Samuel Plummer and His Father’s Sword

Here’s one more story from my foray up the coast from Boston to Gloucester.

Dr. Samuel Plumer, the man who was keeping George Penn enslaved in 1770, had a son, also named Samuel. The younger man tended to spell his surname Plummer.

Young Samuel Plummer attended Dummer Academy and then Harvard College, graduating in 1771 with a nearly spotless record. He was awarded his master’s degree from Harvard in July 1774. Plummer set out to train in medicine with his father.

Here’s the legend he left behind, as told by John J. Babson in his 1860 History of the Town of Gloucester, Cape Ann:

A female negro slave, belonging to his father, had been discovered to be in a state of pregnancy; and not returning one night from the Poles pasture, to which she had gone for the cows, a diligent search for her revealed the horrible fact that she had been murdered. A sword, with which the deed was done, was found in a crevice in a large rock. It was known to belong to Dr. Plummer; and the name of his son was immediately associated with this act of double wickedness.

As no legal measures were taken to investigate the case, he did not leave home immediately; but the increasing mutterings of the people at length aroused apprehension of arrest, and he was obliged to flee to escape the possible consequences of the awful deed which had been committed. He left the town by the way of Squam Ferry and the Ipswich Road, and never again but once returned to it.

Thirty years afterwards, on a Sunday morning, he made his appearance in his native place once more, and stopped at a tavern at the Harbor. His stay was short, extending only to the next day. No disguise was necessary, of course, after this lapse of time, to make him seem to others, as he must have felt himself, a stranger. It is not known that he avoided recognition, or that he sought to exchange greetings with the friends and acquaintances of his youth whom death had still spared. In company with a cousin, to whom he made himself known, he visited the spot of his birth and the haunts of his early years. Around these scenes he lingered several hours: but no visible emotion disclosed the state of feeling which they awakened; and he took his departure from them and from his companion, without leaving any information of himself by which his previous or subsequent career can be traced.

According to Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, Samuel Plummer was reported as dying in 1815, the year he would have turned sixty-three.

The local tradition Babson recorded didn’t preserve the victim’s name or the date of her death. Dr. Samuel Plumer died in 1778 intestate; his probate file doesn’t mention his son Samuel or any human property, so the killing probably happened in the four years between 1774 and 1778. I’ve found no reference to such a murder in the Gloucester vital records or the Massachusetts newspapers from the late 1700s.

The Disappearance of George Penn

After George Penn sat on the Salem gallows for an hour and was whipped twenty times, as described yesterday, the authorities sent him back to the Essex County jail to finish another part of his sentence for rioting: two years’ imprisonment.

At the time, Penn was “(a Mulatto) aged thirty, five Feet nine Inches, and remarkably stout for his Heighth.”

We have that description from the 18 Aug 1772 Essex Gazette. It appeared there because of an event reported in the same paper:

The several Prisoners confined in his Majesty’s Gaol in this Town made their Escape last Saturday Night [15 August].

They were all committed on criminal Actions, viz. Charles Lee, Francis Lewis, Samuel White, William Campbell, and George Mitchell, for Theft, and George Penn, a Mulatto, for being concerned in a Riot at Cape-Ann two or three years ago. For the better Security of them, Mr. Brown, the Prison-Keeper, had them all confined in the two lower Apartments, which were deemed the strongest of any in the Prison.

They however, by Means of a Gimblet and Chizel, made a Hole through the Partition, which divided the two Rooms, and thereby all got together: They then bored off a square Piece of Plank in the Floor, and with the Chizel cut it quite out. Having thus got through the Floor, they applied themselves to work out a Passage through the Stones and Earth, and finally forced their Way through the Underpinning of the Building, quite into the Yard, which is inclosed with a very high Fence; they however, with their united Strength, forced open the Gate, and went off entirely undiscovered.

County sheriff Richard Saltonstall ran an advertisement in that paper describing the six escapees and offering a reward of $10. Those men ranged from “a French Lad, (as will be discovered by his speech) aged twenty” to a man “about forty Years old.”

The same newspaper also reported that a married couple who had arrived in town with the suspected thief Mitchell, “with much pretended Innocence,” had departed town suddenly, leaving behind some scraps of cloth. Also, a Danvers man reported finding a pile of clothing “hid in the Corner of a Wall,…near where Mr. Putnam found the Goods supposed to be stolen by Campbell.” So those thieves were very much on the locals’ minds.

It’s notable that the newspaper referred to the man previously called “a Mulatto Servant [i.e., slave] of Samuel Plummer, Esq; of Gloucester, named George,” with a surname. Did the full name George Penn indicate that Dr. Plumer had freed him? Or simply disowned him?

In the eighteenth century the word “stout” referred to muscle, not fat, so for George Penn to be “remarkably stout for his Heighth” suggests he contributed a lot of the “united Strength” that forced open the prison gate.

Once outside, the men presumably scattered. The harbors of Salem and neighboring towns offered plenty of opportunities to move. Sheriff Saltonstall’s advertisement appeared in the newspaper for several more weeks, into September. But so far as I can tell, George Penn was never apprehended to serve out the rest of his sentence.

TOMORROW: Whatever happened to Jesse Saville?

ADDENDUM: The vital records of Ipswich report an intention of marriage on 16 July 1777 between George Penn and Flora Freewoman. There’s no racial label for either of those people, but this town may have used the appelations Freeman and Freewoman for former slaves. In the 1770s and 1780s listings are Prince, Cesar, and Titus Freeman, the latter marrying Katherine Freewoman. So George Penn may not have completely disappeared after the jailbreak, just laid low in a nearby town until the government changed.

“Being concerned in a Riot at Cape-Ann”

After his Gloucester neighbors mobbed him a second time, dragging him through town and tarring him in 1770, Jesse Seville stopped suing people for the previous assault, back in 1768.

He didn’t show up in court when his case (previously dismissed) came up for appeal at the end of March.

But that wasn’t the end of the legal process. Because once again some government authorities prosecuted the people who attacked Saville for assault. Or at least one person.

That criminal case came to trial 250 years ago this month. The 13 Nov 1770 Essex Gazette reported:

At the Superior Court held here last Week, a Mulatto Servant of Samuel Plummer, Esq; of Gloucester, named George [Penn], was convicted of aiding and assisting in seizing the Person of one Jesse Saville, in the Month of March last,…

Then came the description of the crime I quoted yesterday. The article concluded:

George would not or could not discover any of the Persons concerned with him: They being all disguised, except himself, prevented their being known.———

On Saturday last the said Servant George was sentenced, by the Court, to receive 39 Stripes, sit upon the Gallows one Hour, suffer two Years Imprisonment, and find Surety for his good Behaviour for the Term of seven Years.

Dr. Samuel Plumer (1725-1778) was the older brother of David Plumer, the merchant who had overseen the first attack on Saville’s home. It’s possible the judges sentenced George Penn to prison, not a common penalty at the time, as a way to punish Dr. Plumer by depriving him of the man’s labor.

It took over a year for the corporal punishment to be carried out. The 21 Jan 1772 Essex Gazette described the hanging of a rapist in Salem the previous Thursday and added:

George, a Mulatto, at the same Time sat on the Gallows, with a Rope round his Neck, for the Space of one Hour, and afterwards received 20 Stripes under the same, but being concerned in a Riot at Cape-Ann, some considerable Time since. He was sentenced to receive 39, but his Excellency the Governor [Thomas Hutchinson] was pleased to remit 19.

Penn resisted all pressure to identify the other men who had mobbed Jesse Saville in 1770.

Through these incidents we see the plight of enslaved blacks in Gloucester. During the first assault, Dr. Samuel Rogers threatened Saville’s “Servant” with his dental tools. In the second assault, the attackers reportedly disguised themselves as men of color—“Indians and negroes”—providing witnesses with plausible deniability. A black man was the only one identified and convicted.

TOMORROW: The disappearance of George Penn.