“A youth, son to Captain John Gore”

The older boy wounded by Ebenezer Richardson’s shot on 22 Feb 1770 was nineteen-year-old Samuel Gore.

He appears here in his early-1750s portrait by John Singleton Copley, a detail from a painting now at Winterthur. Of course, this when Sammy was still a toddler and Copley was still developing his technique.

In contrast to Christopher Seider, a servant born to poor German immigrant parents, Sammy Gore came from an old New England Puritan family that was rising swiftly in society. The portrait of the kids was one sign of that social ambition, even if the young artist might have done it for practice or in barter for paints.

Sammy’s father John Gore had started as a decorative painter. Specializing in heraldic designs, he developed an upper-class clientele and began to move into that class himself—as a paint merchant, a militia officer, and eventually an Overseer of the Poor, one of the most respected town offices. By 1770 he was considered a gentleman.

Capt. John Gore’s oldest child, Frances, married Thomas Crafts, Jr., another decorative painter. (I suspect he was one of Gore’s early apprentices, but I can’t confirm that.) Crafts became an active member of the “Loyall Nine” who organized the first anti-Stamp Act protests and looked after Liberty Tree. He, too, was rising through militia service and town offices.

Capt. Gore’s first son, also named John, became a dry goods merchant. He married the niece of the Rev. Henry Caner, minister of King’s Chapel. Both John, Jr., and Samuel had tried schooling at the South Latin School, which would have prepared them for Harvard, but decided to drop out for more practical education. Their little brother Christopher (Kit), however, was sailing through the Latin School curriculum.

In August 1769, Capt. Gore, his son John, and his son-in-law Crafts all dined with the Sons of Liberty at Lemuel Robinson’s tavern in Dorchester, as described here. At the time John, Jr., advertised that he was sticking to the non-importation agreement in the cloth he sold from his shop.

Of course, it was hard for a paint merchant to take that stance and stay in business—the Townshend Act put a tariff on painter’s colors. Sammy, training under his father in decorative painting, had a close-up look at that situation. In late January 1770, the Boston Chronicle published Customs house documents revealing that Capt. Gore had paid duties on “4 barrels Painters colours” that had arrived on the Abigail and more goods that had later come on the Thomas.

That revelation might have motivated the family to demonstrate their commitment to non-importation. In the third week of February, the Gores—more probably, Frances Gore and her daughters and perhaps daughters-in-law—hosted a spinning bee at their house on Queen Street. This was a social occasion, but it also showed the women’s support for local manufacturing.

Most spinning bees took place in rural towns, usually in ministers’ houses, with the host accepting the gift of the spun yarn to benefit the poor. Of ten spinning bees that Laurel Thatcher Ulrich counted in and around Boston in 1766-70, the Gores’ was one of only two not in a minister’s home.

Early in its local news roundup, the 26 Feb 1770 Boston Gazette put a strong political spin on the Gores’ event:

One Day last Week a Number of Patriot Ladies met at the House of John Gore, Esq; of this Town, when their Industry at the Spinning Wheel was at least equal to any Instance recorded in our Paper.

It is principally owing to the indefatigable Pains of Mr. William Mollineux; and it will be said to his lasting Honor, that the laudable Practice of Spinning is almost universally in Vogue among the Female Children of this Town; whereby they are not only useful to the Community, but the poorer Sort are able in some Measure to assist their Parents in getting a Livelihood—

The Use of the Spinning-Wheel is now encouraged, and the pernicious Practice of Tea-drinking equally discountenanced, by all the Ladies of this Town, excepting those whose Husbands are Tories and Friends to the American Revenue-Acts; and a few Ladies who are Tories themselves.

By the time that item was published, Sammy Gore had made his own political statement about non-importation by showing up outside Ebenezer Richardson’s house on 22 February. We don’t know if he was among the boys who organized the demonstrations at Theophilus Lillie’s shop or if he threw garbage and rocks at Richardson’s house. But we do know Sammy Gore was close enough to the front of the crowd to be struck by pellets from Richardson’s gun.

The Boston Gazette stated, “A youth, son to Captain John Gore, was also wounded in one of his hands and in both his thighs.” The Boston Evening-Post reported:

Dr. [Joseph] Warren likewise cut two slugs out of young Mr. Gore’s thighs, but pronounced him in no danger of death, though in all probability he will lose the use of the right forefinger, by the wound received there, much important to a youth of his dexterity in drawing and painting.

As it turned out, Samuel Gore would enjoy a long and healthy career as a painter and manufacturer. In the 1830s a Boston barber recalled that he would show young people his scarred fingers and describe how he’d been wounded in the Revolution “with some relish.”

(For more about Samuel Gore’s Revolutionary activities and reminiscences, see The Road to Concord.)

TOMORROW: A grand funeral.

The Life and Death of Christopher Seider

The younger boy hit by “Swan shot” from Ebenezer Richardson’s musket on 22 Feb 1770 was named Christopher Seider (although that last name also showed up as Snider and in other forms).

Christopher’s story starts with an effort to settle Maine. Around 1740, Massachusetts land speculators recruited German-speaking immigrants to live in the area around Broad Bay now called Waldoboro. At first this community was very small, but immigrant-laden ships arrived in Boston harbor beginning in November 1751.

The 25 Sept 1752 Boston Evening-Post reported:

a ship arrived from Holland with about 300 Germans, men, women and children, some of whom are going to settle at Germantown [in Braintree] and the others in the Eastern parts of the Province [i.e., Maine]. . . . a number of very likely Men and Women, Boys and Girls, from Twelve to twenty-five years old, will be disposed of for some Years according to their Ages and the different Sums they owe for their Passage.

In other words, some of the younger immigrants were to be indentured servants.

On that ship, the St. Andrew, came Heinrich Seiter, a farmer from Langensteinbach, and his family. Their home country was ruled by Charles Frederick, Margrave of Baden-Durlach. He was among the more enlightened of Europe’s noble despots, but Seiter was “very poor” and sought better opportunities. In that family, it appears, was a young man named Georg Frederich Seiter, born in 1727.

Around the same time, a woman named Christine Salome Hartwick, born about 1723, arrived with several of her relatives. That family’s name showed up in New England records as Hardwick, Hartig, and other forms.

Heinrich Seiter settled in the Waldoboro area. George Seiter may have lived with him for a while or gone directly to Braintree, where locals were trying to develop a little manufacturing center. Some of the new Germans were said to be glassmakers, and Joseph Palmer and Richard Cranch were building a glass factory.

We know that Georg Frederich Seiter married Christine Salome (soon Sarah) Hartwick on 20 Mar 1753 at Germantown. They had three children in Braintree:

• Christina Elizabeth, born 26 Dec 1754.
• Sophia, born 29 June 1756.
• Christopher, baptized 18 Mar 1759.

By then the family name was written as “Sider.” If Christopher was baptized a week or two after birth, like his sisters, then he was born in early March 1759.

In 1755, the glass factory was struck by lightning and burned. Palmer and Cranch tried to keep the venture going, but in 1760 they gave up and mortgaged the land to Thomas Flucker. Some of the German workers went to Maine, some to a new town soon called Ashburnham—and George and Sarah Seider moved their family to Boston, where their daughter Mary was baptized at King’s Chapel on 10 June 1761.

The Seiders lived in a little house at the bottom of Boston Common on Frog Lane, later gentrified to Boylston Street. On the other side of the street was the giant elm that in 1765 the Sons of Liberty dubbed “Liberty Tree.”

As the 1760s came to a close, Christopher was no longer living with his family, however. He was in the household of the very wealthy widow Grizzell Apthorp, working as a servant. Apthorp was a pillar of the King’s Chapel congregation, which was probably how she came to know the Seiders.

There’s evidence that Christopher also attended a school of some sort. In the 1840s a woman named “Mrs. Preston” told a writer that she had gone to school with him, probably a reading school when they were younger. The Boston News-Letter reported that Christopher “was going from School” on 22 Feb 1770.

It’s quite clear that Christopher Seider was a reader. The Boston Evening-Post reported that he carried “several heroic pieces” or broadsides “in his pocket, particularly Wolfe’s Summit of human glory.” A broadside titled Major-General James Wolfe, who reach’d the summit of human glory, September 13th, 1759 is now on display at the Massachusetts Historical Society. The 17" by 24" sheet describes the taking of Québec in 1759, illustrated with a large colored woodcut of the general.

On the morning of 22 February, Christopher was among the boys outside Ebenezer Richardson’s house. It’s not clear how much he participated in the young mob’s attack on that house. Prosecutor Robert Treat Paine took notes that a witness named Jonathan Kenny said, “Syder threw nothing stood looking,” and “I was by Syder 5. minutes. Saw him throw nothing.” But Charles Atkins testified, “Syder was stooping to take up a Stone as I thought.”

Christopher must have been toward the front of the crowd when Richardson pulled his trigger because his torso was hit by eleven lead pellets. In addition, said the Boston Evening-Post, “The right hand of the boy was cruelly torn, whence it seems to have been across his breast.” Christopher fell and was carried into a nearby house.

The Evening-Post reported, “all the surgeons, within call, were assembled and speedily determined the wounds mortal.” Among the doctors we know examined the boy were the radical Dr. Thomas Young, the apothecary Dr. John Loring, and Dr. Joseph Warren, who afterward conducted an autopsy.

In addition, there were “clergyman who prayed with” Christopher. The newspaper praised “the firmness of mind he showed when he first saw his parents, and while he underwent the great distress of bodily pain, and with which he met the king of terrors.”

Christopher Seider died “about nine o’clock that evening.” Some reckonings say he was the first person killed in the American Revolution. He was probably just a few days short of his eleventh birthday.

TOMORROW: The older boy.

“The first thought was to hang him up at once”

When Ebenezer Richardson fired his musket out of window of his house on 22 Feb 1770, as recounted yesterday, that gun was loaded with “Swan shot.” Those were lead pellets ”about the bigness of large peas”—larger than “Goose shot” and “duck shot” and similar to a typical pistol bullet of the time.

Several slugs of swan shot were enough to knock down one of the young boys mobbing his house. The Boston Evening-Post reported, “The child fell, but was taken up and carried into a neighboring house, where all the surgeons, within call, were assembled.” Another boy, nineteen years old, was wounded in the hand and thigh.

The men gathered on that North End street had largely been standing back, watching the boys attack Richardson’s house. Now they took action. Again from the Evening-Post:

The people, on hearing the report of the gun, seeing one wounded and another as they thought killed, got into the new brick meeting house and rang the bell; on which they soon had company enough to beset the house front and rear…

According to an anonymous letter sympathetic to Richardson, the “vast Concourse of people…broke down the side of his house & when they had made a breach wide enough several entered.”

Two witnesses testified that when the crowd yelled at Richardson that he had killed a boy, he answered, “I don’t care what I’ve done.” Edward Procter said, “He had a Cutlass drawn, and resisted. He said he would resign himself to proper Officer.” But there was no magistrate on the scene, and no police officer in Boston. People expected to band together to capture criminals, just as they all fought fires or trained for war. They pressed in.

Some men “wrenched a gun” from George Wilmot, the Customs service sailor who had come to help Richardson. They found it “heavily charged with powder, and crammed with 149 goose and buck shot.” Wilmot protested that “he could not have fired for the Screw pin was gone.”

Soon the crowd dragged Richardson out to the street. According to acting governor Thomas Hutchinson, “The first thought was to hang him up at once and a halter was brought and a sign post picked upon,” even though both of the wounded boys were still alive.

But by then William Molineux had arrived on the scene. He was normally the most aggressive of the Whig leaders, but at this moment he saved Richardson from lynching. Even Hutchinson acknowledged, “one who is supposed to have stirred up the tumultuous proceedings took great pains and prevented it.”

Molineux convinced the crowd to carry the two men to John Ruddock, justice of the peace and boss of the North End. The Evening-Post stated that Ruddock

was pleased to send them to Faneuil Hall, under a sufficient guard, where three other magistrates, Richard Dana, Edmund Quincy and Samuel Pemberton, Esquires with Mr. Ruddock, took their examination before at least a thousand people and and committed them.

All those magistrates were solid Whigs, of course.

The Boston News-Letter and Boston Chronicle both published issues that Thursday. Their printers—Richard Draper and John Fleeming, respectively—scrambled to add the latest news to the bottom of the local round-ups. The 22 February News-Letter stated:

This Instant we hear that one Richardson having attempted to destroy some Effigies in the North End, the Lads beat him off into his House, and broke his Windows, upon which he fired among them, mortally wounded one Boy, & slightly wounded two or three others. Richardson is now under Examination.

The Boston Chronicle leaned more to the Crown:

This forenoon, a boy of about 14 years of age, was mortally wounded, and two others slightly wounded by a shot from a musket, fired out of a house at the north end.—Two persons, who were in the house from whence the gun was fired, are now under examination at Faneuil Hall.

The Chronicle was printed at 2:00 P.M., meaning the magistrates’ proceeding extended well into the afternoon. Already people expected one of the boys to die.

Eventually those justices determined there was enough evidence to charge Richardson and Wilmot with a crime—whether assault or murder depended on whether that badly wounded boy lived or died. The next step was to convey the prisoners from Faneuil Hall to the jail on Court Street.

According to an anonymous Crown report, “when the Sheriff [Stephen Greenleaf] was carrying them to Goal, several attempts were made to gett a Rope round Richardsons neck.” The Evening-Post report obliquely admitted the same: “The numberless affronts and abuses both these persons had heaped on the inhabitants, exasperated them to such a pitch that, had not gentlemen of influence interposed, they would never have reached the prison.”

At the end of the afternoon, Ebenezer Richardson and George Wilmot were finally in the Boston jail. People turned their attention back to the house where doctors had come to treat the young boy.

TOMORROW: “The king of terrors.”

Riot at the Richardson House

By 22 Feb 1770, 250 years ago today, the anonymous informant reporting events in Boston to Customs Collector Joseph Harrison judged that the Sons of Liberty had “seemed greatly to gain ground” over the previous week.

One piece of evidence was that “a subscription was sett on foot amongst the females in town to discontinue to Drinking of Tea.” The newspapers also featured a spinning meeting in the North End. (I’ll get back to that.) On the night of 21 February, another anonymous letter said, someone “besmeared…the Importers windows with feathers & tar & feathers.”

In another sign of Whig strength, on 22 February the boys doubled their picket lines enforcing non-importation. According to the letter to Harrison: “The Exhibition at [William] Jacksons [was] the same as Last week—there was likewise an Exhibition at Theopiluis Lillie.” Jackson’s Brazen Head hardware store was in the center of town, but Lillie’s dry-goods shop was up in the North End on Middle Street (now Hanover Street).

Another person living in that neighborhood, “about fifty or sixty paces away,” was Ebenezer Richardson, a Customs service land-waiter. Richardson was a notorious outcast. While living in Woburn in the 1750s, he’d gotten his wife’s sister pregnant, then kept quiet for over a year as people blamed one of the town’s ministers. Once the truth came out, Richardson, now widowed, and his sister-in-law had to move to Boston, where they married at King’s Chapel.

In Boston, Richardson began to supply confidential information to the province’s attorney general, Edmund Trowbridge, and then to Customs official Charles Paxton. That work stopped being confidential after some documents leaked from London in the early 1760s. The Customs office then hired Richardson officially, but Bostonians continued to refer to him as “the Informer.”

During the anti-Stamp Act riots of 24 Aug 1765, a crowd attacked the Richardsons’ house, and a few days later the Overseers of the Poor paid to have the family removed back to Woburn, perhaps for their own safety. By 1766 Richardson was back in Boston. After Capt. Daniel Malcom defied Customs officials, boys went over to Richardson’s house to taunt him for not gaining a reward—and it’s not even clear he was involved in that case.

Not that Richardson was quietly minding his own business in the political disputes of the period. According to William Gray, “Some mention of Effigies” had come up on 21 February, and Richardson said “he hoped if these was before Importers Doors there be a Dust beat up, wish’d the 14. Regiment there. They would Cut up the d——d Yankees.” (Richardson came from an old Puritan family himself, so here “Yankees” was a political epithet.)

According to the next week’s Boston Evening-Post:

Soon after it [the non-importation pageantry] was set up, Ebenezer Richardson, the famous Informer, came by and endeavored to persuade a countryman to overturn it with his wagon; which he refusing, he applied to a charcoal man to drive his cart against it; but he said he had no business with it, and would not concern himself about it.

Richardson (as the boys say) pressed him to it, saying he was a magistrate in the town and would bear him out in it. The man still denying to meddle therewith, Richardson laid hold on the horses and endeavored to shove them upon the pole which supported the pageantry; the cart, however, passed without disturbing it.

Frustrated, Richardson started to stomp off. But by this point some Whig men had arrived “to see Pagentry before Lilly’s Door,” as one of them, Edward Procter, later testified. Richardson saw them, perhaps laughing at him, and shouted, “Perjury! Perjury!”

Nobody’s sure what Richardson meant by that. Was he saying that calling Lillie an enemy of the country was perjury? Was he accusing those men of having perjured themselves in the past? Was he denying what they might have shouted at him (and, as shown above, Bostonians had a lot of stories to tell)? The men challenged Richardson to explain, and he replied that he was directing his comment not at Procter but at another man, Thomas Knox—which doesn’t help.

A neighbor named Deborah Warner said Richardson “Went into his house, and then…he came out in a great Rage, doubling his Fists and challenged the Gentlemen to the Door. Said it should be hot enough before night.” Sarah Richardson, one of the land-waiter’s daughters, testified that Knox and Capt. John Matchet responded, “come out you damn Son of Bitch, I’ll have your Heart out your Liver out.”

The yelling outside of Richardson’s door caught the attention of the boys. They left the signs and shoppers in front of Lillie’s shop and ran over to Richardson’s to “call him Informer,” in the Evening-Post’s words. Richardson and his wife Kezia—the woman who had once been his sister-in-law—tried to shoo the boys away, “flourishing their arms and advancing out into the street, with high threatenings.” That didn’t work. As the newspaper reported, “the children would retreat and on their return, advance, with the squealing and noise they usually make on such occasions.”

Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson later wrote that he “gave express directions to the Sheriff [Stephen Greenleaf] to go and suppress this unlawful assembly…but he did not think it safe to attempt it nor is there a J[ustice]. of P[eace]. in the town who will appear upon such an occasion.”

Outside the Richardsons’ house, the young mob started throwing “light rubbish.” Ebenezer came out “with a stick” and ordered the boys to go away. Invoking traditional British liberty, the children “said they would not, Kings high Way”—i.e., they had the right to be in the street. They threw more garbage. Kezia Richardson threw some back and was in return struck by an egg.

At some point a sailor who worked for the Customs service named George Wilmot came to the Richardsons’ house and offered to help his colleague. According to Sarah Richardson, “Wilmot said he would stand by him as Long as he had breath. Wilmot asked if he had any Gun. R[ichardson]. said he must get his Gun.”

Becoming desperate, “Richardson opened the door and snapped a gun” at the crowd—showing that he had a working musket but not firing anything. He reportedly threatened, “if you dont go away I’ll blow a hole thro you enough to Drive a Cart and Oxen” or “as sure as there was a G— in heaven, he’d blow a Lane thro ’em.” After a moment of fright, the young mob just started flinging things more ferociously.

Multiple witnesses said that someone threw a stick or brickbat out of the house and hit a passing soldier. He threw it back, smashing a window. That got the boys even more excited. Witness Andrew Tewksbury stated, “They threw Limon Peels then Stones. Some Men looked on Boys and they threw faster. Men shew’d no signs of Approbation but laughing.” Ebenezer, Kezia, and Sarah Richardson were all hit by stones.

Soon most of the windows in the house were broken. Sarah Richardson testified, “I staid till no Lead, no Frame, and then went away.” Ebenezer Richardson and George Wilmot retreated to an upper story. The active Whig tailor David Bradlee testified, “I saw one or two Men in the Room with Guns in their hands. R[ichardson] put a Gun on edge of Window.”

Finally, Richardson fired his musket. This time it was loaded.

TOMORROW: Rough justice.

The Great 1770 Quiz Answers, Part 1

Thanks to everyone who puzzled over the Great 1770 Quiz, whether or not you entered answers in the comments!

It looks like the competition is down to John and Kathy since they answered both parts. If I try this again I hope to remember the bunch all the questions in one posting.

In this Age of Google, it’s increasingly easy to find information—as long as one knows how to ask and how to assess sources. That means it’s also increasingly difficult to come up with trivia questions that can’t be answered with a few keystrokes.

This week I’ll share the answers to the questions and point to sources where people could find those answers. So let’s go!

I. Lord North became prime minister of Britain in January 1770. On March 5, the date of the Boston Massacre, what motion did he make in Parliament?

The answer is that on 5 Mar 1770 Lord North stood up and proposed in the House of Commons that Parliament repeal the duties on glass, paper, lead, and painter’s colors instituted by the Townshend Act.

Simply Googling the phrases “Lord North,” “Parliament,” and “March 5, 1770” (each phrase within quote marks, of course) brings up that answer in this essay at History Is Fun.

But of course an online tertiary source should be confirmed, ideally with period references that would pass muster in scholarship. The Annual Register for 1770 describes North’s proposal and the debate next to the date “March 5.”

Notably, that account doesn’t use Lord North’s name. It simply refers to “the government,” which he headed. British printers in this period were still testing the water of reporting Parliamentary debate, so they often didn’t identify speakers by name.

A few years later, however, an anonymous author rewrote the Annual Register into A View of the History of Great-Britain, during the Administration of Lord North, and that book was explicit about Lord North’s action:

One of the first acts of the new minister, was the bringing in a bill [footnote: March 5, 1770] for the repeal of so much of a late act of parliament as related to the imposing of a duty on paper, painters colours, and glass, imported into America; the tax upon tea, which was laid on by the same act, was still continued.

This repeal was made in compliance with the prayer of a petition, presented by the American merchants to the house of Commons, setting forth the great losses they sustained, and the fatal effects produced by the late laws, which for the purpose of raising a revenue in the colonies, had imposed duties upon goods exported from Great-Britain thither.

Both books report that some Members of Parliament proposed repealing the tea tax as well. Again, the names of those politicians don’t appear. But in a 1908 biography Charles A. W. Pownall credited his ancestor, former Massachusetts governor Thomas Pownall, with forcing a vote on that issue. Pownall lost, and the tea tax remained.

All four people who responded to this question—kmjones234, Kathy, Justin C, and John—answered correctly!

II. According to the records of King’s Chapel, which of the following events did NOT occur in that church in early 1770?

• the funeral of Christopher Seider, killed by Ebenezer Richardson
• the funeral of Patrick Carr, killed in the Boston Massacre
• the baptism of Ebenezer Richardson, on trial for killing Christopher Seider
• the marriage of John Murray, representative to the Massachusetts General Court from Rutland

Last November I featured the Colonial Society of Massachusetts’s online publication of the records of King’s Chapel, which inspired this question. The second of those two volumes contains the records on baptisms, marriages, and funerals.

In those webpages we can find mentions of all four of the events listed above: John Murray’s wedding on 24 January, Christopher Seider’s funeral on 26 February (though his name is spelled “Sider”), Patrick Carr’s funeral on 17 March, and Ebenezer Richardson’s baptism on 14 April.

The funerals included processions through the streets, but some religious service evidently took place in King’s Chapel or else they wouldn’t be recorded here. However, the listing for Richardson’s baptism says it took place “In Prison” rather than in the church, so that’s the correct answer.

Richardson’s was an unusual “Adult” baptism in the Anglican church. The man’s birth in 1718 is listed in the records of Woburn’s meetinghouse, indicating that he’d been baptized as an infant there, but in April 1770 he apparently wanted more salvation. Since he was about to go on trial for killing a child and none of the lawyers in Boston wanted to represent him, Richardson evidently felt he could use all the help he could find.

This question may have been too tricky by half because no one got it entirely right, but John noted all four events are in the King’s Chapel records while Kathy discerned that Richardson was in jail.

TOMORROW: Weapons and the legislature.

David Bradlee: “Windows broke when I got there”

We’ve come to the last of the men George Gailer sued for tarring and feathering him in October 1769, the man his legal filing identified as a “Taylor” named “David Bradley.”

As it happens, David Bradlee was one of the first individuals in Boston I dug into, about twenty years ago. I wrote a short article about him for the Bostonian Society newsletter then.

Bradlee hasn’t made a lot of appearances on Boston 1775, but I may have been saving him for the Sestercentennial of when his political activity started to appear in the historical record.

David Bradlee was born in Dorchester on 24 Nov 1742, according to Samuel Bradlee Doggett’s History of the Bradlee Family (1878). David was the sixth child and third son in the family, and two more boys followed. Most moved into Boston.

Bradlee became a tailor. On 22 Mar 1764 he married Sarah Watts of Chelsea. Doggett said her father was a judge, but Mellen Chamberlin’s Documentary History of Chelsea shows she was a daughter of Richard Watts, Harvard 1739, innkeeper and militia captain. His father was the judge—Samuel Watts, justice of the peace, member of the Massachusetts General Court and the Council. In other words, David Bradlee married up in society.

David and Sarah Bradlee’s first son arrived on 20 October, or seven months after their marriage. That baby received the name David Watts Bradlee. The couple then had Sarah (1766), Samuel and Mary (twins in 1768, but Mary died at nine months), and eventually another Mary (1770).

As I’ve written, it’s not clear why George Gailer named David Bradlee as one of the people who attacked him on 28 Oct 1769. I’m assuming Bradlee really was involved in assaulting the sailor in some way. But Bradlee had the connections to secure John Adams as his attorney. He and his fellow defendants eventually won their case on default, and he paid Adams 19s.4d.

Well before that lawsuit was resolved, however, Bradlee was present at another riot and involved into another court case about it. He was on the scene on 22 Feb 1770 when Customs officer Ebenezer Richardson shot into a crowd of boys and young men mobbing his house, killing little Christopher Seider.

Robert Treat Paine’s notes on the Richardson trial summarize Bradlee’s eyewitness testimony this way:

Windows broke when I got there. I saw 3 or 4 Stones come out of the Window. I saw one or two Men in the Room with Guns in their hands. R put a Gun on edge of Window. I heard the Gun, and run to the back of the house. R clapt the Gun at me.

In this case, the word “clapt” seems to mean that Richardson had fired a load of powder but no shot at Bradlee—in other words, he fired a blank to scare the man off. Even though Bradlee’s testimony was all about the stones and gunshots coming from inside the house, one has to wonder what he was doing so close to that house to provoke Richardson’s action.

TOMORROW: Two weeks later.

Two Looks at Revolutionary New England

This week the Journal of the American Revolution published back-to-back articles about Revolutionary New England.

First, Derek W. Beck adapted material from his book The War Before Independence, 1775-1776 to discuss “Henry Knox’s ‘Noble Train of Artillery:’ No Ox for Knox.”

As Beck says, most of the pictures of the mission to bring cannon and mortars from Lake Champlain to the siege of Boston show men prodding oxen through snow. But the documentary record shows Knox renting horses for most of the trip.

The next day, Prof. Len Travers shared “Casualty Of Revolution: The Sad Case of Betty Smith.” Tracing a woman named Elizabeth Smith in eighteenth-century America is a formidable challenge, but this one made herself notorious. She first shows up in the diary of young Anna Green Winslow, as Travers explains:

Smith may have been a servant for the Winslow family at some time. That’s at least one way of explaining Anna’s reference in a letter to her mother on February 25, 1771: “Dear mamma,” she began, “I suppose that you would be glad to hear that Betty Smith, who has given you so much trouble, is well & behaves herself well. & I would be glad if I could write you so.” The next word, of course, was “but.”

For Betty had fallen into bad company—the very worst kind, some would have said. “But the truth is,” Anna continued, “no sooner was the 29th Regiment encamp’d upon the common [in 1768], but miss Betty took herself among them (as the Irish say) & there she stay’d with Bill Pinchion & awhile.”

Next Smith fell into crime, followed by stops at the whipping-post, the Castle, the workhouse, and back to jail. She tried to escape in the worst possible way, only to be convicted of theft again in March 1772 and sent to the gallows.

Betty Smith wasn’t sent off to be hanged, even though theft was still potentially a capital crime. Instead, she had to stand on the gallows with a noose around her neck and then be whipped again as a reminder to behave better.

Beside Smith stood a man named John Sennet, convicted of having sex with an animal on Boston Common. Again, earlier in the century other men and boys convicted of that crime had been executed (along with the unfortunate animals). Though still founded on painful corporal punishment, the colonial justice system became less harsh over time.

Travers’s short article doesn’t discuss another source on Betty Smith, a broadside poem probably sold on the day that she and Sennet stood on the gallows. Anthony Vaver shared that doggerel on Early American Crime. It includes this verse put into the mouth of John Sennet:

Though Murd’rers pass with crimes of deeper hue,
Thieves and house-breakers always have their due.
Cushing has eas’d the former from their fate,
But vengeance always does on Villains wait.

I suspect “Murd’rers…eas’d…from their fate” refers to Ebenezer Richardson, who had been convicted of murdering Christopher Seider in 1770 yet still not sentenced as Massachusetts’s royal judges awaited a pardon from London.

Those lines point to Judge William Cushing, and an earlier verse puns on the name of Judge Nathaniel Ropes. Both men had been appointed to the court after Richardson’s trial, but they weren’t helping to hang him. Boston’s Whigs wanted to keep that injustice in front of people’s eyes, and Betty Smith’s time on the gallows provided an opportunity.

The “Swan Shot” that Killed Christopher Seider

On 22 February 1770, Customs service employee Ebenezer Richardson killed a young boy named Christopher Seider.

Christopher was part of a crowd of boys mobbing Richardson’s house. Indeed, he had just stooped to pick up a stone when he was hit by the discharge from Richardson’s gun.

Richardson had not shot a musket ball. Instead, he had loaded his musket with “Swan shot.” What that meant is clear from the Whig newspapers’ report on the boy’s injuries:

soon after the child’s decease his body was opened by Dr. [Joseph] Warren and others and in it were found eleven shot or plugs, about the bigness of large peas; one of which pierced his breast about an inch and one-half above the midriff and passing clear through the lobe of the lungs, lodged in his back.

This, three of the surgeons deposed before the Jury of Inquest, was the cause of his death; on which they brought in their verdict, wilful murder by Richardson. The right hand of the boy was cruelly torn, whence it seems to have been across his breast and to have deadened the force of the shot, which might otherwise have pierced the stomach.

“Swan shot” was a common term at the time. For example, in the 6 Nov 1729 Pennsylvania Gazette Benjamin Franklin reported:

We are inform’d that the following Accident lately happen’d at Merion, viz. A Man had order’d his Servant to take some Fowls in from Roost every Night for fear of the Fox: But one Evening hearing them cry, he look’d out and saw, as he thought, a Fox among them; accordingly he took his Gun, charg’d with Swan Shot, and fir’d at him; when to his Surprize it prov’d to be the Servant’s Arm, which taking down the Fowls he had mistaken for a Fox. The Man receiv’d several Shot, some thro’ his Arm, but none of them are thought to be dangerous.

In 1751, reporting on how he had knocked himself out with an electric shock, Franklin wrote, “I afterwards found it had rais’d a Swelling there the bigness of half a Swan Shot or pistol Bullet.” Likewise, in Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe had his hero speak of “swan-shot, or small pistol bullets.”

On 22 Aug 1774, a crowd surrounded the house of Daniel Leonard of Taunton, protesting his appointment to the Council under Parliament’s new Massachusetts Government Act. According to Leonard, most people went home but “at 11 o’Clock in the evening a Party fixed upon the house with small arms and run off;...four bullets and some Swan-shot entered the house at the windows.” This is the earliest incident I’ve found of Massachusetts Patriots firing guns in their long political dispute with the royal government and its supporters.

Back in 1770, Richardson’s gun might have contained even smaller pellets than swan shot. During his trial, prosecuting attorney Robert Treat Paine took notes on testimony about George Wilmot, who had helped Richardson defend his house (and was acquitted of murder). If we can read Paine’s handwriting accurately, a witness said: “I took from W[ilmot]. a Gun loaded with 179 Shots. 17. Swan Shot. The rest Goose and Duck.” “Goose shot” and “duck shot” were evidently smaller pellets. Nowadays we’d lump them all together as “birdshot” and assign them numbers.

“A Monument over the grave of young SEIDER”?

On 5 Mar 1770, the Boston Gazette reported on the grand funeral for little Christopher Seider, shot by Ebenezer Richardson on 22 February, and added:

We can assure the Publick, that a Monument will be erected over the Grave of young Snider, with an Inscription, to perpetuate his Memory; A Number of patriotic Gentlemen having generously subscrib’d for that Purpose——It is said it will be done in an elegant Simplicity, and that the Overplus Money, if any, will be given to the Parents.

However, over a year later the 21 Mar 1771 Massachusetts Spy ran this item on the same matter:

For the MASSACHUSETTS SPY.
Mr. [Isaiah] THOMAS,

As there was a collection made some time ago by a Gentleman who had a considerable share in the popular transactions of the year past, for the professed purpose of erecting a Monument over the grave of young SEIDER; if the above Gentleman will condescend to inform the Public, why the Money so collected, has not been approproiate to the avowed design, he will oblige a number of your readers, as well as your humble servant,

The TRIFLER.

The Spy had published another item signed “The TRIFLER” on 10 January. It was a snide attack on Jonathan Sewall, identified by his own newspaper pseudonym “Philanthrop.” It said he should be “satisfied with his 600l. sterling per annum, and no longer prostitute his pen.”

That presents a political mystery. The “Gentleman who had a considerable share in the popular transactions of the year past” had to be one of Boston’s Whigs. But Sewall was a friend and vocal supporter of the royal government. Would the same newspaper writer attack both sides?

One possible explanation is that the Trifler supported the Crown but resented how Sewall was hogging two lucrative government appointments: Massachusetts Attorney General and Judge of the Vice Admiralty Court. Several letters and even newspaper reports from that period show how royal officials wanted Sewall to hand over the judgeship to Customs Commissioner John Robinson. (In the end, Sewall clung to both jobs.)

So who was the “Gentleman who had a considerable share in the popular transactions of the year past”?  I think the most likely candidate is William Molineux. He was definitely the Whigs’ leader in street demonstrations. He was close to Madam Grizzell Apthorp, who had employed Christopher Seider as a house servant, and he was on the scene when people arrested Richardson.

Molineux was also in need of money. On 1 May 1771 he was supposed to repay the town of Boston £300 it had loaned him to kickstart a cloth-weaving enterprise that would employ the poor. He never did pay that back. By 1774 Molineux had probably applied money he was supposed to manage for Charles Ward Apthorp of New York to the weaving scheme. So it’s not hard to imagine that the funds collected for a monument to Christopher Seider went into the same hole.

Then again, the first report from 1770 said merely that some gentlemen had “generously subscrib’d” or promised money for a monument. The Trifler may have been wrong to say that funds had actually been collected. After all, in the evening after the Gazette reported on the possibility of a monument, the Boston Massacre took place. Suddenly everyone had something new to focus on and argue about.

“The usual Notice of their intention to plunder & pull down an House”

Eleven days after Andrew Oliver resigned as Massachusetts’s collector of the stamp tax on 15 Aug 1765, the Boston crowd mobilized again.

It looks like the Stamp Act was no longer the main grievance on people’s minds on 26 August. Instead, Bostonians were out to chastise other royal officials for holding back the town’s economy. And, with a wave of personal bankruptcies coming on top of the post-war recession, that economy was hurting.

Back in 1760, the Boston Customs office had been rocked by infighting. On one side was a lazy, lenient, and therefore popular official named Benjamin Barons. On the other were a handful of colleagues who collected confidential testimony about Barons’s cozy relationship with Boston merchants and sent it to London.

In early 1764 a ship’s captain named Briggs Hallowell (1728-1778) returned to Boston with news that he’d seen that testimony, and “that the whole body of merchants had been represented as smugglers.” Of course, many of Boston’s merchants were smugglers, but they didn’t want people talking about it. The town meeting had lodged official protests which went nowhere. But the mobbing of Oliver’s house appeared to have produced results—so maybe, people thought, the same treatment could make other royal appointees back off.

Gov. Francis Bernard’s report on that evening presented the action as preconcerted, not spontaneous—which may reflect his prejudices or be entirely accurate. He wrote:

Towards Evning some boys began to light a bonfire before the Town house, which is an usual signal for a Mob: before it was quite dark a great Company of People gathered together crying liberty & property, which is the usual Notice of their intention to plunder & pull down an House.

Barons’s main rival in the Customs office had been Charles Paxton, known for his courtly manners. He was also the office’s point person on writs of assistance in 1761, and he had reportedly sheltered Oliver on 14 August. Paxton, a lifelong bachelor, rented half of a three-story brick house near Fort Hill, putting his elegant furniture conveniently close to the South End gang’s favorite spot for bonfires. So, the governor said:

They first went to Mr Paxton’s House (who is Marshall of the Court of Admiralty & Surveyor of the Port); & finding before it the owner of the House (Mr Paxton being only a Tenant) He assured them that Mr Paxton had quitted the house with his best effects; that the house was his; that he had never injured them; & finally invited them to go to the Tavern & drink a barrel of punch: the offer was accepted & so that House was saved.

Paxton’s landlord was Thomas Palmer (1743-1820), shown above in later life courtesy of Harvard University. He had only recently come of age and come into that building from his father’s estate. He seems to have been a quiet, studious gentleman (here’s his bookplate), not involved in politics. And he did offer everyone punch.

So the crowd left Paxton’s home alone and moved on. There’s some evidence people might have split up at this point, which could suggest either coordination or the opposite, lack of clear leadership. Some went to the house of William Story near the Town House. Just that day Story had placed a notice in the Boston Gazette protesting that he hadn’t advocated for the Stamp Act or given harmful testimony about the merchants. Still, that didn’t save his house from the mob.

As soon as they had drinked the punch, they went to the house of Mr Story, Registrar deputed of the Admiralty, broke into it & tore it all to pieces; & took out all the books & papers among which were all the records of the Court of Admiralty & carried them to the bonfire & there burnt them. They also lookt about for him with an intention to kill him.

Contrary to the governor’s suggestion of homicidal intent, the crowd probably just wanted to cripple the Vice Admiralty Court that Story helped to maintain. Mobs never targeted him again. In the next few years Story sought higher positions from the Crown, even traveling to London to lobby for an appointment, but got stymied. In the early 1770s he moved to Ipswich, threw in with the Patriot movement, and became one of the busiest members of the Massachusetts General Court in 1775 and 1776.

Another part of the crowd headed to Hanover Street and the house of Briggs Hallowell’s older brother.

From thence they went to Mr [Benjamin] Hallowell’s, Comptroller of the Customs, broke into his house & destroyed & carried off evry thing of Value, with about 30 pounds sterling in cash. This House was lately built by himself & fitted & furnished with great elegance.

Over the next decade Benjamin Hallowell, Jr., vied with Paxton to be the least popular Customs official in Boston. He was mobbed in one way or another about every two years until the war broke out, and then he even got into a fistfight with a Royal Navy admiral.

Gov. Bernard didn’t deign to mention another victim of the mob, but the 26 August crowd also did some damage at the house of Ebenezer Richardson. Those London documents had revealed how Paxton had paid Richardson to ferret out and inform on smugglers in the early 1760s. By the end of the month, Boston’s Overseers of the Poor sent Richardson and his family back to his home town of Woburn, perhaps for their own safety. But he was just as unpopular there for old reasons, and soon returned to Boston to work for the Customs service openly.

Gov. Bernard ended this portion of his report to London, “But the grand Mischief of all was to come.”

TOMORROW: The mob gets to Lt. Gov. Hutchinson’s house.

Ebenezer Richardson as a Cause of the American Revolution

This afternoon and for the next two days I’ll be attending the “So Sudden an Alteration” conference at the Massachusetts Historical Society. (Follow along on Twitter via #RevReborn2.)

This conference is a sequel to the “American Revolution Reborn” conference in Philadelphia in 2013. And we remember what fun that was.

This installment is subtitled “The Causes, Course, and Consequences of the American Revolution.” The series is charged with reinvigorating the scholarly study and interpretation of the Revolution. So after the call for papers, I offered a radical proposal for a minor but nonetheless notable cause of the American Revolution:

Ebenezer Richardson

As I related in a series of articles beginning here, Ebenezer Richardson was an unremarked Woburn farmer until he married his late wife’s sister and had children by her. Those acts were common enough in eighteenth-century Massachusetts. What set Richardson apart was that he did them in the wrong order: his sister-in-law Kezia Hincher gave birth to his child in 1752, his wife Rebecca died by 1753, and he and Keziua married in Boston in January 1754.

In between the child’s arrival and the Richardson’s departure for Boston, Ebenezer and Kezia had let suspicion of paternity fall on her employer, the Rev. Edward Jackson. That was part of a larger schism and feud between Woburn congregations. Once the baby’s true father was revealed, Jackson’s chief accuser and rival moved out of town in embarrassment.

Meanwhile, Richardson went to work in Boston as an informer for the authorities. That work was exposed in the early 1760s by legal papers that leaked during a dispute within the Customs office. James Otis, Jr., was quick to link Richardson’s willingness to turn in his fellow Bostonians for smuggling to his sexual misbehavior, calling him “a person of the most infamous character,…as was never encouraged under any administration but such as those of Nero or Caligula.”

Customs officials evidently felt some debt to Richardson, however, because they gave him a full-time job as a “land waiter.” (Locals continued to refer to him as “the informer.”)

Then came the confrontation on 22 Feb 1770 when Richardson tried to break up a non-importation protest outside a shop. Not for the first time, a crowd mobbed his house. Fearing for his wife and daughters, Richardson fired birdshot out a window and killed a young boy, Christopher Seider. That spring, a Boston jury convicted Richardson of murder.

If Richardson had been hanged, his behavior might have remained a local political grievance. Instead, the royally appointed judges, convinced his trial was unfair, put off sentencing him for years until the ministry in London sent a pardon. And then the Customs service found Richardson another job, this time in Philadelphia.

To the people of Massachusetts, I argue, Richardson had come to symbolize all that they detested about London: he behaved licentiously, degraded a religious man, betrayed his neighbors’ interests for personal gain, and violently oppressed the innocent. And instead of condemning Richardson, at every turn the royal authorities protected him more closely.

Boston’s Whigs sent information about Richardson to their Philadelphia colleagues, going all the way back to the scandal in Woburn. That made one colony’s grievance into a continental issue. Philadelphians made sure that their local Customs office didn’t become a haven for Richardson.

News of Richardson’s tawdry behavior thus helped to shape popular sentiment against the Crown government. His actions created a moral grievance that united his rural Massachusetts home and the big port he came to patrol. And Americans who never had direct experience with Parliament’s new duties could still see something wrong in royal officials sheltering an adulterer, a sneak, and a child murderer.

As for Ebenezer Richardson himself, in 1774 he fled to London, accepted £10 from the Secretary of State’s office, and slipped out of the historical record. But had he done as much as any other individual to bring on the American Revolution?

The Limits on Fatal Violence in Boston, 1765-1774

Though Boston earned a reputation as a riotous town in the ten years after the first public Stamp Act protests of 1765, those Boston rioters never killed anyone.

A mob did ruin Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson’s North End mansion in 1765, and damaged several other royal officials’ houses in the same months. In 1768, the Customs service’s seizure of John Hancock’s ship Liberty prompted another crowd to manhandle three Customs officials.

The next year, Bostonians learned the ritual of tarring and feathering, which they inflicted on several lower-level Customs employees over the next few years. But those actions all stopped short of killing people.

There are examples from elsewhere in New England of fatal, or nearly fatal, resistance to the Crown. In April 1769, as detailed here, sailors out of Marblehead resisting impressment into the Royal Navy killed Lt. Henry Panton at sea.

During the Gaspée seizure of 1772, the Rhode Islanders storming that Royal Navy vessel shot its commander, Lt. William Dudingston, in the chest—which sure sounds like he could have been killed. But he survived with medical care. Guns were also fired, though not hitting anyone, during some rural demonstrations against mandamus Council members in the fall of 1774.

One might argue that the lack of fatalities in Boston riots was only a matter of luck. There were some close calls:

• After Ebenezer Richardson shot Christopher Seider on 22 Feb 1770, he was nearly lynched by an angry crowd. The Whig leader William Molineux insisted on taking the unpopular Customs employee to a magistrate for indictment.
• Later that year, a crowd frightened importer Patrick McMaster with tar and feathers so badly he collapsed.
• In 1774, a mob attacked John Malcolm, yet another Customs employee, after he clubbed George Robert Twelves Hewes. That attack lasted for hours, and involved choking Malcolm with a noose as well as beating, whipping, and tarring and feathering him. But he survived.

In addition, Hutchinson felt that his nephew Nathaniel Rogers was hounded to an untimely death in 1770.

Nonetheless, the fact remains that during those tumultuous years no Crown official, soldier, or supporter was killed in political violence in Boston. In contrast, during a month-long stretch of early 1770 employees of the royal government shot dead four men and two boys, and wounded several more. A big reason for that difference was that Bostonians didn’t use guns in their conflicts, preferring to intimidate their opponents through numbers.

On 18 Oct 1774, an angry sailor named Samuel Dyer broke that pattern. He attacked two Royal Artillery officers at noon on Boston’s main street, firing pistols at their heads. Both his guns misfired, but the army naturally saw Dyer’s actions as an escalation.

I’ll talk about Dyer, his claims of mistreatment, what the record actually shows, and how his assault with deadly weapons might have started the American War off quite differently at this Saturday’s History Camp.

“Otis is in Confusion yet.”

On 6 May 1772, a Boston town meeting elected four men to represent the town in the Massachusetts General Court, or provincial legislature: Thomas Cushing, the House’s longtime Speaker; Samuel Adams, its Clerk; John Hancock; and William Phillips.

There were a couple of notable details about that election. One was how many votes Adams received relative to the other three men; I’ll deal with that later, around Election Day.

But the first thing to note is that James Otis, Jr. (shown here), was not on that slate of representatives. As a Boston representative, he had led the opposition to Gov. Francis Bernard through most of the 1760s.

Then in September 1769 Otis got into a coffee-house brawl with Customs Commissioner John Robinson and suffered a head injury. On 16 Jan 1770, John Adams wrote in his diary: “Otis is in Confusion yet. He looses himself. He rambles and wanders like a Ship without an Helm.”

Otis sat out the General Court election in March 1770. On the slate he was replaced by James Bowdoin, whom Gov. Bernard had pushed out of his usual seat on the Council. When the new governor, Thomas Hutchinson, let Bowdoin join the Council again, Boston had a special election and chose John Adams as its fourth representative.

Meanwhile, Otis’s behavior turned wild. On the 16th, merchant John Rowe wrote in his diary: “Mr. Otis got into a mad freak to-night, and broke a great many windows in the Town House.” On 22 April, the day after Ebenezer Richardson was convicted of murder for shooting out his window and killing a boy, Rowe wrote: “This afternoon Mr. Otis behaved very madly, firing guns out of his window, that caused a large number of people to assemble about him.” Acquaintances like John Adams had complained about Otis’s florid behavior on some private occasions, but these actions were public. Otis’s family sequestered him for more treatment.

By March 1771, Otis had recovered enough to stand for office again. (Meanwhile, John Adams was suffering health problems and souring on politics; he gave up the legislature and moved back to Braintree.) That year’s Boston representatives were once again Cushing, Adams, Hancock, and Otis.

But right away people wondered if Otis was going to be reliable.

TOMORROW: James Otis’s 1771.

Josiah Quincy Takes the Case (a third time)

Back in October 2006 and again in March 2010 I noted how members of one political party were attacking an opponent for providing a defendant with legal counsel. Even though good legal counsel is a constitutional right and a benchmark for a fair trial. Even though in some cases those lawyers turned out to be right. Well, it’s four years later, and Republicans are doing that again.

Usually American authors cite John Adams after the Boston Massacre as our exemplar of a lawyer taking on an unpopular case because he felt all people facing serious penalties deserved representation. I’ve raised questions about Adams’s memory of how he came to defend the soldiers and how much grief he really took because of that. But there’s solid evidence of criticism for the same decision from Adams’s younger colleague on the defense team, Josiah Quincy, Jr.

As discussed in the Colonial Society of Massachusetts volume Portrait of a Patriot, Quincy was an energetic advocate for the Whig party in pre-Revolutionary politics. His father, Col. Josiah Quincy of north Braintree, wrote to Josiah, Jr., on 22 Mar 1770:

My dear Son,

I am under great affliction, at hearing the bitterest reproaches uttered against you, for having become an advocate for those criminals who are charged with the murder of the fellow citizens. Good God! Is it possible? I will not believe it.

Just before I returned home from Boston, I knew, indeed, that on the day those criminals were committed to prison, a sergeant had inquired for you at your brother’s house,—but I had no apprehension that it was possible an application would be made to you to undertake their defence. Since then I have been told that you have actually engaged for Captain [Thomas] Preston;—and I have heard the severest reflections made upon the occasion, by men who had just before manifested the highest esteem for you, as one destined to be a saviour of your country.

I must own to you, it has filled the bosom of your aged and infirm parent with anxiety and distress, lest it should not only prove true, but destructive of your reputation and interest; and I repeat, I will not believe it, unless it be confirmed by your own mouth, and under your own hand.

Your anxious and distressed parent,...

Four days later the young lawyer replied to his father from Boston:

Honoured Sir,

I have little leisure, and less inclination either to know, or to take notice, of those ignorant slanderers, who have dared to utter their “bitter reproaches” in your hearing against me, for having become an advocate for criminals charged with murder. But the sting of reproach when envenomed only by envy and falsehood, will never prove mortal.

Before pouring their reproaches into the ear of the aged and infirm, if they had been friends, they would have surely spared a little reflection on the nature of an attorney’s oath, and duty;—some trifling scrutiny into the business and discharge of his office, and some portion of patience in viewing my past and future conduct.

Let such be told, Sir, that these criminals, charged with murder, are not yet legally guilty, and therefore, however criminal, are entitled, by the laws of God and man, to all legal counsel and aid; that my duty as a man obliged me to undertake; that my duty as a lawyer strengthened the obligation; that from abundant caution, I at first declined being engaged; that after the best advice, and most mature deliberation had determined my judgment, I waited on Captain Preston, and told him I would afford him my assistance; but, prior to this, in presence of two of his friends, I made the most explicit declaration to him, of my real opinion, on the contests (as I expressed it to him) of the times, and that my heart and hand were indissolubly attached to the cause of my country; and finally, that I refused all engagement, until advised and urged to undertake it, by an Adams, a Hancock, a Molineux, a Cushing, a Henshaw, a Pemberton, a Warren, a Cooper, and a Phillips.

Samuel Adams, John Hancock, William Molineux, Thomas Cushing, Joshua (probably) Henshaw, Samuel Pemberton, Dr. Joseph Warren, William (or the Rev. Dr. Samuel) Cooper, and William Phillips made up the bulk of genteel Whig office-holders and activists in Boston. They all agreed that Quincy should take the case and ensure the soldiers received a fair trail.

The young lawyer continued:

This and much more might be told with great truth, and I dare affirm, that you, and this whole people will one day REJOICE, that I became an advocate for the aforesaid “criminals,” charged with the murder of our fellow-citizens.

I never harboured the expectation, nor any great desire, that all men should speak well of me. To inquire my duty, and to do it, is my aim. Being mortal, I am subject to error; and conscious of this, I wish to be diffident. Being a rational creature, I judge for myself, according to the light afforded me. When a plan of conduct is formed with an honest deliberation, neither murmuring, slander, nor reproaches move. For my single self, I consider, judge, and with reason hope to be immutable.

There are honest men in all sects—I wish their approbation;—there are wicked bigots in all parties,—I abhor them.

I am, truly and affectionately,

your son,

Josiah Quincy Jun.

A few weeks later, Quincy also agreed to represent Ebenezer Richardson, an even less popular defendant charged with killing young Christopher Seider. Because an unjust trial doesn’t produce justice for anybody.

What Lay Behind the Administration of Justice Act

Among Parliament’s Coercive Acts of spring 1774 was the “act for the impartial administration of justice in the cases of persons questioned for any acts done by them in the execution of the law, or for the suppression of riots and tumults, in the province of the Massachuset’s Bay.” Or, in short, the Administration of Justice Act.

That law read:

WHEREAS in his Majesty’s province of Massachuset’s Bay, in New England, an attempt hath lately been made to throw off the authority of the parliament of Great Britain over the said province, and an actual and avowed resistance, by open force, to the execution of certain acts of parliament, hath been suffered to take place, uncontrouled and unpunished, in defiance of his Majesty’s authority, and to the subversion of all lawful government

Whereas, in the present disordered state of the said province, it is of the utmost importance to the general welfare thereof, and to the re-establishment of lawful authority throughout the same, that neither the magistrates acting in support of the laws, nor any of his Majesty’s subjects aiding and assisting them therein, or in the suppression of riots and tumults, raised in opposition to the execution of the laws and statutes of this realm, should be discouraged from the proper discharge of their duty, by an apprehension, that in case of their being questioned for any acts done therein, they may be liable to be brought to trial for the same before persons who do not acknowledge the validity of the laws, in the execution thereof, or the authority of the magistrate in the support of whom, such acts had been done…

That if any inquisition or indictment shall be found, or if any appeal shall be sued or preferred against any person, for murder, or other capital offence, in the province of the Massachuset’s Bay, and it shall appear, by information given upon oath to the governor, or, in his absence, to the lieutenant-governor of the said province, that the fact was committed by the person…either in the execution of his duty as a magistrate, for the suppression of riots, or in the support of the laws of revenue, or in acting in his duty as an officer of revenue, or in acting under the direction and order of any magistrate, for the suppression of riots, or for the carrying into effect the laws of revenue, or in aiding and assisting in any of the cases aforesaid: and if it shall also appear, to the satisfaction of the said governor, or lieutenant-governor respectively, that an indifferent trial cannot be had within the said province, in that case, it shall and may be lawful for the governor, or lieutenant-governor, to direct, with the advice and consent of the council, that the inquisition, indictment, or appeal, shall be tried in some other of his Majesty’s colonies, or in Great Britain…

Further clauses provided for witnesses to be brought to the trial venue with “a reasonable sum to be allowed for the expences of every such witness” and protection for them from lawsuits as well.

When the London government’s top lawyers (like Solicitor General Alexander Wedderburn, shown above) wrote this legislation, they were thinking of how the Massachusetts legal system had treated Crown employees in recent years:

• During the 1768-1770 occupation of Boston, Whig magistrates had dismissed soldiers’ complaints about being assaulted by locals while issuing warrants against Lt. Alexander Ross, Ens. John Ness, and other army officers who had helped their men escape the local authorities. (Those court cases basically went away when the regiments moved out of town after March 1770.)
• Customs employee Ebenezer Richardson was convicted in 1770 of murdering Christopher Seider, a boy in a crowd attacking his house and family. (The Crown eventually pardoned Richardson.)
• Customs officer Edward Manwaring, his friend John Munro, and Customs house employees Hammond Green and Thomas Greenwood had all been put on trial for the Boston Massacre based on flimsy evidence. (A Boston jury acquitted all those men.)

And of course there were the Boston Massacre soldiers themselves. Royal officials believed they had clearly acted in self-defense, even the two convicted of manslaughter.

In short, the London government had come to see the Massachusetts justice system as stacked against royal appointees just trying to do their jobs. The new law didn’t dismiss Massachusetts indictments or lawsuits against those officials, but it made sure they could be tried somewhere else.

Massachusetts Patriots complained this new law tacitly gave royal appointees the go-ahead to oppress people, knowing it would be too hard to convict them in a distant venue. Local Whigs were already complaining about the pardon for Richardson, and about trials before the Vice-Admiralty Court.

Unlike the other Coercive Acts, the Administration of Justice Act was never put into effect. As part of their protest against the Massachusetts Government Act, the province’s Patriots refused to sit on juries and shut county courts in the summer of 1774. That meant they also shut down indictments and lawsuits against royal officials. The new governor, Thomas Gage, never had reason to invoke this law.

TOMORROW: Where did the nickname “the Murder Act” come from?