“It was not disturbed, nor was any of their property taken”

I’ve now quoted two nineteenth-century accounts from descendants of Elbridge Gerry, Azor Orne, and Jeremiah Lee (shown here) saying that British soldiers searched the tavern in Menotomy where they were staying on the night of 18–19 Apr 1775.

The three men, all delegates from Marblehead to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, fled out the back of the tavern and hid outside in the cold.

Less than a month later, Lee died of an illness, which his family attributed to the stress of that night. That obviously made the men’s choices in the early hours of 19 April carry more weight.

There are, however, big problems with the story that part of the British army column searched Ethan Wetherby’s Black Horse tavern that night.

First, Gen. Thomas Gage’s orders for the march said nothing about looking for committee of safety members along the way. His intelligence files have no information on the whereabouts of those committee men. Rather, the general wanted his troops to get to Concord as quickly as possible.

Furthermore, none of the British army officers who wrote reports on that march described searching a tavern in west Cambridge, or anywhere else on their way out.

Finally, no contemporaneous accounts from the provincial side—neither depositions, letters, nor newspaper articles—complained about this search, either. And people made a lot of complaints in the wake of the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

There might be a seed of truth at the start of the story. Both versions say a small number of soldiers approached the tavern after the vanguard passed by. It’s conceivable that some redcoats turned aside to use the tavern’s well or outhouse before catching up with the column. But the lore goes much further than that, saying soldiers spent “more than an hour” searching every room in the building, “even the beds.”

The lore offers no corroborating evidence for that detail, such as the landlord’s testimony. In fact, the nineteenth-century versions specify that the committee men couldn’t point to anything missing as a sign that the soldiers had visited their room:

• “a valuable watch of Mr. Gerry’s, which was under his pillow, was not disturbed.”
• “Mr. Gerry’s watch was under his pillow, but it was not disturbed, nor was any of their property taken.”

Ordinarily if everything in a room looks the same as before, we treat that as a sign it wasn’t searched.

By 1916, Thomas Amory Lee might have spotted that weakness in the traditional tale because his article “Colonel Jeremiah Lee: Patriot” for the Essex Institute Historical Collections stated: “Gerry’s silver watch and French great coat disappeared.” That’s a direct contradiction of earlier Gerry family lore, and even that new version said Orne’s watch went untouched.

Given the totality of evidence, I think the Marblehead delegates were more worried about arrest than Gerry’s exchange of notes with John Hancock let on. Seeing hundreds of British soldiers outside their inn, perhaps seeing some of those soldiers coming closer to the building, they bolted for an exit.

There are reports Gerry and perhaps Lee sustained injuries in their flight. Then they stayed outside in the cold until it felt safe to return. Waiting for the whole army column to pass by and go out of sight may have felt like an hour, but it probably took less time than that.

Finally the three men came back inside, grateful to have escaped arrest. Then came news of the shooting at Lexington, the redcoat reinforcement column, the outbreak of war. The delegates fled the tavern again, this time with their possessions. Lee fell ill soon after, and died on 10 May.

Looking back on the episode decades later, Gerry and Orne—and perhaps even more so their and Lee’s descendants—would have resisted the thought that those sacrifices weren’t really necessary. That the three Marblehead men could have stayed in their warm bedroom, watched the glittering troops march by, and never faced arrest. That Lee might have lived longer.

So they convinced themselves that running outside had been necessary. Not just prudent but necessary. Which meant believing that soldiers came into the tavern and searched the bedrooms, leaving no sign of their presence.

“The soldiers searched for them, for more than an hour”

On 27 Apr 1861, the Cambridge Chronicle published an article headlined “Revolutionary Incident.” and signed “C.F.O.”

The first paragraph listed its “authentic and reliable sources,” including “the Records of the Provincial Congress, Austin’s Life of Gerry, and the niece of Col. Gerry, daughter in law of Col. Orne, and the grand-daughter of Col. Lee.”

“C.F.O.” was Caroline Frances Orne (1818–1905, shown here), a poet, local historian, and Cambridge’s librarian for seventeen years.

She was a granddaughter of Sally (Gerry) Orne (d. 1846), who was “the niece of Col. [Elbridge] Gerry, [and] daughter in law of Col. [Azor] Orne.” I believe “the grand-daughter of Col. [Jeremiah] Lee” was most likely either Louise Lee Tracy (1787–1869) or Helen Tracy (1796–1865).

Thus, this article was based on family lore, not first-hand witnesses, and the author was herself a member of the intertwined family. She consulted books like the Journals of Each Provincial Congress of Massachusetts and James T. Austin’s biography of his father-in-law, but used those to fill out a story she’d undoubtedly heard from her grandmother.

Caroline Frances Orne wrote of the British army march in April 1775:

Among the objects of this march one was to seize the persons of some of the influential members of the Provincial Congress, to hold them as hostages, or send them to England for trial as traitors, and thus to terrify and dismay their associates and friends.

Among others, Col. [John] Hancock, Col. [Azor] Orne and Mr. Elbridge Gerry had been in session, on the day preceding the march of the troops, in the village of Menotomy, then part of the township of Cambridge, on the road to Lexington, at [Ethan] Wetherby’s Black-Horse Tavern.

Col. Hancock, Samuel Adams, and some others went over to Lexington to pass the night, while Messrs. Gerry, Lee, and Orne remained at the village. The appearance of some officers of the royal army who passed through the village just before dark, attracted the attention of these gentlemen, and a message of warning was at once despatched to Col. Hancock. Of their personal danger they did not entertain an idea, but retired quietly to rest, without taking the least precaution.

As the British advance came into view of the dwelling-house, they arose and looked out of the windows, and in the bright moonlight saw the glitter of the bayonets, and marked the regular march of the disciplined troops. The front had passed, and the centre was opposite the house, when a signal was given, and an officer and a file of men marched towards it. Then the apprehension of danger first struck them, and they hastened to escape.

Rushing down stairs, Col. Gerry in his perturbation, was about to open the door in the face of the British, when the agitated landlord exclaimed, “For God’s sake, gentlemen, don’t open that door[.]” He then hurried them out at the back door, into a cornfield, where the old stalks still remained. Hastening along, Col. Gerry soon fell. “Stop, Orne,” he called in low, urgent voice, “Stop for me till I can get up; I have hurt myself.”

“Lie still,” replied Col Orne, in the same low tone, “Throw yourself flat on the ground,” proceeding at once to do the same himself, in which he was imitated by Col Lee.

This manoeuvre saved them. The soldiers searched for them, for more than an hour. Every apartment of the house was searched “for the members of the Rebel Congress,” and even the beds in which they had lain. Mr. Gerry’s watch was under his pillow, but it was not disturbed, nor was any of their property taken. The troops finally left, and the gentlemen returned, suffering greatly from cold, for it was a cold frosty night, and they were but slightly clothed.

Col. Lee never recovered from the effects of the exposure. He was attacked, soon after, by a severe fever, and died, May 10th, 1775, universally lamented. The others lived to render most important services to their country.

Three years later, the Rev. Samuel Abbot Smith (1829-1865) put a shorter version of the same story into his West Cambridge on the Nineteenth of April, 1775. He credited “Miss Orne, who received this account from the lips of her grandmother, who was niece of Elbridge Gerry, and daughter-in-law of Col. Orne.”

TOMORROW: The watch under the pillow.

“Opposite to the house occupied by the committee”

On 18 Apr 1775, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s committee of safety met “at Mr. [Ethan] Wetherby’s, at the Black Horse” tavern in west Cambridge.

Among other business that day, the committee promised “the two brass two pounders, and two brass three pounders” that had been stolen out of Boston to Lemuel Robinson’s Suffolk County artillery company. Robinson had hidden those cannon at his tavern in Dorchester earlier in the year, before they were moved out to Concord.

The committee decided to continue meeting in the same tavern at 10 A.M. the next morning. Three important members from Marblehead—Elbridge Gerry, Jeremiah Lee, and Azor Orne—chose to stay overnight since they were far from their own beds. Other members went home to Charlestown, Newton, and elsewhere. 

On the afternoon of the 18th people spotted Maj. Edward Mitchell and other army officers riding by that tavern on horseback. Gerry sent a warning note to John Hancock in Lexington, and Hancock replied. There was a widespread worry that troops might arrest leaders of the resistance. Of course, neither man’s message indicated that he was worried for himself, certainly not.

In 1828 James T. Austin published a two-volume Life of Elbridge Gerry, his father-in-law, which offered this story about what happened in the night that followed:

Mr. Gerry and colonel Orne retired to rest without taking the least precaution against personal exposure, and they remained quietly in their beds until the British advance were within view of the dwelling house. It was a fine moonlight night, and they quietly marked the glittering of its beams on the polished arms of the soldiers as the troops moved with the silence and regularity of accomplished discipline. The front passed on.

When the centre were opposite to the house occupied by the committee, an officer and file of men were detached by signal, and marched towards it. It was not until this moment they entertained any apprehension of danger.

While the officer was posting his files the gentlemen found means by their better knowledge of the premises to escape, half dressed as they were, into an adjoining corn-field, where they remained concealed for more than an hour, until the troops were withdrawn. Every apartment of the house was searched “for the members of the rebel congress”; even the beds in which they had lain were examined.

But their property, and among other things a valuable watch of Mr. Gerry’s, which was under his pillow, was not disturbed.

I can’t identify the source of the phrase in quotation marks, either in earlier books, period newspapers, or Gen. Thomas Gage’s orders. 

TOMORROW: Another family source.

The Life of “an exceeding active Man”

As I recounted this past week, in the summer of 1774 Elisha Porter of Hadley traveled to New York, Providence, and at least some way to New London seeking military supplies for the Continental Army besieging Boston.

In late September, the Patriot authorities called on Porter for another sensitive job: deciphering the letter that Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr., had given to his mistress Mary Butler, and which she unwisely asked her ex-husband, Godfrey Wenwood, to send into Boston.

Elbridge Gerry gave Porter a copy of that letter to work on. Porter’s deciphering exactly matched one by the Rev. Samuel West. Gerry then spread around news of the results.

During those months Porter was also busy on many committees of the Massachusetts General Court, and in August 1775 he became sheriff of Hampshire County.

In January 1776, Porter volunteered to raise a Massachusetts regiment to go into Canada and shore up the effort to win over that territory by force. Gen. George Washington introduced him by letter to Gen. Philip Schuyler as ”Colo. Porter, said to be an exceeding active Man.” I think that praise is a little faint for someone who had worked directly for the general.

Washington also gave Porter instructions urging him to act quickly, and the Massachusetts government supplied him with money.

Col. Porter started to keep a diary in January 1776, published in 1893. It describes how he got as close as the Plains of Abraham outside Québec City on 27 April, and how a week later the American forces started to withdraw.

Porter took a leave in August because of illness but returned in time to help with the Trenton campaign. He later served in the Saratoga campaign as a militia colonel and escorted Gen. John Burgoyne east. According to the Porter family, Burgoyne left his host a dress sword.

In 1778 Porter married a second time, to Abigail Phillips of Boston, first cousin of his first wife. That couple had no children, and I have no clue who brought up the young children of his first marriage while he was away from home.

After the war, Porter continued to serve as sheriff and militia officer and occasionally a town representative. He argued for Massachusetts to ratify the new U.S. Constitution. In 1796 he died unexpectedly at the age of fifty-four.

As for the other man involved in Gen. Washington’s plan to obtain gunpowder from Bermuda, sea captain William Harris appears to have gone back to sailing out of New London, Connecticut. He may have been the captain named Harris who spread word of a British fleet approaching New York in August 1776.

The 15 Mar 1809 Connecticut Gazette of New London reported the death of “Capt. WILLIAM HARRIS, aged 66 years.”

“Strength, Spirit and Abilities so exhausted”

In the immediate aftermath of the Continental Congress’s vote for independence in early July 1776, almost all the Massachusetts delegation got sick.

As I wrote last month, on 15 July 1776 John Adams saw Elbridge Gerry off on a trip back to Massachusetts. Gerry was “worn out of of Health, by the Fatigues of this station,” Adams told his wife, Abigail.

To James Warren he wrote that Gerry “is obliged to take a Ride for his Health, as I shall be very soon or have none. God grant he may recover it for he is a Man of immense Worth.”

Eleven days later, Adams wrote to Warren more ominously:

My Health has lasted much longer, than I expected but at last it fails. The Increasing Heat of the Weather added to incessant application to Business, without any Intermissions of Exercise, has relaxed me, to such a degree that a few Weeks more would totally incapacitate me for any Thing. I must therefore return home.

And the next day:

I assure you the Necessity of your sending along fresh delegates, here, is not chimerical. [Robert Treat] Paine has been very ill for this whole Week and remains, in a bad Way. He has not been able to attend Congress, for several days, and if I was to judge by his Eye, his Skin, and his Cough, I should conclude he never would be fit to do duty there again, without a long Intermission, and a Course of Air, Exercise, Diet, and Medicine. In this I may be mistaken.

The Secretary [i.e., Massachusetts General Court clerk Samuel Adams], between you and me, is compleatly worn out. I wish he had gone home Six months ago, and rested himself. Then, he might have done it, without any Disadvantage. But in plain English he has been so long here, and his Strength, Spirit and Abilities so exhausted, that an hundred such delegates, here would not be worth a shilling.

My Case is worse. My Face is grown pale, my Eyes weak and inflamed, my Nerves tremulous, and my Mind weak as Water—fevourous Heats by Day and Sweats by Night are returned upon me, which is an infallible Symptom with me that it is Time to throw off all Care, for a Time, and take a little Rest. I have several Times with the Blessing of God, saved my Life in this Way, and am now determined to attempt it once more.

You must be very Speedy in appointing other Delegates, or you will not be represented here. Go home I will, if I leave the Massachusetts without a Member here.

I looked at Paine’s surviving correspondence from this month, and I don’t see him saying anything about being sick.

On 3 August, Gerry wrote back to both John and Samuel Adams from Massachusetts:

I have heard this Morning that Colo. Warren has received a Letter mentioning Mr. Pain’s Illness and your Intention to set off for N England in a fortnights’ Time; and that the Government would be unrepresented. I left Boston yesterday and the Letter had not then arrived, but Mr. [Benjamin] Edes mentions it as a Fact communicated to him by Colonel or rather Major General Warren and therefore I have no Doubt of it.

I should have been glad that You had tarryed untill my Return, as the Absence of so many at one Time will I fear be considered by the people as a discourageing Circumstance; but I shall at all Events Return in a Week or ten Days from hence notwithstanding It will be impossible in so short a Time to benefit much by the Journey, and to recover from a febrile State which the southern Climate has fixed upon me and within this Day or two I find increased.

On 12 August, Samuel Adams left Philadelphia. Gerry arrived back in that city by 6 September. Paine and John Adams never left.

Ironically, John Hancock, who was already becoming known for pleading ill health when he didn’t want to do something, was the one Massachusetts delegate who seems to have remained perfectly well in this period. And as chairman of the Congress, he had plenty of work to do.

Hancock did write to Thomas Cushing on 30 July: “I have Determin’d to move my Family to Boston the Beginning of September, and propose being there my self in all that month.” But that was probably because of his wife Dorothy’s health, not his own. She was pregnant with their first child.

The Massachusetts legislature didn’t send anybody new to the Continental Congress until 1777.

Where Have You Gone, Colonel Robinson?

After Boston’s first anti-Stamp Act protest in 1765, Lemuel Robinson changed the sign outside the tavern he owned in Dorchester (shown above) to show Liberty Tree.

The Sign of the Liberty Tree hosted the big banquet of the Boston Sons of Liberty in August 1769.

Robinson was captain of a Suffolk County artillery company under Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, then a colonel after the Massachusetts Provincial Congress called on Patriots to reorganize their militia structure.

By January 1775 Robinson was hiding two of the Boston train’s small cannon on his property under dung heaps. Two more cannon, plus two mortars, were moved out there soon after. Committee of safety records hint that it took some prodding before Robinson turned those weapons over to provincial agents to be moved further out to Concord.

During the Battle of Lexington and Concord, Robinson made his tavern a center for feeding militiamen arriving outside Boston from the southwest. He became an officer in the New England army, but also stepped on other officers’ toes with his aggressive recruiting tactics.

Robinson then shifted to representing Dorchester in the Massachusetts General Court.

The British military wasn’t the only danger that year. Smallpox was spreading as well. After the king’s troops sailed away, there was a major effort to inoculate people.

On 3 Aug 1776 Elbridge Gerry wrote to his colleagues in Philadelphia about how a number of people they knew had come through that treatment:

Generals [James] Warren, [Benjamin] Lincoln Mrs. [Elizabeth] Bodwoin and a Number of our other Friends are recovered. Mrs. [Mercy] Warren in a good Way, poor Colo. Lem. Robinson dyed by imprudently pumping Cold Water on his Arm after getting well of the Distemper.

So how should we classify Lemuel Robinson’s death? As a result of smallpox? During the smallpox epidemic? Or that more obscure cause, “imprudently pumping Cold Water on his Arm”?

Elbridge Gerry and the Signing

On 3 August 1776, Elbridge Gerry sent a second letter to his Continental Congress colleagues Samuel and John Adams.

Gerry wrote this time from Watertown, still the home of the Massachusetts legislature. He had traveled through Boston, seeing both Adams wives.

Gerry and the Adamses were among the Congress’s most radical delegates, resenting men who hung back from independence. In this letter, for instance, Gerry wrote of “our old Friend Mr. L—— or any other suspected Characters.”

Generally, the Marblehead merchant was optimistic about “the true State of Things in the eastern Colonies,” as people called New England. He had ideas about moving troops around and getting Benjamin Lincoln, then still a Massachusetts militia commander, a Continental commission. But he was confident in the militia system, concluding, “We have eastward of Hudson’s River at least 100000 Men well armed, a Force sufficient to repulse the Enemy if they were forty thousand strong at New York and Canada.”

One significant detail about this letter isn’t its text but its date. It shows that Gerry was in Massachusetts on 2 August when, as the Congress’s official record states, the delegates then present signed the engrossed (handsomely handwritten) Declaration of Independence. Gerry must therefore have added his signature later in the year.

In this article for the Journal of the American Revolution I discussed a story told about Gerry’s signing:

I am credibly informed that the following anecdote occurred on the day of signing the declaration. Mr. [Benjamin] Harrison, a delegate from Virginia, is a large portly man—Mr. Gerry of Massachusetts is slender and spare. A little time after the solemn transaction of signing the instrument, Mr. Harrison said smilingly to Mr. Gerry, “When the hanging scene comes to be exhibited I shall have the advantage over you on account of my size. All will be over with me in a moment, but you will be kicking in the air half an hour after I am gone.”

This anecdote comes to us in somewhat different forms from two seemingly independent sources: Dr. Benjamin Rush and Dr. James Thacher, both probably writing decades later. John Adams read both men’s words and didn’t quibble with the tale. I therefore concluded that this story was more reliable than other legends of the signing.

At the same time I wrote: “Of course it is possible that Rush’s recollection was not accurate. For example, Harrison could have come up with the witticism days later instead of at the dramatic moment of signing.” Or weeks before, when the delegates voted for independence. As Ray Raphael wrote earlier this summer, delegates conglomerated their memories of the vote and the signing.

We can therefore say the anecdote about Harrison and Gerry couldn’t have happened on 2 Aug 1776 when most Congress delegates lined up to sign the Declaration. But Harrison might still have shared his gallows humor sometime that year.

“Pray Subscribe for me the Declaration of Independence”

Elbridge Gerry left Philadelphia on 16 July 1776, heading for home in Massachusetts with a pound of green tea.

His fellow Continental Congress delegate John Adams wrote that Gerry was “worn out of Health, by the Fatigues of this station.”

But Adams also wrote that he expected Gerry to enthusiastically inspect the Continental Army and fortifications while traveling through New York, and that’s just what Gerry did.

On Sunday, 21 July, while staying near the King’s Bridge that connected Manhattan to the mainland, Gerry sat down to write a long letter to Adams and his cousin, Samuel Adams.

Gerry wrote of the Continental officers:

they appear to be in high Spirits for Action and agree in Sentiments that the Men’s as firm and determined as they wish them to be, having in View since the Declaration of Independence an object that they are ready to contend for, an object that they will chearfully pursue at the Risque of Life and every valuable Enjoyment.

The area was well fortified, he judged, and the people of New Jersey and New York City enthusiastic about the Patriot cause.

He reported on Adm. Lord William Howe’s interactions with Gen. George Washington, which included rejecting a proposal for a prisoner swap of Philip Skene, Loyalist governor of Crown Point and Ticonderoga, for James Lovell, a Boston Patriot.

Gerry recommended removing Gen. Philip Schuyler from command of the Northern Department. Indeed, he suggested that Schuyler should be “sent to Boston, recalled to answer any Charges that may be brot against him.” With the collapse of the invasion of Canada, “The N England Colonies are warm for the Measure.”

After discussing how to reenlist and resupply the army, Gerry shared an idea for increasing business with the French:

Would it not be a good Measure to propose to the French Court to supply with Grain their Army in the West Indies and to impower them to employ suitable persons in the States for that purpose who shall be supplyed by Congress with Money and Ship it in their own Vessels; Whilst they are to make Returns by allowing Us a Factor in their Kingdom to purchase Arms or other military Stores to a certain Amount who is to be furnished by their Court with Money for that purpose. This would be a speedy Way of coming at Arms and Ammunition, and open a Channel for a Breach with Britain.

Finally, Gerry addressed two political matters. He asked for one of the confidential printed copies of the new draft Articles of Confederation, and he wrote:

Pray Subscribe for me the Declaration of Independence if the same is to be signed as proposed. I think We ought to have the privilege when necessarily absent of voting and signing by proxy.

After Gerry had left Philadelphia, the Congress formally approved creating the handsome handwritten Declaration that we know. If Gerry’s proposal had been adopted, some of those signatures would not have been the delegates’ actual signatures but signatures of their friends for them. Gerry was worried that after voting for independence he’d be left out.

TOMORROW: About Gerry’s signature.

“She entertaind me with a very fine Dish of Green Tea”

As I related yesterday, in July 1776 John Adams arranged for Elbridge Gerry to carry a pound of green tea home to Abigail, as long as his fellow Congress delegate was heading back to Massachusetts.

On 1 August, Abigail wrote back to her husband from Boston (where she had taken the whole family, plus servants and relatives) to be inoculated against the smallpox:

I Received a wedensday by Mr. Gerry your Letter of july 15. I have not yet seen him to speak to him. I knew him at meeting yesterday some how instinctively; tho I never saw him before. He has not call’d upon me yet. I hope he will, or I shall take it very hard, shall hardly be able to allow him all the merrit you say he possesses. It will be no small pleasure to me to see a person who has so lately seen my best Friend. I could find it in my Heart to envy him.

By 3 August, Gerry had called on Abigail Adams, he reported to both John and his cousin Samuel:

I have had the pleasure of seeing both Mrs. Adams and find them and Families in fine Health and Spirits. Mrs. Samuel Adams is removed from her own Habitation to a House near Liberty Tree, and with the greatest pleasure speaks of the Inconveniences she has suffered as trifling and such as must always be expected at the forming a mighty Empire. Mrs. John Adams with two of her little Heroes by her Side is perfectly recovered of the small pox; the others are in a fair Way.

But as for that pound of green tea? On 7 September Abigail wrote about visiting Elizabeth Adams:

I was upon a visit to Mrs. S. Adams about a week after Mr. Gerry returnd, when She entertaind me with a very fine Dish of Green Tea. The Scarcity of the article made me ask her Where she got it. She replied her Sweet Heart sent it to her by Mr. Gerry.

Unfortunately, the Samuel Adams Papers at the New York Public Library don’t contain any letters from Elizabeth during this summer. She probably sent some to Samuel (though not as many as Abigail sent John), but this family wasn’t as careful about saving documents. Indeed, John wrote about seeing his cousin burning sensitive papers before one of the Congress’s evacuations from Philadelphia. Therefore, we have no note from Elizabeth thanking “her Sweet Heart” for the tea, or from Samuel wondering what that was all about.

Meanwhile, Abigail’s letter to John continued:

I said nothing, but thought my Sweet Heart might have been eaquelly kind considering the disease I was visited with, and that [tea] was recommended as a Bracer. A Little after you mention’d a couple of Bundles sent. I supposed one of them might contain the article but found they were Letters.

How Mr. Gerry should make such a mistake I know not. I shall take the Liberty of sending for what is left of it tho I suppose it is half gone as it was very freely used. If you had mentiond a single Word of it in your Letter I should have immediately found out the mistake.

John had indeed not mentioned the tea in the letter he gave to Gerry to deliver, or in any other letter for two more weeks. So Gerry had left Boston by the time Abigail could ask.

While Abigail’s letter was en route to Philadelphia, one from John dated 5 September was heading north, showing how he’d figured out the same mystery:

I never conceived a single doubt, that you had received it untill Mr. Gerrys Return. I asked him, accidentally, whether he delivered it, and he said Yes to Mr. S.A.’s Lady.—I was astonished. He misunderstood Mrs. Y[ard]. intirely, for upon Inquiry she affirms she told him, it was for Mrs. J.A.

I was so vexed at this, that I have ordered another Cannister, and Mr. Hare has been kind enough to undertake to deliver it. How the Dispute will be settled I dont know. You must send a Card to Mrs. S.A., and let her know that the Cannister was intended for You, and she may send it you if she chooses, as it was charged to me. It is amazingly dear, nothing less than 40s. lawfull Money, a Pound.

Perhaps Sarah Yard, landlady of the Massachusetts delegates’ boardinghouse in Philadelphia, had asked Gerry to deliver the tea to ‘Mrs. Adams in Boston.’ He hadn’t met Abigail before. He may not have known she was in Boston that summer. So Gerry assumed the tea was for the wife of his colleague Adams from Boston.

We don’t have any letters between Elizabeth and Abigail Adams, unfortunately. But on 20 September Abigail wrote to John:

Yours of Sepbr. 5 came to Night to B[raintre]e and was left as directed with the Cannister. Am sorry you gave yourself so much trouble about them. I got about half you sent me by Mr. Gerry. Am much obliged to you, and hope to have the pleasure of making the greater part of it for you.

Back in 1773, about 22% of the tea destroyed in the Boston Tea Party was green tea, but that accounted for 30% of the value. Green tea was thus a bit of a luxury even before wartime.

TOMORROW: What was on Elbridge Gerry’s mind.

“Gerry carried with him a Cannister for you”

The month of July 1776 was a fraught time for John Adams.

Not just for the reason we all remember in story and song, but also because he knew that his wife Abigail and their children were undergoing inoculation against the smallpox in Boston.

John approved of Abigail’s plan in one of the letters he wrote on 3 July. John himself had been inoculated over a decade before and survived well, but of course he worried about his family.

Though inoculation was clearly safer than catching smallpox (and vaccinations have become safer still), there was still a chance that one of the people he loved might die.

So he waited anxiously for news. But of course he didn’t just wait. John wrote, asking how things were. He wrote on the 7th (twice), the 10th, the 11th, and the 13th. He seized every opportunity to send a letter north.

On 15 July, one of John’s fellow Congress delegates, Elbridge Gerry, was about to travel home to Massachusetts. John sent a short letter introducing Gerry to Abigail:

My very deserving Friend, Mr. Gerry, setts off, tomorrow, for Boston, worn out of Health, by the Fatigues of this station. He is an excellent Man, and an active able statesman. I hope he will soon return hither. I am sure I should be glad to go with him, but I cannot.

John wrote to Abigail again the next day, 16 July. And again on 20 July—twice. And again on 23 July. And 27 July. And 29 July, again twice. In one of those 29 July letters, John wrote:

How are you all this Morning? Sick, weak, faint, in Pain; or pretty well recovered? By this Time, you are well acquainted with the Small Pox. Pray how do you like it? . . .

Gerry carried with him a Cannister for you. But he is an old Batchelor, and what is worse a Politician, and what is worse still a kind of Soldier, so that I suppose he will have so much Curiosity to see Armies and Fortifications and Assemblies, that you will loose many a fine Breakfast at a Time when you want them most.

What was that all about? In a 5 September letter John explained:

Before Mr. G. went away from hence, I asked Mrs. [Sarah] Yard [owner of the Massachusetts delegation’s boardinghouse] to send a Pound of Green Tea to you. She readily agreed. When I came home at Night I was told Mr. G. was gone. I asked Mrs. Y. if she had sent the Cannister? She said Yes and that Mr. G. undertook to deliver it, with a great deal of Pleasure. From that Time I flattered my self, you would have the poor Relief of a dish of good Tea under all your Fatigues with the Children, and under all the disagreabble Circumstances attending the small Pox

But Gerry never delivered that green tea to Abigail.

TOMORROW: Canister misshot.

“The attempt had for several weeks been expected”

In the first half of the nineteenth century, American historians continued to write about the start of the Revolutionary War, of course.

But those authors didn’t dig into the question of whether someone close to Gen. Thomas Gage had leaked his plan for a march to Concord, as hinted by the passage from Charles Stedman’s book that I quoted yesterday.

Around the fiftieth anniversary of the event, there was a back-and-forth between Elias Phinney of Lexington and Ezra Ripley of Concord over where militiamen returned the first significant fire at the redcoats. That dispute produced eyewitness testimony from aged veterans, revealing that both towns were on alert well before the Patriot alarm riders from Boston arrived because of previous reports about British activity and the sight of army officers on horseback.

Likewise, James T. Austin’s Life of Elbridge Gerry (1828) offered evidence that members of the committee of safety were watching for Gage to act. It included documents confirming how the British army officers that Gage sent out to stop alarm riders actually provoked an alarm.

In his History of the Siege of Boston (1849), the Charlestown historian Richard Frothingham published Richard Devens’s description of the committee’s activity and of the lights in Old North Church as seen from the opposite shore. That account lined up well with Revere’s.

Frothingham quoted Stedman’s story but not the detail of Gen. Gage telling only one other person besides Col. Percy about his plan. Instead, he emphasized how Massachusetts Patriots had gathered multiple signs that the army was about to act even as the general considered his planning secret.

As a result, the most authoritative American historian of the time, George Bancroft (shown above), presented events this way in his 1860 History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent:

On the afternoon of the day on which the provincial congress of Massachusetts adjourned, Gage took the light infantry and grenadiers off duty, and secretly prepared an expedition to destroy the colony’s stores at Concord. But the attempt had for several weeks been expected; a strict watch had been kept; and signals were concerted to announce the first movement of troops for the country. Samuel Adams and [John] Hancock, who had not yet left Lexington for Philadelphia, received a timely message from [Dr. Joseph] Warren, and in consequence, the committee of safety removed a part of the public stores and secreted the cannon.

On Tuesday the eighteenth, ten or more sergeants in disguise dispersed themselves through Cambridge and further west, to intercept all communication. In the following night, the grenadiers and light infantry, not less than eight hundred in number, the flower of the army at Boston, commanded by the incompetent Lieutenant Colonel [Francis] Smith, crossed in the boats of the transport ships from the foot of the common to East Cambridge. There they received a day’s provisions, and near midnight, after wading through wet marshes, that are now covered by a stately town, they took the road through West Cambridge to Concord.

“They will miss their aim,” said one of a party who observed their departure. “What aim?” asked Lord Percy, who overheard the remark. “Why, the cannon at Concord,” was the answer. Percy hastened to Gage, who instantly directed that no one should be suffered to leave the town. But Warren had already, at ten o’clock, despatched William Dawes through Roxbury to Lexington, and at the same time desired Paul Revere to set off by way of Charlestown.

Revere stopped only to engage a friend to raise the concerted signals, and five minutes before the sentinels received the order to prevent it, two friends rowed him past the Somerset man of war across Charles river. All was still, as suited the hour. The ship was winding with the young flood; the waning moon just peered above a clear horizon; while from a couple of lanterns in the tower of the North Church, the beacon streamed to the neighboring towns, as fast as light could travel.

Quite dramatically rendered, and Bancroft skipped right over the question of whether anyone leaked Gage’s orders.

TOMORROW: New sources and new suspicions.

“The unanimous assent of 11 States and Colonel Hamilton’s”

The Statutes and Stories blog has a couple of new posts detailing an archival discovery related to the New York delegation to the Constitutional Convention.

The first article by University of Wisconsin professor John Kaminski, attorney Adam Levinson, and Sergio Villavicencio of the Alexander Hamilton Awareness Society is a bit breathless for my taste, but the second steps back and raises a lot of thoughtful questions about how to interpret incomplete evidence.

The background of this story is that the state of New York sent three delegates to the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, aimed at revising the Articles of Confederation. One of those men was a leading proponent of having that meeting, Alexander Hamilton. You may have heard of him.

The other two were judge Robert Yates (1738-1801) and his former trainee, attorney John Lansing, Jr. (1754-1829?), both from Albany. The two men were related by marriage and also allied in politics. Like Gov. George Clinton, they opposed strengthening the national government. In sum, they went to Philadelphia to outvote Hamilton on the state’s delegation.

Around 30 June, after the convention had met for a little more than a month, Hamilton went home to New York City. He was getting to propose his ideas, but he couldn’t even get his own state to support them.

Yates and Lansing followed about 10 July. They could see that the convention was moving toward creating a constitution for a stronger federal government, and they didn’t want any part in that.

As the blog posts explain, on 20 August Hamilton told his fellow Federalist Rufus King:

I have written to my colleagues informing them, that if either of them would come down I would accompany him to Philadelphia. So much for the sake of propriety and public opinion.

No one has found Hamilton’s actual letter, so we don’t know how he phrased that offer. As the three authors ask, “Did Yates and Lansing understand Hamilton’s letter to mean that he would only go back to Philadelphia if one of them joined him?” The comment “So much for the sake of propriety and public opinion” suggests Hamilton wrote to the two men purely as a political move.

In any event, Hamilton did go back to participate in the closing sessions. He couldn’t vote on behalf of New York since that state had required all three of its delegates to be present for votes. But he was talking.

In early September the meeting approved a new draft Constitution for the U.S. of A., totally rebuilding the national government. On 17 September the chairman of what had become a Constitutional Convention, George Washington, wrote in his diary:

Met in Convention, when the Constitution received the unanimous assent of 11 States and Colonel Hamilton’s from New York.

Washington distinguished between the eleven states that had a quorum of delegates at the convention and the lone voice from New York piping up unofficially. (Rhode Island wasn’t there at all.) Everyone knew Hamilton didn’t represent his colleagues’ views. Nonetheless, New York didn’t oppose the new document.

Proponents of the new Constitution emphasized that seemingly unanimous vote of the states. Hamilton insisted that every delegate present should sign it. Gouverneur Morris came up with language to indicate the men were signing as witnesses to the state votes, not to endorse the new document personally. Even so, Elbridge Gerry, George Mason, and Edmund Randolph refused to sign.

The new archival discovery is an expense report from Robert Yates to the government of New York for his service as a delegate, including “May June & July 1787 59 Days at 32s pr Day.” At the bottom of that document is the entry:

To my Comming as far as New York in my Way to Philadelphia for the Same purpose where I heard that the Convention rose [i.e., adjourned] a Day after my arrival and my return home 12 Days at the Same rate

As Kaminski, Levinson, and Villavicencio point out, this record shows Yates was on his way to Philadelphia as the convention was completing its work. Had he arrived in early September, his voice would have canceled out Hamilton’s approval of the Constitution. He could have added to the chorus protesting the document and refusing to sign. He could even have sent for Lansing and turned New York’s vote to a no.

Instead, Yates got as far as New York City, learned the convention was done, and went back home. He and Lansing both argued against ratifying the proposed Constitution at New York’s state convention. Their side lost narrowly, 30 votes to 27.

The Statutes and Stories blog posts discuss other small revelations coming out of these expense records, as well as questions they don’t answer but other documents might. It’s a good example of how even mundane bureaucratic documents can reveal crucial facts.

How Maj. Abijah Brown Went to War

Abijah Brown was born in Watertown in 1736, and on 24 May 1758, at the age of twenty-one, he married Sarah Stearns of Waltham.

Their first child, Abijah, Jr., was born in Watertown the following March. By the next year they had moved to Waltham, where Sarah gave birth to:

• Edward (1760)
• Anna (1763)
• Elizabeth (1765)
• Jonathan (1767)
• Abner (1769)

Abijah Brown became involved in town politics as a selectman and meeting moderator. He served on committees to respond to the Boston committee of correspondence, draft instructions for the town’s legislators, and attend the Middlesex Convention of late August 1774.

Brown was also active in the town militia company, rising to captain in 1773 and major at the start of the war. According to Henry Bond’s Family Memorials (1855), he was “one of the first to ascertain the proposed march of the British upon Concord and was active in giving the alarm.” I’m not sure what that means because most histories say that Waltham never got word about the British march on 19 April and had to catch up to its neighbors.

Contemporaneous evidence leaves no doubt that Brown was militarily active in the first weeks of the war. On 28 April the Massachusetts committee of safety declared “Major Brown appointed to give such repairs to the cannon at Waltham, as may be judged proper.” Three days before the committee had ordered that “three Cannon now at Marlborough, be brought to the Town of Waltham, and mounted on carriages prepared for them, till further orders.” 

In this period Maj. Brown probably supplied Col. Richard Gridley, the commander of the artillery regiment, with a horse and sulky so he could move around the siege lines as quickly as possible, overseeing fortifications and gun emplacements.

On 17 May the committee of safety issued new orders:

That the three pieces of cannon, with the stores, now at Waltham, be immediately removed to Watertown, near the bridge, by the advice of the general [Artemas Ward], and that Mr. Elbridge Gerry, one of the Committee of Supplies, be desired and empowered to remove the same.

Where did that leave Maj. Brown? On 19 May he wrote back to the committee:

Agreeable to your order I have removed the cannon under my care at Waltham, to the Town of Watertown, and have delivered them to the Committee of Correspondence for the same Town; and shall have my company in readiness to march to Cambridge to-morrow morning.

I am, gentlemen, with much respect, your most obedient and most humble servant…

TOMORROW: But was he? Was he really?

“No such order as Mr Gridley alludes to”

Scarborough Gridley didn’t just write to Elbridge Gerry seeking back pay in February 1784, as I quoted yesterday.

Gridley first went to the president of the Massachusetts Senate to ask for his help. That man was Samuel Adams (shown here). This is why Gridley’s letter to Gerry is in the Samuel Adams Papers at the New York Public Library, of all places.

Adams’s political estrangement from John Hancock was at its height, so he was probably quite open to Gridley’s complaint that the governor had failed to carry out his duty to send an inquiry to Gen. George Washington about Gridley’s military role. (In 1789 Hancock and Adams reconciled and ran as a ticket, so Adams was Hancock’s lieutenant governor and successor.)

Adams had been in Philadelphia in 1775, when Gridley was cashiered out of his father’s artillery regiment, and 1776, when Gridley claimed his father brought him back on as an assistant while fortifying Boston harbor. So the senate president wasn’t up on the details of the younger man’s career.

On 25 February, Adams wrote from Boston to Gerry, then representing Massachusetts in the Congress, which was convened at Annapolis.

Inclosd is a Letter to your Self from Colo. Scar Gridley. It seems he applied to this G[eneral] C[ourt] some time ago for Depretion of his pay while in the Service, upon which the Govr. was requested to write to G W to make known to him the Rank held by Mr. Gridley & [missing text] but the Letter has never been written.

I advisd him to write you on the Subject, & hope you will excuse my giving you the Trouble. As you are now near the Place of Residence of General Washington, perhaps it may not be inconvenient to you to write to him, in doing which you will gratify & oblige Mr. Gridley.

On 18 March, Gerry wrote to Washington, then retired:

By the last Post I received from the president of the Senate of Massachusetts a Letter, inclosing the papers herewith transmitted, & requesting me to write to your Excellency on the Subject. As I have no other Knowledge of the Matter, than what is derived from Colo Gridley’s Letter & the Resolve accompanying it, I can only say, that when your Excellency is at Leisure, if You think it expedient to make any Observations on the Subject or Answer to the Resolve, & should inclose them to me, I will direct them to Colo Gridley.

I flatter myself with the Hopes, that since your Retirement from publick Life, You have not only enjoyed, Health, peace & Competence, but likewise the pleasure of seeing all your Friends in the same happy Circumstances.

On 31 March, Washington wrote back from Mount Vernon:

I have examined my Letter and orderly Books but find no such order as Mr Gridley alludes to, in his letter of the 21st of Feby, to you.

If his Father, or himself ever received such orders they are no doubt to be produced, and will speak for themselves. Mr Gridley never reported himself to the Chief Engineer (Genl [Louis Lebègue] Duportail) nor has he ever been returned to me by him, or any Senior Officer in that department that I remember as one of the Corps—in the Service of the United States—It is not in my power therefore, from any recollection I have of the circumstance he speaks of—or of his Services—to certifie anything on which his claim can be founded.

According to Gridley, his father had told Washington about his appointment in 1776 and the commander-in-chief had approved it. But there’s no mention of that in the published correspondence of the two men.

The nearest hint of a new army job for Scar Gridley was his court-martial panel’s statement that “they do not consider him incapable of a Continental Commission, should the General Officers recommend him to his Excellency”—which the general officers never did.

Gerry returned Gridley’s letter with Washington’s response in a note to Adams dated 2 April. Adams replied simply: “Your Letter of the 2d relating to Colo. Gridleys Affair came to hand. I am obligd to you for the Care you have taken.” And that was the end of that.

One detail that stood out to me in this exchange is that Adams, and then Gerry, referred to Scarborough Gridley with the title “Colonel.” Gridley was a major when he was removed from the Continental Army in 1775. Some paperwork hints that in the summer of 1775 he and his father tried to get him the rank of lieutenant colonel, but that didn’t go through.

So when and how did Scar Gridley start introducing himself to people as a colonel? Then again, if he really had managed to collect a few years of pay and rations as an assistant engineer in the Continental Army without any commander knowing it, he had a lot of audacity to call on.

Scarborough Gridley died in 1787 at the age of forty-eight at his parents’ home in Stoughton.

There Once Was a Man from Virginia

Yesterday the Journal of the American Revolution observed Independence Day (Observed) by publishing contributors’ limericks about the Declaration of Independence.

I had one in that bunch, but I wrote others before choosing which to submit. Since the J.A.R. would publish only one, I’m sharing the rest here, you lucky people.

Here’s the verse that appeared in the J.A.R. round-up:

“Since our new circumstances allow,”
Said Congress, “we’ll separate now!”
But all the while,
Upon Staten Isle
A British advance force asked, “Howe?”

On 2 July 1776, the Continental Congress voted for independence, and on 4 July it approved its formal public declaration. In between, on 3 July, the British military under Adm. Richard Howe and Gen. William Howe began to land 10,000 troops on Staten Island.

Here’s one in the voice of Thomas Jefferson:

“With high-minded principles, my
Declaration nobly states why
We plan to leave, and says
Plenty of grievances,
But the bottom line’s ‘This is goodbye.’”

And speaking of grievances, some analyses of the Declaration’s complaints:

The king like a tyrant “assented”
To laws unjust and resented.
A well-founded cause?
A lot of those laws
Were never in fact implemented.

The king brought on “Indian savages,”
Well known for their “merciless” ravages.
That abuse was the worst!
(Though we did do it first,
So it all evened out in the averages.)

On John Adams’s immediate response to the vote:

Independency, John Adams reckoned,
Would be glorious, far-reaching, and fecund.
But as for the dating,
He foresaw celebrating
Not on the 4th, but the 2nd.

Finally, what turned out to be a well-founded anecdote about Benjamin Harrison, Elbridge Gerry, and signing the Declaration:

Big Harrison said to wee Gerry,
“After signing this, you should be wary.
When it comes time to hang, I’ll
Die quick, but you’ll dangle
For hours, and that will be scary.”

Enjoy the Fourth!

Why Do We Pronounce “Gerrymander” with a Soft G?

The story of the gerrymander is well known. In 1812, the Massachusetts General Court drew a state senate district that collected the large south Essex County towns of Marblehead and Salem and then snaked up through Andover and along the northern bank of the Merrimack River to Salisbury.

An artist at Russell and Cutler’s Boston Gazette saw that map and said the district shape resembled a salamander. To heighten the resemblance, he drew wings extending west out of Methuen—because salamanders have wings.

The Boston Gazette was a Federalist newspaper. The legislature was then in the hands of the Jeffersonians, and the governor who signed this districting plan, Elbridge Gerry, was also a Jeffersonian. So the newspaper decided to dub that supposedly monstrous district a “gerry-mander.”

A term spread a bit. In the seventh edition of The Olive Branch: or, Faults on Both Sides, Federal and Democratic (1815), Mathew Carey expounded on it and the practice it lampooned:

The senates, in almost every case, are composed of members chosen by districts, formed of two or more counties, which districts elect a number of senators in proportion to their population. . . .

The above arrangement and the adjustment of these districts opens a door to a considerable degree of intrigue and management, and invites to chicane and fraud—in one word, to the political sin, which I have styled Gerrymanderism. . . .

To accomplish this sinister purpose, counties are frequently united to form a senatorial district, which have no territorial connexion, being separated from each other by an intervening county, sometimes by two or three. Of this heinous political sin, both federalists and democrats, as I have said, have been guilty.

The state of Massachusetts was depicted, two or three years since, as a sort of monstrous figure, with the counties forming the senatorial districts, displayed on this unprincipled plan. It was called a Gerrymander, in allusion to the name of the late vice-president of the United States, then governor of that state. Hence I derive the term Gerrymanderism. To those who gave the title of Gerrymander, it might not unaptly be said—“men of glass; throw no stones.”

As that last paragraph makes clear, Elbridge Gerry had become a national figure, not just a regional one. He had been elected Vice President under James Madison and even served a year and a half before dying. So politically savvy people—the type of people who would use the term Gerrymanderism—knew about him. And knew that he pronounced his name with a hard G, as in glass.

Why, then, do we now all pronounce the word gerrymander with a soft G, as in Elbridge?

On a hunch, I ran the term through Google Books Ngram Viewer, and this is what it showed.

Although the term gerrymander was coined in the early republic, it really became popular around 1890, with additional booms after 1910, 1945, and 1960.

By the time the word really took hold, Americans had largely forgotten Elbridge Gerry, despite his career as a Signer of the Declaration of Independence, skeptical member of the Constitutional Convention, diplomat, Congressman, governor, and Vice President. Or at least people knew him only from the printed page, not from political discussions. Nobody was practiced in pronouncing his name.

Following the usual rule, folks assumed a G followed by an E was soft. Hence, gerrymander.

“Paul Revere never made the midnight ride”?

A lot of legend grew up around the American Revolution in the late 1800s, and Henry W. Longfellow’s poem “Paul Revere’s Ride” made the events of 18-19 Apr 1775 especially famed and susceptible to mythologizing.

In the early 1900s the pendulum swung the other way, toward debunking and skepticism. This is when the story of Boston’s stolen militia cannon dropped out the standard telling—that story seemed too dramatic to be true. Sometimes debunking went too far.

Here’s another example from the 29 Nov 1908 New York Times—a story headlined “Paul Revere’s Ride Is Fiction, He Says”:

Walter Benjamin, publisher of The Collector, has in his possession a letter which he believes proves conclusively that Paul Revere never made the midnight ride attributed to him by Longfellow and tradition.

The document is a letter from John Hancock to Elbridge Gerry, dated Lexington, April 18, 1775, at 9 o’clock. . . . The message reads:

Dear Sir: I am much obliged for your notice. It is said the officers are gone along the Concord Road, and I will send word thither. I am full with you that we ought to be serious, and I hope your decision will be effectual. I intend doing myself the pleasure of being with you tomorrow. My respects to the committee. I am your real friend, JOHN HANCOCK.

Mr. Benjamin says that it Hancock of the Committee of Safety, knew at 9 o’clock that the troops had gone along the Concord road and hoped they would be “serious,” that Lexington and Concord were fully aroused to the danger of the coming of British troops, and that there would be no need for Paul Revere. . . .

The article noted that a version of this letter had been published in the 1828 biography of Gerry, but without the time included. Benjamin argued that the omission of “at 9 o’clock“ meant people hadn’t realized its significance.

On the other hand, the Times continued, “the learned professors…did manage to find a plain prose version of Paul Revere among the old manuscripts of the Massachusetts Historical Society papers.” The article summarized Revere’s own account, which the M.H.S. had published in 1798 and certainly wasn’t hiding from view.

The Times story concludes:

However, the historians are not altogether satisfied with the Revere letter, for he wrote it in 1798, twenty-four years after the ride, and, conceding his honesty, his memory might easily have been bad. Considering the many doubts which the learned have come to have of Paul Revere’s ride, Mr. Benjamin believes that the evidence contained in the Hancock-Gerry letter shows that it never happened at all, outside Longfellow’s poems.

Benjamin made a couple of errors in interpreting the document he’d bought. First, Gerry and Hancock exchanged notes about a squad of “officers,” not the full “coming of British troops.” Those officers were mounted scouts with a mission of stopping messengers from getting out of Boston and into Concord. The hundreds of grenadiers and light infantrymen who followed the scouts presented a much bigger threat. About three hours after Hancock wrote his note, Revere reached Lexington with news of that column.

Benjamin’s second error was concluding that the letter showed “Lexington and Concord were fully aroused to the danger of the coming of British troops” before Revere arrived. They were only partially aroused. James Barrett’s household was busy moving the most valuable weaponry off his Concord farm. The sight of the mounted officers caused Sgt. William Munroe to summon a guard at the Lexington parsonage. But again, news of the much larger column of soldiers increased the alert level in both towns, producing the full militia alarms.

It looked like this debunking was itself quickly debunked and didn’t affect early-20th-century recountings of the Battle of Lexington and Concord. The letter itself appears to have stayed in private collections because authors continued to quote the published version only.

Then in 2014, Hancock’s letter to Gerry was displayed in an excellent exhibit at the Concord Museum. I saw it there and grabbed a brief quotation for The Road to Concord. (My transcription varies a bit from both the Gerry bio and this Times article, but not meaningfully.)

Marblehead Resistance Walking Tour, 10 May

On Wednesday, 10 May, and twice more at the end of the month, Judy Anderson of Marblehead Architecture Heritage will lead a walking tour of Marblehead focusing on the events of 1774 and 1775.

At that time, Marblehead was the second-largest town in Massachusetts, third-largest in New England. Historically it stood out from the rest of the colony with an economy based on fishing more than farming and a population less devout than the Puritans.

The tour will quote from writings by and about Marbleheaders at that time—some secret, and some in diaries or newspapers. It will focus on the town’s resistance activities, from top to bottom.

As a significant trading port (with a bunch of smaller coves) and a large fleet, Marblehead was an important site for importing weapons and gunpowder in those years.

On 27 Oct 1774, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress appointed its first five “commissaries,” responsible for obtaining supplies for the army it was surreptitiously forming. Those men included Jeremiah Lee of Marblehead (shown here).

On 9 February, the congress added Elbridge Gerry, also from Marblehead, to what had become a whole committee on supplies. Meanwhile, another delegate from the town, Azor Orne, was on the committee of safety. And with the port of Boston closed, those three merchants and their neighbors brought in a lot of the military supplies the Massachusetts militia started the war with.

The 10 May walk is scheduled to last from 5:30 to 7:30 P.M. It will start at Abbot Hall, 188 Washington Street. It will end at Homan’s Cove, where Lt.-Col. Alexander Leslie’s troops reportedly disembarked in Marblehead Harbor on Sunday, 26 Feb 1775. That cove is between two harborside restaurants—The Barnacle and The Landing—where tour members can choose to eat before or after the event.

Anderson will repeat the walk twice on Memorial Day weekend: on Saturday morning, 27 May, 9:00 to 11:00 A.M., and Sunday afternoon, 28 May, 3:00 to 5:00 P.M. There is a suggested donation of $5 per adult for any tour. Reservations are not necessary.

When Henry Knox Came Back to Cambridge

On Thursday, 25 January 1776, John Adams and Elbridge Gerry were on their way back to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. The two Massachusetts delegates stopped at midday to dine in Framingham.

Adams wrote in his diary:

Coll. [Joseph] Buckminster after Dinner shewed us, the Train of Artillery brought down from Ticonderoga, by Coll. [Henry] Knox.

It consists of Iron—9 Eighteen Pounders, 10 Twelves, 6. six, four nine Pounders, Three 13. Inch Mortars, Two Ten Inch Mortars, one Eight Inch, and one six and an half. Howitz, one Eight Inch and an half and one Eight.

Brass Cannon. Eight Three Pounders, one four Pounder, 2 six Pounders, one Eighteen Pounder, and one 24 Pounder. One eight Inch and an half Mortar, one Seven Inch and an half Dto. and five Cohorns.

That’s fifty-eight pieces of artillery in all. (I’ll get back to that number tomorrow.)

Adams’s diary entry for this date in 1776 is notable because the traditional date for Knox reaching Cambridge with his “Noble train of Artillery” is 24 January. Here, for examples, is a Mass Moments page linked to that date. I stated that same date in my study for the National Park Service a few years back. And yet Adams tells us that on the following day all the colonel’s guns were still out in Framingham.

So did Knox leave the ordnance behind and go ahead to Cambridge to report to Gen. George Washington? That makes sense since Knox owed his position to Washington and was acting on orders he received directly from the commander-in-chief. And the historical record indicates that Knox did indeed leave his guns behind—but he did so the previous week.

Gen. William Heath’s memoirs, based on his wartime diary, state this for 18 January:

18th.–Col. Knox, of the artillery, came to camp. He brought from Ticonderoga a fine train of artillery, which had been taken from the British, both cannon and mortars, and which were ordered to be stopped at Framingham. 

At this time Heath was serving under Gen. Israel Putnam in east Cambridge. So “came to camp” almost certainly meant Knox came to Washington’s headquarters.

So where did the 24 January date for his arrival come from? It appears in the first biography of Knox, published by Francis S. Drake in 1873, but that doesn’t cite a source. And the Adams and Heath diaries say that:

• Knox reached Cambridge six days before that date.
• All the artillery pieces were still out in Framingham after that date.

So I apologize for repeating the 24 January date without foundation.

TOMORROW: How many cannon and mortars did Knox transport?