“A Committee exercising such extensive Powers as this”

In addition to the main protest against Boston’s committee of correspondence and Solemn League and Covenant boycott, quoted yesterday, there was also a shorter, milder protest signed by only eight merchants.

This was also dated 29 June 1774 and appeared in the same newspapers as the big one. In fact, the Boston Post-Boy printers ran it first, perhaps because it was easier to set in type.

That protest read:

WHEREAS at a Meeting of the Town of Boston, held at the Old-South Meeting-House on the 28th Instant, a Motion was made and seconded, That the Committee of Correspondence of said Town should be censured and dismissed, which being put to Vote passed in the Negative.

We the Subscribers, being Dissentients therefrom, do now enter our Protest, grounded on the following Reasons:

First, Because that notwithstanding we think that a Committee of Correspondence, constitutionally appointed, may at any Time be useful, provided it was under proper Restrictions, and that the Letters wrote by them previous to their being sent were duly considered and approbated by the Town; yet that a Committee exercising such extensive Powers as this has done, is of dangerous Tendency.

This Committee was appointed in November 1772, to state the Rights of the Colonists and of this Province in particular, with the Infringements and Violations thereof that have been, or from Time to Time may be made; and to publish the same to the World as the Sense of the Town; and likewise to request of the other Towns a free Communication of their Sentiments on this Subject; and to make Report of the same to this Town for their Approbation; and were not authorized to publish the same until it was approved, and the Letter accompanyed by the Town; and when this Business was done we apprehend the Committee was dissolved, or at furthest at the End of the Year; and as they have not been re-chosen, we are of Opinion they do not properly now subsist as a Committee.

Because the said Committee have lately, not only without the Knowledge and Approbation of the Town, but in a secret Manner, issued out to many Towns in the Province a Covenant for Non-Consumption of British Goods, accompanied by a Letter recommending the same, signed by their Clerk, which Covenant was of the highest Importance to the Town.

Because they have also, as a Committee of the Town, aspersed the Characters of many respectable Inhabitants of this Town, in Letters written by them to the Cities of New-York and Philadelphia.

Nothing less than a Sense of its being our Indispensable Duty, to defend the Characters of our Neighbours, when we think them injured, could have induced us to give this last Reason.——

We declare we have no private Pique against any one Gentleman of the Committee, but have an Esteem for some of them, and can readily do them Justice to say, that this Conduct is so far from being consonant to the Tenor of their Actions (as far as we have known them) in the common Occurrences of Life, that we were struck with the greatest Surprize at the Discovery.

The men who signed this protest were Edward Payne, Thomas Amory (shown above), John Amory, Samuel Elliot, Caleb Blanchard, Frederick William Geyer, John Andrews, and Samuel Bradstreet. Some were future Loyalists, others moderate Whigs. Payne was even a victim of the Boston Massacre.

This document notably didn’t criticize the Solemn League and Covenant itself, only how the committee had promulgated it without running it by a town meeting first.

In fact, on 30 May the town had instructed the committee to write a non-consumption agreement and communicate it to other Massachusetts towns. The committee members evidently felt they didn’t have to go back to another meeting for approval of the final text.

TOMORROW: Behind the protests.

For and Against the Committee of Correspondence

During Boston’s town meeting session on 27 June 1774, town clerk William Cooper didn’t record who spoke.

But the merchant John Rowe did.

In his diary, Rowe listed the defenders of the standing committee of correspondence as:

• Samuel Adams.
• Dr. Joseph Warren.
• William Molineux.
• Josiah Quincy, Jr.
• Dr. Thomas Young.
• Benjamin Kent (1708–1788), a lawyer. He was a Whig, but he had Loyalist relatives and after the war he actually moved to Canada to be with his children.

Aside from Kent, those names are familiar to Boston 1775 readers. They were most of the town’s most visible Whig leaders. All but Kent had been named to the committee of correspondence back in 1772.

Speaking “against the Behaviour of the Committee” were:

• Harrison Gray (1711–1794, shown here), treasurer of Massachusetts, merchant.
• Thomas Gray (1721–1774), merchant, elected to the General Court for one term in 1764, half-brother to Harrison Gray.
• Samuel Elliot (1739–1820), merchant, later president of the Massachusetts Bank.
• Samuel Barrett (1722–1798), merchant, occasional town official, later a justice of the peace.
• John Amory (1728–1803), merchant, owner of a distillery.
• Edward Payne (1721-1788), merchant, shot during the Boston Massacre, later in marine insurance.
• Francis Green (1742–1809), merchant, British army veteran.
• Ezekiel Goldthwait (1710–1782), insurance broker, former town clerk, clerk of the courts, registrar of deeds.

Those men were evidently representing Boston’s merchants, not the friends of the royal government. Most of them weren’t politically active. Only Harrison Gray, Green, and Goldthwait had signed the addresses to the royal governors that spring. Gray and Goldthwait did have major government appointments, but they tried to present themselves as moderate centrists serving both the people and the Crown.

We don’t know what paths Thomas Gray would have chosen when war broke out and when the British military left Boston because he died after a carriage accident in November 1774. But we do known the political choices of all the other men.

Harrison Gray, Amory, and Green left Boston with the redcoats, becoming Loyalists. Amory and Green eventually returned to Massachusetts, however.

Elliot, Barrett, Payne, and Goldthwait stayed in Massachusetts, some serving in civic offices under the new republican order. Barrett appears to have thrown in with the Patriots just a couple of months after this town meeting, participating in the Suffolk County Convention and taking on wartime tasks for the state. In contrast, Goldthwait retired from public life.

The argument of this group was likely that, while it was important to stand up for liberty and protest unjust laws, the Boston committee of correspondence’s methods had been too confrontational and led the town into trouble. It was time to back off, settle accounts for the Tea Party, and reopen for business.

John Rowe himself wrote privately: “the Committee are wrong in the matter. The Merchants have taken up against them, they have in my Opinion exceeded their Power.” But he didn’t speak up in the meeting himself.

COMING UP: Mutual resentments.

Who Was the “person out of Boston last Night”?

The Pennsylvania Packet article describing the flag on Prospect Hill in January 1776 also reported that the British inside besieged Boston had misinterpreted it:

…the Boston gentry supposed it to be a token of the deep impression the [king’s] Speech had made, and a signal of submission—That they were much disappointed at finding several days elapse without some formal measure leading to a surrender, with which they had begun to flatter themselves.——

This is bunk. According to the article’s own timing, the flag went up on 2 January and the latest news from Cambridge was written on 4 January, so “several days” had not elapsed.

This newspaper anecdote is thus too good to be true. Joseph Reed, who most likely supplied the article, must have been tickled with the idea of the royalists falsely thinking the Continental Army was ready to give up.

In fact, no sources created inside Boston show the royal authorities thinking the rebels were about to surrender. The two British mentions of the flag later that January correctly interpreted it as a signal of colonial unity. So where did the story come from?

The first version appeared in Gen. George Washington’s 4 January letter to Reed:

we had hoisted the Union Flag in compliment to the United Colonies, but behold! it was receivd in Boston as a token of the deep Impression the Speech had made upon Us, and as a signal of Submission—so we learn by a person out of Boston last Night

That person might have had an idiosyncratic interpretation of the flag. More likely, I suspect that person described initial perplexity inside the town on seeing the new flag, which Washington preferred to interpret in the way that made his enemy seem most foolish.

So who was that person who arrived at Cambridge headquarters on 3 January?

On the same day that Washington wrote to Reed, he sent a more formal letter to John Hancock as chairman of the Continental Congress. In that report the general wrote:

By a very Intelligent Gentleman, a Mr Hutchinson from Boston, I learn that it was Admiral [Molyneux] Shuldhum that came into the harbour on Saturday last . . .

We also learn from this Gentleman & others, that the Troops embarked for Hallifax, as mentioned in my Letter of the 16—were really designed for that place . . . 

I am also Informed of a Fleet now getting ready under the Convoy of the Scarborough & Fowey Men of War, consisting of 5 Transports & 2 Bomb Vessels, with about 300 marines & Several Flat bottom’d Boats—It is whispered that they are designed for Newport, but generally thought in Boston, that it is meant for Long-Island . . .

Washington sent that same information to Reed, and it went into the newspaper.

Also, at “8 o’clock at night” on “the 3d.” of January, Washington’s aide Stephen Moylan wrote to Reed:

a very inteligent man got out of Boston this day, says, two of the Regiments of the Irish embarkation pushed for the River of St. Lawrence . . .

he allso says that it was generally thought in Boston that Nova Scotia was in our possession——

Reed didn’t include that last tidbit in his digest for the newspaper—probably because he knew it was false.

Thus, although Gen. Washington mentioned “others,” his headquarters’ main source for information from inside Boston in those two days was “Mr Hutchinson.” Both letters called him “intelligent,” which Dr. Samuel Johnson described as meaning both “knowing” and “giving intelligence.”

A footnote in the Washington Papers says, “Mr. Hutchinson has not been identified.” So let’s do something about that.

On Tuesday, 9 January, the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper wrote in his diary:

I din’d at Mr. [Edward] Payne’s with Mr. Shrimpton Hutchinson, Deacon [Ebenezer] Storer, [Joseph] Barrell &c.

The transcription of Cooper’s diary published in the American Historical Review in 1901 doesn’t identify the men Cooper dined with. But at this time Cooper and his family were living in Waltham, and Edward Payne’s son later wrote that during the siege his father “lived at Medford and at Waltham.” Payne, Storer, and Barrell all came from the top echelon of Boston businessmen, and they all appeared several times in Cooper’s diary before this date.

Shrimpton Hutchinson (1719–1811, gravestone shown above) was another well established Boston merchant. As an Anglican and a cousin of Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, he had reasons to become a Loyalist. But instead he kept out of politics, even as a justice of the peace. We know he lived in Boston after the war, becoming one of the leaders of the King’s Chapel congregation.

I’ve looked for other signs of Shrimpton Hutchinson’s movements during 1775 and 1776 without success. Therefore, I can’t say for sure that he had left Boston just a few days before his dinner at Payne’s, which was the first time Cooper mentioned him. But he was the sort of older, upper-class, well-connected man that Gen. Washington and his aides would have respected as a valuable intelligence source.

TOMORROW: The missing copies of the king’s speech.

“Upon the inhabitants in general lodging their arms in Faneuil-hall”

On 22 Apr 1775, with the Massachusetts militia besieging the king’s soldiers inside Boston, many townspeople wanted to get out of the way.

Gen. Thomas Gage, army commander and royal governor, had his own priorities: forestalling any citizen uprising against those soldiers.

Gage had approached Boston’s selectmen to start discussions on avoiding discontent and unrest. Those officials seized the opening to talk about letting people leave town.

In addition to five of the seven selectmen (John Hancock and Oliver Wendell had left Boston earlier in the month before fighting broke out), the town appointed four men to communicate with the governor. They were all established businessmen with political experience:

• James Bowdoin, a member of the Council, firm Whig, and, therefore, longtime headache for Govs. Francis Bernard and Thomas Hutchinson. He was, however, wealthy and learned, thus undeniably respectable. Also, though Bowdoin might excuse violence after the fact, he didn’t encourage it beforehand.
• Ezekiel Goldthwait (shown above), insurance broker, registrar of deeds, and veteran of other political offices, including Boston town clerk. While calling himself a Whig, Goldthwait was more centrist than most in that party and maintained friendly relations with the royal governors. Some people even called him a Tory.
• Henderson Inches, a Boston selectman voted out earlier in the decade for not pushing as hard on the Massacre orations as the voting public wanted, but still in the Whig party.
• Edward Payne, wounded in the Boston Massacre while standing peacefully on his front steps—but he chose not to sue about it. 
• Alexander Hill, a warden and fireward often chosen to audit the town’s accounts. Though he had been put on the town’s committee of correspondence, Hill was rarely involved in protests and debates over imperial issues.

In sum, these were gentlemen whom the governor couldn’t dismiss or treat with suspicion.

It’s a sign of the emergency situation that the town met on Sunday, 23 April. Indeed, Hill’s job as warden had been to ensure that people didn’t conduct business on the Sabbath. But these were desperate times.

The record published in the 26 June Boston Gazette continued:

Sabbath morning ten o’clock, April 23, 1775.

The town met according to adjournment.

The said committee made a verbal report. Whereupon it was desired that the committee would withdraw and reduce their report to writing, which was accordingly done, and is as follows, viz.

The committee appointed by the town to wait upon his excellency General Gage, with a copy of the two votes passed by the town yesterday in the afternoon; report, that they being read to him by the committee, and a long conference had with him upon the subject matter contained in the said votes, his excellency finally gave for answer, that upon the inhabitants in general lodging their arms in Faneuil-hall, or any other convenient place, under the care of the Selectmen, marked with the names of the respective owners, that all such inhabitants as are inclined may depart from the town, with their family’s and effects; and those who remain may depend upon his protection. And that the arms aforesaid at a suitable time would be return’d to the owners.

Most men in Boston, as in other towns, were required by law to drill with the militia and therefore owned firelocks. Gen. Gage didn’t want those guns used against his soldiers. He also didn’t want people to take their weapons out of town, join the besieging force, or arm fighters in that force.

On the other hand, the province had just gone through several months of Patriots complaining that they had the right—indeed, the obligation—to amass weapons, gunpowder, and other military supplies. Bostonians couldn’t participate much in that arming of the countryside, being under army occupation, but they supported it. Would they give up their means of self-defense?

TOMORROW: The townspeople’s expectations?

Boston’s Town Meeting on the Fourth Day of the War

As quoted yesterday, on 3 Apr 1775 the Boston town meeting voted to continue their work by adjournment on 17 April.

By that date, town clerk William Cooper had slipped out of town with the official records. Also unavailable were Samuel Adams, chosen moderator of that meeting, and selectman John Hancock.

I’ve found no record of a notice that Bostonians would not meet that day, nor indication that they tried. The following day, Gen. Thomas Gage set his plan for the Concord expedition in motion, and the day after that the province was at war.

The first indication of another town meeting appeared in Isaiah Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy, newly moved to Worcester, on 3 May. After a detailed account of the first day of fighting, that paper stated:

It is now thirteen days since Boston was entirely shut up. The Sunday after the battle there were but two or three religious assemblies that met in Boston. In the Forenoon there was a town meeting, at which a Committee, consisting of the Select-Man, were chosen to wait upon General Gage, in order to get permission for the inhabitants to remove out of town with their effects.

A more detailed and apparently more accurate account appeared in the Boston Gazette on 26 June. This report used the legal formula of Boston’s other town meetings, and it’s clear the selectmen were involved, so this appears to meet all the criteria to be an official meeting.

Boston, ff. At a Meeting of the Freeholders and other Inhabitants of the Town of Boston legally warned, on Saturday the Twenty second day of April, A. D. 1775.

The Hon. JAMES BOWDOIN, Esq [shown above]; was chosen Moderator.

The Moderator informed the town that the present meeting was in consequence of an interview between his excellency General Gage and the Selectmen, at his desire, and mentioned the substance of the conversation that pass’d; and also that the Selectmen with the advice and assistance of a number of gentlemen had prepared several votes, which they thought it might be proper for the town to pass—And which in conjunction with the assurances that had been given to his excellency by the selectmen, they apprehended from the interview aforesaid, would be satisfactory to his excellency——

Whereupon,
The Hon. James Bowdoin, Esq; Ezekiel Goldthwait, Esq; Mr. Henderson Inches, Mr. Edward Paine, Mr. Alexander Hill, together with the selectmen, viz. John Scollay, Esq; Mr. Timothy Newell, Mr. Samuel Austin, Thomas Marshall, Esq; & Mr. John Pitts, were appointed a committee to consider of this important matter, and were desired to report as soon as may be.

The said Committee made report, and after some debate, the two following votes passed unanimously, viz.

His excellency General Gage in an interview with the selectmen, having represented that there was a large body of men in arms assembled in the neighbourhood of this town, with hostile intentions against his majesty’s troops stationed here, and that in case the troops should be attacked by them, and the attack should be aided by the inhabitants of the town, it might issue in very unhappy consequences to the town.

For prevention whereof, his excellency assured the selectmen, that whatever might be the event of the attack, he would take effectual care, that the troops should do no damage, nor commit any act of violence in the town; but that the lives and properties of the inhabitants should be protected and secured, if the inhabitants behaved peaceably; and the selectmen in behalf of the town engaged for the peaceable behaviour of the inhabitants accordingly:

In confirmation of which engagement—Voted,
That as the town have behaved peaceably towards the troops hitherto, they hereby engage to continue to do so; and the peace officers, and all other town officers, are enjoined, and the magistrates, and all persons of influence in the town, are earnestly requested to exert their utmost endeavors to preserve the peace of the town:

The Town at the same time relying on the assurances of his excellency, that no insult, violence or damage shall be done to the persons or property of the inhabitants, either by the troops or the kings Ships, whatever may be the event of the attack his excellency seems to apprehend; but of which attack we have no knowledge or information whatever, as all communication between the town and country has been interrupted by his excellency’s order, ever since the collection of the body aforesaid.

Whereas the communication between this town and the country both by land and by water is at present stop’d by order of his excellency General Gage, and the inhabitants cannot be supplied with provisions, fuel and other necessaries of life; by which means the sick and all invalids must suffer greatly, and immediately; and the inhabitants in general be distress’d, especially such (which is by much the greatest part) as have not had the means of laying in a stock of provisions, but depend for daily supplies from the country for their daily support, and may be in danger of perishing, unless the communication be opened:

Therefore, Resolved,
That a committee be appointed to wait on his excellency General Gage, to represent to him the state of the town in this regard, and to remind his excellency of his declarations in answer to addresses made to him when the works on the neck were erecting, viz. “That he had no intention of stopping up the avenue to the Town, or of obstructing the inhabitants or any of the country people coming in or going out of the town as usual;” that “he had no intention to prevent the free egress and regress, of any person to and from the town, or of reducing it to the state of a garrison; that he could not possibly intercept the intercourse between the town and country;” that “it is his duty and interest to encourage it; and it is as much inconsistent with his duty and interest to form the strange scheme of reducing the inhabitants to a state of humiliation and vassalage, by stopping their supplies,”—

Also, to represent to him, that in consequence of these repeated assurances of his excellency, the fears and apprehensions of the inhabitants, had generally subsided, and many persons who had determined to remove with their effects, have remain’d in town, whilst others largely concern’d in navigation, had introduced many valuable goods, in full confidence of the promised security:

That the Town think his Excellency incapable of acting on principles inconsistent with honor, justice and humanity, and therefore that they desire his excellency will please to give orders for opening the communication, not only for bringing provisions into the town, but also, that the inhabitants, such of them as incline, may retire from the town with their effects without molestation.

The same Committee were appointed to wait upon the General with the foregoing votes.

Then the meeting was adjourned to Sabbath morning, ten o’clock.

The town was reminding Gen. Gage of all the promises he’d made in the preceding months of keeping life as normal as possible. Of course, now there was a besieging army outside (“a large body of men in arms assembled in the neighbourhood”). How would the general respond?

TOMORROW: Sunday meeting.

“Voices from the Boston Massacre” Exhibit at M.H.S.

The Massachusetts Historical Society has opened a new exhibit called “Voices from the Boston Massacre,” displaying documents and artifacts from its collection illuminating that Sestercentennial event of 5 Mar 1770.

The exhibit includes trial notes and letters from the collections of such attorneys as John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, and Samuel and Josiah Quincy, Jr. There’s a full series of Massacre engravings by Henry Pelham, Paul Revere, and the artists who copied them. We can see the musket balls that Edward Payne dug out of his doorway after he was wounded in the arm. We can read parts of the newspaper reports, orations, and memoirs of the event.

One document new to me is the recently acquired handwritten memoir of Julia Bernard Smith, daughter of Gov. Francis Bernard. He left Massachusetts in August 1769, but his family remained behind until December 1770, in part because the children were still in school.

Later in life, Smith wrote: “Captain [Thomas] Preston had performed at my Father’s Concerts and was well known to us.” I knew Preston was generally well regarded, but I had no idea he was musical.

This exhibit holds personal meaning for me. Twenty years ago, I was drawn into the study of Revolutionary Boston through the figure of Christopher Seider, the young boy killed eleven days before the Massacre by Customs officer Ebenezer Richardson.

As I wrote back here, I spent years looking for a broadside that a newspaper said Christopher had in his pocket when he died, and I finally found it in the M.H.S. catalogue. Now that broadside is in a display case near the beginning of the exhibit, illustrating Christopher’s importance in the events that followed. And the label cites my work identifying its significance.

There are also a couple of video displays in this exhibit. One shows actors reading various witnesses’ accounts of the shooting (or, in the case of Charles Bourgate, what he claimed was his account). Another shows historians speaking about the event from Serena Zabin and Hiller Zobel down to myself.

The M.H.S.’s “Voices from the Massacre” website features online resources about the period for researchers and educators. Folks can visit the exhibit at 1154 Boylston Street in Boston every Monday through Saturday from 10:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M., and as late as 7:00 P.M. on Tuesdays. It will be up through the Massacre anniversary until June 2020.

Speaking of the Massacre, I’ll be speaking of the Massacre with Bradley Jay on WBZ radio’s Jay Talking Show—what led up to the confrontation on King Street, how it happened, and why it mattered. That conversation will run from midnight to 1:00 A.M. on the morning of Tuesday, 12 November. If our chat is particularly interesting, it will become one of the show’s podcasts.

Hammond Green on Trial

Most people who follow early American history know that after the Boston Massacre the British soldiers were put on trial for murder. People who study the topic more closely know that there were separate trials for Capt. Thomas Preston and the eight enlisted men.

At those trials John Adams and Josiah Quincy, Jr., handled the defense alongside future Loyalists Robert Auchmuty and Sampson Salter Blowers. They won acquittals for most of the accused, convictions for manslaughter instead of murder for two. Americans remember the Whig lawyers’ work for the soldiers as a touchstone of every defendant’s right to a vigorous legal defense.

But there was a third murder trial after the Massacre which we hear very little about. While the record of the soldiers’ trial was reprinted multiple times in the 1800s, the publishers left out the description of that third trial which was originally printed with it.

That trial grew out of the claims of Charles Bourgate, a teenager of French extraction who worked for Customs official Edward Manwaring. For reasons of his own, Charles accused his master of having fired a gun out of an upper floor of the Customs house at the crowd on King Street.

When the teenager first made this accusation, Manwaring quickly refuted it by bringing in a friend, notary John Munro, to testify that the two of them had been somewhere else at the time. In addition, Hammond Green and Thomas Greenwood testified that they had been in that room of the Customs House during the violence, not seeing Manwaring or anyone else shoot out the windows.

Bourgate then revised his testimony to say that both Manwaring and Munro had been up in the room with guns. And that Hammond Green had yanked him into the Customs House to shoot a gun as well. This made no sense, but it allowed the Boston Whigs to arrest all four of those men and discount their testimony—after all, one should expect accused murderers to lie to protect themselves. Soon the town was proclaiming that it had evidence for a Customs service conspiracy against the people.

It looks like the judicial system recognized the relative weaknesses of this case. While Capt. Preston and the soldiers remained in jail until their trial, Green was released on bond on 7 April, as this document from the Boston Public Library collection shows. It identified Green as a “Boat builder.” His sureties were fellow boatbuilder Thomas Hitchbourn and the printers Richard Draper of the Boston News-Letter and John Green and Joseph Russell of the Boston Post-Boy.

The Customs men’s trial finally started on 12 December, after the soldiers’ ended. Samuel Quincy (shown above) had the difficult task of prosecuting. Bourgate repeated the latest version of his story under oath. Another youth (“Some people thought him foolish”) described seeing flashes from the Customs House windows. Then the defense called its witnesses.

Four merchants stated they had seen no shots from the windows. One of those men, Edward Payne, had been wounded in the Massacre, so he had no reason to cover up anything. Elizabeth Avery testified that she had watched the shooting with Hammond Green:

There was no other people in this room, (except them I have mentioned) during the whole time of my being there, but Thomas Greenwood who came in and went out again in a minute. Nor was there any gun or pistol, or candle in the room. Nor was the door of the balcony or any of the windows of the chamber opened that evening to my knowledge, and I verily believe they were not. The French Boy, who has just been sworn in this Court was not there that evening, nor did I ever see him there in my life. Nor was Mr. Manwarring or Mr Munroe there on that evening.

Hammond’s sister Ann stated the same.

Later the defense attorneys called a man who had spent time in the Boston jail with Charles Bourgate and said the boy had boasted of the reward he would get for perjuring himself. Charles denied that, but the jury cleared the Customs men of murder without getting up from their seats. The acquittal even made the London Chronicle.

I can’t tell if Hammond Green worked for the Customs service in 1770 or simply lived with his father who did. But by the time the war broke out, he was on the payroll as a tidesman. In March 1776 Hammond Green evacuated to Halifax with the British army, leaving behind his wife, Mary, and their child. In July 1777 the Massachusetts legislature granted permission for them to join him in Nova Scotia. Mary died in the following years, and in 1785 Hammond married Elizabeth Mott, young daughter of a former Royal Artillery mattross. Green was still working as a tidesman at Halifax in 1807, thirty-seven years after being tried and acquitted for the Boston Massacre.

Smuggling in Boston, Before the Revolution and 18 Sept.

One of the sources John Tyler used for Smugglers and Patriots: Boston Merchants and the Advent of the American Revolution (1986) are the records of Ezekiel Price’s marine insurance office. Merchants were happy to lie to the Customs office about where their ships were headed, but they didn’t want to invalidate their insurance policies with misinformation. Many of the voyages that Price underwrote were therefore clearly going outside imperial bounds.

Tyler also reported that written evidence survives for smuggling by Thomas Hancock, the governor’s rich uncle; Shrimpton Hutchinson, the other governor’s cousin; Whig organizer William Molineux; fence-sitting merchant John Rowe; ropemaker Benjamin Austin; future tea consignee Richard Clarke; and Massacre victim Edward Payne, among others.

In 1766 the Boston Customs office tried to search the storehouse of Daniel Malcom, an incident that still shows up in histories of American search-and-seizure laws. There’s strong evidence that Malcom really was a smuggler, even aside from how he refused to let the Customs men onto his property.

The most prominent merchant accused of smuggling before the Revolutionary War was, of course, John Hancock. The fortune he inherited from his uncle was certainly based in part on illegal trade (as well as government contracts). But the case that John Hancock himself oversaw serious smuggling is still unproven.

Peter Andreas’s Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America is the latest book to ply this region.  It covers the period from colonial times to the present, with smuggling dominated in different eras by molasses, slaves, drugs, booze, and people.

Andreas, a professor in the Department of Political Science at Brown University, will speak at the Massachusetts Historical Society on Wednesday, 18 September. There will be a reception at 5:30, and Andreas is due to speak at 6:00. This event costs $10 for people who aren’t M.H.S. members, and reservations are required. But if his book’s theme holds true, you can probably find someone to sneak you in.

Charles Bahne on the Boston Massacre Site Today

This is the anniversary of the shootings on King Street in 1770. That street became known as State Street, and the event became known as the Boston Massacre. Today guest blogger Charles Bahne, author of Chronicles of Old Boston, continues his analysis of exactly where the shootings happened.

Under the balcony at the east end of the Old State House, a circle of stones sits in the sidewalk, surrounded by a bronze ring proclaiming the “Site of the Boston Massacre.” Perhaps hundreds of thousands of people pause at that circle each year, to take a photo or listen to a tour guide, as they contemplate the events of that fateful fifth of March, 243 years ago.

They’re standing in the wrong place.

When first installed in 1887, the memorial stones were embedded in the middle of the intersection, nearer the site where Crispus Attucks actually fell. Since then, the circular marker has been moved at least three times: once in 1904, for Blue Line subway construction; again in the 1960s for Government Center urban renewal; and most recently in 2011 to build the plaza that’s there today. Its current location was chosen merely for safety, so that people can stand around the stones without being hit by traffic.

Published here for the first time anywhere, this diagram above shows how present-day landmarks relate to the buildings and events of March 5, 1770. My goal in creating this diagram was to update Paul Revere’s plan of the Massacre—described yesterday—into the 21st century. It’s a project that I first envisioned thirty years ago, now made far easier by online availability of historic maps and modern satellite views.

Running from right to left in my diagram is King Street, now known as State Street. At the left is present-day Washington Street, called “Main Street” by Revere, but designated as “Cornhill” on other colonial-era maps. (Remember that the Revere map is oriented with north to the right, so Cornhill is at the top.)

South of State Street, today’s street patterns remain remarkably similar to those in Revere’s day. Going from west to east, Revere labeled the streets as Pudin [Pudding] Lane, Court Square, and Quaker Lane. Today these are Devonshire Street, Quaker Lane, and Congress Street. (Note that the name Quaker Lane has been transferred from one thoroughfare to another in the intervening centuries!) Devonshire and Congress Streets are wider now, but Quaker Lane remains as a pedestrian pathway. The present buildings south of State Street—erected in the late 19th and early 20th centuries—still stand upon historic property lines, just as the 1770 structures did.

But north of State Street substantial changes have been made in the last half-century. The Government Center project obliterated streets that had survived the centuries, and skyscrapers are now set back from the historic street lines to create wide plazas.

To the right of the Town House on Revere’s plan is an unnamed street, called Crooked Lane on other colonial maps. Known as part of Devonshire Street until the 1960s, it would have run right through today’s skyscraper at 28 State Street.

The Custom House, at the lower right of Revere’s plan, stood at the corner of what he called Exchange Lane. Widened multiple times, it’s now an extension of Congress Street, four times its original breadth. Thus the Custom House—and the Massacre soldiers—stood where the northbound lanes of Congress Street flow today. To its west, the Exchange Tavern of Revere’s day was mostly in the southbound lanes of new Congress Street.

At lower left in Revere’s drawing is the house where Edward Payne was shot on his doorstep; today a stone wall of the Exchange Place high-rise stands on the site.

The main Guard House, headquarters of His Majesty’s armed forces in Boston, stood just south of the Old State House on the site that was until recently the entrance to a National Park Visitor Center at 15 State Street. It was here that Capt. Thomas Preston “walked up and down…for near half an hour” before deciding to bring relief troops to aid the besieged sentry in front of the Custom House. Shown, but not labeled, on Revere’s drawing are the two fieldpieces or cannons that the army placed in front of the Guard House, pointing directly at the Representatives’ Chamber just across the street.

One other colonial building of note is the Old Brick Meeting-House, home to Boston’s oldest Congregational parish, whose cupola is prominent behind the Old State House in Revere’s engraving. On his plan it would be just beyond the margin at upper left; on my diagram, a corner of it is visible to the left of the “C” in the label “Cornhill.”

It was fairly easy to determine the footprint of 1770s buildings as they relate to modern-day landmarks. My basic assumption was that colonial buildings were on the property line, and not set back from it. Especially on major thoroughfares—such as King Street and Cornhill—their façades made a uniform row at the boundary between private land and the public street. This assumption is borne out by the appearance of King Street both in Revere’s engraving of the Massacre and in the plan described here yesterday. An 1801 view of State Street and the Old State House also confirms this assumption.

The thick red lines in my diagram then, technically indicate property lines, but I assume they are the same as or very close to the building lines. Those property lines are well documented in a series of highly-detailed atlases prepared for fire insurance underwriters. Atlases from 1867 to 1938 are now available online at several sources; with design software, I could overlay maps from different eras over satellite views from sites like Google Maps. Also of assistance were an 1895 map showing how streets had been widened and a detailed map of Boston from 1814.

Revere’s drawing served as my chief source for the places where the soldiers and victims stood. But as noted here yesterday, the exact sites where some of the victims fell—especially the fifth fatality—has been, and will always be, fodder for speculation.

A larger version of Charlie’s “Boston Massacre Site, Then and Now” diagram will be featured in the fourth edition of his guidebook The Complete Guide to Boston’s Freedom Trail, coming this spring. Look for it at finer shops around Boston and online. Or, if you can’t wait, the third edition is available here.

Thanks for sharing your work, Charlie!

Charles Bahne on the Scene of the Massacre

As we approach the anniversary of the Boston Massacre on 5 March, Charles Bahne, author of The Complete Guide to Boston’s Freedom Trail, kindly shared this essay analyzing what may be our earliest visual source on the question: What did the Boston Massacre look like?

Besides the depositions and testimony given by eyewitnesses to the Boston Massacre, we have two contemporary pictorial depictions of the incident. Better known of the two is the copperplate print of “The Bloody Massacre”, “Engrav’d Printed & Sold by Paul Revere, Boston.” As discussed here, Revere’s print of the Massacre was copied—some say plagiarized—from an almost identical image by Henry Pelham.

The Revere/Pelham print is an accurate portrayal of the setting for the Massacre — the buildings, the starry night with its crescent moon, the overall streetscape. But its depiction of the events is far less accurate; issued as part of the radicals’ propaganda efforts, it contains some deliberate distortions. And to compress the entire action into one image, the perspective was foreshortened, placing the victims in much closer proximity than they really were.

For a more accurate depiction, we look to the above image, also attributed to Paul Revere, but with less certainty, since it’s unsigned. (Mellen Chamberlain, who gave this document to the Boston Public Library, said that the handwriting matched Revere’s.) Unlike the more famous print, which was fairly widely distributed, this image existed only in manuscript and wasn’t circulated publicly until over a century later.

We’re looking at a plan or map of the action that evening, drawn from an overhead perspective. North is at right, west at top. In the upper center the Town House (Old State House) is prominently marked. Rows of buildings line either side of King Street (State Street), with other streets branching off to right and left.

But while this plan is a more accurate portrayal of the Massacre events, it also has its limitations. Four bodies lie in the street, some drawn in intricate detail, along with six circles, which apparently show the injured townsfolk. That makes a total of ten victims, but eleven people were actually shot—five dead and six wounded.

At extreme upper right is a seventh circle, unlabeled by the artist and unnoticed by any earlier commentator. Could this be the eleventh victim, or is it something else entirely, being so remote from the rest of the action?

All four bodies, and five of the circles for the wounded, are labeled with letters. Two letters clearly match the names of the slain: A for Attucks and G for Gray. But the other two bodies are marked C and G, only a partial match with the other martyrs, Caldwell, Carr, and Maverick. The circles are labeled with three Ps and two Ms; the six wounded citizens were Payne, Patterson, Parker, Monk, Clark, and Green.

Some discrepancy may have been caused by the belated deaths of Patrick Carr and Samuel Maverick. Was one of them considered wounded, rather than killed, when the plan was drawn?

Still, there are just nine letters in this plan. With eleven known victims, we’re missing two Cs; while a G and an M appear to have been switched between the injured (Green) and the deceased (Maverick).

At lower right, in front of the Custom House, stands a curved line of seven soldiers—not the eight who were actually there. Some historians have theorized, partly on the basis of this plan, that one of the regulars may have stood behind the others, not in line with his colleagues.

Unfortunately, the meaning of the letters, numbers, and circles must remain a matter of speculation. If a key to the plan was created, it’s been lost. Some say that a key was written on the back of the paper, which has since been glued to a board, permanently obscuring whatever it may once have said.

In their recent books about the Massacre, Neil York and Richard Archer both attempt to match the bodies and circles with the names of the fallen citizens—and they disagree. (Neil York consulted with me on this, and cites me in his book.)

The bottom line is that we know with some certainty where Crispus Attucks and Samuel Gray fell, next to the soldiers, and where Edward Payne was hit, standing on his doorstep at lower left. James Caldwell is one of the other bodies shown on the plan, probably the prominent one in the middle of the intersection. As for the other victims, we can only guess who fell where.

TOMORROW: How the scene looks today.

Edward Payne: genteel shooting victim

On 6 Mar 1770, the day after the Boston Massacre, acting governor Thomas Hutchinson wrote a letter to his superiors in London explaining what they would want to know about the event:

I found two persons killed a third mortally wounded since dead, a fourth dangerously wounded & a fifth, Mr Payne a Merchant of the Town, shot in his arm and the bone splintered as he stood at his door.

Who was “Mr Payne,” and why did he warrant being the only shooting victim the governor named?

Edward Payne (1722-1788) was the only person shot on King Street who came from the genteel class rather than being a craftsman or sailor. That’s why he warranted attention from royal officials. He was also the only man shot on his own property, rather than on the street—though that was apparently a matter of inches.

Benjamin Andrews filed a report for the town on where the soldiers’ musket balls lodged in Payne’s house. He described a “bullet hole in the entry door post..., which grazed the edge of the door before it entered the post where it lodged, two and a half inches deep” and a “hole made by another musket ball through the window shutter of the lower story of the same house, and lodged in the back wall of the shop.” The first ball had gone through Payne’s arm before ending up in that post.

Payne’s testified to the town’s investigating committee about his experience. After describing reports of fights between soldiers and townspeople, he said:

That this deponent then went home, and stood upon the sill of his entry door, which is nearly opposite to the east end of the Customhouse, where he was soon joined by Mr. George Bethune [1720-1785], and Mr. Harrison Gray [Jr.] (c. 1735-1830), that the people round the sentinel were then crying out “Fire, fire, damn you, why don't you fire,” soon after, he perceived a number of soldiers coming down towards the sentinel, with their arms in a horizontal posture, and their bayonets fixed, who turned the people from before the Custom-house, and drew up before the door, the people, who still remained in the street and about the soldiers, continued calling out to them to fire.

In this situation they remained some minutes, when he heard a gun snap, and presently a single gun fired and soon after several others went off, one after another, to the number, of three or four, and then heard the rammers go into the guns as though they were loading; immediately after which, three or four more went off in the same manner; at which time, a ball passed through the deponents right arm, upon which he immediately retired into the house.

The report noted that Payne signed his deposition “with his left hand” because of the injury to his right. Later he testified at the soldiers’ trial, telling much the same story.

William Tudor’s mention of Payne in The Life of James Otis (1823) is probably less accurate, but vivid and amusing:

Among the persons wounded was Edward Payne, Esq. a respectable merchant, who having been attracted by the noise in the street, was standing as a spectator at his own door, at the corner of Congress street when he received two balls through his arm, that afterwards lodged in the door-post.

This gentleman’s mild manner of expressing his vexation, when he found himself wounded, excited a smile among his friends. “I declare,” he said with emphasis, “I think those soldiers ought to be talked to.”

I love the phrase “with emphasis.”

Tudor added, “These balls are now in the possession of his son William Payne, Esquire, and may be considered an interesting relic of the revolution.”

Indeed they are. The two balls now belong to the Massachusetts Historical Society, though this photo of them comes via the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library & Museum website. The labels say the one on the right went through Payne’s arm, the one on the left straight into his house.

After my posting on Monday about soldiers probably double-loading their guns, some Boston 1775 readers commented about the importance of the weight and metal content of the musket balls. I don’t know if anyone’s studied these bullets in that regard. I suspect, given where they ended up, that they came from the same gun.

One more anecdote about Edward Payne and the Massacre comes from Peter Oliver, one of the judges who presided over the trials at the end of the year. As a bitter Loyalist in England in 1783, he wrote this anecdote about the gentleman wounded in the shooting (who must be Payne) and the Rev. Dr. Charles Chauncy:

[The minister] had heard that a Gentleman was wounded, on that unhappy Night when the Soldiers had fired. He waited upon the Gentleman, & asked him, whether he did not design to prosecute Capt. [Thomas] Preston in damages [i.e., file a civil suit against him for assault]?

The Gentleman replied, “No Sir! It will be of no Advantage. Capt. Preston is to be tried for his Life. If he should be convicted he will suffer Death, & then I cannot recover any Damages; & if he is acquitted I shall be in the same Circumstances”: to which this hoary headed Divine…said—“if I was to be one of the Jury upon his Trial, I would bring him in guilty; evidence or no Evidence.”

After the siege of Boston, Payne gave up trading goods and started selling insurance. He died on the anniversary of the Massacre in 1788. Payne’s son William took over the house, office, and business at what became 15 State Street. Edward Payne’s daughter Rebecca married Christopher Gore, one of Hutchinson’s successors as governor of Massachusetts.

The First Newspaper Reports on the Massacre

In colonial Boston, some newspapers published each Monday, and some each Thursday. Because the Boston Massacre occurred on a Monday evening, the first press reports appeared on Thursday the 8th—237 years ago today. The Massachusetts Gazette and Boston News-Letter listed the casualties this way:

Mr. Samuel Gray, Ropemaker, killed on the Spot, the Ball entred his Head broke the Skull.

A Mollatto Man, named Johnson, who was born in Framingham, but lately belonging to New-Providence, and was here in order to go for North-Carolina, killed on the Spot, two Balls entering his Breast.

Mr. James Caldwell, Mate of Capt. Morton’s Vessel, killed on the Spot, two balls entering his Breast.

Mr. Samuel Maverick, a promising Youth of 17 Years of Age, Son of the Widow Maverick, and an Apprentice to Mr. Greenwood, Joiner, mortally wounded, a Ball went through his Belly, and came out at his Back: He died the next Morning.

A Lad named Christopher Monk, about 17 Years of Age, an Apprentice to Mr. Walker, Shipwright; Mortally wounded, a Ball entered his Side and came out of his Back; apprehended he will die.

A Lad named John Clark, about 17 Years of Age, whose Parents live at Medford, and an Apprentice to Capt. Samuel Howard of this Town; Mortally wounded, a Ball entered just above his Groin and came out at his Hip, on the opposite side, apprehended he will die.

Mr. Edward Payne, of this Town, Merchant, standing at his Entry Door, received a Ball in his Arm, and shattered some of the Bones.

Mr. John Green, Taylor, coming up Leverett’s Lane, received a Ball just under his Hip, and lodged in the under Part of his Thigh, which was extracted.

Mr. Robert Patterson, a Seafaring Man, who was the Person that had his Trowsers shot thro’ in [Ebenezer] Richardson’s affair, wounded; a Ball went thro’ his right Arm.

Mr. Patrick Cole, about 30 Years of Age, who work’d with Mr. Field Leather- Breeches-maker in Queen-Street, wounded, a Ball entered near his Hip and went out at his Side.

A Lad named David Parker, an Apprentice to Mr. Eddy the Wheelwright, wounded, a Ball entered his Thigh.

What seems off about this list? Well, for one thing, though people expected apprentices Christopher Monk and John Clark to die shortly, neither did. Monk remained disabled by his wound for several years before dying, so he’s not memorialized among the standard five Massacre victims.

The Boston Gazette, published the same day, ran a similar list, emphasizing the three wounded apprentices ahead the working-men. The Gazette also gave different names for two men. The first was Patrick Carr, an Irish-born laborer I’ll have more to say about soon. While the two apprentices survived, Carr turned out to have been mortally wounded.

The Gazette also reported the one name people today are most likely to connect to the Boston Massacre: Crispus Attucks. Apparently he was living in Boston under the alias “Michael Johnson,” the name on the coroner’s report on his death (now in the collections of the Old State House Museum). Both the News-Letter and the Boston Chronicle reported the mulatto sailor’s name as Johnson. But the Boston Gazette had the name that appeared on all the subsequent legal proceedings, the name that’s come down in history.

Oddly enough, however, the News-Letter and Gazette had the same description of the man’s history: born in Framingham, working as a sailor out of the Bahamas, in Boston between voyages. Both identified him as mulatto, and therefore didn’t grant him the honorific title of “Mr.” In the 1850s historians found a newspaper ad that implied Attucks had escaped from slavery in Framingham twenty years before, which would explain why he used an alias while back in his home province. But how Bostonians discovered the history of that dead man, and how details reached one newspaper before the others, is still a gnawing mystery.