Twenty Years of Boston 1775

Twenty years ago today, on 14 May 2006, I posted my first item on this blog.

That post was a link to an article I’d written for the magazine then called New England Ancestors, now American Ancestors, published by the New England Historical and Genealogical Society.

The original link broke. A subsequent link from 2012 broke. But Boston 1775 is still here.

That article described how a message from Dr. John Homans to his mentor, Dr. Joseph Gardner, in the first days of the Revolutionary War was detoured by the duplicitous Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr.

Last August I revealed other messages that Dr. Church diverted into the files of Gen. Thomas Gage, from Boston magistrate Edmund Quincy to his daughter Dorothy and her fiancé, John Hancock.

Tonight I’m speaking in Stoneham about how Dr. Church managed to infiltrate Gen. George Washington’s network for sneaking intelligence out of besieged Boston before the Continentals realized their surgeon-general as a spy.

One way to look at this situation is that after twenty years of daily blogging I’m still working the same ground.

Another is that Dr. Benjamin Church’s treachery is an endless source of revelations and fun.

“Are you serious, Dr. Church?”

In a letter to the Rev. Dr. Jeremy Belknap, Paul Revere recalled a dramatic moment on 21 Apr 1775:

The Friday evening after [the Battle of Lexington and Concord], about sun set, I was sitting with some, or near all that Committee [of safety], in their room, which was at Mr. [Jonathan] Hastings’s House at Cambridge. Dr. [Benjamin] Church, all at once, started up—

Dr. Warren, said He, I am determined to go into Boston tomorrow—

(it set them all a stairing)—

Dr. [Joseph] Warren replyed, Are you serious, Dr. Church? they will Hang you if they catch you in Boston.

He replyed, I am serious, and am determined to go at all adventures.

After a considerable conversation, Dr. Warren said, If you are determined, let us make some business for you. They agreed that he should go to git medicine for their & our Wounded officers.

He went the next morning; & I think he came back on Sunday evening.

As part of his medical mission, Dr. Church carried in a note from Dr. John Homans of Brookline to his mentor Dr. Joseph Gardner, asking for surgical knives.

Revere recalled speaking to Church after his return:

After He had told the Committee how things were, I took him a side, & inquired particularly how they treated him? he said, that as soon as he got to their lines on the Boston Neck, they made him a prisoner, & carried him to General [Thomas] Gage, where He was examined, & then He was sent to Gould’s Barracks, & was not suffered to go home but once.

In Igniting the American Revolution, Derek W. Beck guessed that the Gould of “Gould’s Barracks” was Lt. Edward Thoroton Gould, who on that day was a wounded prisoner of war outside of Boston. But I think the answer appears in a letter of merchant John Andrews on 11 January:

This morning the soldiers in the barrack opposite our house, left it, and took quarters with the royal Irish in Gould’s auction room or store—in the street leading to Charlestown ferry.

Bostonians often referred to barracks by the name of the local landlord who had rented those buildings to the army, making “Gould’s barracks” a big building on Back Street in the North End.

Robert Gould was a merchant who in August 1773 announced that the Boston selectmen had authorized him to set up as an auctioneer. He advertised heavily over the next several months (usually signing those notices “R. Gould”) before the Boston Port Bill hit. Renting his store to the army might have seemed like the best possible deal.

Robert Gould had also invested in Maine land along with Francis Shaw, Sr., a settlement that became Gouldsboro. He had trained Francis Shaw, Jr., in business, and newspaper ads in 1770 show that the younger man was selling ceramics out of “the store lately improved by Mr. Robert Gould.” In June 1776, Francis, Jr., and his wife Hannah had a boy they named Robert Gould Shaw. That man would pass the name on to his grandson, the Civil War hero.

Robert Gould remained in Boston after the British evacuation, but the Patriot authorities were suspicious of his dealings with the king’s army. The selectmen recommended detaining him for questioning, but the Massachusetts General Court decided to drop him from the list. Gould went back to advertising as a regular merchant in late 1776. But then he died unexpectedly, intestate and in debt, in January 1777, aged 57.

TOMORROW: The doctor’s documents.

“This scheme was revealed to General Gage”

Yesterday I analyzed the untenable claim that John Adams told descendants of Samuel Swift how the man had tried to spark an uprising inside besieged Boston.

So let’s set aside the claim that Adams was the source of this claim. How does the story itself stand up on its own?

The version published in The Memoirs of Gen. Joseph Gardner Swift (1890) stated:

the zeal and resolution of Samuel Swift…caused many Bostonians to secrete their arms when Gov. [Thomas] Gage offered the town freedom if arms were brought in to the arsenal; and that Mr. Swift presided at a freemason’s meeting where it was covertly agreed to use the arms concealed, and, in addition, pitchforks and axes, if need be, to assail the soldiery on the common; which scheme was betrayed to Gage, causing the imprisonment of Swift and others.

That wording has led some authors to state that Swift died in jail. In fact, we have jailhouse diaries from John Leach and Peter Edes covering the period when he died, and they don’t mention the prominent lawyer being locked up with them.

Another version of the story, published in Teele’s History of Milton (1887) and reprinted in Roberts’s history of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, said:

This scheme was revealed to General Gage, and Mr. Swift was arrested, he was permitted to visit his family, then at Newton, upon his parole to return at a given time. At the appointed time he returned, against the remonstrance of his friends, and so high an opinion of his character was entertained by General Gage that he was permitted to occupy his own house under surveillance. From disease induced by confinement, he died a prisoner in his own house…

Again, the military authorities were locking up people like Leach, Edes, and James Lovell for lesser threats, but this tale asks us to believe that not only did they not lock up Swift, they let him leave town.

And then Swift supposedly went back into Boston. Because, according to this lore, he was willing to lead an attack on soldiers with pitchforks and axes, but not to break his promise to Gen. Gage.

Even before that, the story is hard to believe. Swift was sixty years old, had no military experience, and had never been a militant political activist. It’s true he told Adams in October 1774, “I am no Swordsman but with my Gun or flail I fear no man…,” so it’s conceivable that he made similar boasts when the townspeople discussed turning over their weapons in late April 1775. But few Bostonians would have chosen Samuel Swift to lead an armed revolt.

No contemporaneous source mentions such an uprising. Gage, John Burgoyne, Peter Oliver, and other royal appointees wrote a lot about threats from Patriots, but none of them complained about Swift and an attack with pitchforks and axes. Samuel Swift was popular in Boston’s legal and mercantile circles, and no other American credited him with proposing an assault on the troops.

From early on, Swift’s widow and descendants perceived him to be a victim of Gen. Gage. Furthermore, they complained that Swift’s death led to the disappearance of the family wealth. (Though they also blamed “the unfaithfulness of his agent” for that.) They believed the fallout of his death meant his eldest son, fifteen-year-old Foster Swift, couldn’t follow his path to Harvard College. (In fact, by 1768 Foster had dropped out of the college-prep Latin School and was attending a Writing School; he went on to train in medicine under Dr. Joseph Gardner and had a long professional career.)

We don’t know why Samuel Swift didn’t receive a pass to leave Boston while his wife and children went out to Springfield. We don’t know what health issues contributed to his death on 30 Aug 1775. But the Swift family perceived great significance in how Samuel Swift died, and, at least in later generations, they wanted it to be significant for the nation as well.

TOMORROW: A debunking derailed.

The Prosecution’s Closing Argument

John Adams’s closing argument in the trial of soldiers for the Boston Massacre started on 3 Dec 1770 and lasted until the next day.

Then Robert Treat Paine summed up for the prosecution, concluding on the morning of 5 December, 250 years ago today.

Paine’s notes for that presentation survive, though his handwriting is notoriously hard to read. He planned to say:

Witnesses tell you they saw nothing of the violent Abuses offered to the Soldiers nor heard the Threats and loud Hallowings testified of by others. Some of this Collection were Boys and Negros drawn there by the Curiosity peculiar to their disposition, and without doubt might throw some Snow Balls, and its quite natural to believe from the Evidence and the Nature of the thing that there were some there armed with Sticks and Clubbs determin’d if the Soldiers abused them in the manner they had the Inhabitants that Evning and at times before to try the weight of them and had repaired into K[ing].S[treet]. on a Supposition that those Soldiers who had began the disorder of the Evening at a time when they ought to have been in their Barracks were continuing their disorders there, (for it appears about the time of the attack on the Centry [several?] partys of Soldiers were seen in K.S. armed with clubbs Cutlasses &c.;) and that they had not the least design or Idea of Attacking a Party on duty. And many other peaceable people gathered there meerly to see what was going on.

Can any person living from the history of this Affair as it turns up in Evidence Suppose these persons were such dangerous rioters as to bring them within those Rules of Law which have been read to you that it is lawful to kill them; Shall the innocent and peaceable who by meer Casualty are mixt with [some?] of the ruder Sort be liable to be Shot down by a Party of Soldiers meerly because they please to call ’em dangerous Rioters? Tis the Action [Generally?] and not a few [Angry?] tho threatning Expressions that constitutes any Riot and the Agreement of the whole Body that makes ’em Partys. This appears from some of the Authoritys read. . . .

It is proved to you Gentlemen that all the Prisoners at the Bar were present in K.S. at the firing. It appears by the current of the testimony that 7 Guns were fired, and it appears pretty certain that [William] Wemys, the Corporal was the one who did not fire. It is certain that five men were killed by the firing of which [Edward] Montgomery killed [Crispus] Attucks and [Mathew] Kilroy killed [Samuel] Grey.

But which of the other 5 prisoners killed the other 3 of the deceased appears very uncertain. But this operates nothing in their favour if it appears to you that they were an unlawful Assembly for it has been abundantly proved to you by the Numerous Authoritys produced by the Council for the Prisoners, that every individual of an Unlawful Assembly is answerable for the doings of the rest. They are all considered as Principals, and all that are present aiding assisting and abetting to the doing an unlawful act as is charged in the Several Indictments against the Prisoners are also considered as Principals. . . .

When you recollect further, the Account given you by many Witnesses, that on firing the first Gun the people dispersed and were in a Manner withdrawn to a distance at the firing the last Guns[;] that the last Gun was fired at a Boy at a distance running down Street; that they presented their firelocks again at the few people who came with the Chirugeon [Dr. Joseph Gardner] to pick up the Dead it appears to me you must be Satisfy’d they were possessed of that Wicked depraved malignant Spirit which constitutes Malice, that from the whole Evidence taken together no just Cause appears for such outrageous Conduct and therefore that they must be considered as aiding and assisting each other in this unlawful Act which the lawfulness of their Assembling will not excuse. . .

Paine singled outs Pvts. Montgomery and Kilroy as killing specific victims. Since the corporal was “pretty certain” not to have fired a shot, Paine argued the other privates just must have shot the rest.

Edward Pierce’s notes as a juror show that that was just the sort of distinction he was keeping track of. But would he and his fellow jurors accept the Crown’s argument that all the privates were part of an illegal attack on the crowd?

TOMORROW: The judges’ charges and the verdict.

“David Bradley, came down with me to the corpses”

On 5 Mar 1770, eleven days after David Bradlee saw Ebenezer Richardson shooting out of his house, there was a confrontation between soldiers and civilians in King Street. That became, of course, the Boston Massacre.

Among the people on the scene was Benjamin Burdick, Jr., constable of the town house watch. He testified about what he saw in multiple forums. Burdick’s most detailed account appears in the town’s Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre, and in part it says:

I then looked round to see what number of inhabitants were in the street, and computed them to be about fifty, who were then going off as fast as possible; at the same time I observed a tall man standing on my left-hand, who seemed not apprehensive of the danger he was in, and before I had time to speak to him, I heard the word “Fire!” and immediately the report followed, the man on my left hand dropped, I asked him if he was hurt, but received no answer, I then stooped down and saw him gasping and struggling with death. I then saw another man laying dead on my right-hand, but further advanced up the street.

I then saw the soldiers loading again, and I ran up the street to get some assistance to carry off the dead and wounded. Doctor Jos. Gardner, and David Bradley, came down with me to the corpses, and as we were stooping to take them up, the soldiers presented at us again; I then saw an officer passing busily behind them. We carried off the dead without regarding the soldiers.

At the soldiers’ trial the shorthand expert John Hodgson, who was a relative newcomer to town and didn’t know everyone, quoted Burdick this way:

When the Molatto man was dead, I went up, and met Dr. Gardner and Mr. Brindley. I asked them to come and see the Molatto, and as we stooped to take up the man, the soldiers presented their arms again, as if they had been going to fire, Capt. [Thomas] Preston came, pushed up their guns, and said stop firing, do not fire.

“Mr. Brindley” is clearly the man Burdick knew as “David Bradley.”

The tailor David Bradlee was thus at three violent political events in Boston in the space of five months: the tarring and feathering of George Gailer on 28 Oct 1769, the fatal confrontation at Richardson’s house on 22 Feb 1770, and the Massacre.

Furthermore, Bradlee was willing to walk under the guns of the British troops to help pick up Crispus Attucks’s body.

We write a lot about the Boston “crowd” and the “Sons of Liberty” as a collective actor, but of course that group was made up of individual people. David Bradlee was evidently one of those people. He did the work of resisting Crown authority at the street level. He was part of the crowd that genteel political leaders like Samuel Adams, James Otis, and William Molineux relied upon.

COMING UP: The Bradlees and the Tea Party.

Rachel Revere and Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr.

The 2 May 1775 letter from Rachel Revere that I quoted yesterday was not the first that she’d written to her husband Paul from inside besieged Boston. An earlier note appears here at the Clements Library website, and it begins:

My Dear by Doctor Church I send a hundred & twenty five pounds and beg you will take the best care of yourself and not attempt coming in to this town again and if I have an opportunity of coming or sending out anything or any of the Children I shall do it

It’s undated, but we have good clues about when Rachel wrote it. A hasty note from Dr. John Homans to Dr. Joseph Gardner confirms that Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr., went into the besieged town on 21 Apr 1775, and in 1798 Paul Revere recalled that Church came back out two days later, on Sunday. Rachel most likely gave Church the message and money for her husband that during that visit.

Neither Paul Revere nor Dr. Gardner ever saw the letters addressed to them. Church handed them over to Gen. Thomas Gage, and they were found in the general’s files over a century later. (I wrote about the Homans-Gardner-Church document in an article for the spring 2006 issue of New England Ancestors.)

Yet another document that might bear on the relationship between Rachel Revere and Dr. Benjamin Church was quoted by Allen French in General Gage’s Informers. It’s undated and unsigned, but the handwriting matches what’s on other papers from Church, the general’s best-placed spy. French concluded that the doctor probably wrote this note in early May 1775. It says in part:

Send Rachel out with more practicable instructions, I can’t see how ’tis possible to write again there is a close watch set up, Contrivances shall not be wanting if necessary, send me the news.

The note then looks ahead to the 25th of the month, which “finishes a quarter”—i.e., when bills would be due.

So what do we know? On 2 May, Rachel Revere was still in Boston, trying to get a pass out of town for herself and the many children. By 22 May, according to Jayne Triber’s biography A True Republican, the whole family was in Watertown (except for oldest son Paul, Jr., who stayed behind to look after the shop).

Did Gage receive Church’s undated note early in May and give Rachel Revere a pass so that she could leave Boston, unwittingly carrying secret instructions to the doctor? Or was there another Rachel, or was “Rachel” a code name for someone else?

(This musing was prompted by a query from author John A. Nagy. The image above comes via Oceansbridge, which promises to deliver handmade reproductions of this Gilbert Stuart portrait of Rachel Revere in less than a month.)

The Truth Comes Out about Dr. Benjamin Church

The disappearance of suspected double agent Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr., at sea in 1776 left a lot of unanswered questions for his contemporaries. Massachusetts hadn’t been able to convict him of spying for the British authorities. The state therefore had no information about when Church might have begun collaborating, what information he gave up, and how else he might have undercut the Patriot cause.

In the same 1798 letter in which he described his famous midnight ride, Paul Revere wrote that he’d seen reasons to wonder about Dr. Church’s loyalty before the war. However, there’s no evidence the silversmith spoke up at the time, so the doctor’s actions probably appeared more suspicious in hindsight.

Based on the evidence available through the nineteenth century, people could still have a little doubt about Dr. Church’s cooperation with the Crown. The letter he was caught sending into Boston in mid-1775 could indeed be read as the doctor insisted he meant it: as a back-door attempt to convince the British authorities to back down. That possibility informs this article by Tara Dirst and Allan Kulikoff from Common-place on using the American Archives website to explore the case. (Unfortunately, the article’s links to that database no longer seem to function.)

However, in the early 1900s we got a new source of information. A wealthy American manufacturer named William L. Clements bought the papers of Gen. Thomas Gage, as well as those of several other prominent Revolutionary War figures, and donated them to the University of Michigan. Instantly the Clements Library made Ann Arbor one of the centers for Revolutionary research. The novelist and historian Allen French examined those files, and his book General Gage’s Informers offered, as its subtitle promised, “New Material upon Lexington and Concord, Benjamin Thompson as Loyalist, and the Treachery of Benjamin Church, Jr.”

Gen. Gage’s files turned out to contain:

• A letter that Dr. John Homans, a young surgeon working for the provincial army, wrote to his mentor, Dr. Joseph Gardner, on 22 Apr 1775 and sent into Boston with Dr. Church. I wrote about this document in an article in New England Ancestors. It describes casualties and prisoners after the Battle of Lexington and Concord.
• A letter that Rachel Revere wrote to her husband, Paul, and gave to Dr. Church to take out of Boston. The University of Michigan offers an article about that document, as well as the image above.
  
• An anonymous letter to Gen. Gage on 24 May saying that the writer had been ordered to go to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, just as we know Dr. Church ordered to go to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia.

In short, we know much more about Dr. Benjamin Church’s correspondence with Gen. Gage than was available to Revere, George Washington, or other Patriots. There’s no longer any reason to doubt that Dr. Church was collaborating with the British, and did so since shortly after the war began.

Indeed, Gage’s intelligence files also show that the general suddenly knew a lot more about decisions by the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s Committee of Safety right after Church became a member of that committee in early 1775. I think we can therefore push the doctor’s collaboration that far back. However, I’ve seen no strong evidence that Church worked for the British even earlier.

COMING UP: One more wrinkle about the Dr. Church case and the quest for liberty.

Doctor's note in New England Ancestors

The spring 2006 issue of New England Ancestors, the magazine of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, has provided a nice home for my article "Note from a Doctor: A Story of the American Revolution." The online version contains the article's full text, but the printed version has more illustrations and a handsome layout. [ADDENDUM in 2012: Page images are now available online.] My thanks to all the folks at the NEHGS who worked on it.

This article starts from a single document written on 22 Apr 1775, at the start of the Revolutionary War. One doctor was desperately trying to treat wounded British POWs after the Battle of Lexington & Concord. Another was trapped in Boston with the British military. And a third was volunteering to sneak across the lines. But what was really going on?

I've had versions of this article burning a hole in my hard drive for a few years. One reason I wanted to publish it was to set down more information about one of those doctors, Joseph Gardner. As I note in my notes, some authoritative studies have confused him with other men:

1. Dr. Silvester Gardiner, a wealthy Loyalist physician
2. Justice of the Peace Joseph Gardner, a less politically active man
   
3. his younger brother Samuel Gardner, a physician in Milton

Dr. Joseph Gardner was the first physician recorded as examining victims of the Boston Massacre. He later served in the first independent session of the Massachusetts General Court, and he was a cofounder of the Massachusetts Medical Society. Since he was bachelor with no children, Gardner's main legacy was his work, so it's a pity that his work is getting mixed up with other men's.