The Outcome of Harvard’s “Butter Rebellion”

As I wrote yesterday, the prevailing interpretation of Harvard College’s “butter rebellion” in the fall of 1766 is that the faculty quashed the protesting students.

Certainly the undergraduates did end their action on 11 October, nearly all of them signing the confession dictated by the faculty.

However, we shouldn’t lose sight of what the students had achieved already. First, the faculty inspected steward Jonathan Hastings’s supply of butter and rejected most of it. The tutors had already complained the President Edward Holyoke about the butter, but nobody made any changes. The protest got that very real problem fixed.

Second, the bulk of the student body had stood united from 24 September to 11 October—more than two weeks. They presented a strong defense for their actions, demonstrated unity and order, and commanded the attention of the college’s highest board. Despite all signing that confession, they received no punishment. There were just too many of them.

The students thus achieved a concrete benefit in exchange for a symbolic concession.

What about the individual scholars?

Asa Dunbar was the senior who started the controversy by complaining about the butter to his tutor and refusing the man’s order to sit down. His classmates feared he would be expelled. Instead, the faculty demoted him to the bottom of his class (which was still ranked by social standing rather than grades). Everyone knew that punishment could be reversed, and indeed that’s what the college administration did at the end of the school year.

Earlier I mentioned “a telling of the event that’s entirely in mock Biblical language.” That document refers to Dunbar as “Asa, the scribe,” and his private notebooks show he wrote similar pieces about other events in his life, so Harvard chronicler Clifford K. Shipton concluded he wrote the account. A person doesn’t normally compose and share long, satirical stories about events that embarrass them, so I don’t think Asa Dunbar felt much shame about his actions or punishment.

Thomas Hodgson moderated the first student meeting, which concluded with a mass threat to withdraw from college if Dunbar was expelled. He didn’t graduate with the class of 1767—but that was because in the spring he was caught with a “lewd Woman” in his room. He went home to North Carolina and died young.

Daniel Johnson, the senior who defied the faculty’s demands in long discussions on 26 September, suffered no immediate consequences from this protest at all. He was caught up in the “lewd Woman” infraction with Hodgson and demoted, but then restored to his place again.

After graduating, Dunbar was a minister in Bedford and Salem, and then an attorney in Keene, New Hampshire. One of his grandchildren was Henry David Thoreau, who created his own history of protest.

Johnson became the minister in the town of Harvard. He was a strong supporter of the Revolution, even joining his parishioners in marching toward Boston in April 1775. In the summer of 1777 he served as chaplain for a militia regiment guarding Boston harbor, apparently contracted an illness, and went home and died at the age of thirty.

As for younger Harvard students involved in the butter protest, one of the “College Committee” that signed the defense was Stephen Peabody. He learned his lessons so well that he was in the thick of an even bigger protest in 1768.

Because the administration hadn’t quashed student protest at all. 

“In all Respects behave as dutiful & obedient Pupils”

When the overseers of Harvard College met on 10 Oct 1766, they had four documents to consider:

• Prof. Samuel Wigglesworth’s description of the preceding month’s conflict over rancid butter, endorsed by college president Edward Holyoke and the faculty.
• “A Paper said to be found on the Chapel door,” which I don’t think has survived.
• The students’ defense of their united protest, signed by seven undergraduates as a “College Committee.”
• “A Confession signed by 43 Scholars.”

The last document was new, and suggested that the student body’s united front was cracking.

Addressing the president, professors, and tutors, those forty-three students stated:

As the Undergraduates of this College have been inform’d, That their late Transactions, have had a Tendency, to disturb the Peace & good Order of this Society; “We do therefore to testify our earnest Desire, to promote that Harmony wch. ought ever to subsist, and to remove any Suspicion, wch. may have arisen in the Breasts of our immediate Govern.”, freely acknowledge, That our Proceedings have been attended, wth. some irregularity; That we are sorry, if by any of our Actions, we have incurr’d the Displeasure of any of our Worthy Instructrs.; Wou’d have persu’d better & more lawful Methods, if we were sensible of Them; Are willing to pay all due Respect to the Authority over us, and if any future Grievance should arise, will seek for Redress according to the Directions of Law; And hope by the regularity of our Conduct, to reinstate ourselves in the Good Opinion of our Instructrs. & reflect Honour on this Society.

Six students signed that message as a committee for the rest. The signatories included Thomas Hodgson, who had moderated the student body’s first gathering, and three of the seven members of the earlier “College Committee.”

Back on 26 September, the faculty had told protest leader Daniel Johnson that the students could draft their own “Declaration of Grievances and the Reason of their Conduct.” But now the overseers deemed this admission from undergraduates as “their pretended Submission to the Governmt of the College.” They resolved that the students’ language wasn’t good enough.

The next morning, with the overseers present, President Holyoke addressed the student body at chapel. He read out a longer confession and demanded that all the boys sign it:

We the Subscribers being now made sensible, That some of our late Proceedings in Order to obtain Relief from a Grievance We labour’d under, were irregular & unconstitutional;

That our resolving to go out of the Chapel in a disorderly Manner, & to leave College in Case [Asa] Dunbar should be rusticated or expell’d, or if our Absence from Prayers was not excus’d by the Presdt when We should respectively answer Detentus a Nuntio paterno:

And that our entering into a written Ingagemt. to do the same, if any public Censure should be inflicted upon any Student, for his being concern’d in the late extraordinary Transactions; Were Violations of our Duty as Pupils, inconsistent wth the Peace & good Order of this Society & eventually tended to its Destruction;

And that our Offence, in entering into the abovesd. Resolutions is aggravated by the Obstinacy we discover’d in refusing to sign a Moderate acknowledgemt. of the same, & a Promise of future good Conduct, when invited thereunto by the Presdt. Profesrs & Tutrs., wth. a Promise that our Misconduct shou’d be overlook’d upon our Compliance:

Do hereby manifest our hearty Sorrow for every Thing Each of us severally have done, contrary to the good Order & Laws of the College, & humbly ask Pardon therefor of every Person to whom We have Given just Cause of Offence: promising that if We shall hereafter be under any Grievance or Difficulty, We will seek Redress in a regular constitutional Way, & That We will never enter into any agreemt. to oppose the good Governmt. of this Society, but on the contrary will alwaies discountenance, & to our utmost, endeavour to prevent, all disorderly unlawful Combinations, & in all Respects behave as dutiful & obedient Pupils.

Out of 172 undergraduates, 155 signed this document. The only exceptions were four students who had sat out the protests and thirteen were absent for some or all of the events.

“Those proceedings appear to have had the desired effect,” wrote Benjamin Peirce in his 1833 history of Harvard. A century later, Samuel Eliot Morison drew this conclusion in Three Centuries of Harvard: “It is clear that the Governing Boards would stand for almost any individual misconduct, but that a concerted effort must be vigorously suppressed lest the students suppose that ’in union there is strength.’”

In articles published in 1974 and 1981, Sheldon S. Cohen wrote about this outcome as a big win for the administration. “Student defiance almost immediately collapsed,” says one essay. But that comment applied only to the final confrontation in the chapel on 11 October.

I have a somewhat different interpretation.

TOMORROW: Consequences.

“The present uncomfortable state of the College”

Yesterday’s posting left the Harvard College community on 26 Sept 1766 roiled with controversy over butter.

Or rather, the undergraduates and faculty (at least the tutors, the younger ones who habitually dined with the undergraduates) were in agreement about the butter supplied by steward Jonathan Hastings. It was bad.

The controversy was over how far the students had gone to protest that situation. The faculty objected to the boys:

• complaining in the dining hall, possibly using the word “stinketh.”
• gathering in a large group to plan actions, or what the college laws called a “combination.”
• walking out of the dining hall en masse before being dismissed with prayer.

But, President Edward Holyoke said, he could be forgiving if the students just confessed their guilt.

Daniel Johnson, the senior who was one of the leaders of the protest, refused to do that. And almost the whole student body showed up at the president’s house to support Johnson.

During evening prayers on 26 September, Holyoke threw all his authority behind the demand that the undergraduates sign an acknowledgment of wrongdoing written by the faculty. As Johnson had predicted, the student body stood firm against doing that.

On 4 October, Holyoke and the tutors endorsed a report on the situation written by Prof. Samuel Wigglesworth. They sent that to the Harvard Corporation, which met three days later, alongside the Harvard Board of Trustees. The latter group included Gov. Francis Bernard, Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, provincial treasurer Harrison Gray, and several impressive clergymen.

Those gentlemen considered “the present uncomfortable state of the College” and came down firmly on the side of the administration. Both bodies said the students’ action was “irregular & disorderly in an high Degree” while the faculty response was “mild & gentle.” As for the students’ threat to withdraw as a mass protest, the boards resolved:

That if any Scholar shall leave the College in persuance of the Combinations enter’d into as afforesd. or shall go out of the Town of Cambridge wtḥout Leave, before ye Fall vacation which will begin on Wednesday the fifteenth Instant, every Scholar so offending shall be adjudged to have renounc’d his Relation to the College & shall not be again rec’d. into it, wtḥ out a Vote of the Presdt. Professrs. & Tutors.

The overseers agreed to act together (in what might otherwise be called a combination) by attending the chapel service when President Holyoke read all those resolutions. Surely that show of authority would cow the student body into agreeing “to sign a full & ample Confession of their Crimes.”

Instead, the students submitted a defense of their actions more than 1,500 words long. It was signed by seven undergraduates as a “College Committee”—four seniors plus one representative from each of the other classes. The first signatory was senior Thomas Bernard, son of the governor.

Incidentally, other prominent men who had sons at Harvard at this time included Lt. Gov. Hutchinson, colony secretary Andrew Oliver, new clerk of the legislature Samuel Adams, and Prof. John Winthrop. Even steward Hastings had a son in the college, though he was staying out of the protest.

The students’ defense repeated how their protest against the butter was the only way they could be heard, expressing gratitude that the faculty had finally done something about that shared problem. As for the charge of being “disorderly in an high Degree,” they emphasized their group discipline: in visiting President Holyoke, “we formed ourselves into regular Ranks, & marched in a Body to his House,” showing “remarkable good Order.” That quasi-military behavior was similar to the 5 Nov 1765 anti-Stamp Act march in Boston, and to the rural court closings of 1774.

The Board of Overseers gathered again on 10 October, with only five days left before the fall vacation.

TOMORROW: The opposition melts.

(The photo above shows steward Jonathan Hastings’s house, which stood near Harvard Yard in an area now used by the Harvard Law School. It became the headquarters of the provincial army in April 1775.)

“They shou’d have been obliged to have eat all the Bad Butter”

Harvard College picked up the rebellious spirit of the ’60s—the 1760s.

The unrest started with a protest against rancid butter in autumn 1766. According to one account, on 23 September student Asa Dunbar told the college’s senior fellow, Belcher Hancock, “Behold our butter stinketh and we cannot eat thereof!”

That quotation appears in a telling of the event that’s entirely in mock Biblical language, so I’m not convinced those were Dunbar’s actual words.

Whatever Dunbar said, the faculty deemed his behavior “a very great Misdemeanr. by an high act of Disobedience.” They demanded an apology and demoted him to the bottom of his class.

Predictably, instead of stopping the protests, that harsh punishment caused more discontent. Most of the undergraduates had a meeting that night. Then more bad butter was served the next morning. When more boys complained, their tutors replied by saying that morning’s butter was “pretty good—much better than they had frequently been served with.”

At that point, senior Daniel Johnson (1747–1777) stood up and started walking out of the dining hall, before the faculty read the prayer of thanks and dismissed the students. A second later, as they had agreed the night before, almost all the undergraduates stood and followed him. Only three upperclassmen and a few freshmen remained in the hall. Outside in the yard, the students huzzahed and fanned out into Cambridge to find breakfast.

The students didn’t know that the faculty had appointed a committee “to examine the Condition of the Stewards Butter & condemn what they tho’t not proper to be offerd to the Scholars.” Later that day, that committee rejected one barrel and six firkins of butter and deemed four firkins suitable “for Sauce only.” The tutors agreed that the butter was bad, and indeed they’d made their own complaints to college steward Jonathan Hastings.

The bigger problem, as far as the college administration was concerned, was that the undergraduates had not “presented a Petition to those in the im̄ediate Governmt. of the College, to have this Grievance redress’d.” Instead, their large meetings and collective actions constituted “a Breach of the Law relating to Combinations.”

That evening, after prayers, the long-tenured college president, the Rev. Samuel Holyoke (shown above), announced the butter committee’s findings. But he demanded that students confess they had broken college rules while promising that he might remit their punishment.

Prof. Samuel Wigglesworth summoned Daniel Johnson, a former tutee, and asked him to cooperate to avoid being rusticated (and presumably set an example for the rest of the student body). Johnson refused to sign any acknowledgement of guilt, insisting that the students had no other way of gaining redress.

On 26 September, more faculty members met with Johnson, asking him to sign, and get his classmates to sign, an admission “That some of our late Proceedings, in Order to procure Relief from a Grievance we have lain under, were irregular & unconstitutional.”

Johnson refused to sign any confession. Furthermore, he said most of the undergraduates would leave the college before signing any confession.

This wasn’t a confession, the faculty insisted; it was merely an expression of sorrow. Johnson said he had nothing to express sorrow about. He repeated that the students’ method of protest was the only way they could be heard. That response echoed what American Whigs were saying to the Crown.

The discussion continued to go round and round about proper procedure:

He was told, that the College Law prescrib’d, First an Application to the Presdt. & Tutrs., Then to the Corporation & Overseers.

He said, if they had proceeded in that Manner, they shou’d have been obliged to have eat all the Bad Butter before They cou’d have procur’d Redress.

Upon this he was told, That upon emergent Occasions [i.e., in emergencies] The Presdt. call’d a Meeting of the Corporation im̄ediately & that if Theyhad made a proper Application, There might probably have been a Meeting of the Corporation on ye next Day.

Having made that promise, the faculty asked Johnson to read their language to his fellow students. According to William C. Lane, the senior said he’d “be afraid to enter the College Yard should it be known that he had such a paper about him, for he should either have his limbs broke or be hissed out of the Yard.”

Increasingly desperate, the faculty invited Johnson and his fellow scholars to draft their own “Declaration of Grievances and the Reason of their Conduct” and sign that. And if anyone objected to signing that, he could speak personally to the college president.

Half an hour later, President Holyoke was about to leave his house to lead evening prayers. Almost the whole student body was on his doorstep asking to explain their objections to him.

TOMORROW: The controversy churns.

The Landlord of Liberty Tree

This is how the merchant John Rowe described Boston’s first public protest against the Stamp Act in his diary:

A Great Number of people assembled at Deacon Elliots Corner this morning to see the Stamp Officer hung in Effigy with a Libel on the Breast, on Deacon Elliot’s tree…

The great elm that held the effigy and provided shade for that protest hadn’t yet been dubbed Liberty Tree. In the coming months, the Sons of Liberty would come up with that name, hammer a plaque into the side of the tree, and make it a political gathering-point. As of mid-August 1765, however, that elm was still “Deacon Elliot’s tree.” And who was he?

As far back as May 1733, when the Boston town meeting debated setting up official marketplaces, one of the proposed sites was “near the great Tree, at the South-End, near Mr. Eliot’s House.” When the 31 May Boston News-Letter reported on that hotly contested vote (364 yeas to 339 nays), it referred to “the great Trees at the South End.” That phrase suggests that there were multiple large trees near Eliot’s house, but one particularly big one. It had probably been growing there for over a century, since before Englishmen came to the Shawmut peninsula.

As for clues about “Deacon Elliot,” this advertisement appeared in the 17 June 1734 New-England Weekly Journal:

TO BE LETT,
A Good convenient House, adjoyning the South Market place, with a large Garden in good Order; Inquire of Mr. John Eliot Stationer, living near the great Trees.

When proposals for publishing an American Magazine went around in 1743, “Mr. John Eliot, at the great Trees at the South-End,” was one of the men collecting subscriptions (along with “Mr. Benja. Franklin, Post Master in Philadelphia”).

John Eliot was born in 1692, a descendant of some of Boston’s earliest British settlers. He was a great-nephew of the famous Rev. John Eliot, “Apostle to the Indians.” The young man appears to have followed his uncle Benjamin Eliot (1665-1741) into the business of bookbinding and stationery sales. He also commissioned small books from printers, almost all sermons and other religious literature. As early as 1716 Eliot was issuing these publications “at his shop at the south-end.”

It appears Eliot inherited that land in the South End, as well as property out in Brookline. In 1708, when the Boston selectmen laid out the southernmost stretch of the main road through town, they defined Orange Street as from the old Neck fortifications to the Eliot house. With, presumably, the great elms nearby.

As he neared the age of thirty, Eliot married Sarah Holyoke. Her brother, the Rev. Edward Holyoke, was a Marblehead minister who became president of Harvard College. The Eliots had eight children between 1721 and 1735.

In the early decades of the eighteenth century, the south end of Boston was still sparsely populated. Then the Hollis Street Meetinghouse was built for the Rev. Mather Byles in 1732. The town opened its south market, and soon the area had more houses and streets. We can see that growth in how Eliot’s title pages described his business:

• “at his shop, the south end of the town,” 1724
• “in Orange Street at the south end of the town,” 1734
• “near the South Market,” 1741

Even after the consolidation of Boston’s marketplaces at Faneuil Hall in 1743, the neighborhood grew.

Deacon Eliot’s big trees remained a handy landmark for people entering or navigating town. Newspaper advertisements tell us Josiah Quincy, Sr., lived “opposite to the great Trees, at the South End,” until he struck it rich in privateering and moved to a country estate in Braintree. Other sites in the neighborhood included the house of auctioneer and deacon Benjamin Church, Sr.; the leather workshop of Adam Colson; and a building once called “the Half-Moon, or Land-Bank House.”

Isaiah Thomas later wrote of Eliot:

He published a few books, and was, many years, a bookseller and binder, but his concerns were not extensive. However, he acquired some property; and being a respectable man, was made deacon of the church in Hollis street.

Thomas simply missed the period when Eliot was most active in publishing. After his uncle’s death in 1741, the deacon appears to have cut back on new ventures and lived off his real estate and shop.

Sarah Eliot died in 1755 at the age of sixty. Deacon John Eliot was then sixty-three years old. He married again to a woman named Mary, then in her forties, but she died in 1761. The deacon’s daughters Sarah and Silence remained unmarried, so one or both might have kept house for him after that.

In August 1765, as described yesterday, the Loyall Nine used the boughs of Deacon Eliot’s tree to hang Andrew Oliver in effigy. The figures of several other royal appointees and political enemies followed in the subsequent years. The Sons of Liberty put up a flagpole beside the tree and raised a banner—the Union Jack on a red field—to call public gatherings. Christopher Seider’s funeral train stopped at the tree. So did the processions of men being tarred and feathered.

The way people referred to the tree as belonging to Deacon Eliot suggests it stood on his property with the branches extending over the street. It’s not clear how near Eliot’s house was to the tree, or whether he had a fence around his land. (The picture above was created decades after the tree was cut down in 1775, and there’s no way to know how accurate it was.) How did Eliot feel about the large political gatherings right outside his house? About his property being identified with rebellion?

Though Eliot doesn’t show up on the records as an active Whig, he does seem to have supported that cause and accepted the new identity for the elm outside his house. The 10 Apr 1769 Boston Gazette included an advertisement saying that land and “a large Building thereon, commonly known by the Name of the South Market,” was to be sold by court order. Prospective buyers were invited to “inquire of John Eliot at Liberty-Tree.”

On 14 August that year, the elderly deacon was among the many local dignitaries who dined with Boston’s Sons of Liberty at Lemuel Robinson’s tavern in Dorchester. In 1770, when William Billings advertised his New-England Psalm-Singer, one of the of the four places where people could buy it was “Deacon Elliot’s under Liberty-Tree.”

By that time, Deacon Eliot was in his late seventies. He didn’t live to see all that his elm tree inspired. On 22 Nov 1771, the Boston News-Letter ran this death notice:

Last Thursday died here, Mr. John Eliot, Deacon of the Church under the Pastoral Care of the the Rev’d Dr. Byles—He justly sustain’d the Character of an Honest Man, and a good Christian—His Remains were decently interr’d on Saturday last.

Three days later an ad in the Boston Gazette called on people with debts to settle with Eliot’s estate to meet with the administrators, Joseph Eliot and Thomas Crafts, Jr. The former was probably his son (1727-1782), who moved to Natick, as did his unmarried sisters. The latter was a member of the Loyall Nine who watched over Liberty Tree from his nearby workshop.

The gravestone for Deacon John Eliot and his two wives still stands in the Granary Burying Ground.

“The Fury of the flames is beyond Conception”

I’ve been looking for personal accounts of fleeing or fighting the great Boston fire of 1760, which started in the shop at the Sign of the Brazen Head. Anonymous newspaper reports, however vivid, don’t give us the same experience as an individual’s story.

Naturally, diaries from eastern Massachusetts mention the event, but fewer 1760 diaries have been published than those kept a few years later. Edward Holyoke, president of Harvard College, wrote: “This Morn past two began ye great fire at Boston, beginning at ye Brazen head & burnd to Fort St.” Which shows how even people outside of town knew of the Brazen Head as a landmark and where the fire began.

The merchant John Rowe told a relative on 21 Apr 1760:

we have had a Terrible Fire hapen’d at Boston in which I was a Sufferer at Oliver’s Dock, the Newspapers will fully acquaint you the Situation of what was burnt, such a Melancholy & Dismal Burning was never yet seen in any part of this Continent

The wind blew very hard at North West and the Fury of the flames is beyond Conception

That’s as close to a personal statement as I’ve found, and it focuses on property and weather.

Up in the North End, Deacon John Tudor wrote at more length, but still at a distance, in his diary:

This morning a Terable Fire broke oute about 2 O’Clock in the Morning at the Brazen-head E Side of Corn Hill. Soon after the Fire got to a head the Wind Sprung up Fresh aboute N. W. which communicated the sparks to the S. E. part of the Town as far as Hunts Shipyard and about Fort-hill and in 5 or 6 howers Consumed 349 Buildings. It is impossable to express the Distress of the unhappy Sufferers by the grevos Judgment. The loss to the Sufferers in Houses, Stores, Merchandizes, Furneture &c. was £100,000. Sterling.

Tudor was an Overseer of the Poor, and he went on to discuss the disaster relief effort.

COMING UP: The religious side, and collecting aid.

(The picture above is one of Rowe’s firefighting buckets, dated 1760 and therefore most likely acquired after the great fire showed how important they were.)

Taking the Measure of the Holyoke Family

At Two Nerdy History Girls, Isabella Bradford highlighted a weighty image from Harvard University’s new online collection of colonial materials.

In his almanac for the new year of 1748, thirteen-year-old John Holyoke wrote down the weights of all the members of his family’s household as of 8 January. Here is what that page looked like after it was transcribed and published.

John’s list of weights started with his father, the Rev. Edward Holyoke (1689-1769, shown here), president of Harvard College since 1737, weighing in at 234.5 pounds.

The Holyoke genealogy shows that this was a blended family, formed in 1742. The college president was on his third marriage with several children from the second. His wife Mary had children from her first marriage.

The others John listed were:

• “Mother”: Mary (Whipple Epes) Holyoke (d. 1790, aged 92 years old). She was actually John’s stepmother.
• “Peggy”: Margaret Holyoke (1726-1792), who two years later married John Mascarene (1722-1779), later a Customs official in Salem.
• “Betty Hol[yoke].”: Elizabeth Holyoke (1732-1821), daughter from the president’s first marriage.
• “John”: The note-taker, nearly fourteen and 93 pounds. He entered Harvard later that year but died five years later.
• “Sam’l”: Samuel Epes (1733-1760), son of the mother’s first marriage and only 88 pounds. He became a lawyer and died in his twenties. In August 1746 these two boys went into Boston for school, presumably at one of the grammar schools to prepare for college.
• “Anna”: Also called Nancy Holyoke (1735-1812).
• “Betty Epes”: Elizabeth Epes, daughter of the mother’s first marriage, born in 1736.
• “Priscilla”: Priscilla Holyoke (1739-1782).
• “Mary”: Mary Holyoke (1742-1753), only child of the present marriage, she died five years later.
• “Deb Foster”: On 4 Oct 1734, Holyoke wrote in his diary, “Deborah Foster came to live with us.” The editor of the family diaries identified her as “the hired girl,” though at 159 pounds she must have been a grown woman. Sometimes her last name was spelled Forster. On 24 July 1750, she went to Marblehead, and a few months later “Deborah Dwelly came to live with us.”
• “Juba”: An enslaved black servant. On 20 Aug 1744 she took “Johny” into Boston by foot. That moment and her weight seem to be the only time she was mentioned by name in the family diaries.

The president’s oldest son Edward Augustus “Neddy” Holyoke (1728-1829) was no longer in the household. On 22 Aug 1747 he had gone to Ipswich to study medicine from Dr. Thomas Berry.