest judges decided in her favor. Then the Massachusetts General Court passed a special law to compensate the man who’d bought that property for what he had to pay her estate. So the Massachusetts government ended up paying Esther Sewall money.

“Putting all matters of politicks out of view”?

Esther Quincy married Jonathan Sewall in January 1764, after a courtship of more than four years.

She was the daughter of the Boston merchant and magistrate Edmund Quincy, who had come back from bankruptcy a couple of years before.

He was a young lawyer of sharp wit and moderate means trying to establish himself, building up from the position of justice of the peace.

Jonathan Sewall didn’t enter the political debate over the Stamp Act, but in December 1766 he came out swinging on behalf of Gov. Francis Bernard and royal policy in newspaper essays signed “Philantrop.”

The governor rewarded Sewall with appointments as the province’s solicitor general and then attorney general. He later got to be a judge in the Vice Admiralty Court as well.

Esther’s father was on the other side of the political divide. He was one of the justices the Boston Whigs called on when they had a complaint about a royal official or soldier. He joined other magistrates in resisting Gov. Bernard’s call for barracks in 1768. He took the (conflicting) testimony of Charles Bourgate after the Boston Massacre. He issued the warrant to arrest John Malcolm for assault.

Most of Esther Sewall’s other male relatives were also Whigs. Uncle Josiah Quincy, Sr., in Braintree was on the Council, one of several thorns in the royal governors’ sides. Cousin Josiah, Jr., practiced law in Boston, wrote newspaper essays, counseled local activists, and traveled to meet fellow Whigs in the southern colonies and London. The major exception within the Quincy family was cousin Samuel Quincy, who followed in Jonathan’s wake as the province’s solicitor general.

Many of Jonathan’s old friends were Whigs, including John Adams, and that produced some awkward social moments. Jonathan prosecuted John Hancock on smuggling charges (eventually dropping the case for lack of solid evidence). But in 1772 the merchant wrote to him expressing

my inclination and wish (putting all matters of politicks out of view) that a perfect harmony and friendship may be kept up between us, and wish rather more familiarity than the common shew of friendship expresses, considering the connection I have formed with the sister of your Lady.

That was Esther’s sister Dorothy. She became Hancock’s fiancée, their engagement almost as long as the Sewalls’ had been.

By 1774 the Sewalls were living in Cambridge in a country mansion bought from Richard Lechmere. Their household included three small children, three young men studying the law, and at least one enslaved young man.

Early on 1 September, Gen. Thomas Gage’s soldiers seized militia gunpowder in Charlestown and cannon in Cambridge. Around noon, Jonathan Sewall suddenly left home and headed to Boston. The governor might have sent for him, or he might have feared how the neighbors would react to the army operation. Or he might have had a whim.

After dark, those neighbors came to the Sewalls’ house. They refused to take Esther’s word that Jonathan was out. Some men pushed into the house, and the young men inside beat them back. One of those boarders, Ward Chipman, fired a pistol inside the house—some sources say accidentally, some not. Either way, that noise got everyone’s attention. The two groups of men agreed not to do further violence as long as they could enjoy some of the Sewalls’ wine.

Soon afterward, Esther took the children into Boston to be with Jonathan. That might have been as early as 2 September when the “Powder Alarm” brought thousands of militiamen into the street outside.

Unlike some people threatened by crowd violence, Esther Sewall never renounced Massachusetts. Her family ties were too strong. In 1778 she wrote to her father: “I had not forgot my own Country, and Friends no, my D[ea]r Father, I should as soon forget myself.” But as of September 1774 she was stuck inside Boston with her unpopular husband.

TOMORROW: Can this marriage be saved?

“Alarmed in Lexington” and More

The Lexington Historical Society is now the Lexington History Museums.

As the Sestercentennial of the start of the Revolutionary War approaches, the organization’s Buckman Tavern museum is open to visitors every day of the week but Wednesday, 10am–4pm.

Another of the museums, the Hancock-Clarke House, is about to host this special program.

Saturday, 8 March, 7 to 9 P.M.
Alarmed in Lexington
Hancock-Clarke House, 36 Hancock Street

Step back in time to experience the anxious hours before the start of the American Revolution. It’s past midnight on April 19th, 1775, and Paul Revere has just left the home of Lexington’s minister, Jonas Clarke, with news of an impending British attack. This leaves the home’s occupants to take in the news and prepare for what is to come.

In a series of three short plays by Debbie Wiess, see how John Hancock and Samuel Adams, leaders of the Revolution; Dorothy Quincy and Lydia Hancock, John’s family; and Jonas and Lucy Clarke, town leaders, process the impending crisis as they prepare for war in the very rooms in which these conversations took place 250 years ago.

Admission is $25, or $20 for museum members. This program has received funding from Kirkland and Shaw Plumbing and Heating and by a grant from the Lexington Council for the Arts, a local agency supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, which in turn receives funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.

[I hope those funds were received last year since the current administration has stopped many payments for work already done and contracts already awarded. The White House has also ordered future N.E.A. grants to conform to criteria not established by Congress; arts organizations just filed a lawsuit about the unconstitutionality of that order. Events like “Alarmed in Lexington” show how White House edicts can affect local endeavors that don’t have direct federal involvement.]

Next month, the Lexington History Museums will also reopen its Munroe Tavern for the season, and debut its new Depot museum covering all of Lexington history.

“So they painted the little maid”

The Discover Quincy website now says in its description of the Dorothy Quincy Homestead in Quincy:

The childhood home of Dorothy Quincy, who became Mrs. John Hancock; the second President of the Continental Congress, first signer of the Declaration of Independence and the first Governor of Massachusetts.

There’s no mention of any other Dorothy Quincy.

But there was (at least) one, and records are clear that that house was named after an earlier woman named Dorothy Quincy (1709–1762, shown here courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society). She was an aunt of the woman who married Hancock.

The earlier Dorothy Quincy married the merchant and mill-owner Edward Jackson. One of their children was the merchant and politician Jonathan Jackson. The other child, a daughter named Mary Jackson, married the Boston merchant and politician Oliver Wendell.

A portrait of young Dorothy (Quincy) Jackson descended in the Wendell family to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., who became a very popular author. He wrote about the painting and its subject in “Dorothy Q.: A Family Portrait” in 1871. That poem begins:

Grandmother’s mother: her age, I guess,
Thirteen summers, or something less;
Girlish bust, but womanly air;
Smooth, square forehead with uprolled hair;
Lips that lover has never kissed;
Taper fingers and slender wrist;
Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade;
So they painted the little maid.

On her hand a parrot green
Sits unmoving and broods serene.
Hold up the canvas full in view,—
Look! there's a rent the light shines through,
Dark with a century’s fringe of dust,—
That was a Red-Coat’s rapier-thrust!
Such is the tale the lady old,
Dorothy’s daughter’s daughter, told. . . .

This was one of several poems Holmes wrote about the memory of the Revolution and its shadow on his time, such as “The Last Leaf” and “Under the Washington Elm.” He was so good at creating images and phrases that people overlook how he often simultaneously raised questions about those icons.

But Holmes wasn’t correct on the painting’s subject, either. His footnote for this poem said:

Dorothy was the daughter of Judge Edmund Quincy, and the niece of Josiah Quincy, junior, the young patriot and orator who died just before the American Revolution, of which he was one of the most eloquent and effective promoters. . . . The canvas of the painting was so much decayed that it had to be replaced by a new one, in doing which the rapier thrust was of course filled up.

Dorothy (Quincy) Jackson’s father was an Edmund Quincy, but a later Edmund Quincy was the father of the later Dorothy Quincy. That Dorothy Quincy did have an uncle named Josiah Quincy, but a later Josiah Quincy was the Patriot who died in 1775. So the confusion is understandable.

Nonetheless, it’s worth maintaining the knowledge of how the Dorothy Quincy Homestead got its name. It represents a confluence of the Colonial Revival and the Fireside Poets, and it stood for decades of family history. Discover Quincy’s current write-up is all about big names from the Revolutionary years only.

“Strength, Spirit and Abilities so exhausted”

In the immediate aftermath of the Continental Congress’s vote for independence in early July 1776, almost all the Massachusetts delegation got sick.

As I wrote last month, on 15 July 1776 John Adams saw Elbridge Gerry off on a trip back to Massachusetts. Gerry was “worn out of of Health, by the Fatigues of this station,” Adams told his wife, Abigail.

To James Warren he wrote that Gerry “is obliged to take a Ride for his Health, as I shall be very soon or have none. God grant he may recover it for he is a Man of immense Worth.”

Eleven days later, Adams wrote to Warren more ominously:

My Health has lasted much longer, than I expected but at last it fails. The Increasing Heat of the Weather added to incessant application to Business, without any Intermissions of Exercise, has relaxed me, to such a degree that a few Weeks more would totally incapacitate me for any Thing. I must therefore return home.

And the next day:

I assure you the Necessity of your sending along fresh delegates, here, is not chimerical. [Robert Treat] Paine has been very ill for this whole Week and remains, in a bad Way. He has not been able to attend Congress, for several days, and if I was to judge by his Eye, his Skin, and his Cough, I should conclude he never would be fit to do duty there again, without a long Intermission, and a Course of Air, Exercise, Diet, and Medicine. In this I may be mistaken.

The Secretary [i.e., Massachusetts General Court clerk Samuel Adams], between you and me, is compleatly worn out. I wish he had gone home Six months ago, and rested himself. Then, he might have done it, without any Disadvantage. But in plain English he has been so long here, and his Strength, Spirit and Abilities so exhausted, that an hundred such delegates, here would not be worth a shilling.

My Case is worse. My Face is grown pale, my Eyes weak and inflamed, my Nerves tremulous, and my Mind weak as Water—fevourous Heats by Day and Sweats by Night are returned upon me, which is an infallible Symptom with me that it is Time to throw off all Care, for a Time, and take a little Rest. I have several Times with the Blessing of God, saved my Life in this Way, and am now determined to attempt it once more.

You must be very Speedy in appointing other Delegates, or you will not be represented here. Go home I will, if I leave the Massachusetts without a Member here.

I looked at Paine’s surviving correspondence from this month, and I don’t see him saying anything about being sick.

On 3 August, Gerry wrote back to both John and Samuel Adams from Massachusetts:

I have heard this Morning that Colo. Warren has received a Letter mentioning Mr. Pain’s Illness and your Intention to set off for N England in a fortnights’ Time; and that the Government would be unrepresented. I left Boston yesterday and the Letter had not then arrived, but Mr. [Benjamin] Edes mentions it as a Fact communicated to him by Colonel or rather Major General Warren and therefore I have no Doubt of it.

I should have been glad that You had tarryed untill my Return, as the Absence of so many at one Time will I fear be considered by the people as a discourageing Circumstance; but I shall at all Events Return in a Week or ten Days from hence notwithstanding It will be impossible in so short a Time to benefit much by the Journey, and to recover from a febrile State which the southern Climate has fixed upon me and within this Day or two I find increased.

On 12 August, Samuel Adams left Philadelphia. Gerry arrived back in that city by 6 September. Paine and John Adams never left.

Ironically, John Hancock, who was already becoming known for pleading ill health when he didn’t want to do something, was the one Massachusetts delegate who seems to have remained perfectly well in this period. And as chairman of the Congress, he had plenty of work to do.

Hancock did write to Thomas Cushing on 30 July: “I have Determin’d to move my Family to Boston the Beginning of September, and propose being there my self in all that month.” But that was probably because of his wife Dorothy’s health, not his own. She was pregnant with their first child.

The Massachusetts legislature didn’t send anybody new to the Continental Congress until 1777.

“My sincere attachment to the interest of my country”

On the morning of 3 Mar 1774, Andrew Oliver, lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, died. He had previously held the offices of provincial secretary and stamp agent, though of course he never got to do any work in that last capacity.

John Adams viewed Oliver as one of ”the original Conspirators against the Public Liberty,” for monopolizing offices with his brother Peter and their relative by marriage Thomas Hutchinson; for reporting on the Council’s sensitive discussion after the Massacre; and for urging changes to the colonial constitution in the “Hutchinson Letters.”

Adams and colleagues quickly started speculating about what Oliver’s death might mean. At a dinner party the consensus was “Peter Oliver will be made Lieutenant Governor, Hutchinson will go home, and probably be continued Governor but reside in England, and Peter Oliver will reside here and rule the Province.” (That didn’t happen.)

The more immediate worry for the Boston Whigs was the 1774 Massacre oration. Past orators had been Dr. Thomas Young, James Lovell, Dr. Joseph Warren, and Dr. Benjamin Church, all known for their newspaper essays and/or poetry. But for this year the oration committee had decided the speaker would be John Hancock.

Though Hancock had been a selectman, General Court representative, and militia officer for several years, he wasn’t known for his public eloquence. Nor his rhetorical skills. Nor his hale and reliable health. But Hancock was prominent and popular, educated and young. If he wanted to deliver the oration, his colleagues couldn’t say no.

Evidence suggests that the Whigs clustered around Hancock to ensure his speech was up to par. In his autobiography John Adams recalled, “Mr. Samuel Adams told me that Dr. Church and Dr. Warren had composed Mr. Hancocks oration…, more than two thirds of it at least.” Other sources credited Samuel Adams himself and the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper, Hancock’s eloquent minister.

On Saturday the 5th, Boston men gathered at Faneuil Hall for their first official town meeting since the previous November. They quickly went through the ritual of voting to have an oration, inviting Hancock to deliver it, and adjourning to the Old South Meeting-House, the largest enclosed space in town. The crowd gathered. The orator entered. The Whigs held their breaths.

Hancock’s speech began with remarks about his speaking abilities not being up to the occasion, traditional rhetoric but in this case perhaps right on the nose:

The attentive gravity; the venerable appearance of this crowded audience; the dignity which I behold in the countenances of so many in this great assembly; the solemnity of the occasion upon which we have met together, joined to a consideration of the part I am to take in the important business of this day, fill me with an awe hitherto unknown, and heighten the sense which I have ever had of my unworthiness to fill this sacred desk. But, allured by the call of some of my respected fellow-citizens, with whose request it is always my greatest pleasure to comply, I almost forgot my want of ability to perform what they required.

In this situation I find my only support in assuring myself that a generous people will not severely censure what they know was well intended, though its want of merit should prevent their being able to applaud it. And I pray that my sincere attachment to the interest of my country, and the hearty detestation of every design formed against her liberties, may be admitted as some apology for my appearance in this place.

Soon he started to spout the fiery rhetoric about the killings four years earlier:

Tell me, ye bloody butchers! ye villains high and low! ye wretches who contrived, as well as you who executed the inhuman deed! do you not feel the goads and stings of conscious guilt pierce through your savage bosoms? Though some of you may think yourselves exalted to a height that bids defiance to human justice, and others shroud yourselves beneath the mask of hypocrisy, and build your hopes of safety on the low arts of cunning, chicanery, and falsehood, yet do you not sometimes feel the gnawings of that worm which never dies? Do not the injured shades of Maverick, Gray, Caldwell, Attucks, and Carr attend you in your solitary walks, arrest you even in the midst of your debaucheries, and fill even your dreams with terror?

It’s noteworthy that that is the only passage in all the orations preserved between 1771 and 1783 to name all the people who died in the Massacre. I suspect that reflected Hancock’s instinct for democratic politics—which was actually sharper than most of his colleagues’.

Son and grandson of ministers, Hancock ultimately turned to exhorting his audience to look to their own moral virtue. He got particular points for warning the crowd against following the allure of rich, dishonest men:

Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed, by the soft arts of luxury and effeminacy, into the pit digged for your destruction. Despise the glare of wealth. That people who pay greater respect to a wealthy villain than to an honest, upright man in poverty, almost deserve to be enslaved; they plainly show that wealth, however it may be acquired, is, in their esteem, to be preferred to virtue.

But I thank God that America abounds in men who are superior to all temptation, whom nothing can divert from a steady pursuit of the interest of their country, who are at once its ornament and safeguard.

Again, I suspect that those words, whoever wrote them, reflected Hancock’s own convictions. He inherited a fortune and spent it down on politics, dying a popular but less wealthy man.

As for how people responded to John Hancock’s 1774 oration, I wrote about that last year.

“Heard the oration pronounced, by Coll. Hancock”

On 12 March, Revolutionary Spaces’ Old South Meeting House will host a program devoted to Dr. Joseph Warren’s 1775 oration on the Boston Massacre.

With royal troops back in town, army officers in the hall, and the province on the brink of war, that was an especially dramatic moment.

The previous year’s oration probably had a lot of drama, too, but it consisted of hushed, concerned conversations behind the scenes.

Boston’s first three official commemorative orations were delivered by:

• James Lovell, once recruited for the pulpit at Old North
• Dr. Warren, a vigorous newspaper essayist
• Dr. Benjamin Church, known for poetic eloquence

In contrast, the orator chosen for March 1774 was John Hancock. Unlike those three predecessors, he wrote hardly anything for the newspapers. Though he had served for years as both a town selectman and a representative in the General Court, he wasn’t considered one of Boston’s eloquent men. Hancock was known for public largesse, not public speaking.

Why then did the Whigs choose Hancock to deliver the 1774 oration? It may have been to bind him to their cause. In 1771, with the Liberty case resolved, troops moved out of town, and the Massacre trials over, people saw Hancock as shifting away from the radical Whigs. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson even fantasized about winning the young merchant over to his side.

My reading is that Hancock had the best sense for public opinion around, and he realized the overall populace wasn’t interested in confrontation. Then came the tea crisis of late 1773. Public sentiment changed, and everyone expected a harsh response from London. That was a good time to take a prominent position in the resistance. And what better way to do that than by delivering a Massacre oration?

Of course, there was still the matter of writing that speech. Reportedly Dr. Church and the silver-tongued Rev. Samuel Cooper helped Hancock compose his text. But it was up to him to deliver it.

People crowded into Old South on 5 Mar 1774. Within the crowd was John Adams, who had known Hancock as a fellow schoolboy back in Braintree. That evening, Adams wrote in his diary:

Heard the oration pronounced, by Coll. Hancock, in Commemoration of the Massacre—an elegant, a pathetic, a Spirited Performance. A vast Croud—rainy Eyes—&c.

The Composition, the Pronunciation, the Action all exceeded the Expectations of every Body. They exceeded even mine, which were very considerable. Many of the Sentiments came with great Propriety from him. His Invective particularly against a Prefference of Riches to Virtue, came from him with a singular Dignity and Grace.

Dined at Neighbour Quincys, with my Wife. . . . The Happiness of the Family where I dined, upon account of the Colls. justly applauded Oration, was complete. The Justice and his Daughters were all joyous.

The joy of relief, clearly. Hancock’s talk had gone so much better than people had expected.

One of Justice Edmund Quincy’s daughters was Dorothy. Although the young woman was already close to the widow Lydia Hancock, I’m not sure she and the orator were yet engaged to marry. But within a year they would be.

Legends of Nathaniel Balch

As I discussed back here, the hatter Nathaniel Balch was well known in post-Revolutionary Boston for his sense of humor and his friendship with Gov. John Hancock.

The Genealogy of the Balch Families in America (1897) shared a family tradition about one of the jokes that Hancock and Balch shared:

Governor Hancock one day said to Balch, ”Come up and see a Savage I have locked in my garret.”

He complied, and found that the Governor was protecting a portrait painter named Savage from arrest for debt. Savage was engaged on a portrait of the Governor, and at the request of Hancock, also made one of Balch.

Edward Savage (1761-1817) was a native of Princeton, Massachusetts. He trained as a goldsmith but by the late 1780s was making copies of Copleys and evidently learning a lot from them. Around 1788 Savage painted a full-length portrait of John and Dorothy Hancock, which I believe is now at the Katzen Art Center of American University. I don’t have any evidence to confirm that Savage was hiding out from creditors at the time.

Savage’s smaller portrait of the hatter, labeled on the back “painted by the artist Savage by order of Governor Hancock of Massachusetts,” descended in the Balch family into this century.

In 1840 the writer E. S. Thomas recalled about Gov. Hancock, “such was the mutual attachment between the governor and Mr. Balch, that if the former was called away, no matter what distance, ’Squire Balch attended him, like his shadow.”

In fact, Balch’s entertaining personality could overshadow the governor. This item in the 31 July 1792 Argus became a little famous for joking about that:

TOMORROW: Mrs. Balch and Mr. Paine.

More Glimpses from the Lexington Parsonage

Yesterday I quoted the recollections of Dorothy Quincy about her experiences at the Lexington parsonage on 19 Apr 1775, where she was staying as fiancée of John Hancock.

As recorded in 1822 by William H. Sumner, the widow Dorothy Scott described the aftermath of the battle this way:

Mrs. Scott was at the chamber window [i.e., upstairs] looking at the fight. She says two of the wounded men were brought into the house. One of them, whose head was grazed by a ball, insisted on it that he was dead; the other, who was shot in the arm, behaved better. The first was more scared than hurt.

In 1912 the Lexington Historical Society published another woman’s memory of that morning in the parsonage. This came from Elizabeth Clarke (1763-1844), the Rev. Jonas Clarke’s oldest daughter, writing to a niece in 1841:

this day which is sixty six years since the war began on the Common which I now can see from this window as here I sit writing, and can see, in my mind, just as plain, all the British Troops marching off the Common to Concord, and the whole scene, how Aunt [Lydia] Hancock and Miss Dolly Quinsy, with their cloaks and bonnets on, Aunt Crying and ringing her hands and helping Mother Dress the children, Dolly going round with Father, to hide Money, watches and anything down in the potatoes and up Garrett, and then Grandfather Clarke sent down men with carts, took your Mother and all the children but Jonas [1760-1828] and me and Sally [1774-1843] a Babe six months old. Father sent Jonas down to Grandfather Cook’s to see who was killed and what their condition was…

The hiding of valuables and wringing of hands probably preceded the arrival of the redcoats, though the appearance of those soldiers and the shooting must have increased the anxiety.

Back to Dorothy Scott:

After the British passed on towards Concord, they received a letter from Mr. H. informing them where he and Mr. [Samuel] Adams were, wishing them to get into the carriage and come over, and bring the fine salmon that they had had sent to them for dinner. This they carried over in the carriage…

Back in Lexington, the minister and his family eventually turned to look after the community:

…in the afternoon, Father, Mother with me and the Baby went to the Meeting House, there was the eight men that was killed, seven of them my Father's parishoners, one [Asahel Porter] from Woburn, all in Boxes made of four large Boards Nailed up and, after Pa had prayed, they were put into two horse carts and took into the grave yard where your Grandfather and some of the Neighbors had made a large trench, as near the Woods as possible and there we followed the bodies of those first slain, Father, Mother, I and the Baby,

there I stood and there I saw them let down into the ground, it was a little rainey but we waited to see them Covered up with the Clods and then for fear the British should find them, my Father thought some of the men had best Cut some pine or oak bows and spread them on their place of burial so that it looked like a heap of Brush.

Clarke’s recollection didn’t include anything about the British returning to Lexington from both east and west—Col. Percy and his relief column arriving from Boston at the same time the remnants of Lt. Col. Francis Smith’s expedition made it back from Concord. That occurred about 2:30 P.M.

In his biography The Patriot Parson of Lexington, Richard P. Kollen posits that the Clarkes kept hidden until the combined British forces had withdrawn to the east and then went to the meetinghouse to view the bodies around 4:00.

Other sources say that the weather on 19 April wasn’t even “a little rainey” but cool and dry. It’s possible that the wet interment Betty Clarke remembered occurred on the next day, or that her memory combined a couple of events. Three more Lexington men were killed in the afternoon fighting, and the town also had a British soldier to bury.

A Musket Ball “whizzed by old Mrs. Hancock’s head”?

In 1822, William H. Sumner visited Dorothy Scott, the widow of John Hancock.

Before going to bed, Sumner wrote down notes on their conversation. That memorandum was published in the New England Historic and Genealogical Register in 1854.

About the first shots on Lexington common on the morning of 19 Apr 1775 Sumner wrote:

Mrs. Scott says the British fired first, she is sure. This was a point much contested at the time, and many depositions were taken to prove the fact that the British were the actual aggressors.

One of the first British bullets whizzed by old Mrs. Hancock’s head, as she was looking out of the door, and struck the barn; she cried out, What is that? they told her it was a bullet, and she must take care of herself.

Was Lydia Hancock (shown above) really almost hit by a musket ball from Lexington common?

From the end of the common, where the British troops were standing, one could look down a road to the parsonage. (The barn no longer stands, and I have no idea where it was.)

However, the distance between those spots is more than a quarter-mile. As Michael Barbieri documents in this Journal of the American Revolution article, eighteenth-century experts agreed that a “musket shot” was 300 yards—which is significantly longer than most modern authorities say.

Now that 300 yards was based on firing from a leveled musket, so it’s conceivable that an elevated shot would travel farther. But then it would have come down at an angle as well—unlikely to be whizzing by the head of a lady at the door of a house and then hitting a separate barn.

Of course, it’s possible that Lydia Hancock heard something strike the barn and then felt certain it had whizzed by her head. Or that Dorothy Scott’s recollection of the first shots at Lexington became more dramatic than it actually was.

A Mad March with the Junto and History Camp

The Junto Blog is hosting its annual March Madness brackets, a way to bring attention to articles, books, and (this year) digital projects in early American history.

Boston 1775 was generously nominated in the category of “Blogs and Online Publications,” bracketed against the highly respectable Age of Revolutions blog. That’s currently running a series of essays by different scholars on “Revolutionary Material Cultures.”

Check out Round 1 of the Junto’s March Madness and the many digital projects highlighted this year. If you feel like it, vote for your favorites to see which advance to the second round.

In other news, on Saturday, 16 March, I’ll speak at History Camp Boston on “Tales from Boston’s Pre-Revolutionary Newspaper Wars.”

This event is already at capacity, so I can’t encourage you to show up unless you’re already registered. There may still be seats left for the evening performance of “The House of Hancock,” an “immersive living history performance” that somehow uses the music of Hamilton to explore the lives of John and Dorothy Hancock.

I recommend keeping an eye out for History Camps in other locales, and for next year’s Boston gathering, which might expand into multiple days to accommodate more attendees.

Living History in Quincy, 18 Aug.

On Saturday, 18 August, the Dorothy Quincy Homestead in Quincy is hosting a living-history event highlighting the Quincy, Hancock, and Adams families. The title for this event is “Lydia, Liberty, and Loyality.”

Those three families had a lot to talk about 250 years ago. In June, as I related back here, in the spring the Customs service tried to get Massachusetts attorney general Jonathan Sewall to prosecute John Hancock for interfering with their personnel aboard his ship Lydia. Sewall refused, saying the law was on Hancock’s side.

In June top Customs officers, with the help of the Royal Navy, seized Hancock’s ship Liberty for smuggling. This time they got Sewall to prosecute the case. Hancock retained John Adams as his lawyer.

Hancock and Adams had known each other since they were boys; Adams was a Braintree selectman’s son, and Hancock’s father was a minister in that town before his early death. Adams was also good friends with his fellow lawyer Sewall, though they were drifting apart because of political differences.

Even more fraught with drama, Sewall’s wife was the former Esther Quincy, part of the family that had owned that mansion earlier in the 1760s. Hancock would eventually marry Esther’s younger sister Dolly. And John Adams’s wife Abigail was cousin to the Quincys.

Also present at this event will be John Singleton Copley, portrait painter for the wealthy. In the 1760s he painted John Hancock and yet another Quincy cousin, attorney Samuel, and his wife. Eventually Copley would paint John Adams, but only after almost two decades had swelled Adams from a country lawyer to the American minister to the Court of St. James. For the Adamses and Sewalls in 1768, Copley was too expensive.

The Dorothy Quincy Homestead is co-owned by the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. That organization is co-sponsoring this event with Discover Quincy, Revolution250, and the Guild of Historic Interpreters South. Guides will also offer tours of the mansion.

This event is scheduled to run from 11:00 A.M. to 3:30 P.M. at the Dorothy Quincy Homestead, 34 Butler Road in Quincy. It is free to all, but donations will be gladly accepted.

Videos from History Camp Boston 2018

The History List has just posted a video of my session at History Camp Boston last month on the arrival of British soldiers in 1768.

Before we get to my talk, though, the video shows a History Camp tradition of going around the room so all the attendees can introduce themselves and their interests in history. In earlier years, we did this in a plenary session with everyone. This year’s Boston convention was too large for that, so we did it after dispersing to the lecture halls for the opening sessions. That part of the video is a useful answer to the question “What sort of people do you meet at History Camp?”

The History List has also posted videos of several other sessions made throughout that day. Those that might be of particular interest for Boston 1775 readers include:

• Alyssa G. A. Conary, ”Behind the Devil’s Shield: Counter-Magic in Early New England”
• Margo Burns, ”The Salem Witchcraft Trials and Ergot, the ‘Moldy Bread’ Hypothesis“
• Marilynne K. Roach, “The Corpse in the Cellar: or, the Posthumous Adventures of Sheriff George Corwin”
• Samuel Forman, “War, Espionage, and Intrigue—Dr. Warren on the Eve of Revolution”
• Stephen Knott, “The Founding Fathers and Covert Operations”
• Patrick Gabridge and Courtney O’Connor, “Using the Hancock Door to Unlock Unheard Historical Voices”
• Podcasters panel with Liz Covart of Ben Franklin’s World, Jake Sconyers of HUB History, Ed O’Donnell of In the Past Lane, Mick Sullivan of The Past and the Curious, and Tracy V. Wilson of Stuff You Missed in History Class

Here’s the playlist of all the 2018 sessions on YouTube, including those about other historical periods.

A Door into the Past

This week I got a look at the Bostonian Society’s new exhibit “Through the Keyhole” and its attendant short play, “Cato and Dolly.”

The starting-point for both exhibit and play is the door of the Hancock mansion on Beacon Hill, preserved when that 1737 building was destroyed in 1863. (The land that the mansion sat on is now occupied by a wing of the Massachusetts State House, but its initial replacement consisted of luxury townhouses in the newer taste.)

The Bostonian Society has exhibited the Hancock door in its Old State House Museum off and on over the years, but for the last couple of decades it was in storage. The society partnered with the preservation carpentry department at the North Bennet Street School to conserve the original door and create a setting for it.

(When I first heard about this project online, I got the impression that the school’s students were building a replica of the original door. In fact, they were recreating the original doorway based on measured drawings from 1863. That structure serves as a frame and support for the actual door.)

While that work was going on, the society also went to playwright Patrick Gabridge and director Courtney O’Connor, who had created the play Blood on the Snow for the Council Chamber of the Old State House two years ago. Their challenge: produce an interesting drama inspired by the door, incorporating the door—but no one could touch the door! It is, after all, a museum artifact.

Blood on the Snow immerses the audience in the events that took place inside the Old State House on the day after the Boston Massacre. It takes place in a somewhat sped-up real time without many obvious theatrical artifices.

In contrast, the actors in “Cato and Dolly” address viewers directly, take on different roles by donning and doffing hats, and portray moments in the title characters’ lives over half a century from the 1760s to the 1810s. The North Bennet Street School’s frame includes lots of bare wood, a carpenters’ choice that also reminds us of the constructed quality of this drama.

The play’s main characters are Cato Hancock, who began working for Thomas Hancock as an enslaved child, served his widow Lydia and nephew John, and finally returned to the house as a free middle-aged man; and Dorothy (Quincy) Hancock (Scott), fiancée, wife, and widow of Gov. Hancock. The cast I saw was Stephen Sampson as Cato (as well as Lafayette, James Scott, and others) and Becca A. Lewis as Dolly (as well as John and others), but three other people are playing those roles at other performances.

The result is a sort of smaller, earlier, and Bostonian version of Driving Miss Daisy, exploring America’s historical color line through the lives of an employer and an (at times coerced) employee. While the play discusses such major events as the fight at Lexington and the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, it’s most affecting when the drama focuses on the two people in front of us.

Thus, I don’t recall the play ever mentioning the Massachusetts court decisions that made slavery unenforceable in the state, a moment in Hancock’s first stint as governor. But it delves into the difficulties of Cato’s status—Thomas and Lydia Hancock each freed Cato in their wills, but only conditionally, and the opportunities for a black man remained constricted in the early republic.

Likewise, the “Through the Keyhole” exhibit highlights the theme of how past lives are recorded and recalled, particularly those of people without the access to wealth and power like John Hancock. Paradoxically, it does this through artifacts preserved because they’re associated with John Hancock.

Since the Bostonian Society became the city’s attic during the Colonial Revival, it owns a miscellany of objects and papers once in the mansion on Beacon Hill. Items on display in “Through the Keyhole” include Thomas Hancock’s indenture to a bookseller, the family Bible, and a copper teapot. And, of course, the front door.

“Through the Keyhole” is part of the Old State House’s exhibits through September at least. Performances of “Cato and Dolly” take place every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday at 11:00 A.M. and 12:30 and 2:00 P.M., thus offering a chance to sit out the height of the summer sun. Each performance runs about half an hour, and the show is suitable for all ages (though attendees should be prepared for sad moments). A seat at the show is included in museum admission.

Hancock’s Trunk in Worcester, 16-22 Apr.

To celebrate Patriots’ Day, the Worcester History Museum is displaying John Hancock’s trunk for one week starting on Monday, 16 April. The museum will be open that day from 10:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M.

This was reportedly the trunk where Hancock was storing his business and political papers—including sensitive documents from his work with the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and its Committee of Safety—while he was in Lexington in April 1775. Though Hancock himself slept at the parsonage, along with his fiancée Dolly Quincy, his aunt Lydia Hancock, and Samuel Adams, the trunk was with his clerk, John Lowell, at Buckman’s Tavern.

Hancock and Lowell left town several hours into the early morning of 19 Apr 1775 along with Adams and Paul Revere, who had come out from Boston to warn that British troops were on the march. After settling Adams and Hancock at what they thought was a safe distance, Lowell and Revere went back to Lexington to scout the situation.

At that point Lowell thought about that trunk. He decided it might be good to keep its contents away from the approaching soldiers. He and Revere went to the tavern, climbed upstairs, brought the trunk down, and were carrying it across the town common during the first shots of the war.

The photograph above comes from the Worcester Telegram’s coverage of the museum’s similar display last year, which explains:

The Hancock trunk was donated years later to the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester by a descendant, Dorothy Hancock Gardner White (1799-1890). She wrote that in her childhood the box contained “letters of correspondence of the prominent men of the revolution” and also letters from Hancock to his future bride, Dolly Quincy, her great-aunt. Mrs. White gave many of the letters away.

The trunk was empty when it came to the Antiquarian Society, and when it was transferred in 1895 to the collection of the Worcester Society of Antiquity, what is today the Worcester Historical Museum.

“The trunk only comes out once a year,” said Vanessa Bumpus, the museum’s exhibit coordinator.

Most of the time the fragile artifact is kept downstairs in climate-controlled storage, she said. But for school vacation week coinciding with Patriots’ Day in April, museum staffers don special gloves, place the trunk on a dolly, and gingerly transfer it to a museum exhibit case.

Ironically, if this trunk had stayed in Buckman’s Tavern that morning, it would have been perfectly safe. No British soldiers entered the building. That column passed through Lexington just because it was on the road to Concord.

A Few More Local Patriots’ Day Events

Yesterday I listed the events surrounding Patriots’ Day that are scheduled to take place in Minute Man National Historical Park. I also linked to Battleroad.org, a website listing other events in the area.

But there are yet more local commemorations, some of which may not appear on either list. I’ve come to see that pattern as emblematic of deep New England culture. Even though the militia mobilizations of 1774-1777 were by definition mass evens, our communities often like to maintain our own traditions independent from coordinating authorities.

This afternoon, for example, the town of Tewksbury commemorates its response to the 1775 alarm with the “Tewksbury Line of March” starting at 1:30 P.M. The Tewksbury Militia and Minutemen, Billerica Colonial Minutemen, and Second Massachusetts Regiment will participate. Former Tewksbury Historical Society president David Marcus will narrate the event.

Attendees are invited to walk behind the reenactors along the militia companies’ original route along East Street, Lee Street, and Chandler Street to the town library, where there will be a musket salute. At around 2:45 P.M. guest speaker will then provide a Loyalist perspective on events.

On Sunday, 15 April, Arlington will be the scene of “The Fight at the Jason Russell House,” reenacting the skirmish that cost more than a dozen lives in 1775. Participating reenacting groups include the Menotomy Minutemen, the Danvers Alarum Company, Gardner’s Regiment, and the Acton Minutemen. The Jason Russell House is at 7 Jason Street (just off Massachusetts Avenue), and this event is due to start at noon.

That fight is scheduled to finish by 2:00 P.M. when the Arlington Patriots’ Day Parade will begin, starting at Massachusetts Avenue and Brattle Street and proceeding east along Mass. Ave. to the Walgreen’s in East Arlington. Expect bands, fire engines, reenacting units, and community groups to march by.

Finally, that Sunday evening in Lexington, History At Play will present “The House of Hancock,” a “fun-filled, Hamilton-style musical” about the rise of the Hancock family. John Hancock’s grandfather was the minister in Lexington for decades, and he spent some years of his youth there before returning for his fateful visit in 1775.

“Join John and Dolly Hancock, Sam Adams, and more as they plan a revolution,” says the show notice. This chamber musical will be performed in the Lexington Depot starting at 7:00 P.M. Tickets are $20 for Lexington Historical Society members, $25 for non-members, and $15 for children.

The Hancocks’ Dinner Table

Ticonderoga, New York, boasts the most accurate recreation of the Hancock mansion that used to stand on Beacon Hill.

The merchant Thomas Hancock built the original and passed it to his nephew John.

The replica was erected in 1925, long after the original was torn down, based on detailed architectural drawings. It is the headquarters of the Ticonderoga Historical Society.

Now the society is also the owner of a dinner table that was in the Hancock mansion, as the New York History Blog explains.

The table was the gift of Benn and Claire Eilers of Bend, Oregon. Benn Eilers is a descendant of Hancock’s sister-in-law, Sarah Quincy [who married William Greenleaf, sheriff of Worcester County].

With leaves that extend to 30 feet, the table is constructed of birds-eye walnut, a relatively rare wood. It is believed that George Washington dined at the table while visiting the Hancock House in Boston in 1789, during Hancock’s time as Governor of Massachusetts.

Hancock served many terms as governor, so depending on when he had that table he and his wife Dolly could have used it to entertain French army and naval officers, local politicians, and close friends.

However, I don’t think Washington dined at the Hancocks’ house in 1789. The governor invited him to do so, but the new President was trying to establish that he outranked American governors, so he wanted Hancock to wait on him instead of the other way around. Eventually Hancock relented and visited the President at a tavern, pleading infirmity for not coming out earlier. There was also a public dinner for Washington at Faneuil Hall. But I can’t find a mention of the President visiting Beacon Hill.

The table is on display in the parlor of Ticonderoga’s Hancock House daily until Labor Day. The society is hoping to raise funds to interpret a table setting in John Hancock’s time.

TOMORROW: Why that display should include plum cake.

Abigail Adams at a Birthday Ball in Boston

In February 1797, the U.S. of A. made plans to celebrate George Washington’s last birthday as President. Some parts of the country were also eager to celebrate the new President who would take office in March, John Adams.

On 17 February, Abigail Adams received an invitation to a banquet and ball in Boston, along with one for her niece Louisa Catherine Smith. The next day, Abigail asked her daughter Nabby to pick out a new dress cap, “a good one proper for me, not a Girlish one.”

“I presume yu will have a Splnded Birth Day,” Abigail wrote to John in Philadelphia; “there are preparations making in Boston to celebrate it. . . . the Note from the Managers requested me to honour them with my attendance, which they should esteem a particular favour, as it is the last publick honour they can Shew the President. thus circumstanced I have determined to attend.”

The ball took place at the Federal Street Theatre, converted into “a magnificent saloon; sumptuously decorated with tapestry hangings; elegantly illuminated with variegated lamps; and fancifully embellished with festoons of artificial flowers.”

Gov. Samuel Adams didn’t attend, and I doubt anyone expected him to; he’d already expressed his disapproval of Boston’s flowering post-independence social scene. Lt. Gov. Moses Gill was deputed to escort in Mrs. Adams at noon. She reported, “His Honours politeness led him to stay untill he had conducted & Seated me at the Supper table. he however escaped as soon after as he could.”

All in all, however, Abigail was pleased with the event:

I do the Managers but Justice when I say, I never saw an assembly conducted with so much order regularity & propriety, I had every reason to be pleased with the marked respect and attention Shewn me. col [Samuel] Bradford, who is really the Beau Nash of ceremonies even marshalld his company [of Cadets], and like the Garter King at Arms calld them over as they proceeded into the Grand Saloon, hung with the prostrate Pride, of the Nobility of France.

[James] Swan had furnishd them with a compleat set of Gobelin Tapresty, as the Ladies only could be Seated at Table with about 20 or 30 of the principle Gentlemen the rest were requested to retire to the Boxes untill the Ladies had Supped, when they left the Table & took their Seats in the Boxes whilst the Gentlemen Sup’d all was order and Decency about half after one, the company returnd to the Ball Room, and I retired with those who accompanied me to the Ball. most of the rest of company remaind untill 4 oclock. . . .

the Seat assignd to the Lady of the President Elect was Hung with Gobeline Tapestry, and in the center of the Room, conspicuous only for the hanging, on my Right the manager placed the Lady of Judge [John] Lowel. and on my Left the Lady of Judge [Increase] Sumner. Judge [Francis] Dana, but not his Lady was present, when I was conducted into the Ball Room the Band were orderd to play the President March.

the Toast were only 6 in Number. . . . every toast save one made the Saloon resound with an universal Clap and a united huza. that was the vice President Elect, I was sorry it was so cold and faint,

Despite the Adamses’ political differences with Thomas Jefferson, Abigail still considered him a personal friend. She didn’t make her break with him until 1804 when she read James Thomson Callender’s revelations of how Jefferson had orchestrated press attacks on her husband while assuring the couple he did no such thing.

One lady, Abigail said, didn’t have a good time at the ball, feeling “mortified & placed in the back ground. . . . how could she expect any thing else?” That was “Mrs [Dorothy] Scott,” the remarried widow of the late governor John Hancock, no longer wife of the state’s most acclaimed politician.

TOMORROW: What President Adams thought of the Philadelphia ceremonies.