“Confined in the New Goal of the city of New York”

The four Massachusetts men I named yesterday weren’t the only Continental officers trying to be inoculated against smallpox in May 1776.

Members of the New York committee investigating that incident spoke with Glorianna Betts, wife of the inoculating doctor. She revealed “That Lieut. Seymour from Long Island had informed her, that seven persons of the Army (Officers as she understood) on Long Island, were taking mercurial preparations, and as he supposed, were inoculated, or preparing to be inoculated for the small pox.”

Mrs. Betts was probably trying to win favor for her husband, either by pointing out that officers wanted to be inoculated or by giving up someone else to the authorities.

It didn’t work. The New York government was already familiar with Dr. Betts, having locked him up in January for denigrating the provincial and Continental Congresses. On 3 April the committee of safety had freed him on the condition that he

will not bear arms against the inhabitants of the American Colonies, or do any other act inimical to the liberties of the United Colonies, or contrary to the resolutions of Congress, during the present controversy between Great Britain and the American Colonies

The doctor also had to pay his “expenses while in confinement” and give a bond for £200 for “future good behaviour.”

Yet less than two months later, Dr. Betts had gone back to his “business” of smallpox inoculation despite knowing it was against the provincial and army rules. He thus potentially spread the disease, weakened the army, and panicked the local population. No surprise, the New York congress locked him up again.

The next we hear from Dr. Betts is on 14 June, when he petitioned the congress:

That your petitioner hath been for some time past Confined in the New Goal of the city of New York.

That the cause of his confinement is that he hath violated a Resolve of the Honorable Provincial Congress, he having inoculated some officers in the service of this Country.

That your petitioner meant not to injure those gentlemen who were inoculated, nor to show any contempt to your worshipfull house, but ardently wished to render his best services to those who had the Command in relieving them from those fears which people in general have who are subject to that disorder.

That your petitioner is extreamely sorry for the offence he hath given his countrymen and your honorable Body in particular, and prays that he may be released from his confinement and suffered to go at large, and your petitioner doth hereby promise and engage that he will not for the future by word or deed counteract the orders of your Honorable house

Five days later he petitioned again, adding:

That he is in great distress owing to the great Expense he for a long time past hath been to lay in Confinement, his being out of Business and having a large Family; That he is sorry for his imprudent Conduct and sincerly wishes that the Colonies may Injoy the present glorious strougle and Injoy their rights and Liberties uninviolated and their present Contest be crouned with success.

That the Petitioner is willing and desirous to be removed out of the Goal and to be permitted to live in the Country. He would therefore Humbly pray to be removed to the North Castle in west Chester County and have the Liberty of riding Ten or fifteen miles into the Country to visit his Patients, he will especially give security not to exceed the Limets assigned to him and in all things to observe the orders of this Honourable House.

That offer appears to have been acceptable to the Patriot government. As of 14 July, Dr. Betts was listed as “dischd. gave Bond.”

Years later, Betts rewrote this episode in his testimony to the Loyalists Commission. He didn’t mention treating Continental Army officers, apologizing, or offering to live in rural exile. Instead, his claim was:

After his return from Œsopus the Claimt. was tried by the Provincial Congress for carrying Intelligence to ye Enemies & was sentenced to die, and was lying in Gaol under that sentence just as the Brit. troops came.

Curiously, he also testified that he “Made his escape just before New York was taken.” I guess if you’re going to make up why you were put in jail, you might as well make up a jailbreak as well.

In any event, once the British military took Manhattan in the fall of 1776, Dr. Betts became a firm Loyalist inside the city. He “Had a Warrant as a Capt.’s Lieut. in the King’s American Rangers,” recruiting men, and was also “made Surgeon of Queen’s Rangers by Genl. [William] Howe.”

In May 1783, Azor and Glorianna Betts and their children came to St. John, New Brunswick. He resumed his practice “in the Physical Line,” later moving to Kingston at the urging of settlers there. Reportedly he continued to treat people against smallpox, switching to the new vaccine method.

Dr. Betts died in Digby, Nova Scotia, in 1811, according to a family gravestone. (Printed sources say he died in 1809.) Glorianna Betts died in St. John in 1815.

TOMORROW: Back in New York…

“To return to a proper sence of his Duty to his Country”

On 23 Jan 1776, the New York committee of safety sent Dr. Azor Betts and two other men to the local committee in charge of Kingston in Ulster County.

The provincial committee told their colleagues to lock those men in the town jail since their “wicked practices forbid their being permitted to go at large.”

In the case of Dr. Betts, the “wicked practices” appear to have been saying nasty things about the New York committee of safety and other Patriot authorities.

Kingston’s jail was in the part of town that later broke off as Esopus, the original Native name for the area. On 20 February Dr. Betts sent a petition to the New York provincial congress from “Esopus Gaol”:

your Petitioner fully sensible of his former indiscresions begs leave to return to a proper sence of his Duty to his Country, and your Petitioner further most solemnly assures the Congress, that it shall be his future most earnest study, to convince every individual of his most steady adherence to the utmost of his abilitys in promoting the Liberties of America.

That your Petitioner still flatters himself his crime is not of so atrocious a Nature but that his pardon may be anounced on a due submission, as such he most humbly leaves his case to their tender consideration and should he be so happy to experience their forgivness and protection, it will by him with a most thankfull heart ever be acknowledged and your Petitioner as in duty bound shall ever pray.

The head of the Kingston committee forwarded that on, explaining, “we are entirely strengers to his former conduct.” Betts had “made offers to sign a Recantion and make oath for his futur behaviour,” but the locals deferred to the provincial congress about what to do with him.

Evidently the congress did nothing because a month later, on 25 March, Dr. Betts sent another petition in even more abject language:

I flatter myself my present melancholy situation will be a sufficient pardon for this intrusion but where can the wretched fly for shelter but to those where the power of extricating them is lodged, by the last Post Gentlemen, I troubled you with a Petition the purport of which I am willing most solemnly to adhear to, and as the inevitable ruin of myself and Familly must be the certain Issue of my Confinement, therefore trust to your Clemency for my Enlargement wch. if I am so happy to obtain shall ever with gratitude be rememberd by Gentlemen yr. very obedt. Humble servt.
AZOR BETTS

Dr. Betts’s pleas finally prompted some action, and the Patriot authorities released him in the spring of 1776. He later told the Loyalists Commission what he found on returning home:

About the time of his first confinment by order of the Committee, the Rebel Barrack Master went and broke open his house.

His Books, his Medicines & furniture were lost at that time. The damage done to him was at least £50.

The Continental military probably wanted Betts’s medical resources for their surgeons. After all, there was a war on. 

Dr. Betts was soon back to treating patients. In particular, as described yesterday, in late May he inoculated four men from the Continental Army against smallpox against Gen. George Washington’s express orders.

On 24 May the General Committee of the City of New-York summoned Betts to explain his action. He

allowed the charge against him, and offer’d in his vindication—that he had been repeatedly applied to by the officers of the Continental Army to inoculate them, that he refused, but being overpersuaded, he at last inoculated the persons abovementioned.

That might have gone over better if Dr. Betts wasn’t already suspected of opposing the Continental cause.

TOMORROW: The four inoculatees.

“Azor Betts be sent to Ulster county jail”

As I quoted yesterday, on 20 May 1776 Gen. George Washington ordered that no one associated with the Continental Army should be inoculated against smallpox.

Four days later, Dr. Isaac Foster appeared before the General Committee of the City of New York and reported:

that information was given to General [Israel] Putnam, that several persons had been inoculated, at the house of one Fisher, in Stone Street, contrary to a resolve of the Provincial Congress of this Colony, he, the examinant (agreeable to Genl Putnam’s order) immediately went to the house of the above mentioned Fisher, where he discovered that Lt Colonel Moulton, Capt. Parks, Doctor Hart and Lieut. Brown had been inoculated by Doctor Azor Betts.

The committee already knew about Dr. Betts.

Back in January, Christopher Duyckinck, the chairman of the city’s committee of mechanics, had accused Betts of

having, in his presence, damned the Congresses and Committees, both Continental and Provincial, and said that they were a set of damned rascals, and acted only to feather their own nests, and not to serve their country; that they had shut up his shop, but that he hoped to see the day when he would shut them up, or overturn them

Duyckinck mentioned a “Captain Buchanan and others as witnesses to support the charge.”

Now Duyckinck was a radical. He himself had defied the committee’s authority, called one member “a usurper and a coward,” and even seized that man’s watch. But Duyckinck had then made some sort of partial apology (while still keeping the watch), and there was no question he supported the Patriot resistance. So when he pointed his finger at Betts, the committee listened.

Betts had come to New York from Norwalk, Connecticut, where he was born in 1740, the seventh child of Nathan and Mary Betts. About 1764 he married Glorianna Purdy of White Plains, and their first child came shortly afterward—or before, according to some online genealogies. By the time the war broke out, Dr. Betts was the father of several children and practicing medicine in or near New York City.

The committee summoned Betts to answer the accusation. He didn’t “deny the charge or desire any other witnesses to be called.” He said he expected Buchanan to corroborate Duyckinck’s testimony. The doctor’s only defense was “that he did not mean to include all the members of Congresses and Committees, and supposes there are some good men among them.”

Not surprisingly, that didn’t mollify the New York committee of safety. [ADDENDUM: And its journal shows members heard from other witnesses:

Capt. John Buchanan says he heard Azor Betts damn the Congresses and committeee, and say they had taken the bread out of his mouth; that his business was inoculation; that the said Azor Betts has taken great pains to prevent Joseph Hunt, an ensign in Capt. [Nathaniel] Tylee’s company, from taking his commission.

Peletiah Haws gives the like testimony as to Azor Betts.]

On 17 January the members resolved that “Azor Betts be sent to Ulster county jail, to be there confined in close jail until the further orders of the continental or provincial Congress, or of this committee."

Years later, Betts told the Loyalists Commission that he had been “confined by a Committee for carrying Intelligence on Board the Duchess of Gordon & Asia. [Gov. William Tryon’s base of operations in late 1775 and early 1776], and for attempting to spike same at King’s Bridge.” However, at that time he had reasons to burnish his services to the Crown. The New York Patriots’ records don’t suggest any suspicion that Dr. Betts was a spy, [unlike other men examined the same day]. Rather, the committee of safety locked him up just for saying nasty things about them.

TOMORROW: Dr. Betts in and out of jail.

(The image above is a broadside Christopher Duyckinck had printed in April 1776 during local elections. I have no idea what he was on about, but it gives a sense of the man’s political style.)