“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.)

British-American Prisoner Exchange

I promised to write about Ann Molineux’s marriage today, but then I realized I’d already planned to discuss an event from 1775 noted in selectman Timothy Newell’s diary:

6th [June]. Mr. John Peck, Mr. Frost, Mr. Brewer and sundry others discharged from on board the Admiral in exchange of prisoners, viz Major Dunbar, Capt Gould and a number of wounded soldiers.

This was the first negotiated exchange of prisoners in the Revolutionary War, I believe. [ADDENDUM: There was an earlier exchange of one wounded British officer for one American on 28 May 1775.] Newell didn’t have all the prisoners’ names, and one of the names he listed (Gould) was an error. Here’s a very detailed report on the day from the Patriot newspaper nearest the scene, the 9 June Essex Gazette:

Tuesday last being the day agreed on for the exchange of prisoners, between 12 and 1 o’clock, Dr. [Joseph] Warren and Brigadier General [Israel] Putnam, in a phaeton, together with Major Dunbar, and Lieut. Hamilton of the 64th on horse-back; Lieut. Potter, of the marines, in a chaise; John Hilton of the 47th, Alexander Campbell of the 4th, John Tyne, Samuel Marcy, Thomas Parry, and Thomas Sharp, of the marines, wounded men, in two carts; the whole escorted by the Weathersfield company, under the command of Capt. Chester, entered the town of Charlestown, and marching slowing [sic] thro’ it, halted at the ferry, where, upon a signal being given, Major [Thomas] Moncrief landed from the Lively, in order to receive the prisoners, and see his old friend, General Putnam:—

Their meeting was truly cordial and affectionate. The wounded privates were soon sent on board the Lively; but Major Moncrief, and the other officers, returned with Gen. Putnam and Dr. Warren, to the house of Dr. [Isaac] Foster, where an entertainment was provided for them.

About 3 o’clock, a signal was made by the Lively, that they were ready to deliver up our prisoners; upon which, Gen. Putnam and Major Moncrief went to the ferry, where they received Messirs. John Peck, James Hews, James Brewer, and Daniel Preston, of Boston; Messirs. Samuel Frost and Seth Russell, of Cambridge; Mr. Joseph Bell, of Danvers; Mr. Elijah Seaver, of Roxbury, and Caesar Augustus, a negro servant of Mr. Tileston, of Dorchester, who were conducted to the house of Capt. Foster, and there refreshed; after which, the General and Major returned to their company, and spent an hour or two in a very agreeable manner.

Between 5 and 6 o’clock Major Moncrief, with the officers that had been delivered to him, were conducted to the ferry, where the Lively’s barge received them; after which, General Putnam, with the prisoners who had been delivered to him, &c. returned to Cambridge, escorted in the same manner as before.

The whole was conducted with the utmost decency and good humor; and the Weathersfield company did honor to themselves, their officers, and their country. The regular officers expressed themselves as highly pleased; those who had been prisoners politely acknowledged the genteel, kind treatment they had received from their captors; the privates, who were all wounded men, expressed in the strongest terms, their grateful sense of the tenderness which had been shown them in their miserable situation; some of them could only do it by their tears. It would have been to the honour of the British arms, if the prisoners taken from us could with justice make the same acknowledgment.

The map above, courtesy of the National Park Service, shows the Charlestown peninsula in 1775. It centers on the Bunker Hill battlefield, of course. The prisoner exchange probably took place in the settled part of town near the bottom, where the ferry landed and gentlemen could sit down for a good meal.

COMING UP: Who were all those guys, and how had they become prisoners?