“The Women from the Windows asking Davis whether he wanted any Gingerbread”

Massachusetts ships captured the Peggy on its voyage from Halifax to New York on 22 July 1776, as described yesterday.

The civilians aboard that ship were taken to Marblehead, then to Boston under guard. Word spread quickly that one of them was Benjamin Davis, a merchant who had left town months before.

On 28 July, Joseph Ward wrote to John Adams from Boston about the ship: “There are many Tories on board, among whom is the noted Benjamin Davis.”

The next day, Ezekiel Price put in his diary: “Brought to town Benjamin Davis and a number of other Tories, who were committed to jail.”

Why was Davis being singled out? He’d made himself notorious in some way, and we have a couple of hints about how.

David Cobb wrote to Robert Treat Paine on 29 July:

Just now the Tories were Landed at the Long Wharf from Marblehead & were attended from thence to the Prison by 2 thousand people; the Women from the Windows asking Davis whether he wanted any Gingerbread, refering to his treatment of the little Chreldren when they were going out of Town last Year. I wish the Devil had ’em.

Abigail Adams alluded to the same scuttlebut in her letter to John the same day:

we have taken a vessel from Halifax bound to New York, which we should call a prize but that it containd about 14 Tories among whom is that infamous Wretch of a Ben Davis the Ginger Bread Robber. How many little ones can say I was an Hungry and you gave me no Bread, but inhumanely took what little I had from me. I wish the Sea or any other Element had them rather than we should be tormented with them.

The editors of the Adams and Paine Papers weren’t sure what to make of those remarks about gingerbread.

I can’t find any sources providing a definite answer, but here’s my guess. At the start of the war, many families sought to leave Boston. Gen. Thomas Gage didn’t want refugees to take out food, which his army needed, or weapons, which the provincial army needed. So the governor set up a system of passes and inspections using both military and civilian administrators.

In the 5 June 1775 Boston Gazette, Benjamin Edes published an open letter addressed “To the perfidious, the truce breaking THOMAS GAGE” and signed “Massachusettensis.” (This was not, presumably, the Loyalist political writer.) Among its complaints about Gage was:

Nay, have not you, and your associates by your orders, been mean enough to steal rum and sugar from a poor teamster, half a cake of gingerbread, a nutmeg, and half a bisket from a poor woman who was flying half famished out of Boston from your low lived tyranny and oppression?

That item was reprinted in several other Massachusetts and Connecticut newspapers over the next couple of weeks. It’s the one gingerbread-related complaint I could find from the period.

That complaint shows that people working for the royal government were confiscating food from folks trying to leave Boston, even mundane food like gingerbread, even from “a poor woman.”

I suspect that Benjamin Davis had agreed to work for Gage’s royal government as some sort of inspector or administrator. At some point that spring, he took gingerbread from a family or two trying to leave town. Children may have cried. That incident didn’t get into the newspapers, but it made him notorious enough that citizens yelled at “Ben Davis the Ginger Bread Robber” more than a year later.

And, unlike Hopestill Capen, few people in Boston minded seeing Davis locked up.

(The picture above shows the Pennsylvania politician Joseph Galloway, not mentioned anywhere in this posting. In September 1774 John Adams wrote in his diary that he was “introduced to Mr. Galloway, the Speaker of the House in Pensylvania. He looks like Ben. Davis the Sandimanian.”)

“The Firings Continued all Night”

With hindsight, we can see that 250 years ago the siege of Boston was basically over, with the British military preparing to leave.

At the time, however, Gen. George Washington couldn’t be completely sure that Gen. William Howe was pulling out. He had good indications from the letter I discussed yesterday and from some people who slipped out of Boston around the same time. But he still had to consider the possibility that Howe was deceiving him, or might change his mind.

On the night of 9 Mar 1776, the Continental troops moved to fortify another high point of the Dorchester peninsula: Nook’s Hill, also known as Foster’s Hill. It was on the tip closest to Boston, from which cannon could threaten the town.

Nook’s Hill wasn’t as high as the heights that Gen. John Thomas had first fortified. It was closer to the British artillery on the Neck and inside Boston. It was vulnerable.

Capt. John Barker of the Tenth Regiment described the action that day:

The Rebels having been deserned carrying Materials for making a Battery to Foster’s hill at Dorchester, the nearest of any to Boston; and at 8 o’clock in the evening it being reported they were at work there, our Batteries at the Blockhouse, the New Work at the Neck, and [John Rowe’s] Wharf began to play upon them, and kept it up all night so as to prevent their Working: they likewise fired at the Town from their different Batteries at Roxbury.

Sgt. Henry Bedinger of the Virginia riflemen described the experience from the American side:

About 2 hours after Dark the Enemy Began to fire on a part of our men who were throwing up a Breastwork on the Nearest point to Boston on Dorchester. They fired from a Small Vessel from Boston Neck, from the wharf, from Fort Hill, &c. Supposed they Fired 1000 Shott as it Lasted the whole Night. Our people Fired in Boston from Roxberry. The Firings Continued all Night. We had 1 Surgeon & Three men Kill'd.

The surgeon was Dr. Enoch Dole, buried in his native town of Littleton, as shown above and discussed here.

Ezekiel Price heard the cannonade out in Milton. In his diary for 10 March, he added that “some travellers from below [i.e., downriver]” had told him “Four men, some say five, were killed by the enemy’s cannon, and by one ball; they were sitting round a fire on the hill.”

Even during that exchange of fire, however, the British military really was preparing to leave. Barker also wrote: “All the Brass Artillery on board except a few small field pieces. Orders for all the sick Men and Wo[men to] be embarked before night.”

TOMORROW: Pressure.

“Henry Knox’s Trek from Ticonderoga” in Acton, 26 Feb.

On Thursday, 26 February, I’ll return to the Acton 250 lecture series to speak about “Henry Knox’s Trek from Ticonderoga: Myths, Realities, and Results for Boston.”

Our event description says:

In early 1776, the young Continental Army colonel Henry Knox moved dozens of heavy cannons and mortars from Lake Champlain to the siege lines around Boston; one of the most famous stories from the Revolutionary War. And like many famous stories, it embodies a fair amount of legend and lore.

This talk sorts out what we know, what we only think we know, and what we should know about how Knox brought this “noble train of artillery” that helped to make all of Massachusetts independent.

The day on which I’ll speak will be the 250th anniversary of when Gen. George Washington informed the Massachusetts Council and the Continental Congress about the plan to fortify Dorchester Heights. On that same day the Boston official Ezekiel Price, then living as a refugee in Milton, wrote in his diary:

It is said that the heavy cannon which were left at Framingham are brought down to Cambridge;…every thing getting in readiness to make a push by our army.

For a month the fifty-eight artillery pieces which Col. Knox had managed to bring from Fort Ticonderoga had stayed in Framingham, being equipped with the necessary carriages and tools. Now they were moving forward to the siege lines. How would the Continentals use them?

This talk is scheduled to start at 7 P.M. in Room 204 of the Town Hall, 472 Main Street in Acton. It will also be shown live and recorded on Acton cable television.

(The photo above shows a cannon carriage being completed at the Hartwell Tavern in Lincoln. I took this photo during yesterday’s Minute Man Park/Fort Ti event.)

“He particularly enlarged his accounts of our ammunition”?

On 28 Oct 1775, the Massachusetts House put Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr., on trial for corresponding with the British military inside Boston.

In his defense, the doctor pointed to a passage in the allegedly incriminating letter, dated 23 July (copy shown here):

20 Tons of Powder arroved at Philad. Connecticut and Providence, upwards of 20 Tons are now in Camp, salt petre is made in every Colony. Powder mills are erected and constantly employed in Philada & New York.

That wasn’t giving sensitive information to the enemy, Church told the legislators. Instead, he

declared that the only motive he had in writing was the publick good; that he took care to exaggerate our strength and firmness, with a view to dishearten and intimidate; that he particularly enlarged his accounts of our ammunition, at a time when an attack might have proved fatal, on account of the scarcity of that article…

Nobody believed that. But nobody could refute it, either. The deciphered letter certainly did declare that the Continental Army had a lot of gunpowder.

Some historians have wondered if Church was writing in a code, in addition to cipher—perhaps the men who received his letter would know by previous arrangement he was actually communicating the opposite of what it said. Or maybe the doctor was sincerely trying to reconcile the royal authorities to the provincial cause.

In fact, Church’s 23 July writing reflected a common understanding around the camp that summer. On 2 July, Ezekiel Price, living in Milton, wrote in his diary: “Mr. E[dmund]. Quincy reports that eighteen hundred barrels of powder is arrived at Philadelphia or New York.”

On 10 August, the Boston Gazette reported, “the Needfull is said to be not wanting,” probably a reference to gunpowder.

Down in Newport, on 15 August the Rev. Dr. Ezra Stiles noted: “I am told so that I rely on it, that our Army now have Fifty Tons of Powder.”

In fact, on 3 August Gen. George Washington had learned that the army was facing a gunpowder shortage. He and his generals were writing desperately—but secretly—to various governments asking for more. They were coming up with wild plans to grab powder from colonies still loyal to the Crown. But of course the commander worked to keep that news from spreading. (I wrote about that effort in this article for the Journal of the American Revolution.)

By late October, more gunpowder had arrived in the American camp, making it safe to acknowledge there had been a shortage a couple of months before. But when Dr. Church wrote his letter in late July, nobody knew about that shortage, not even Gen. Washington. So the doctor’s claim that he was deliberately trying to fool his correspondents on that point was plausible only if his listeners didn’t remember what happened when.

And those Massachusetts legislators wouldn’t have believed Dr. Church for an instant if they’d seen his next letter.

TOMORROW: Out of the files of Gen. Gage.

Ezekiel Price on “A Great & Glorious Event”

Yesterday’s posting raised the question of when exactly Boston heard about the American and French victory at Yorktown. The most immediate reaction would appear in people’s diaries, so I looked for my usual informants on daily events.

John Adams? In 1781 he was far away in Europe.

Merchant John Rowe? His surviving diaries end in 1779.

Printer John Boyle? He stopped compiling his “Journal of Occurrences” in 1778.

Shopkeeper and selectman Harbottle Dorr? He stopped collecting newspapers assiduously at the end of 1776, adding just a few issues from the next two years.

Robert Treat Paine was keeping his diary out in Taunton in 1781. Fortunately, the folks at the Massachusetts Historical Society have done the hard work of deciphering his handwriting and publishing pertinent entries in the Paine Papers. On 26 October, he wrote: “News came that Cornwallis had Surrendred to Genl. Washington, on 17th. Instant.”

I wanted more detail than that, and I wanted a voice from Boston. Fortunately, Harvard has preserved and digitized the 1781 almanac diary of Boston court official and insurance broker Ezekiel Price (1727–1802), who was a gossip sponge.

Price’s entry for 26 Oct 1781 appears on sequence 37–38 of the digitized version of this diary:

This Morning Mr. Thomas Hulbert [?] came to Town from Providence who brings a Hand Bill printed at Newport Yesterday in which is an Account that the afternoon before one Capt Lovett arrived there from York River who brot an account that Lord Cornwallis & his Army Surrendered Prisoners of War to Genl. Washington on the 18th. instant—

that Cornwallis had wth. him in Garrison 9000 Men with an immense quantity of Stores also that a 44[-gun warship] & one frigate & 100 Transports were Captured—

Mr. Winship who left Newport Yesterday tells me that he saw Capt. Lovett & his Mate who informed him that they say the British Flag lowered & the Continental & French Flags hoisted on the Forts at York Town—that he heard the Huzzas upon the Occasion—

they they saw the French Admiral go on shoar at the Fort that the American Vessells which lay below York Town went up to Town & that he went up so near the Forts that he could throw a Bisket on Shoar—

From all these Accts. it is beyond a doubt that Lord Cornwallis & his great Army with Vast quantities of Artillery & Military Stores are in Possession of our illustrious Genl. Washington & the Allied Army—A Great & Glorious Event—

On this Joyful occasion all the Bells in Town were rang most part of the day & the Sons of Freedom showed evident marks of their felicity. In the Evening the Coffee house was illuminated & Fireworks displayed.

Mr. [John?] Marston tells me that a French Gentleman acquainted him he had received a Letter from a Person who was in York Town at the time of the Surrender & adds that Genl. Washington had ordered 1200 Horse to the Reinforcement of Genl. [Nathanael] Greene.

Price recorded additional information on 27 and 31 October. He came to date Cornwallis’s surrender to the 17th, like Paine. That was when the British general first raised the white flag. It wasn’t until the 19th that the commanders signed surrender terms and the Crown troops gave up their arms, but we now treat that date as the significant one.

“I could almost wish that an inoculating Hospital was opened, in every Town”

In the Washington Post, Prof. Andrew Wehrman wrote about Massachusetts and Boston’s official response to the threat of smallpox in the summer of 1776:

Abigail Adams…learned of the Continental Army’s failed invasion of Canada. Smallpox had broken out among the soldiers, dooming the campaign. Returning soldiers threatened to bring the disease back with them. Exasperated, John wrote to Abigail: “The Small Pox! The Small Pox! What shall we do with it?” He answered his own question by remarking, “I could almost wish that an inoculating Hospital was opened, in every Town in New England.”

While John Adams and 55 other men in Philadelphia debated the final wording of the Declaration of Independence, on July 3, 1776, the people of Boston declared their independence from smallpox. Fearing further outbreaks, the Massachusetts legislature voted to once again shut down the entire city for a general inoculation.

The people of Boston cheered the news. Ezekiel Price, a local businessman and court official, declared on July 4: “Liberty given for to inoculate for the small-pox; many begin upon it this afternoon.”

Abigail Adams took her four children to her uncle’s house to inoculate with the families of her two sisters. Guardhouses were built to warn anyone entering the city of the presence of smallpox and to prevent anyone from leaving the city during the general inoculation without a certificate from a doctor.

On July 18, 1776, Col. Thomas Crafts read the Declaration of Independence for the first time to the people of Boston from the balcony of the State House. Abigail Adams joined the “multitude into King Street to hear the proclamation.” The assembled crowd was composed of recently inoculated Bostonians and those with previous immunity who had stayed behind to take care of the rest. . . .

Boston’s “freedom summer” ended on Sept. 18, 1776, when the city ordered the guardhouses closed and the city to reopen for business. Although statistics were not immediately published, 20 years later, Thomas Pemberton, a businessman and member of the newly founded Massachusetts Historical Society, compiled the numbers. In the summer of 1776, Boston saw 29 deaths from 304 cases of natural smallpox. By contrast, only 28 deaths were reported with 4,988 Bostonians inoculated. Ninety percent of Boston’s nonimmune population was inoculated, saving hundreds of lives.

The implications for how our population should respond today are obvious. Some choose to reject them.

Press Coverage of the Owen Richards Riot

On 21 May 1770, Green and Russell’s Boston Post-Boy reported:

Last Friday Night Owen Richards, one of the Tidesmen belonging to the Custom-House, was Tarred, Feathered and Carted thro’ the Town for several hours, for having as ’tis said, given Information against a Connecticut Sloop which was Seized.

In contrast, the same day’s Boston Gazette from Edes and Gill said:

Last Friday Night one Richards, a Tide-Waiter, having ’tis said informed against a Connecticut Sloop, was tarred, feathered and carted thro’ the Town for two or three Hours.

No full name for the victim, no acknowledgement that the ship had actually been judged to be smuggling, and an ordeal of “two or three Hours” instead of “several.” 

Here are three more items from the newspapers reporting on different legal fallout from the 18 May 1770 attack on Richards.

In the Boston Post-Boy, 28 May:

At a Council held at the Council-Chamber on Monday last, His Honor the Lieutenant-Governor [Thomas Hutchinson], with the Advice of His Majesty’s Council, sent for His Majesty’s Justices of the Peace of in the Town of Boston, and enjoined them to meet, and make strict Examination into the Affair of taring, feathering & carting Owen Richards, as mentioned in our last, and to bind over such Persons, as shall appear to have been active in it, to answer the same in due Course of Law; and that in all Respects they pursue the Steps of the Law, in order to bring the Offenders to Justice.

The Same Day and the Day following His Majesty’s Justices met at the County Court-House, and sent for several Persons as Evidences, but could obtain no Intellgence of any one that was concerned.

In the Boston Post-Boy, 11 June:

Court of Vice-Admiralty
at Boston, June 2, 1770.

ALL Persons claiming Property in the Schooner Martin, and 17 Hogsheads, 4 Tierces and 2 Barrels of Brown Sugar, seized for Breach of the Acts of Trade, are hereby notified to appear at a Court of Vice-Admiralty to be held at Boston, on the 13th Day of June instant, at Ten o’Clock beforenoon, to shew cause, (if any they have) why the said Schooner and Sugar should not be decreed to remain forfeit pursuant to an Information filed in said Court for that purpose.

By Order of Court, Ezekiel Price, D. Reg’r.

That was the ship Richards had seized for the Customs office.

Finally, the Boston Gazette on 24 December (250 years ago today):

One Owen Richards, a petty Officer in the Customs, who was tarred and feather’d some Months ago, we hear has commenced an Action of Damage for Three Hundred Pounds lawful Money, against a young Gentleman of this Town, whose family Connections are among the better sort of folks, the friends of Government.

This Lad was taken by a single Writ and held to Bail—Upon his application to several of his near relations who are persons of fortune, to become sureties for him, we are told, they absolutely refus’d. But others had compassion upon him; for two Gentlemen were bound for his Appearance at Court.

I haven’t yet figured out who this young man might be. It’s striking how Edes and Gill criticized his relations for not bailing him out for an assault they presumably disapproved of on both personal and political grounds.

COMING UP: The court cases.

When Balch Came Back

In early October 1775, Nathaniel Balch the hatter left London and sailed back home to America.

On 23 December, the Providence Gazette reported on news from the preceding days:

Captain Gorham is arrived at Nantucket from London, after a Passage of eleven Weeks. With him came passenger Mr. NATHANIEL BALCH, late of Boston.  

Balch was soon on the mainland. On 20 December, the Boston court official and insurance broker Ezekiel Price, taking refuge from the siege in Stoughton, wrote in his diary:

Mr. Bailies, from Taunton, says that Mr. Nathaniel Balch was there last night. He is lately from London, and reports that the great men in England are against us, but that the common people are in our favor.

However, four days later Price wrote that young Benjamin Hichborn had told him:

Mr. Balch says our Boston gentry that lately went to England were, most of them, very desirous of getting back; that the people there in general were against us, and continually threatening to scourge us till they had obliged us to submit.

I don’t trust Hitchborn about anything. But the discrepancy between Price’s entries may simply be due to him using the word “people” to refer to two different groups: ordinary people as opposed to “great men” in his first entry, British gentry as opposed to Loyalist gentry in the second.

Finally, there’s a mention from Isaac Smith, Sr., father of one of the men Balch had sailed and seen some sights in London with. Smith wrote to his niece’s husband, John Adams, on 2 Jan 1776:

Itts likely you may have heard Mr. Balch is returnd from England but came Out the begining Octbr. so cant bring any thing New of a publick Nature tho possibly he may of his One invention.

Balch’s own invention might have meant private information he’d picked up, though, knowing him, it might just as well have been some new funny stories. I haven’t come across any other references to Massachusetts men debriefing the hatter about his trip.

Which means I still have the mystery of why Balch went to Britain at all.

TOMORROW: Post-war legends.

The Voyage of Nathaniel Balch

Earlier this year I introduced the figure of Nathaniel Balch, a hatter who was prominent in Boston society before and after the Revolutionary War.

Balch was close to Revolutionary leaders, particularly John Hancock. In August 1769, Balch entertained at the Sons of Liberty banquet. So I assume he was a Whig.

When the war broke out in April 1775, Balch was inside Boston. Many people who opposed the royal government spent the next few weeks working to get out to the countryside, a safe distance behind the provincial lines. Balch had other plans.

On 6 May, merchant John Andrews wrote to his relative William Barrell:

Your uncle Joe has engag’d a passage for London, at the expence of one hundred Guineas for himself and wife, to expedite her sailing without waiting for freight. Balch, brother Joe and his wife, Jno. Amory, &ca., &ca., go in her. . . . You must know, that no person who leaves the town is allow’d to return again.

That same day the young merchant David Greene sent the same news to a relative in Demerara:

I am going to London with Captain Callahan, and expect to have for fellow-passengers Mr. J[oseph]. Green and wife, of School Street; Mr. J. Barrell and lady, Mr. John Amory and lady, Mrs. Callahan, Mr. Balch, Mr. S[amuel]. Quincey, D[avid]. Sears, &c. As I have long entertained thoughts of making this voyage, as it will be impossible to do any business here, and as I may find something to do in England, I doubt not you will approve of my intention.

John Callahan sailed regularly between Boston and London in the 1770s. His name often appeared in the newspapers attached to the latest news or goods from London. When Gov. Thomas Hutchinson left Massachusetts in the spring of 1774, he traveled on Capt. Callahan’s Minerva.

The 22 May 1862 Boston Evening Transcript offered more information, tagged to Viscount Lyndhurst, the eminent British attorney who had been born in Boston as the oldest son of John Singleton and Susanna Copley:

If it is of sufficient importance to know the exact time that Lord Lyndhurst left this country for England, allow me to state that he was a passenger on board the ship Minerva, Capt. Callahan, which sailed from Marblehead May 27, 1775, with fourteen other cabin passengers; thirty-nine souls in all on board.

The cabin passengers were Mrs. Callahan, Joseph Green, Esq., and lady, Mr. John Amory and lady, Mrs. Copley and three children, Mrs. Jackson, Samuel Quincy, Esq., Lieut. Wm. Aug. Merrick, of the Royal Navy, Mr. David Green, Mr. David Sears, Mr. Nath. Balch, Mr. Isaac Smith, Jr., besides servants, and six steerage passengers.

The above is from the diary of a fellow passenger, who landed at Dover 24th June, and arrived in London 6 P. M. next day. Lord Lyndhurst was born 21st May, 1772—of course, was just 3 years and six days old.

E.

At first I doubted that the Minerva really sailed from Marblehead, thinking that was a legal fiction that the Customs service allowed because the port of Boston was still legally closed. But the 31 May Massachusetts Spy reported, “Captain Callahan is to sail this week for London from Salem.”

Balch, therefore, along with the many Loyalists in that party, got a pass to leave besieged Boston, crossed into territory held by the provincial army, and then got onto a ship to sail to Britain itself. He must really have wanted to go.

TOMORROW: Reasons for leaving.

Ezekiel Price: “Sand was mixt with the powder”

I don’t trust Elkanah Watson’s story of a Continental Army powderhouse stocked with barrels of sand to make the gunpowder supply look bigger than it was. And I completely discount Edward Everett Hale’s statement that Gen. George Washington was taken aback by such a subterfuge by Gen. Artemas Ward. But there was a moment during the siege of Boston when Americans worried about such a mix-up.

That moment was right after the Battle of Bunker Hill, before the provincials realized how much damage they had inflicted on the British troops. In those early days, people were looking around for someone to blame for losing the Charlestown peninsula.

Ezekiel Price was a Boston court officer and insurance broker who had taken up residence in Milton after the war broke out. He kept a diary recording lots of the gossip he picked up, including this news on Monday, 19 June 1775, two days after the battle:

Further reports relating to the unfortunate action at Charlestown,—that the Continental Army fought like lions, and mowed down the Regular Army as they approached the entrenchments, until their ammunition was expended, and until a fatal mistake (as I call it) was discovered,—that the cartridges and shot for the artillery proved wholly unfit for them, and could not be used; besides which, an opinion prevails among the Continental Army, that treachery was in some of the Continental officers. A suspicion also arises among them that sand was mixt with the powder, and that the cartridges and ball being thus sent was with design: all which creates great uneasiness in the camp.

This rumor appears to have confined the problem of sand and gunpowder just to the cartridges, or bags of powder, supplied to the New England artillery, not to the entire army’s powder supply.

There had indeed been problems with the cartridges for Capt. John Callender’s artillery company: the cartridges sent out with his cannon were too large to fit into the barrels. But once provincial soldiers broke open those cartridges, the powder inside proved quite explosive.

The next day, Price discounted all those rumors on the basis of new rumors:

Heard that the Continental Army had received a fresh supply of powder, and that they were in high spirits; . . . that all the reports of treachery were entirely without foundation, and propagated by the enemies to the cause, and weak, discontented men, and by some cowards who fled from the engagement, and formed these lies to favor their escape from danger.

Those counter-rumors might protest too much, but that would only confirm that we can’t treat all the tales Price recorded as reliable fact. Most likely, the suspicion about sand and gunpowder grew from an early attempt to explain why the provincial artillery regiment had performed so badly overall. Once more information spread, blame focused on Callender and other specific officers.

TOMORROW: One last mix of sand and gunpowder.

“In daily expectation of Colonel Knox’s arrivall”

Yesterday I quoted the Boston businessman and court official Ezekiel Price about Col. Henry Knox and the artillery he brought from Lake Champlain in January 1776.

At that time Price was a war refugee living at Thomas Doty’s tavern in what was then Stoughton (shown here). That was also the home town of Col. Richard Gridley, Chief Engineer of the Continental Army and, until the previous fall, the commander of its artillery regiment. Price socialized with the Gridley family. He also gathered up rumors from other sources.

Price’s diary entries make clear that people like him knew about Knox’s mission to retrieve cannon and were eagerly awaiting the result.

Thursday, Jan. 11. — Went down to Milton. Could hear nothing remarkable from the American Army. It is reported that Colonel Henry Knox is on his return from Crown Point; got back as far as Worcester, and has with him a number of brass cannon and other ordnance-stores, and was expected at Cambridge last night with his artillery. Mr. William Bant [a business associate of John Hancock] called here on his way to the army, &c. Son Zek spent the day with us. Mrs. Price, Polly, &c, went home with Zek in the chaise. The weather threatens snow or rain soon.

Friday, Jan. 12.— A light snow fell in the night. The weather is moderate, and the morning agreeable for the season. Towards noon, it began to grow cold. Mrs. Gridley and daughter Beckey stopt here, in their way to Cambridge to visit Scar Gridley, who, they hear, is dangerously ill. A soldier from the army below says that nothing material has happened there within a day or two past, except that he heard Colonel Knox was on his return to Cambridge, and that a number of cannon had reached there, which Colonel Knox sent before him. It is cloudy, and has the appearance of more foul weather soon.

I’m skeptical about that “number of cannon” reaching Cambridge; no other sources confirm that secondhand information, and it looks to me like Knox went ahead of the guns instead of the other way around.

On 13 January, Gen. George Washington was still awaiting his artillery commander. He told Col. Alexander McDougall of New York, “I am in daily expectation of Colonel Knox’s arrivall.”

That same day, Price wrote, “By advices from Canada, I think Governor [Guy] Carlton’s head is pretty near the noose: so that we may hope to see him soon at headquarters.” He was expecting news of American triumph at Québec City.

In the evening Thomas Crane, representative from Stoughton to the Massachusetts General Court, told Price “that Knox, with the cannon, was at Springfield.” Which of course contradicted the earlier reports that the colonel was much closer. But Price was still optimistic.

Meanwhile, Washington kept waiting. On 16 January, he received a progress report from Gen. Philip Schuyler in Albany and wrote back: “I am much pleased, that the artillery was like to be got over the River, and am in Hopes, that Colonel Knox will arrive with it in a few Days—It is much wanted.”

Late the next day, Gen. Washington received bad news: Gen. Richard Montgomery had died in an unsuccessful assault on Québec. Washington called his generals together for a council of war the next morning to decide how many soldiers they could spare to bolster that effort against Canada. Knox, according to Gen. William Heath, finally arrived later on the 18th.

Sometime that same day, Ezekiel Price also heard about Montgomery’s death. He held out hope that that “melancholy and unfortunate” report was false. But on the 19th everyone connected with the army told Price the same bad news, and he had more detail by the 20th. For the next two days he described troops preparing to head north. Despite all his anticipation of Knox’s arrival, Price never actually recorded that event or mentioned the new artillery until late February. The disastrous news from Québec completely overshadowed it.

Why Did Knox Stop His Guns at Framingham?

In response to my Wednesday posting about Col. Henry Knox’s arrival in Cambridge on 18 Jan 1776 (a week or so earlier than the traditional date), Boston 1775 friend Charles Bahne commented:

I still wonder how the town of Framingham fits into Knox’s route. The direct route to Boston (and Cambridge) from the west was the Boston Post Road, which in this area is basically today’s U.S. 20 with some minor detours. That road passes through Marlborough, Sudbury, Wayland, Weston, and Waltham. All of these, except Wayland, existed as towns in the 1770s; Wayland was still part of Sudbury. It would have been a significant detour — with all those heavy cannon! — to go to Framingham.

It’s more logical for John Adams and Elbridge Gerry to have passed through Framingham on their way from Cambridge to Philadelphia, since there was another road — today’s “Old Connecticut Path” — which branched off the Post Road at the Weston-Wayland line and headed directly to Hartford, bypassing Worcester and Springfield.

So we have a question of space as well as time. As part of my possible project on Knox, I’m reexamining the traditional stories about him. Among the most visible of those stories is his progress through New York and Massachusetts; the Knox Cannon Trail has been marked with large roadside stones starting in 1926. Yet much of that trail is based on assumptions about where Knox and his cargo passed because the records of his trip are incomplete. Some marker stones have had to be repositioned.

Following the first Knox biography, we assumed Knox brought his artillery from Springfield (a town he mentioned in a letter to Gen. George Washington) to Cambridge, arriving 24 January. And we assumed he took the straightest, most traveled route, which was the Boston Post Road. But that timetable is wrong. What if the route is an unsupported assumption as well—at least for the guns?

As shown in the map above (a detail from the 1775 “Seat of War in New England” map), the Boston Post Road leads east from Marlborough through Sudbury to Watertown. At Marlborough another road diverged southeast into Framingham toward Natick. It seems likely that Col. Knox directed his “noble train” along that second road. But why?

Gen. William Heath wrote in his diary that Knox “came to camp” on 18 January while the guns “were ordered to be stopped at Framingham.” To me that wording implies the order came from above—i.e., from Gen. Washington.

Another clue comes from the Gershom Foster orderly book at the Anderson House library of the Society of the Cincinnati. That’s an orderly book for the artillery regiment. The orders start to come from Col. Knox (in a big, dramatic way) on 28 January. So even though he was in Cambridge on 18 January and presumably received his commission as colonel then, Knox didn’t start directing the regiment for another ten days. What was keeping him busy?

I suspect Knox went ahead of the guns to meet with his commander-in-chief in Cambridge on 18 January, then hurried back west to meet the guns and stop them at Framingham, or divert them to that town. Why? Knox’s papers have a big gap at this point, and Washington’s surviving headquarters papers don’t mention him or the new artillery. (Notably, however, “Framingham” is one of the passwords of the day on 22 January.)

One possibility is that Knox always planned to take that road because he was aiming to deliver the cannon to Roxbury, not Cambridge. He had worked on the big fort in Roxbury. He might have expected to mount most of the guns in that part of the siege lines. In that case, the route through Framingham to Natick and thence to Dedham might make sense.

But it also seems likely that those cannon needed to be mounted and equipped for use in the siege. Washington may well have decided that Framingham was the place to do that work, far enough from the lines to be safe from the enemy. I haven’t found any mention of such work in Framingham, however.

It appears that Knox’s heavy cannon remained in Framingham for a month or so. On 26 February Ezekiel Price, a Boston official and businessman who collected many threads of gossip from his refuge in Stoughton, wrote in his diary:

It is said that the heavy cannon which were left at Framingham are brought down to Cambridge; the mortars are fixed in their new beds; the fort at Lechmere’s Point nearly finished; fascines going constantly to Dorchester; and every thing getting in readiness to make a push by our army.

Not all the gossip Price wrote down was that reliable (I’ll talk about that tomorrow). But it seems unlikely that he would have been wrong about the heavy cannon being left in Framingham for weeks.  And while it’s not clear what Price meant by saying they were brought “down to Cambridge” (Allston was still part of Cambridge then), this diary entry does suggest some of Knox’s artillery did indeed travel into that town. So there’s still a case for some of those markers.

“Hoping he will still continue Honestly, faithfully & obediently to serve”

To find out more about Caesar Marion, also called “the well-known Caesar Merriam,” I looked into the life of the man who once owned him.

Edward Marion was born in Boston in 1692. He served in some town offices in the 1720s and ’30s, joined the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, and donated blacksmithing work for the town’s new workhouse.

Marion didn’t advertise his services (blacksmiths rarely had to), but he placed a couple of advertisements in the Boston Gazette in 1758 when he administered the estate of turner John Underwood.

Marion married Mary Reynolds in 1715. I’ve found no evidence that they had children, which would explain why the blacksmith didn’t feel a need to preserve his property for a son. It also left the Marions without the traditional source of support in their old age.

Both Edward and Mary Marion turned seventy years old in the early 1760s. Presumably journeymen and slaves like Caesar were already doing most of the physical work in Edward’s smithy.

On 9 May 1769, Marion made out an unusual written promise:

of my own meer motion & in consideration of the Faithfullness & honesty wherewith my Negro Servant Caeser has Served me for divers years past, & hoping he will still continue Honestly, faithfully & obediently to serve me & his mistress Mary my Wife I do hereby order & declare that it is my Will & pleasure that at & immediately after the Decease of me and my said Wife & the Survivor of us that my said Negro Caeser shall be manumitted & freed from his Servitude.

And I do also hereby give & order unto my said Negro at the time of his freedom all my working Tools belonging to the Black smiths Business now in my Shop & also the sum of six Pounds lawfull money and I do hereby also order my Ex’ors or Adm’ors In Case of his Living to be Aged or Infirm & unable to Support himself, that they be Aiding & Ajusting to him out of my Estate to prevent his becomeing a Charge to the Town—

provided always & these presents are granted upon this Condition that my said Negro shall honestly Soberly obediently & faithfully [missing word—behave?] himself towards me & my said Wife during our & each of our Lives otherwise I do hereby reserve in my own Power to revoke & invalidate this my bequest in case my said Negro shall not so faithfully & honestly bare & behave himself towards me & his said Mistress as I hope & expect he will.

I or his said Mistress may invalidate the same either by Destroying this Instrument or Expressing the same by Writing

Marion added to that promise on 30 Jan 1770:

I the within named Edward Marion do further give and order unto my said Negro at the time of his Freedom All his Cloaths Bed & Bedding, & also the Use & Improvement of my Blacksmiths Shop for him to Work in during his Life upon the Condition of his future faithfull Service to me & my said Wife as within mentioned.

As discussed yesterday, notary Ezekiel Price recorded the document on 2 February.

Jared Hardesty interprets the legal recording of that document as evidence of Caesar Marion looking out for his economic interest, exercising agency in his own life. I’m struck by how it shows the reversal of a concern I’ve seen in anecdotes about enslaved people resisting emancipation in old age, when they feared their owners simply didn’t want to support them any longer after having squeezed the labor out of them.

In this case, Edward Marion was concerned for his and his wife’s support. And he was willing to make their slave into their heir to ensure it. Of course, the blacksmith also added clauses demanding that Caesar keep up his end of the bargain at the risk of losing everything (and added a clause to keep him from becoming a burden on the town). Of course, Edward Marion may also have been motivated by feelings of duty and genuine fondness toward Caesar—we can’t read that in the legal record.

COMING UP: How did this arrangement work out?

(Thanks to professional genealogist Liz Loveland for sharing images from the Ezekiel Price notarial records at the Boston Athenaeum, the source of the above quotations.)

A New Clue to Caesar Marion

Back in 2006, I wrote about a black man named Caesar Marion who protested a town meeting measure in August 1775, during the siege of Boston. The Essex Gazette referred to him as “the well-known Caesar Merriam.”

I’d found the name of Caesar Marion on the 1771 provincial tax list, indicating that he owned property. Being a free black with real estate might have been rare enough on its own to make him “well-known.” Marion’s willingness to speak out against the authorities, even to the length of being put in jail, suggests he might also have been a recognized community leader.

But I didn’t know anything more about Marion until last month Jared Hardesty shared “Finding Agency in Unexpected Places” on the African American Intellectual History Society’s website.

Hardesty examined the records of Ezekiel Price, a well-connected notary, court clerk, and insurance agent in eighteenth-century Boston, at the Boston Athenaeum. He found transcripts of documents that Price had been asked to notarize by African-American townspeople:

Upon obtaining their freedom, many blacks turned to Price to help them record and lay claim to property. In this sense, freedom was only the first step. Property would allow freed men and women to enjoy that liberty and, more importantly, secure independence within white society. There are two instances of free blacks looking to secure property in Price’s books. The first involved a man named Charles whose former master gifted him a small Hopkinton, Massachusetts farm in his will. Charles had Price record three different testimonials from white neighbors acknowledging his inheritance. The other document belonged to a freedman named Caesar Marion, whose master, retired blacksmith Edward Marion, not only manumitted his slave in 1769, but also gave Caesar all of his tools and use of his shop. Caesar then used this property to go into business for himself, becoming one of the few black property owners in Boston listed in the 1771 Massachusetts tax assessment.

This document thus helps to fill in a crucial part of Caesar Marion’s story.

TOMORROW: Edward Marion’s grant.

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.

“Those who would listen to such things heard tall tales”

In stating that Gen. George Washington “leaked word to the enemy…that he had eighteen hundred barrels of powder” in August 1775, as quoted back here, James T. Flexner cited a page from the previous multi-volume biography of the man.

Back in 1951, Flexner’s predecessor Douglas Southall Freeman (shown at right) wrote in George Washington: Planter and Patriot:

If Washington could not procure from these sources of intelligence [deserters and refugees] much information of real value concerning British plans, he could not fail to be pleased at the success of efforts to keep secret the shortage of powder. The public, in fact, overconfidently exaggerated the size of the supply instead of presenting the scarcity as worse than it was. False reports circulated of large importation and of great stores. Ezekiel Price had heard in July that 1800 barrels of powder had reached Philadelphia; the next month, from its printing house across the salt marshes, the [10 Aug 1775] Boston Gazette had boasted that “the needful” was “not wanting”; Ezra Stiles was told he might rely on it that the Colonies had fifty tons.

This, in a sense, was a triumph of the American intelligence service. So was the deception of the British. Royal officers were being misled and, in some instances, were deceiving their own people at home. Those who would listen to such things heard tall tales of the magnitude of desertion from American ranks, and of the unexplained “arrest” of Charles Lee by his own commander’s order. London newspaper readers were soon to be regaled with reports that on August 7, the British, 5000 strong, had attacked “the rebels” and after slaughtering a host had captured [Israel] Putnam and Lee, 2500 other prisoners, a vast number of carefully specified cannon, 6000 stand of small arms, and £100,000 in specie. If these absurdities later were found in newspapers that were smuggled across the Atlantic, they would amuse the Americans who meantime did all they could not only to confuse the enemy but also to create discontent in British ranks.

Freeman thus provided Flexner with no direct evidence of Washington managing a disinformation campaign about the powder supply—no secret orders, letters, or reminiscences of double agents. And the circumstantial evidence strikes me as very thin.

Down in Newport, the Rev. Dr. Ezra Stiles did indeed write on 15 August: “I am told so that I rely on it, that our Army now have Fifty Tons of Powder.” Nineteenth-century manuals for ship’s officers say that a barrel of gunpowder held one hundred pounds, so those “Fifty Tons” would have filled a thousand barrels. (According to Gen. John Sullivan, the Americans’ actual count was 38.) But Stiles was:

• a sucker for any news that he wanted to hear, and
• not a British army officer in Boston.

We’re still missing evidence of a disinformation campaign as opposed to the typical fog of war.

Flexner specified “eighteen hundred barrels of powder.” That convincingly specific figure came from Ezekiel Price’s diary on 2 July:

Mr. E[dmund]. Quincy reports that eighteen hundred barrels of powder is arrived at Philadelphia or New York, and that General Washington is to be at the camps Tuesday next.

Price wrote about powder to the south, not the siege lines around Boston. Furthermore, Price recorded that rumor before he knew Washington arrived at Cambridge, and over a month before that commander realized there was a powder shortage. Those imaginary 1,800 barrels have no link to Washington at all.

Freeman did credit “the American intelligence service” with keeping the gunpowder shortage secret—“in a sense.” He hinted that “Royal officers were being misled”—but he never stated who did the misleading or how. All of Freeman’s examples of false rumors among the British involved matters other than gunpowder. And he acknowledged there were similar false rumors all over the American lines, though he didn’t call that confusion a triumph of the British intelligence service.

TOMORROW: Printing the legend.

“Carpenter was sentenced to be hanged this day”

On 18 July 1775, the Dublin-born barber Richard Carpenter swam from Boston, held by the British military, to Dorchester, under the control of provincial troops.

On the night of 19 July, he swam back.

Boston selectman Timothy Newell reported in his journal that “Mr. Carpenter was taken by the night Patrole.” Teenager Peter Edes encountered him in the Boston jail as they were both taken to a building called Concert-Hall for a military inquiry and trial:

My four room companions and myself were escorted as before, with one Carpenter a barber, who swam from Boston to Cambridge [sic], and back again. The said Carpenter and Mr. [John] Hunt were examined.

An unnamed British officer wrote to someone in London on 25 July that Carpenter had been “caught last week swimming over to the rebels, with one of their General’s passes in his pocket.” Evidence in Gen. George Washington’s papers suggests that Carpenter had no interaction with him, but during his day on the American side of the siege lines he could have met Gen. John Thomas or even Gen. Artemas Ward. Or the British officer could have been passing on bad information.

The royal authorities quickly found Carpenter guilty and sentenced him to death. According to Newell, the barber heard

sentence passed on him to be executed the next day,—his coffin bro’t into the Goal-yard, his halter [i.e., noose] brought and he dressed as criminals are before execution.

Sentence was respited and a few days after was pardoned.

Newell didn’t write his journal entries on the dates attached to them, but a few days afterward, so events got mashed up. The young merchant William Cheever puts the mock execution on 21 July:

one Carpenter was sentenced to be hanged this day for carrying Intelligence over to the Provincials by swiming; however it was thought fit to reprieve him.

Other sources add more haze to the picture, however. According to that British officer on 25 July, Carpenter was still due to “be hanged in a day or two.” On Friday, 28 July, Ezekiel Price, outside of Boston, recorded this rumor:

the barber who swam from Boston to Dorchester about ten days ago, returned again into Boston, was taken up by General [Thomas] Gage, and hanged on Copps Hill last Saturday.

As for Peter Edes in the Boston jail, his journal never mentions Carpenter again.

So what was going on? The British authorities probably wanted to scare Carpenter into confessing all that he knew about the rebels’ intelligence operations. Which may not have been much, since he appears to have been acting on his own.

It’s also possible that the royal government wanted to scare other prisoners or Bostonians into cooperating, while also showing that it could be merciful. But in that case, I would expect to read more about Carpenter in Edes’s diary.

For a while I considered the possibility that Carpenter had been a British plant, with the aborted execution a way of providing him with cover, but other sources show that the army kept him locked up through the siege and beyond.

In the end, the British military found Carpenter suspicious and dangerous, but just wasn’t ready to hang him. I think that reflects how this early in the war neither side had the stomach for such fatal measures. The executions of Thomas Hickey and Nathan Hale were still several months away.

TOMORROW: Richard Carpenter in and out of prison.

“Suspected by Gen. Gage”

Yesterday I quoted Ezekiel Price recording a rumor of information slipped out of besieged Boston in August 1775 by John Carnes, a retired clergyman and grocer who was working for Gen. George Washington.

On 13 November, Ezekiel Price recorded another tidbit of information that may have come by the same route:

Mr. Carnes (a son of the parson’s) was here this afternoon: he says that it is reported at Cambridge, &c., and believed, that twenty-five hundred Regulars have lately arrived at Boston; he also says that the Regulars, last Saturday, intended to land a number of them at Chelsea,—having their boats, &c., ready,—but the wind blowing fresh against them prevented their setting off.

That rumor might not have come from the parson inside Boston, however. A Carnes family tradition that appears to have hit print first in an 1898 volume of American Ancestry says:

lived in Boston during the siege 1775. corresponded with Gen. Washington, was suspected by Gen. [Thomas] Gage, had his house and papers searched, and was ordered to leave, which he did

Gage sailed away from Boston on 11 Oct 1775, leaving the command to Gen. William Howe. If the family lore is correct about Gage ordering Carnes to leave, that must have happened before October, and Price’s November rumor had a different source. Alternatively, the family might not have remembered the right general’s name.

John Carnes was definitely outside the besieged town by 1 Mar 1776 when he took the job of chaplain to a regiment in the Continental Army. He didn’t remain in Boston throughout the siege.

The entry on Carnes in Sibley’s Harvard Graduates calls the lore “an unsubstantiated family tradition,” but I think the man’s name in Washington’s papers and Ezekiel Price’s August diary offers a fair amount of substantiation for his espionage work. I wonder if there’s more to be found in the papers of Gen. Gage or Gen. Howe.

After serving several months as a chaplain, at one point taking over his colonel’s correspondence with Gen. Horatio Gates, Carnes returned to Massachusetts. By the late 1770s he had settled in Lynn, his wife’s home town. The Rev. William Bentley wrote that “by the prosperity of his children [Carnes] rose to competence, was in the General Court & became justice of the peace.” He was also part of the Massachusetts convention to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

And apparently no one outside of the Carnes family suspected the man of having been a spy. In fact, he appears to have come across as an easy mark, which might be why he had so much trouble as a minister. After Carnes died, Bentley wrote:

His talents were small & his manners displeasing but his simplicity had no vice in it. . . . His poverty returned again towards the close of life tho’ not in extreme. We used often to laugh at Carnes, but there was many a worse man in our wicked world.

That harmless impression might have saved Carnes from imprisonment—because his little spy network had been infiltrated from the start.

TOMORROW: The British army’s moles behind the American lines.

“A Letter from the Mr. J— C— the Grocer”

On 15 August 1775 Lt. Col. Loammi Baldwin sent Gen. George Washington some intriguing news from Chelsea:

I hope to be able tomorrow to forward to your Excellency a letter from the Mr. J— C— the Grocer

I heard from him yesterday Informing that he Expected to git further Information by tomorrow if it comes to hand shall forward it with all Convenient Speed

And the next day Baldwin wrote:

I have received a Letter which I supose came from Mr. J. C. by the Hand of the Gentleman Expected who says he is going to Headquarters in the morning to see about the sheep that was brought off from Puding Point which I have wrote to the adjutant General about

At the time Baldwin was dealing with the puzzle of what to do with sheep that his troops had driven out of reach of British raising parties, but which then had nowhere to graze. The people of Point Shirley, evidently including the man named Tewksbury who was part of the communication chain to “Mr. J. C.,” wanted to keep some of that livestock. Baldwin was writing not only to Gen. Horatio Gates, the adjutant general, but also quartermaster general Joseph Trumbull.

Baldwin referred to the American agent inside Boston only by his initials, but the letter he had received from Joseph Reed a couple of weeks before spells out the man’s full name: John Carnes. And as a confirmation that this was the same John Carnes who had been a minister, four days later a refugee from Boston named Ezekiel Price recorded a rumor in his diary:

in the afternoon, Mr. Hill, of Providence, was here, who left Cambridge this forenoon, and says, that this morning a woman got out of Boston, who brought a letter from Parson Carnes, which mentioned that the Regulars in Boston intended to come out this night or tomorrow night,—in consequence of which, preparations were making in the several American encampments to receive them

I’m not sure who “Mr. Hill” from Rhode Island was. Price had been a court clerk, registrar of deeds, notary, and insurance broker in Boston before the war, and was plugged into a lot of information networks.

Richard Frothingham’s History of the Siege of Boston states, “On the 20th, the British, it was thought, were about to sally out of Charlestown, when the camp was alarmed, and the men ordered to lie on their arms,” in order to be ready for any attack. Nothing happened, and at the end of that week the American forces preemptively attacked Ploughed Hill, as described back here.

TOMORROW: Another message from John Carnes inside Boston?

Escaping Tories Captured at Sea

While the British army and navy sailed away from Boston on 17 Mar 1776, they didn’t go far at first. Capt. John Barker reported the long departure in his diary:

After remaining 2 or 3 days at King Road and blowing up the Castle, the fleet fell down the Harbour to Nantasket; the Centurion left at King Road, the Rebels brought Guns [and fire]d at her without effect. The Fleet preparing for Sea, taking in Water, &c.

A naval officer patrolling the area wrote on 23 March:

The bay swarms with American privateers, but we hope to protect the transports, which are daily expected from the West Indies, and to send them safe to Halifax.

Inevitably, some of the evacuating merchant ships became separated from the main fleet and vulnerable to those New England privateers. Boston businessman and court official Ezekiel Price, still at his refuge in Stoughton, recorded this news on 6 April:

Ed. Quincy…came from Boston, and says that Captain [John] Manley was in Boston, and told there that he had taken out of the fleet a brig laden with Tories and Tory goods, and other effects, which they plundered in Boston. Among the Tories is Bill Jackson.

According to the 8 April Boston Gazette, William Jackson was the new owner of the ship Manly had captured, a prize estimated to be worth £35,000 with the goods aboard. A brazier, or maker and seller of brass goods, Jackson had become notorious for defying the Whigs’ nonimportation boycott in 1769-70. He may have been unpopular even before then since the fire that destroyed the center of town in 1760 had started in his store, the sign of the Brazen Head. However, Jackson had not held appointments under the royal government, and therefore the new authorities couldn’t convict him of anything. After getting out of jail, he tried to settle back into life in Boston.

Three days later, Price added:

At noon, a traveller from below says that he heard Captain [Adino] Paddock and Captain [John] Gore were among the Tories taken in the transport brig by Captain Manley. Afterwards several other travellers from below passed; but they did not hear of Paddock or Gore being in that vessel, and no other of note but Bill Jackson and Crane Brush.

Yesterday the remains of Dr. [Joseph] Warren were re-interred in Boston with every mark of honor and respect that was possible to be exhibited.

Paddock and Gore, two militia officers who had sided with the king, indeed avoided capture. They landed safely at Halifax, then sailed on to London, where they roomed together. Paddock eventually settled on the Isle of Jersey while Gore came back to Boston in the late 1780s.

Also on board that ship, according to the Gazette, were “a number of others, women and children,...besides a Serjeant and 12 privates of the king’s own [4th] regiment, who are made prisoners.”

But the really big prize was Crean Brush, who had been appointed by Gen. Thomas Gage to take charge of goods that might be useful to the military. The Patriot authorities clapped him in Boston jail and kept him there over a year, even though they were unable to convict him for looting because he’d had government authority.

I’ll have more to say on Jackson and Brush’s ultimate fates. You can track the story of Dr. Warren’s remains here. The engraving of Capt. Manly above comes from the Surface Navy Association’s Hall of Fame.