The Triumph of the Barnstable Crowd

As recounted yesterday, on 27 Sept 1774 a reported 1,500 people surrounded the courthouse in Barnstable, refusing to let the county court session begin.

The local justices kept assuring the crowd that they, too, were concerned about the Massachusetts Government Act and other Coercive Acts, but they felt they should sit to hear local cases.

The committee chosen by the crowd, led by Dr. Nathaniel Freeman, told the justices that wasn’t satisfactory. That day apparently ended in a stalemate with the courthouse still closed.

The committee drafted a promise for each justice to sign, promising not to act under the new laws, even if that meant losing their governmental appointment. Then the crowd decided that sheriffs, deputies, and anyone else holding a royal commission do the same.

Feeling even more expansive, the crowd went on to demand that a local who had threatened (jokingly, he said) to cut down Barnstable’s Liberty Pole promise never to do that. That man made himself scarce.

Finally, the crowd voted to ask James Otis, Sr., a longtime member of the Massachusetts Council under the previous constitution, to go to Salem in case Gov. Thomas Gage went through with his initial plan to convene the Massachusetts General Court there.

On 28 September, 250 years ago today, several justices and other royal appointees signed the crowd’s promises. Otis promised to go to Salem. The crowd marched back to the courthouse, drums sounding. There they resolved to provide arms for their defense, not to buy any imported goods, and “endeavor to suppress mobs and riots” (as well as “common peddlers”).

In 1830, Barnstable County built a new, larger courthouse. The 1763 building was eventually sold to a Baptist church that expanded and remodeled it, as shown above. Then in 1972 it became the headquarters of Tales of Cape Cod. But somewhere within that building is the courthouse at the center of a political protest in 1774. 

Around Barnstable County’s Courthouse

In 1763 Barnstable County commissioned a new courthouse. The sketch here shows one man’s memory of how it looked in the early 1800s.

The building wasn’t large. There was no separate jury room, for instance; juries deliberated in a nearby tavern.

The court records were stored in another building nearby, which burned down in 1827, leaving us records of only a handful of cases from colonial Barnstable County.

On 27 Sept 1774, 250 years ago today, there was supposed to be a court session in this building. 

However, back in August the men of Berkshire County had created a new meme for Massachusetts’s Patriot resistance: closing the courts as a protest against the Massachusetts Government Act. That law changed the constitution of the colony and the way juries were chosen.

Over the following weeks crowds shut down court sessions in one Massachusetts county after another, either by entering the building and refusing to let any judges enter, or by surrounding the building so no one dared to try.

On 26 September, men from the counties of Barnstable, Plymouth, and Bristol gathered in Rochester to plan the closing of the Barnstable Courthouse. 

On the morning of 27 September about 1,500 people assembled around that small building. They chose a committee to speak for them with Dr. Nathaniel Freeman of Sandwich as the leader.

Deputy sheriff Job Howland moved to ring the bell atop the building to signal the start of the court session. The crowd told him to stop.

Justices arrived to work. The crowd asked them to wait outside while they finished writing an address about the unconstitutionality of Parliament’s latest laws. After that document was read, some of the justices insisted that their own, older commissions were valid and that canceling the session would cause hardships.

Both sides spoke of adhering to whatever the upcoming Provincial Congress or the Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia advised. But that didn’t resolve the question of what to do that day, 27 September.

TOMORROW: Signatures and James Otis. 

Thomas Machin “employed in ye. Colony service”

I left off yesterday with Gen. George Washington asking the Massachusetts government to release Lt. Thomas Machin from his project surveying a canal through Cape Cod and join the Continental Army around New York. Washington needed engineers to build fortifications.

On 10 June, Washington’s military secretary Robert Hanson Harrison told Gen. Artemas Ward:

I am commanded by his Excy to request you to send immediately to this place Lt Machin of the Train, provided, he does not belong to either of the Artilly Companies, in Boston—If he does not, he will come with all possible dispatch

A week later, Ward wrote back to the commander-in-chief: “Last evening I received Major Harrison’s Letter of the tenth Instant, and agreeable [to] your desire have directed Lieut. Machin to be ready as soon as possible to set out for New York.”

But “as soon as possible” appears to have meant different things to different people. Massachusetts still wanted that canal, which would make shipping from Boston to the southern states quicker and safer. Evidently Machin continued to work on the project. On 19 June the head of the Massachusetts Council, James Bowdoin (shown above), wrote to him at Nantasket, or Hull:

I informed the committee that you could go to Sandwich on the survey if it could be taken this week; in consequence of which, we agreed that you might set out as soon as is thought proper, and begin the survey, and that we would follow, and be there next Tuesday. I beg you would let me see you to-morrow evening, that the committee may hear what to depend on.

He also provided a pass: “Lieut. Machin, the bearer hereof, being employed in ye. Colony service, it is desired he may pass from hence to Sandwich and back without interruption.” That was dated “Boston, June 20, 1776.”

But Massachusetts couldn’t keep Machin much longer. A month later, on 21 July, he was in New York City, Gen. Washington sent him up the Hudson River, telling a secret committee of the state government:

Mr Machine a Lieut. in the Train, who has just returned from overseeing the Works at Boston, he is as proper a person as any I can send, being an ingenious faithfull hand, And One that has had considerable experience as an Engineer

Washington’s orders for Machin were:

You are without delay to proceed for Fort Montgomery, or Constitution in the High Lands on Hudsons River, and put yourself under command of Colo. George [actually James] Clinton or the Commanding Officer there, to Act as Engineer in compleating such Works as are already laid out, and such others as you, with the advice of Colo. Clinton may think Necessary—’tis expected and required of You—that you pay strict and close Attention to this Business—and drive on the Works with all possible Dispatch, In Case of an Attack from the Enemy, or in any Action with them you are to join and act with the Artillery on that Station, and to return to your Duty in the Regiment as soon as you can be spared from the Works

That was the beginning of Machin’s long service fortifying and protecting the upper Hudson against British ships, which included his most storied feat: building a chain of barriers across the river at West Point.

Machin had left something behind in Massachusetts, however. On 10 Aug 1778 Dr. Nathaniel Freeman wrote to Machin from Sandwich: “Your chest of books and instruments are safe here, and ready to be delivered to your order at any time…”

As for Massachusetts’s big engineering project, Freeman wrote, “Our report respecting the channel was seasonably made and in favor of it, but nothing done.” The Cape Cod Canal wasn’t completed until the early twentieth century.