Molly Stark, Medford, and Myths

Gen. John Stark’s wife Elizabeth, nicknamed Molly, became a very popular historical figure during the Colonial Revival of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

She served New Hampshire and (given the Battle of Bennington, though it was actually fought inside New York) Vermont as a local heroine. Anecdotes managed to portray her both as a gentle hostess and nurse and as a brave, hardy frontier woman.

Among those anecdotes was her own tale of watching Col. Stark climb Copp’s Hill at the end of the siege of Boston to be sure that the British had actually evacuated, as I quoted yesterday. In 1909 the Daughters of the American Revolution’s American Monthly Magazine recounted that story as it had appeared in the Stark family memoir. However, other books and periodicals retold the story in new ways.

The center of those retellings was Medford’s Royall House (shown above). Col. Stark appropriated that mansion in the spring of 1775 as his headquarters, though the details of his family’s story of that move are unreliable. I can’t tell how long Stark lived there. His regiment was eventually stationed on Winter Hill. Gen. George Washington’s letters and other documents show that Gen. Charles Lee and later Gen. John Sullivan used the Royall house as their headquarters later in the siege, but it had room for lots of officers. By bringing Molly Stark into the mansion full of military men, its guardians made both her and the site seem more domestic.

In retelling the story of how Mrs. Stark had watched her husband’s military action from afar, those authors took her off her horse and put her in (or on) the Royall House. In 1915 House Beautiful told its readers, “The steep, narrow staircase to the attic is called the ‘Molly Stark’ staircase, because it was up these steps she ran to watch the evacuation of Boston by the British.” Robert Shackleton’s Book of Boston (1916) stated:

In this house General Stark early made his headquarters; and his wife, pleasantly remembered as “Molly Stark,” watched from the roof the topmasts of the British ships, in the distance, as they moved out of the harbor at the evacuation of Boston.

That wasn’t precisely what the Stark family memoir had described Mrs. Stark watching, but at least it was on the same date.

Other authors changed the event. In Historic Shrines of America (1918), John T. Faris wrote:

Under the direction of Molly Stark the house maintained its reputation for hospitality, and she did her best to make the place the abode of patriotism. On the day when the British evacuated Boston she promised her husband to signal to him from the roof the movements of the enemy. Passing on with his soldiers to Dorchester Heights, he anxiously awaited the news sent to him by his faithful Molly.

The Continental Army moved onto the Dorchester peninsula on the night of 4-5 March, almost two weeks before the evacuation. Stark’s New Hampshire regiments weren’t involved; they were helping to hold the northern wing of the siege lines. And if it’s hard to imagine Molly Stark seeing the British fleet sail from Boston harbor, picture her signaling to her husband all the way over in Dorchester.

Meanwhile, in 1913 the Massachusetts Library Club Bulletin said of the Royall House, “It is rumored, but not confirmed, that Molly Stark watched the battle of Bunker Hill from its windows.” In March 1921 the Medford Historical Register noted a particular upper window as where, “it is said, Molly Stark looked anxiously on the eventful day of Bunker hill.” That was, of course, months earlier.

Obviously, I don’t think those disparate stories are reliable, and I’m still looking for solid evidence that Col. Stark’s wife visited him in the Royall House.

Mrs. Stark’s Story of the Evacuation

A Facebook discussion with folks at the Royall House and Slave Quarters in Medford led me to this page from the Memoir and Official Correspondence of Gen. John Stark (1860), preserving a story that Elizabeth (Molly) Stark (1737-1814) told her descendants about the end of the siege of Boston.

The anecdote starts with Gen. George Washington and the American forces getting impatient at the British military’s slow departure from Boston in March 1776 and ordering an assault on the town.

He ordered a strong force to enter the town by way of Roxbury neck, while at the same time a force, under the command of Colonel Stark, was directed to pass over on rafts and carry the battery on Copp’s hill.

The wife of Colonel Stark was at this time in the camp on a visit; and was directed by him to mount on horseback, after the embarkation of the troops, and remain in sight to watch the result. If the party were fired upon, she was directed to ride into the country, spread the alarm, and arouse the people.

The troops effected their passage over the river unmolested. She observed them land, advance up the height and take possession of the battery. The enemy’s rear guard were then embarking at the end of Long wharf.

The troops, on entering the works, found the guns loaded, and lighted matches lying beside them, indicating that mischief had been intended; but, for some reason, the design had not been carried out. . . .

The wife of General Stark has often related this incident.

In this case, we know from Gen. John Sullivan’s 19 Mar 1776 letter that the Continental Army didn’t assault Boston at the end of the siege. Seeing the British ships leaving on 17 March, a small party scouted the fortifications on Bunker’s Hill, found them abandoned, then got news from the men who ran the ferry across the Charles River. Gen. Israel Putnam led a force across the river onto the western side of the Boston peninsula. There was no real need for anyone to be ready to “spread the alarm, and arouse the people.”

In fact, Washington’s general orders had already called for Col. Stark to lead his regiments south to Norwich, Connecticut, on 15 March, though he may not have left until the following day.

In addition, Gen. Washington’s description of what the British left behind in Boston and detailed inventories don’t mention loaded cannon with lighted matches found on Copp’s Hill.

Elizabeth Stark’s story thus appears to be what I call a “grandmother’s tale,” supposedly an eyewitness account of the Revolution passed down to young relatives that, either in the telling or the retelling, portrays the actions of one family’s ancestors as braver, nobler, or more important than contemporaneous accounts say.

Was there any real basis for this story? Perhaps at some point Elizabeth Stark did sit on horseback, watching her husband and his men carrying out some mission, and transferred that anxious moment to the significant day at the end of the siege of Boston. Unfortunately, there are a lot of stories told about her now, and very little documentation for them.

TOMORROW: How this story appears to have grown in the 1900s.