“The troops quitting the town was a beautiful sight”

From yesterday we continue with Robert Woolf’s reminiscence of being a teen-aged businessman caught in the siege of Boston in the spring of 1775:

I had not been many days settled with the family of a gentleman in the custom house when, early on the morning of June the 17th (1775), we were awakened by a smart cannonade from one of the ships of war!

This was no less than the prelude to the famous and bloody battle of Bunker’s Hill, so well recorded in all the public documents of the time that it requires no comment. I, however, lost a valuable friend, Major [John] Pitcairn, killed on the field, and the cries and groans of the great number of wounded brought into the town, as they passed our house, were heart-rending.

Affairs now remained quiet until the following year, the town strictly blockaded by the Americans, the troops and remaining inhabitants suffering many privations up to the beginning of March, 1776. Then began a heavy cannonade and bombardment, many of the shot falling so close to my quarters that we were obliged to remove to a more distant part of the town, and soon afterwards orders were issued by the Governor [actually Gen. William Howe] for the troops and loyal inhabitants to evacuate the place.

This was accordingly done without molestation by the enemy, and all embarked safely in transports provided for the occasion. The troops quitting the town was a beautiful sight, the whole coming off at one and the same time by signal!

I hadn’t seen anyone praise the British soldiers’ departure that way before. In fact, contemporaneous sources are clear that the some troops went on board ships days before others. Perhaps Woolf was remembering one particular day, such as the last embarkation on 17 March, and all the redcoats left in town at that time.

All then proceeded to Halifax, Nova Scotia, which, being a small place, caused no little confusion. The troops, however, remained but a few days [more like weeks] and then proceeded to attack the Americans at New York, leaving two battalions in Halifax, with whom I was stationed, and became one of the mess of the second battalion, and there I remained for two years, thus having an opportunity of exploring some parts of that wild and (at that time) unsettled country, the extensive and impenetrable woods coming within two miles of the town.

At last we embarked for England with part of the marines, and after a most boisterous passage (at one time being five days unable to carry any sail, or to cook any victuals) we landed safely at Plymouth, where I remained a week, and then, proceeding to Portsmouth, a few days more saw me safely set down again in London! October, 1778.

By 1779 Woolf moved on to India, eventually becoming accountant-general for the East India Company. He married Anna Maria Smart, whose father painted the miniature of her shown above. They had nine children.

In 1848 a granddaughter of the couple moved to the province of New Brunswick, bringing some family papers and art. That’s why the portrait is in the National Gallery of Canada and Woolf’s memoir was published by the Women’s Canadian Historical Society despite having no mention of women.

Hyson’s Story about a Walk to Liberty Tree

Caleb Crain’s 2010 New Yorker article “Tea and Antipathy” quotes an item from the Boston press, and Andrew Roberts’s recent Spectator essay quotes Crain’s article (without credit).

Here I’m sharing the whole text of that item for analysis.

This letter appeared in Richard Draper’s Boston News-Letter on 4 Nov 1773, the day after Boston’s first public meeting about the tea (which devolved into a small riot against the Clarke family):

Mr. DRAPER,

As I was walking Yesterday Noon towards Liberty-Tree, a Man who seemed to have just left his Work, hurried by me—I asked him why he walked so fast—

he said he was going to Liberty-Tree; for his Wife told him at Breakfast, that the Men who had raised the Price of Tea upon the Poor to a Dollar a Pound were to be carried there and obliged to sell as usual.—

I told him of his Wife’s Mistake,—That the Design was to make those who expect to have it to sell at half that Price, send it back again.—

Aye, replies the Man, if that be the Case, I will go no further,—and returned back to his Work again.

Your’s HYSON.

Did this exchange actually happen? Or did “HYSON” create this tidy story to dramatize a detail of the conflict that he (or she) thought wasn’t getting enough press? I’m inclined to think the latter.

Early on, there probably was confusion about how the Tea Act changed the business of importing tea. One American newspaper seemed to treat the East India Company as a victim of the new law rather than a beneficiary.

Furthermore, the idea of a “moral economy” was strong at the time. Most folks believed that people with goods shouldn’t price them too high, or monopolize supply, or keep them off the market in hopes of a better price. Boston regulated the price of bread. I recall a news story about a man pursued for buying up too many turkeys. During the war, a riot by women forced Thomas Boylston to sell the coffee he was hoarding, and eventually he left town entirely.

So it’s possible some Bostonians thought the problem with tea was that price was too damn high. Even more likely is that some didn’t realize the tea consignees could drop the price for their latest supply (which of course didn’t mean that they had to).

But by that point the Whig leaders had been complaining about the tea tax for years. People understood non-importation as a political tactic. And that Liberty Tree gathering on 3 November was explicitly about forcing the tea consignees to return those cargos to London, not to sell them on the spot. So this putative Bostonian must have exceptionally out of touch with the issues. (To be sure, the story puts more blame on his wife.)

In addition, I can’t help recalling that the Hutchinsons and Clarkes had already been among Boston’s biggest importers of tea. That’s one reason they were at the front of the line to handle the East India Company’s own supply. So it’s possible that “the Men who had raised the Price of Tea upon the Poor to a Dollar a Pound” and “those who expect to have it to sell” now were the same men.

More significant to how the overall tea conflict played out, however, I can’t find this letter reprinted in any American newspaper. Neither in Boston nor in other towns, neither in Whig papers nor in those leaning toward the Crown. Printers just didn’t think the point that “Hyson” made, however accurate, was that newsworthy.

Lexington and the “subtle, wicked ministerial plan”

Last week I analyzed the accounts of tea burning in Marshfield 250 years ago and concluded that I found no strong evidence for the exact date of this event.

Marshfield was notable for being split between Whigs and Loyalists. It had an Anglican church as well as the Congregationalists. The control of town meeting teetered back and forth between factions. The tea-burning, whenever it happened, wasn’t an official act.

In contrast, the town of Lexington was militantly Whig. Its minister, the Rev. Jonas Clarke, supported that stance. Early on, the town voted to create a committee of correspondence to share news and views with Boston and elsewhere—a litmus test for radicalism.

On 13 Dec 1773, as the crisis over the East India Company cargoes in Boston heated up, Lexington called a town meeting. Charles Hudson’s town histories published the record, and Alexander Cain, author of We Stood Our Ground: Lexington in the First Year of the American Revolution, has shared more exact transcriptions at Untapped History. I drew the quotations that follow from a combination of those sources.

Lexington’s committee of correspondence produced a blistering statement about the Tea Act:

…the Enemies of the Rights & Liberties of Americans, greatly disappointed in the Success of the Revenue Act, are seeking to Avail themselves of New, & if possible, Yet more detestable Measures to distress, Enslave & destroy us.

Not enough that a Tax was laid Upon Teas, which should be Imported by Us, for the Sole Purpose of Raising a revenue to support Taskmasters, Pensioners, &c., in Idleness and Luxury; But by a late Act of Parliament, to Appease the wrath of the East India Company, whose Trade to America had been greatly clogged by the operation of the Revenue Acts, Provision is made for said Company to export their teas to America free and discharged from all Duties and Customs in England, but liable to all the same Rules, Regulations, Penalties & Forfeitures in America, as are Provided by the Revenue Act. . . .

Once admit this subtle, wicked ministerial plan to take place, once permit this tea, thus imposed upon us by the East India Company, to be landed, received, and vended by their consignees, factors, &c., the badge of our slavery is fixed, the foundation of ruin is surely laid; and, unless a wise and powerful God, by some unforeseen revolution in Providence, shall prevent, we shall soon be obliged to bid farewell to the once flourishing trade of America, and an everlasting adieu to those glorious rights and liberties for which our worthy ancestors so earnestly prayed, so bravely fought, so freely bled!

The committee proposed six resolves to steer the town away from this horrible fate. These included:

2. That we will not be concerned either directly or indirectly in landing, receiving, buying, or selling, or even using any of the Teas sent out by the East India Company, or that shall be imported subject to a duty imposed by Act of Parliament, for the purpose of raising a revenue in America.

3. That all such persons as shall directly or indirectly aid and assist in landing, receiving, buying, selling, or using the Teas sent by the East India Company, or imported by others subject to a duty, for the purpose of a revenue, shall be deemed and treated by us as enemies of their country.

Other resolves endorsed everything the Bostonians were doing and condemned the tea consignees, even naming Richard Clarke and the Hutchinson brothers.

After the meeting unanimously approved those statements, someone proposed another:

That if any Head of a Family in this Town, or any Person, shall from this time forward; & until the Duty taken off, purchase any Tea, Use or consume any Tea in their Famelies, such person shall be looked upon as an Enemy to this town & to this Country, and shall by this Town be treated with Neglect & Contempt.

Now they were getting personal.

TOMORROW: What happened next.

“To wait upon the Messrs. Hutchinsons at Milton”

Over the two days of 5–6 Nov 1773, the Boston town meeting tried to finish the job an informal committee of businessmen (and rioters) had failed to do: convince the East India Company’s agents in Boston to resign from that responsibility.

The first step was getting those men to actually admit to having been appointed. Although there were plenty of reports that the company had decided to sell its tea through Thomas and Elisha Hutchinson, Richard Clarke and Sons, and Benjamin Faneuil and Joshua Winslow, no official paperwork had arrived.

Furthermore, those merchants were keeping low profiles after their confrontation with the crowd on 3 November.

The official record of the town meeting describe how that effort played out.

On the morning of 5 November, the meeting named a high-powered committee to ask those agents to resign: John Hancock as meeting moderator; merchants Henderson Inches, Benjamin Austin, and Jonathan Mason; and all the selectmen—Hancock again, plus John Scollay, Timothy Newell, Thomas Marshall, Oliver Wendell, Samuel Austin, and John Pitts.

Those men evidently went out with their message during the dinner break. At 3:00 P.M. the town meeting resumed with the committee’s report that Clarke and Faneuil had declined to respond on the excuse that they couldn’t consult with the Hutchinson brothers, who were out at their father’s house in Milton.

The meeting then named Samuel Adams, William Molineux, and Dr. Joseph Warren—three men not currently active as merchants but among the most radical political leaders—to deliver a more forceful demand to Clarke and Faneuil. They came back with a promise of a reply in half an hour.

The gathering then decided that Hancock, Pitts, Adams, Warren, William Powell, and Nathaniel Appleton would go out to Milton with the same message for the Hutchinsons.

Someone brought in Clarke and Faneuil’s written message on behalf of their firms. Those men stated that since they didn’t yet have the details of the tea consignment, they couldn’t comply with the town’s request. The town unanimously voted that response unsatisfactory.

The meeting resumed the next day at 11:00 A.M., “still continuing very full.” Town clerk William Cooper recorded:

The Committee appointed to wait upon the Messrs. Hutchinsons at Milton—Reported—That they had enquired the last Evening and this Morning at the House of Elish Hutchinson Esq. in this Town, and were informed that those Gentlemen were at Milton;

the Committee proceeded this Morning to Milton and calling at the Governors Seat were informed that only Mr. Elisha Hutchinson lodged there the last Night, who had set out early this Morning for Boston;

on their return they called at his House, and were told that he had been at home this Morning but had again set off for Milton—

they then went to the House of Thomas Hutchinson Esq. who was then at home, where they read and delivered to him an attested Copy of the Towns Vote, when he acquainted the Committee, that the Town might expect his answer in one quarter of an Hour—

The following Letter was soon after sent into the Moderator, signed Thomas Hutchinson, which was read, vizt.

Sir

I have nothing relative to the Teas referred to in the request or Vote of the Town, except that one of my Friends has signified to me by Letter, that part of it he had reason to believe would be Consigned to me and my Brother Jointly, but upon what terms he could not then say——

Under these circumstances I can give no other answer to the Town, at present, then that if the Teas should arrive & we should be appointed Factors, we shall then be sufficiently informed to answer the request of the Town—

I am for my Brother & self
Sir Your humble Servant
T. Hutchinson Junr.

The meeting voted that unsatisfactory with no dissent. Then the citizens declared, once against unanimously, that all the tea consignees’ behavior was “Daringly Affrontive.” They voted to send the record of this meeting to every town in Massachusetts, and thus to the newspapers.

There was one last action:

A Motion was then made, that the Thanks of the Town be given to the Honble. John Hancock Esq. the Moderator of this Meeting for the dispatch he has given to the Business thereof—but the Motion was objected to by himself and Mr. Adams, and it seemed to be the sense of the Town, that a Vote of Thanks should be only given upon very special and signal services performed for the Publick——

Hancock and his colleagues had, after all, simply been carrying out their duties as patriotic citizens. (Though I’m sure Hancock enjoyed the gesture of public praise.)

Meanwhile, in between those two town meeting sessions Boston had observed its traditional Pope Night.

TOMORROW: And how had that gone?

(The picture above, courtesy of the Milton Historical Society, is the only known image of Gov. Thomas Hutchinson’s country mansion in Milton, where his son Elisha spent the night of 5 Nov 1773. John Ritto Penniman painted this picture in 1827, so it shows the house as it existed fifty years after the Revolution, having perhaps been remodeled.)

“The 5th. of Novr. being a day of disorder”

On 3 Nov 1773, as I described back in 2019, Boston saw its first tea-inspired violence.

The Sons of Liberty, using a note signed “O.C.,” had summoned half a dozen merchants to meet under Liberty Tree and resign their appointments as agents to sell the East India Company’s tea. Those activists were following the playbook of the first Stamp Act protest from August 1765.

When no merchants showed up, however, William Molineux led a crowd to the warehouse of Richard Clarke (shown here) and demanded a reply. Then they demanded entry, shoving their way inside.

Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, father of two of the tea agents and a more distant relative of others, described how that confrontation ended:

Mr. [Nathaniel] Hatch a gentleman of Dorchester & a Justice of peace commanded the peace & required them to disperse [i.e., Hatch read the Riot Act] but they hooted at him & after a blow from one of them he was glad to retreat. I was all the time in the Council chamber with as many gentlemen of the Council as I could get together but could not make a Quorum.

The mob, after they found the gentlemen determined, began to separate and thereupon a number of gentlemen, who were in the Street, went through those that remained, joined the Gentlemen who were with the consignees in the Warehouse, & guarded them through the mob who were discouraged from offering any further violence.

The next morning I met the Council who advised me, unanimously, to direct the Attorney General [Jonathan Sewall] to prosecute such persons as upon inquiry into this tumult should appear to him to have been Offenders and, as I am informed the Justice has evidence of the person who struck him, I doubt not I can prevail with him to bring forward a separate prosecution of that Offence.

The gentlemen of the town have shewn more resolution upon this occasion than I have known before and, hitherto, nothing has been done which can bring any imputation upon the Town in general. I wish the Select men had discountenanced the proceeding. I am informed a Town meeting is intended to morrow. I wish nothing may be done there which shall oblige me to give your Lordship a less favorable account.

Indeed, the selectmen’s records for 4 November read:

The Selectmen having receiving a Petition from a number of the Inhabitants praying that a Town Meeting may be called immediately for the purpose set forth in their Petition, whereupon,

Voted, that the Town Clerk [William Cooper] issue his Warrant for a Town Meeting Fryday next 10 O’Clock.

“Fryday next” meant the next day. That was also the 5th of November, or Pope Night, when Boston’s youth paraded with effigies of the enemies of the day, collecting money, before having a big rumble and bonfire.

Hutchinson wrote:

The 5th. of Novr. being a day of disorder, every year, in the town of Boston one of my sons thought it advisable to remove with his family to the Lieutenant Governor’s in town, the other came to me in the Country.

In other words, Thomas Hutchinson, Jr., went to his father-in-law Andrew Oliver’s house in Boston, and Elisha Hutchinson left town for his father’s mansion in Milton. Other tea consignees probably took similar protection action.

A town meeting was the most official way for Boston to take political action while the Pope Night processions were the least respectable. How would that Friday play out?

TOMORROW: The 5th of November in 1773.

Two Chests of Tea Unaccounted for?

This morning I’m speaking about the Boston Tea Party at a teachers’ workshop hosted by the Massachusetts Historical Society.

And, as I’ve written over the past couple of days, I’ll be speaking about other aspects of the Tea Party around the 250th anniversary in December.

That’s got me thinking about one small mystery of the event highlighted by Charles Bahne in a posting back in 2009.

All the Boston newspapers in 1773 reported that persons unknown had destroyed 342 chests of tea, and that number went into American histories and textbooks. But the East India Company asked the British government to compensate it for the loss of only 340 chests.

More specifically, the locals believed each ship carried 114 chests, but the East India Company tallied only 112 on the Beaver. That was the last of the three ships to arrive at Griffin’s Wharf, mooring on 15 December.

The East India Company accountants had no reason to undercount the chests. And counting goods was their job, after all.

In contrast, the men destroying the tea didn’t need a numerical total at the end of the night—they just needed to know there were no chests left in the holds.

So the simplest explanation is that the locals simply assumed that if there were 114 chests on each of the first two ships, there must be 114 chests on the third, and didn’t bother to confirm that.

But are there other possibilities? Might the Beaver have carried 114 chests of tea across the Atlantic, but then something happened to cause two of those chests not to be listed in the East India Company’s losses? I can imagine two possible scenarios:

• Two chests were slipped off the Beaver during the days it was quarantined for smallpox in the harbor, and the company chose to say nothing about those.
• The Beaver’s captain, Hezekiah Coffin, carried two chests of tea on his own account, not property of the East India Company. The Bostonians dumping tea took those as well, and therefore counted 114. Coffin kept his mouth shut.

As I said, the simplest explanation is that the East India Company figure was accurate and complete, and the local figure was based on an erroneous assumption. But this little mystery opens the door to speculation.

Turning London’s Queer Underground into a Game

In 2017 Wehrlegig Games released the first version of John Company, an interactive historical game based on the rise and fall of the British East India Company.

Players had to navigate the company’s world-spanning bureaucracy and the fallout of their actions in India. That game is in its second edition.

Now Wehrlegig Games is preparing to release Molly House, a game based on the lives of queer people in eighteenth-century London. This game has been in development for a few years, and its launch is more than funded through the crowdfunding site BackerKit.

The description on Board Game Geek says:

In Molly House, players take the roles of the gender-defying mollies of early eighteenth century London. Throw grand masquerades and cruise back alleys while evading moralistic constables who seek to destroy your community. Be careful, there may even be informers in your midst!

Over the course of an hour, players will draft hands of vice cards representing the different gestures, desires, and encounters that were frowned upon by the Society for the Reformation of Manners, a citizen group that sought to stamp out any behavior it deemed deviant in late 17th and early 18th century London. These cards allow players to host festivities with the help of their fellow mollies and create joy. But, those same cards can also lead players to be arrested and to the ultimate ruin of the molly house.

As players encounter the Society’s enforcers, they will often have to pay bribes or may be coerced into becoming informers for the Society. Informers must try desperately to undermine the community around Mother Clap’s Molly House without being discovered by their fellow mollies.

The description on Backerkit lays out how the game connects to historic developments:

The rapid growth of London in the late 17th century allowed for greater anonymity, and the increase in population gave access to a wider range of people, allowing queer people to congregate in burgeoning communities. Molly House is a game about how these communities formed and flourished even in the shadow of great persecution. It is an intimate game about the very idea of intimacy.

Molly House is also a game about policing. Here the primary policing actors are not city officials but instead a citizen group, the Society for the Reformation of Manners, which sought to weaponize the legal apparatus of the city in order to destroy a community it perceived as a threat. Critically, this goal could not have been accomplished without the intimidation and eventual compliance of a handful of informers, drawn from the ranks of the house’s patrons.

Lastly, Molly House is a game about the practice of history itself. So much of queer history has been lost: hidden, suppressed, or outright destroyed. But, the story of the molly houses of the eighteenth century was protected in the most unexpected of places. As witnesses were pulled before the authorities in London, they gave their testimony and their accounts were preserved in the proceedings of the Old Bailey (London’s central criminal court). 

Board Game Geek also offers perspectives on the development of the game by Cole Wehrle, co-founder of the company, and Jo Kelly, the primary designer.

I don’t play board games often, especially these more esoteric games. And the culture of developing those games is even more fascinatingly foreign, with its own vocabulary and traditions. Like period fiction, dramas on stage and screen, and video games, well designed board games and role-playing games offer unique ways to explore the dramas and contingencies of history.  

Background to the Boston Tea Party

If Parliament had enacted a tariff on tea in 1765 instead of a Stamp Act for North America, would colonists have resisted that new tax as strongly as they did? It’s impossible to answer a historical counterfactual question, but nonetheless I keep asking myself this one.

The tea supply was, after all, made possible by the might and spread of the British Empire. Taxing people who enjoyed that commodity to support the imperial government therefore might seem justified.

Many colonists would have paid the stamp tax directly, making it easy for American Whigs to show that new revenue laws affected everyone, even farmers (and most Americans were farmers). In contrast, only the merchants importing tea paid the tea tariff. They passed that cost on to their customers, to be sure, but it wasn’t so obvious.

Furthermore, unlike some of the actions taxed by the Stamp Act, such as court filings and marriages, no one was legally required to buy tea. And yet, because tea supplied that pleasant touch of caffeine, many Americans were in the habit of drinking it.

In 1765, therefore, Americans might well have grumbled about an imperial tea tariff, but not massively and energetically enough to render the new law unenforceable. Would that revenue have satisfied the ministry in London enough that successive administrations wouldn’t have tried new tax laws? Or would it have provided a precedent for more tariffs based on similar commodities?

As it was, the ideas that the British constitution rightly bars taxation without representation, that corrupt royal appointees were draining money from the colonies, and that these problems could affect even people in small towns far from the ports were widespread by 1773. That made the Tea Act loom larger than it otherwise would have.

In this Sestercentennial year for the tea crisis, many institutions are examining that conflict through events and exhibits. Of course, the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum focuses on the climax of that crisis every day. It’s got two events coming up exploring the background of the event and commemorations of it.

Thursday, 8 June, 7:00 to 8:30 P.M.
Canton to Boston: How Chinese Tea Steeped at American Revolution
Abigail’s Tea Room and online (registration required)

Tea historian Bruce Richardson was recently granted access to the vaults of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, where he searched for teas like those tossed into Boston Harbor on December 16, 1773. He will share news of his detective work and the fascinating journey of the Boston teas as they left Canton bound for London’s East India Company warehouses and Colonial America.

Sunday, 25 June, 7:00 P.M.
Rev War Revelry: The Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum
Facebook Live

Join the hosts at Emerging Revolutionary War as they talk with staff of the Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum on the history of the events leading up to and on December 16, 1773, learn more about their interactive museum and learn about all the events planned around this year’s 250th anniversary.

Vaughn on “Tea, Taxes and World History,” 24 May

On Wednesday, 24 May, the American Revolution Institute in Washington, D.C., will host a talk by Prof. James M. Vaughn of the University of Chicago on “On Tea, Taxes and World History: The British East India Company and the Origins of the American Revolution.”

The event description says:

In May 1773, Parliament passed the Tea Act, which instituted a tax of three cents per pound on all British tea sold in America. The act effectively granted a monopoly on the sale of tea in the American colonies to the British East India Company, which was looking to reduce its excessive stores of tea and relieve its financial burdens.

To commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Tea Act’s passage, James Vaughn, a historian of the British Empire at the University of Chicago, examines the developments in Britain, British North America and South Asia leading to the passage of the act, and discusses why a relatively mundane piece of parliamentary legislation renewed the imperial crisis and led to the outbreak of the American Revolution.

Vaughn is a professor at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on the British Empire and Atlantic world during the eighteenth century. He is the author of The Politics of Empire at the Accession of George III: The East India Company and the Crisis and Transformation of Britain’s Imperial State and co-editor of Envisioning Empire: The New British World from 1763 to 1773.

Vaughn is currently preparing “a book on the American Revolution and the origins of liberal democracy in global context.”

This talk will also be available for viewing online, starting at 6:30 P.M. Register through this page.

“I am (as we say) a daughter of liberty”

For a presentation this week that didn’t come off, I picked out three extracts from the letters of young teenager Anna Green Winslow to her mother in Nova Scotia, showing her political awakening. She wrote between November 1771 and May 1773.

Richard Gridley, retired artillery colonel, explained the political factions to Anna.

As a girl, and an upper-class girl at that, Anna wasn’t supposed to demonstrate in the streets. But the Whig movement encouraged girls to participate in other ways, such as learning to spin so that local weavers could make more cloth so that local merchants didn’t have to import so much from Britain.

But Anna didn’t know how to spin.

So she contented herself by visiting the Manufactory where her cousin Sally’s yarn had been woven into cloth, and doing a little dance there.

Anna could also participate in the movement as a consumer, choosing to buy more locally produced goods. In one letter she proudly described herself to her mother as a “daughter of liberty.”

I’m not sure how Anna’s family felt about the politics she was learning in Boston. Her father, Joshua Winslow, was more closely allied with royal officials. Later in 1773 he lucked out (he thought) in being named one of the East India Company’s tea consignees in Boston. But when the town mobilized against allowing that tea to be landed, he had to lie low in Marshfield. Eventually, he left Massachusetts as a Loyalist.

Anna Green Winslow remained in the state, living in Hingham, but she died in 1780. Alas, outside of those letters to her mother in 1771–1773 we have almost no sources about Anna’s life, so we don’t know how her political outlook changed after the Whigs made her father an enemy for agreeing to sell tea, and after the war began.

Four Million Pounds of Leaves

At the Regency Explorer, Anna M. Thane shared information about a problem I hadn’t consider: counterfeit tea.

That doesn’t mean the labrador and other herbal infusions that Whig leaders like Dr. Thomas Young promoted as a substitute for tea during the boycott 250 years ago.

Rather, this problem was leaves of other plants sold as genuine tea in Britain. According to Thane:

A government report states in 1783 that the quantity of fictitious tea made from sloe and ash-tree leaves sums up to more than four million pounds (compare to the whole quantity of genuine tea sold by the East India Company: about 6 million pounds per year).

For consumers the problem wasn’t just not getting the tea (and caffeine) they expected. Turning sloe and ash-tree leaves into something that looked like black tea started with boiling them with verdigris, which was poisonous. For green tea, the leaves would be colored with the same substance. Also, sloe was known as a purgative.

In 1820 a chemist named Frederick Accum published A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons in London describing the tricks of making counterfeit tea and also the ways of testing the leaves one had bought to make sure they were genuine.

Check out the Regency Explorer for that vital information. Seems like it might be especially useful for a mystery novelist.

From Experimental Seamanship to the Naval Art

Fans of the Age of Sail might enjoy reading Elin Jones’s article “Stratifying Seamanship: Sailors’ Knowledge and the Mechanical Arts in Eighteenth-century Britain” in the British Journal for the History of Science, accessible here.

As the abstract explains, in the mid- and late 1700s a few British “seamen with decades of experience on the lower deck of merchant and naval vessels” published books about the practical aspects of sailing large ships. Those titles were popular, going through multiple editions.

But after a few more years those authors were supplanted by “land-bound authors and naval officers” from the upper class. That change erased the first group’s emphasis on the collective knowledge and ingenuity of working sailors.

British mariners already viewed “seamanship” and “navigation” as separate areas of knowledge, divided by class. Young Royal Navy officers learned to manage the vessel from veteran sailors, but only officers were expected to know how to figure out where the ship was. For an ordinary seaman to appear on deck with a sextant was not only rare, but possibly mutinous.

It takes a while for the article to get through theories of knowledge to its evidence, but here’s a compelling example:

In 1792, William Nichelson, who had been a seaman on merchant ships before becoming master attendant at Portsmouth throughout the American Revolutionary Wars, published his A Treatise on Practical Navigation and Seamanship. . . .

Nichelson’s work was structured around occurrences and weather events he had encountered under sail and his observations on the best methods to rig, reef, furl, steer and haul, and to improve the ship whilst at sea. . . .

This is most thoroughly demonstrated in Nichelson’s forty-page recounting of the voyage of the East India Company ship Elizabeth from India to England in 1764, aboard which he had acted as master. Whilst sailing 650 leagues off the Cape of Good Hope, the crew of the Elizabeth had encountered a storm which had almost wrecked the ship, and required them to sail for thirty-five days back towards the Cape without a working rudder. Nichelson’s account of this period recounts the inventiveness and ingenuity of an experienced seafaring crew in the face of immediate danger. The ship again was represented as a site of experiment, as the author described in great detail the process by which the crew arrived at the invention of a temporary rudder, made by sawing part of the top mast and lashing it to the outside of the ship, which would form the main part of the new ‘machine’, then sawing an oak plank until it resembled a ‘key’ which could manipulate the mast's direction.

While old salts like Nichelson emphasized gaining knowledge through “experimental” practice, the succeeding set of genteel authors wrote of a “naval art” available to only a few.

This shift from a prizing of collective manual labour to individual mental acumen is further represented in a 1793 publication of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce which details the ‘invention’ by Captain Edward Pakenham of ‘a substitute for a lost rudder’. The invention is remarkably similar to that described by Hutchinson and Nichelson several years earlier, but the account given of its creation is very different. Whilst Nichelson's representation of events emphasized the work of the crew in pooling their experience to arrive at the invention of their new ‘machine’, Pakenham's account describes him as a ‘highly-esteemed inventor’ and includes a plan of ‘my machine’, which he seems miraculously to have devised and wrought single-handedly.

The plan for a temporary rudder is almost identical to that designed by Nichelson's crew, but it would come to be known as ‘Pakenham's Rudder’, described as ‘genius working for the benefit of humanity’, and accordingly awarded a gold medal by the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.

There are no American examples in the article, but it put me in mind of how Capt. Timothy Folger of Nantucket told his cousin, Benjamin Franklin, about the Gulf Stream. Franklin sent his first report on this ocean current to London in 1768. British authorities mostly ignored it. Franklin ended up republishing his map in later decades in France and the U.S. of A.

How Big Was a “Half Chest” of Tea?

Returning to the leafy details of the Boston Tea Party, earlier this month I quoted the Boston Gazette reporting that Ebenezer Withington had found “a half chest which had floated and was cast up on Dorchester point.”

Around the same time John Rowe wrote that people had confiscated “about half a Chest of Tea” from Withington.

Rowe’s report was almost certainly secondhand. The Gazette article could also have been hearsay, or could have come from an eyewitness to the tea confiscation and burning.

Withington’s own surviving statement said nothing about the quantity of tea or the size of the container it arrived in.

The phrase “a half chest” prompted local historian Charles Bahne to comment:

The East India Company's official inventory of the tea destroyed in Boston — which I discussed in these pages on December 17, 2009 — indicates that this particular cargo was shipped in full chests, weighing an average of 353 pounds each (net weight, not counting the chest itself); and in smaller chests that averaged 77 pounds net. Those smaller chests were about a quarter the weight of a full chest, so presumably they were "quarter chests". There don't seem to be any "half chests" on board.

So where did Withington's half chest come from?

Christopher Sherwood Davis, who researched the shipments for the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum, then responded:

It's my theory that "half chest" functioned as a generic term for a smaller chest, while also being a more technical term for a chest one half the weight of a whole chest. Much like how "barrel" is both a generic term for a cask and a type of cask with a specific volume. Drake's Tea Leaves has the Polly's freight invoice for the tea, and it refers to the same 130 chests as both "half" and "quarter" in different places. The Dartmouth's logbook also calls the chests "half chests", but as you pointed out the average weights are more consistent with the quarter chests.

That accords with other reports of measurements I’ve seen from merchants and mechanics. It wasn’t yet a time of exactitude.

Another source on tea shipments that I’ve mentioned is Dan Du’s doctoral thesis, “This World in a Teacup: Chinese-American Tea Trade in the Nineteenth Century.” On page 42 Du transcribed a chart that Jonathan Donnison, captain of the General Washington, entered into his log in 1791. That chart shows different dimensions for chests of different types of tea.

According to the General Washington log, “Half Chests of Bohea Tea,” the basic kind of black tea, were 2'10" long, 2' broad, and 1'3.5" deep. That’s over 7 cubic feet.

In contrast, a “Chest of Souchong Tea,” which was more expensive, was 1'5" long, 1'4" broad, and 1'.5" to 1'3" deep. That's about 2 cubic feet.

A “Half Chest of Hyson” was listed as about the same size as a “Chest of Souchong.” Donnison set down two listings for a “Chest of Hyson,” differing by a full foot in length (at least as transcribed). Even at the higher length, the resulting container wasn’t as big as the “Half Chests of Bohea.”

Now those figures from the Du thesis might be in error, or they might apply only to chests from Capt. Donnison’s suppliers in 1791 and say nothing about the East India Company’s shipping containers two decades earlier. But they do suggest that a “chest of tea” or “half chest of tea” was far from a standard measurement. To understand what a “chest of tea” meant, one had to know the type of tea inside. The more precious the leaves, the smaller the standard container of those leaves.

None of the reports about Ebenezer Withington’s tea said anything about the type of tea he’d found. The Gazette’s use of “a half chest” suggests he hadn’t brought home one of the large containers of Bohea that made up the bulk of the East India Company’s shipment, but his box could have counted as a full chest of Souchon or Hyson. That in turns suggests that Withington had lucked out (for a while) in finding a supply of a more expensive variety.

Taking the Measure of Tea Chests

In addition to the various samples of tea leaves I’ve discussed, relics of the Boston Tea Party include supposed remnants of the chests that tea came in.

One highly visible example is a lacquered tea chest donated by the Foster family to the Massachusetts Daughters of the American Revolution in 1902. Tradition said it was collected by Hopestill Foster on the Dorchester shore in 1773.

The state chapter loaned that box to the national organization’s museum in Washington, D.C. In 2006, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette reported that this tea chest was the most famous item in the museum’s Massachusetts Room, itself a replica of the Hancock-Clarke House in Lexington.

In Treasure Chests: The Legacy of Extraordinary Boxes (2003), Lon Schleining reported that the Foster chest was “quite small, about a foot high and wide by about a foot and a half long, made of 1/2-in.-thick wood and painted with red and black Oriental scenes.” He added, “Even full of tea, one of these chests would have weighed only a few pounds.”

In fact, the East India Company’s list of lost inventory, reproduced back here and analyzed by Charles Bahne, shows that full chests of Bohea tea “contained an average of 353 pounds per chest.” They were lined with lead and built to survive long sea voyages.

Bahne noted that the cargo also included four higher-priced grades of tea shipped in “quarter chests,” and those averaged between 68 and 86 pounds of tea.

Dan Du’s doctoral thesis, “This World in a Teacup: Chinese-American Tea Trade in the Nineteenth Century,” quotes another period source:

During the adventure to Canton in 1791, Jonathan Donnison, Captain of American ship General Washington, detailed the measuring of the tea chests for Hyson, Hyson [Skin], Bohea, and Souchong teas in his account book.

That account book is now in the collection of the Peabody Essex Museum. It shows a half chest of Bohea tea was nearly three feet long, two feet wide, and over a foot tall. Chests of more expensive Hyson and Souchong teas were closer to the dimensions of the Foster family chest, but still larger.

Most important, the chests that the East India Company shipped to America were utilitarian containers meant to go to tea wholesalers. They were not decorative household objects like the Foster family chest. Which, incidentally, shows no signs of having been hatcheted or left soaking in saltwater for hours.

Interestingly, a 2013 issue of South Boston Today reports a completely different story of Hopestill Foster’s family and the tea destruction:

the Widow Foster became famous during the Boston Tea Party. While it seems far away today, in 1770 it was ocean from First Street to the British tea ships at anchor. When the “Indians” dumped the tea, at least one chest floated to the area around F Street. A workman on the Foster estate dragged the chest to a barn, lit a fire and tried to dry it. Widow Foster discovered him and made him burn the tea, chest and all.

(The Tea Party was, of course, in 1773.)

[ADDENDUM: As the comment from Patrick Sheary below reports, the museum has concluded that this chest dates from after the Boston Tea Party, and it’s no longer on display in the Massachusetts Room. Older sources still mention it as a Tea Party relic, but the latest study is more exact.]

Two Captains and the “disagreeable necessity” of Money

In the eighteenth-century British army, officers were expected to pay their predecessors when they were promoted into a new rank.

Thus, a captain might retire while receiving £750 from an ambitious lieutenant, who in turn would receive £300 from an ensign, whose father would pay £200 to get him into the army in the first place.

Since the captain had paid his own predecessor, he thought receiving £750 was only fair. And this system promised officers some money for their retirement. Of course, it also limited the officers’ ranks to men with wealth—which that society saw as a Good Thing. No matter that some competent officers languished without promotions for years because they couldn’t scrape up the cash.

A similar system appears to have taken hold in the East India Company maritime service, even though the corporation didn’t like it. (Probably because it wasn’t receiving a cut of the money changing hands.)

At the British Library blog, curator Margaret Makepeace just highlighted the case of Capt. James Munro of the East India Company’s fleet. Munro had gone to sea in 1766 at the age of ten, serving under his uncle William Smith [yes, another one] on the Houghton. By 1778 he was second mate, and by 1782 he was sailing to China on the York.

Makepeace writes:

In 1782 James Monro succeeded his uncle William Smith as captain of the Houghton, making four voyages to China and India before resigning and passing the command to Robert Hudson in 1792. Captains were appointed by the ship owners and approved by the East India Company . . .

In April 1792, William Smith wrote to his nephew, addressing him as ‘Dear Jim’. Smith understood that Monro had sold the command of the Houghton for 8,000 guineas, having paid him £4,000 for it. Although Monro had not promised him anything, Smith thought he should receive half the profit. Smith claimed that he could have sold his command at a far higher price, perhaps as much as £7,000, but he had his nephew’s interest too much at heart to consider such offers. He regretted the ‘disagreeable necessity’ of speaking his mind.

James Monro’s reply began ‘My dear Sir’. He felt that he was being put in a very unpleasant position, and put forward his side as he would to someone not related.

Monro was away on board the York when it was decided that he should succeed as commander of the new Houghton which was being built to replace Smith’s ship. On his return to England he was told to pay Smith £4,000. He had no idea that any future demand would be made on him until a chance conversation with his uncle some time later.

Both the East India Company and the owners had been trying to lessen the price given for ships, or to prevent totally the sale of commands. If they had succeeded, would Smith have refunded part of his £4,000? Smith had not paid for his own command but had received interest on Monro’s £4,000 for ten years.

Monro had always thought to offer his uncle £1,000 when he sold the command. He would cheerfully give him 1,000 guineas and nothing more need be said.

I should note that 1,000 guineas was 5% more than £1,000—though still far less than half the difference between what Capt. Munro had paid his uncle Capt. Smith ten years before and what he had received from his successor.

Did the two captains work this out and maintain friendly family relations? See Makepeace’s article here.

A Collection of Art from Bengal via Berwickshire

Last month the Herald in Scotland reported on a collection of Indian art coming to the National Museums Scotland:

Brought back from India in 1766, the collection, which features paintings and lacquer work, was formed by Captain Archibald Swinton while he was in Bengal in north-east India between 1752 and 1766. . . .

The large paintings depict the Nawabs who were ruling Bengal at that time. When Capt Swinton, an army surgeon, first met them, they were the local rulers under Mughal sovereignty but subsequently came under British rule.

The paintings are believed to have been given as diplomatic gifts during this period of transfer of power. . . . An Edinburgh-trained surgeon, Capt Swinton, who lived from 1731 to 1804, travelled to Madras (now Chennai) in 1752 and secured a position as an army surgeon. He served in the East India Company’s army at the beginning of its military expansion in India and subsequently, with his Persian language skills and familiarity with local customs, became an interpreter for the East India Company.

Here’s a biography of Capt. Swinton from the Daily Star of Bangladesh. That article includes the Swinton family painting above, made by Alexander Naysmith in the 1780s.

Evidently the Nawabs gave this art to Capt. Swinton shortly before the East India Company and then the British military forcefully took over India. Indeed, the donors were probably showing off their wealth and power for political advantage.

As a result, this collection doesn’t carry the baggage of art objects and cultural artifacts that came to western countries through looting, conquest, or purchase in a manifestly unfair society.

National Museums Scotland has displayed some of the Swinton collection before. Now those artworks are becoming national property to settle a massive tax bill.

From The Scotsman I learn that the estate at issue belonged to the late Major-General Sir John Swinton, K.C.V.O., O.B.E., D.L., laird of Kimmerghame House and father of the actress Tilda Swinton.

Asians in the Continental Army

The Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia just shared a blog post about evidence of Asian soldiers in the Revolutionary War.

This doesn’t mean the thousands of soldiers who fought battles in India when the British, the French, and their local allies went to war there. That’s another seldom-told story.

Rather, interpreter Daniel Sieh quoted two sources showing how Continental Army officers identified certain enlisted men as from South Asia:

• “Charles Peters…is an East-India Indian, formerly the property of Mr. Thomlinson in Newbern.” —advertisement for deserters, North-Carolina Gazette, 15 May 1778.
• John Newton, a barber from “Bengaul, yellow complexion, talks good English” —size roll of Capt. Matthias Ogden’s company in the First New Jersey Regiment, 1779-82.

It’s intriguing to note that on 13 July 1776 Dixon and Hunter’s Virginia Gazette included this advertisement for a man named John Newton of the same age and skills as the “Bengaul” in Ogden’s company:

a Servant Man named JOHN NEWTON, about 20 Years of Age, 5 Feet 5 or 6 Inches high, slender made, is an Isiatic Indian by Birth, has been about twelve Months in Virginia, but lived ten Years (as he says) in England, in the Service of Sir Charles Whitworth.

He wears long black Hair, which inclines to curl, tied behind, and pinned up at the Sides; has a very sour Look, and his Lips project remarkably forward. He left his Master on the Road from Williamsburg, between King William Courthouse and Todd’s Bridge, where he was left behind to come on slowly with a tired Horse (which I have been informed is since dead) but has never made his Appearance at Home. . . .

He has been at Richmond, Williamsburg, and in other Parts of the Country, in the Service of Mr. George Rootes of Frederick, and Colonel [Thomas?] Blackburn of Prince William, of whom I had him; and as he is a good Barber and Hair-Dresser, it is possible he may endeavour to follow those Occupations as a free man.

The same notice appeared in other Williamsburg newspapers through September, some referring to Newton as simply “an Indian by birth.” (I first learned of that first ad through Ned Hector’s webpage.)

Sir Charles Whitworth was a Member of Parliament remembered for his use of statistics.

As for Charles Peters, Sieh writes:

Historian Justin Clement has done extensive research into Peters’s years of servitude, court battle for freedom, and subsequent military service. At his querying, historian Todd Braisted discovered that Charles Peters was born around 1757 in Madras (present-day Chennai, India). We can posit that he was born in territory controlled by the British East India Company, and that he was sent as an enslaved person to the Carolinas, where he joined the Continental Army and gained his freedom.

Unfortunately, Peters’s story gets a bit murky after his desertion, and while he occasionally appears in later records, we are still researching what happened to him next. He may have rejoined the Revolutionary forces in time for the reorganization of the North Carolina Line in the spring of 1778. We have tantalizing evidence that Peters participated in the Siege of Charleston, became a prisoner-of-war, and even joined a Loyalist regiment, after which time he died in Kingston, Jamaica.

I must note that, according to the 7 Aug 1783 Pennsylvania Packet, a “pioneer” in the Duke of Cumberland’s regiment named Charles Peters was killed on Jamaica; his murderer, Pvt. John Griffin, was hanged in June 1783.

As Sieh says, both Peters and Newton came to America enslaved. Both had been assigned British names that don’t indicate Asian origin; we need other sources to learn where they came from. And both made multiple moves to gain their freedom.

(It’s a delight to see so many familiar names contributing to the research on these two men: John U. Rees, Don N. Hagist, Robert A. Selig, and Todd W. Braisted.)

“Whereas Tea is an Indian Plant…”

Yesterday I quoted a couple of press reports and a diary entry showing how Bostonians used the trope of “Indians” to discuss the men who dumped tea in the harbor, both in December 1773 and March 1774.

Another document of that sort was printed in facsimile in Francis S. Drake’s Tea Leaves (1884). In 1901 it came to the Bostonian Society as part of the collection of the late Jeremiah Colborn.

According to Drake, the document was in the handwriting of Edward Procter or Proctor (1733-1811). Procter was a middling merchant, a militia officer, and a member of the St. Andrew’s Lodge of Freemasons.

He was also a confrontational Whig, quarreling with Ebenezer Richardson during the protest that led to the death of Christopher Seider and being the first volunteer to patrol the docks when the tea ships arrived.

The document reads:

Abrant Kanakaratöphqua
Chief Sachem of the Mohawks,
King of the Six Nations and
Lord of all their Castles, &c. &c. &c.
To all our liege Subjects—HEALTH.

Whereas Tea is an Indian Plant, and of right belongs to the Indians of every Land and Tribe: and WHEREAS, our good Allies the English, have in lieu of it, given us that pernicious Liquour RUM, which they have pour’d down our Throats, to steal away our Brains, and WHEREAS the English have learn’d the most expeditious Way, or Method, of drawing an Infusion of said TEA without the Expense of Wood, or Trouble of Fire, to the Benefit and Emolument of the East India Trade as vastly greater Quantities may be expended by this Method, than by that heretofore practiced in this Country, and therefore help to Support the East India Company under these present Milancholly Circumstances—

We of our certain Knowledge, Special Grace, and Meer Motion, permit and allow any of our liege Subjects to barter for, buy, or procure of any of our Said English Allies, TEAS of any kind: PROVIDED always each Man purchase not less than Ten, nor more than One hundred and fourteen Boxes, at a Time, and those the property of the East India Company, and PROVIDED also that they pour all the Said Tea into the Lakes, Rivers and ponds, that while our Subjects in their Thirsting instead of Slakeing their Thirst with Cold Water, as usual, may do it with Tea.

Of all which our Subjects will take Notice, and govern themselves accordingly— By command
Toneteroque.
1st. Moon
1774

The phrase “One hundred and fourteen Boxes” refers to the tea chests carried by each of the ships Dartmouth and the Eleanor in December. As Charles Bahne noted here, the official accounting submitted to the House of Lords said the Beaver held only 112 chests, though the Boston press had said there were 342 in all.

A bigger question is when this document was created. If “1st. Moon,” meant January, then it was dated a month after the famous Boston Tea Party. This might thus be the earliest example of putting words about the tea into a supposed Indian chief’s mouth, elaborating impromptu disguises into a parodic royal decree.

This document addresses only tea that was “the property of the East India Company.” The second Boston Tea Party in March 1774 dumped tea sent by an independent mercantile firm. Procter evidently didn’t anticipate that the tea boycott would expand to cover all imported tea. Then again, neither did that mercantile firm.

Another notable detail is that this ersatz proclamation came from the fictional “Chief Sachem of the Mohawks” and “King of the Six Nations” far to the west of Massachusetts, not the Narragansetts from Rhode Island that other people wrote about. But of course it wasn’t really about Indians.

COMING UP: Fallout in London.

“The Multitude began their Salutation with missive Weapons”

As I wrote back here, Jonathan Clarke (1744-1827) happened to be in London when Parliament enacted the Tea Act of 1773. He took advantage of established commercial ties to secure for his family’s firm, Richard Clarke and Sons, a contract to import the East India Company’s tea into Massachusetts.

On 17 Nov 1773, Jonathan Clarke wrote back to the chairman of that company from Boston:

After a long detention in the English channel, and a pretty long passage, I arrived here this morning from England, and there being a vessel to sail for London within a few hours, gives me an opportunity of writing you a few lines on the subject of the consignment of tea, made to our house by the Hon’ble East India Company, in which I had your friendly assistance, and of which I shall always retain a grateful sense.

I find that this measure is an unpopular one,…

That was an understatement. As discussed yesterday, the Clarkes and other Massachusetts tea importers had been summoned to Liberty Tree on 3 November. When they refused, a crowd burst into the Clarkes’ warehouse on King Street and tried to shove their way into the counting-house.

The tea consignees managed to hold off public demands for two weeks by saying they hadn’t yet received solid word from London about what was happening. Once Jonathan Clarke arrived, that excuse no longer held water. Furthermore, the captain he had sailed with, James Scott of the Hancock fleet, reported that four ships carrying tea were on their way.

The Boston crowd made their displeasure known that evening. The Clarkes were at their house next to King’s Chapel on School Street, originally owned by Elisha Cooke and rented from Dr. Nathaniel Saltonstall. On 22 November, the Boston Post-Boy—now firmly favoring the royal government under new owners Nathaniel Mills and John Hicks—published a letter describing what happened:

on the Evening of the same Day, his Brothers and Sisters, being on the joyful Occasion of his arrival, collected at his Father’s House, in School-street, in the perfect Enjoyment of that Harmony and Soul and Sentiment, which subsists in a well united and affectionate Family, about 8 o’Clock their Ears were suddenly assailed by a violent Knocking at the Door, and at the same Instant a tremendous Sound of Horns, Whistles, and other Noises of a Multitude; which caused, in those of the tender Sex a Distress, that is more readily conceived than described.

The Care and Safety of these took up the Attention of their Parent; the Sons immediately had Recourse to Weapons of Defense, and throwing open the Chamber Window commanded those who were endeavouring to force the Door to retire, threatening them with immediately firing upon them unless they withdrew; this somewhat raised their Fears, but the most hardy remaining and continuing the Violence, a Pistol was fired from the House, but not taking Place, the Multitude began their Salutation with missive Weapons, Stones, Brickbats and Clubs, and surrounding the House, they demolished the Windows, Window-Frames, and all that was frangiable, within their Power; and in this Manner they continued with Threats and outrageous Attempts for the Space of two Hours, after which they dispersed, leaving a virtuous and distressed Family, to seek Shelter and Lodging with their friendly and compassionate Neighbours.

Obviously, that letter reflected the Clarkes’ perspective. Furthermore, it appears to have come from patriarch Richard Clarke—the “Parent”—or one of the women in the family, not from one of the younger men on the front lines of the confrontation.

TOMORROW: Details from one of the gentlemen yelling out the window.

“All possible exertions to stem the current of the mob”

Richard Clarke and Sons weren’t the only merchants tapped by the East India Company to import tea into Boston in 1773. The others were:

• Business partners Benjamin Faneuil, Jr. (1730-1787) and Joshua Winslow (1727-1801).
• Thomas Hutchinson, Jr. (1740-1811), and his brother Elisha (1745-1824). They were sons of royal governor Thomas Hutchinson, who had invested about £1,000 in their business—what some of us today would call a conflict of interest. 

Those firms didn’t treat each other as competitors. In fact, Richard Clarke was Joshua Winslow’s uncle by marriage. Winslow and the Hutchinsons were third cousins. Everyone was in close contact with the governor.

When all three firms received the unwelcome invitation to Liberty Tree on 3 Nov 1773 that I quoted yesterday, they agreed to act in concert. The Clarkes later wrote:

The gentlemen who are supposed the designed factors for the East India Compy, viz: Mr. Thos. Hutchinson, Mr. Faneuil, Mr. Winslow & Messrs. Clarke, met in the forenoon of the 3rd instant, at the latter’s warehouse, the lower end of King Street. Mr. Elisha Hutchinson was not present, owing to a misunderstanding of our intended plan of conduct, but his brother engaged to act in his behalf.

You may well judge that none of us ever entertained the least thoughts of obeying the summons sent us to attend at Liberty Tree. After a consultation amongst ourselves and friends, we judged it best to continue together, and to endeavour, with the assistance of a few friends, to oppose the designs of the mob, if they should come to offer us any insult or injury. And on this occasion, we were so happy as to be supported by a number of gentlemen of the first rank.

There appear to have been over a dozen friends and supporters in the Clarkes’ warehouse, in addition to the family and the other importers.

About one o’clock, a large body of people appeared at the head of King Street, and came down to the end, and halted opposite to our warehouse. Nine persons came from them up into our countingroom, viz: Mr. [William] Molineux, Mr. Wm. Dennie, Doctor [Joseph] Warren, Dr. [Benjamin] Church, Major [Nathaniel] Barber, Mr. Henderson, Mr. Gabriel Johonnot, Mr. [Edward] Proctor, and Mr. Ezekiel Cheever.

Caleb H. Snow’s 1825 History of Boston didn’t list anyone named Henderson on this impromptu committee. Francis S. Drake’s Tea Leaves identified this man as Henderson Inches, and Bernhard Knollenberg’s Growth of the American Revolution, 1766-1775 guessed he was tax collector Benjamin Henderson.

This man was almost certainly Joseph Henderson, who this same week signed a letter asking the selectmen to call an urgent town meeting about the tea tax. On that document his name appears right below those of Samuel Adams, Church, and Proctor. Henderson was then a merchant and proprietor of Long Wharf; later he became commissary of prisoners and sheriff of Suffolk County. (Interestingly, John Rowe wrote that in July 1771 a crowd “Routed the Whores” at a waterfront house that Henderson owned.)

Henry Pelham estimated the crowd behind that committee of nine as “about 300 People.” A similar crowd, including most of the town’s top elected officials, were waiting behind at Liberty Tree. The Clarkes’ report goes on:

Mr. Molineux, as speaker of the above Comtte., addressed himself to us, and the other gentlemen present, the supposed factors to the East India Comy. and told us that we had committed an high insult on the people, in refusing to give them that most reasonable satisfaction which had been demanded in the summons or notice which had been sent us, then read a paper proposed by him, to be subscribed by the factors, importing that they solemnly promise that they would not land or pay any duty on any tea that should be sent by the East I. Comy, but that they would send back the tea to England in the same bottom, which extravagant demand being firmly refused, and treated with a proper contempt by all of us, Mr. Molineux then said that since we had refused their most reasonable demands, we must expect to feel, on our first appearance, the utmost weight of the people’s resentment, upon which he and the rest of the Comtte. left our countingroom and warehouse, and went to and mixed with the multitude that continued before our warehouse.

Soon after this, the mob having made one or two reverse motions to some distance, we perceived them hastening their pace towards the store, on which we ordered our servant to shut the outward door; but this he could not effect although assisted by some other persons, amongst whom was Nathaniel Hatch, Esqr. one of the Justices of the inferior Court for this country, and a Justice of the Peace for the county.

Nathaniel Hatch (1723-1784) was born in Dorchester and graduated from Harvard in 1742. He became a bureaucrat, accumulating royal appointments: clerk of the Massachusetts Superior Court, comptroller of the Customs office, justice of the peace and of the quorum, member of a commission to wind down the Land Bank. In 1771 he was seated on the Suffolk County court of common pleas, and at the end of 1772 Thomas Hutchinson, Jr., joined him on that bench.

Hatch also had a family tie to at least one tea agent. In 1768 his stepdaughter Elizabeth Lloyd had married Joshua Loring, Jr., whose sister was the wife of Joshua Winslow.

This genm. made all possible exertions to stem the current of the mob, not only by declaring repeatedly, and with a loud voice, that he was a magistrate, and commanded the people, by virtue of his office, and in his Majesty’s name, to desist from all riotous proceedings, and to disperse [i.e., he read the Riot Act], but also by assisting in person; but the people not only made him a return of insulting & reproachful words, but prevented his endeavors, by force and blows, to get our doors shut, upon which Mr. Hatch, with some other of our friends, retreated to our counting-room.

Soon after this, the outward doors of the store were taken off their hinges by the mob, and carried to some distance; immediately a number of the mob rushed into the warehouse, and endeavored to force into the counting-room, but as this was in another story, and the stair-case leading to it narrow, we, with our friends—about twenty in number—by some vigorous efforts, prevented their accomplishing their design.

The mob appeared in a short time to be dispersed, and after a few more faint attacks, they contented themselves with blocking us up in the store for the space of about an hour and a half, at which time, perceiving that much the greatest part of them were drawn off, and those that remained not formidable, we, with our friends, left the warehouse, walked up the length of King Street together, and then went to our respective houses, without any molestation, saving some insulting behavior from a few despicable persons.

Thus ended the first physical confrontation of the tea crisis in Boston. According to Gov. Hutchinson, “This seems to have been intended only as an intimation to the consignees, of what they had to expect.”

TOMORROW: Shooting on School Street.