The Brown Family Memories of Crispus Attucks

As I quoted yesterday, in 1857 the descendants of William Brown of Framingham published a claim that he had been the owner of Crispus Attucks, victim of the Boston Massacre.

They made that statement in a small book published to celebrate a wedding anniversary; it’s unlikely that any historian outside the family would have challenged it, or even seen it. So how credible was their claim?

And yet, two years later both the New England Historical and Genealogical Register and The Liberator reprinted an advertisement that William Brown had placed in the Boston Gazette on two dates in 1750. As quoted here, Brown was seeking an escaped slave named Crispas.

Because Crispas/Crispus was a rare name, and because both the escapee in 1750 and the man who died in 1770 were unusually tall mulatto men from Framingham, most readers then and now have assumed that notice described Attucks. The ad thus offers contemporaneous evidence to support the Brown family’s claim.

By the 1850s, Attucks was a significant figure in the American past. After decades of being largely forgotten, he had become a symbol of African-American patriotism and martyrdom. That was principally the work of William Cooper Nell, Boston’s leading black historian and abolitionist (shown above). Nell organized commemorations of the Boston Massacre that put Attucks front and center.

A member of the Brown family attended one of those ceremonies, as Nell wrote in that Liberator item from 1859:

It will be remembered that, at the Faneuil Hall commemoration of the Boston massacre, (March 5th, 1858,) Samuel H. Brown, Esq., a grandson of the above William Brown, was present, and narrated to several persons the traditions extant in the family relating to Crispus Attucks—of his goblet, powder-horn, &c.

That same year C. H. Morse of Cambridge wrote in the N.E.H.G.R.: “The descendants of Mr. Browne have a pewter drinking cup, worn by Attucks when he fell, which I have seen. They have also his powder horn.”

Those are the earliest mentions I’ve found of any objects said to be linked to Attucks. In 1860 Nell’s broadside announcing the ninetieth-anniversary commemoration of the Massacre promised a look at “a GOBLET, which belonged to CRISPUS ATTUCKS,” and a copy of the Boston Gazette with William Brown’s ad. (No teapot, though.)

TOMORROW: More information gathered by W. C. Nell.

The Crispus Attucks Teapot

Among the artifacts in the “We Are One” exhibit at the Boston Public Library is a teapot linked to Crispus Attucks, now owned by Historic New England. (And shown here thanks to a Harvard course on material culture.)

I read about this teapot years ago, but I’d never seen it before. It’s smaller than I expected, about the size of one of those little individual pots a restaurant with airs brings out when one orders tea. It‘s pewter, plain, and poorly made. In short, it was a cheap teapot.

But is it Attucks’s?

The evidence from 1770 suggests that Attucks was working as a sailor under an assumed name, at least while he was in Massachusetts. Documents from the coroner’s inquiry immediately after he died in the Boston Massacre called him “Michael Johnson.” The Thursday newspapers identified him as:

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

That day was both market day and the day of the funeral for Attucks and three other shooting victims. It’s conceivable those events brought people into Boston with new information. Alas, the Boston Gazette on Monday offered no explanation for identifying that same man as “Crispus Attucks,” and the legal system followed suit. Every source from 1770 agrees that Attucks was a sailor.

In the 1850s, after Attucks had become a touchstone for American abolitionists, a Framingham family named Brown came forward to claim part of his memory. In 1857 that family published a small anniversary book titled The Golden Wedding of Col. James Brown and His Wife. It included a “Speech of Mr. Wm. D. Brown” about his ancestors’ Revolutionary history, including this:

In the month of March 1770, a collision occured between the people of Boston and a portion of the King’s troops, then quartered in the town. The soldiers were very obnoxious to the citizens and a slight provocation was sufficient to raise a mob against them. The old school books tell us, that at this time the mob was led on by a stout negro whose name was Attucks. The mob pressed close up to the troops who received them with leveled muskets! Attucks beat down the guns with a heavy club and cried “they dare not fire!” They did fire, and Crispus Attucks, our great grandfather[ William Brown]’s slave, was shot dead!

Attucks was a well informed and faithful negro. He was a good judge of cattle and was allowed to sell and buy upon his own judgment. Crispus was sensible of the oppressions of Great Britain, and as indignant as the most patriotic, at the presence of hireling soldiers in the country, to enforce unjust laws.

It’s a curious passage, setting down family lore yet apparently relying on “old school books” for information about Attucks’s actions on 5 Mar 1770. In this description of a “faithful negro,…sensible of the oppressions of Great Britain,” there’s no hint that Attucks had become a sailor or used the name Michael Johnson.

TOMORROW: The Brown family and William C. Nell.

Searching for Mrs. Seaver

Yesterday I quoted from the page of the Hopkinton meetinghouse records shown above, photographed this week for the New York Times:

February 26th. 1763. The Church met at the meeting-house (pursuant to adjournment) and unanimously Voted, That the Charge brought against Mrs. Seaver, appear’d to them to be Sufficiently prov’d; and that therefore they could not Consent to her owning the Covenant, and receiving Baptism for her Child.

Who was Mrs. Seaver? What was the charge against her? Obviously her Hopkinton neighbors were convinced she’d done something wrong—but what?

The first place I went looking for Mrs. Seaver was in those same Hopkinton meetinghouse records—the part published within the vital records of Hopkinton for genealogists. They show that on 11 Sept 1763, or six and a half months later the church vote, two children of Moses “Sever” were baptized in that meetinghouse: Nabby and Amos Carril. A third Seaver baby, named Moses, was baptized in October 1765. The mother of those children isn’t named, but other baptism records from the same decade also omit the mother’s name, so that may not be significant.

The Westboro birth records say that Abigail (Nabby) Seaver was born 8 Mar 1761, so she was two and a half years old when she was baptized in Hopkinton. That delay points to her mother being the “Mrs. Seaver” whom the Hopkinton church didn’t want to admit.

It looks like Mrs. Seaver was born Lucy Carril(l) in Hopkinton in November 1737. On 21 Aug 1755, she married nineteen-year-old Hezekiah Johnson of Southboro, according to records from Hopkinton. This Johnson genealogy says Hezekiah died near Albany during the war against the French in 1756.

The Johnsons had a child named Miriam. Westboro records say she was born on 28 May 1756. But she was baptized on 5 September in Hopkinton, listed as “child of Lucy” with no father named. Evidently Hezekiah was no longer alive, or no longer present.

In May 1758, Lucy Johnson remarried to Moses Sever or Seaver, as recorded in the Hopkinton and Westboro records. Their first child, Lucia, was baptized in Framingham the following March. In 1762 they were living in Sudbury. During that period Lucy gave birth to Nabby, Amos Carrill, and Moses.

Sadly, according to this webpage, as of 1766 the family consisted of “Moses Sever from Hopkinton, his wife Lucy, Lucy’s daughter Merriam Johnson, and his daughter Naby.” So it looks like three of those five children died very young.

By that year, Moses and Lucy Seaver had gone back to Westboro, and they finally seem to have achieved some stability there. They remained in that town for the birth of three more boys and a girl, all of whom lived to adulthood. Moses Seaver died in 1809 or 1810. Lucy died in 1816.

What was “the Charge brought against Mrs. Seaver” that the Hopkinton church felt should bar her from admission? I couldn’t find a clear answer. One might lurk within the meetinghouse records, though more often such details were left out.

One common problem was sex outside of—usually before—marriage. For example, the Seavers’ first child, Lucia, might have been born well within nine months of their wedding. The surviving records don’t tell us her birthdate, so it’s possible the Seavers took her to Framingham to be baptized some months after she arrived.

Eighteenth-century New England congregations were quite used to dealing with brides who had been pregnant at the altar. They usually required one or both parents to admit that they had strayed before they were admitted into church membership, thus allowing their children to be baptized. And after that no one cared. Was that what ultimately happened in this case? Or was Lucy (Carrill Johnson) Seaver denying some greater scandal?

Lectures in Framingham in April

Framingham State University and the Framingham Public Library have been sponsoring a free series of ten “Lifelong Learning Lectures.” Two of the remaining talks are about networks spreading news during the Revolutionary period.

Thursday, 3 April
“Liberty’s News: How the Media Shaped the American Revolution”
Prof. Joseph M. Adelman
This talk explores the influence of the media business on political debate during the American Revolution. (Eighteenth-century media meant printers, the mail, and unabashed gossips, of course, but Joe is active in using new media today through the Junto Blog and Publick Occurrences 2.0.)

Thursday, 10 April
“Paul Revere’s Ride”
Prof. Gary Hylander
On the night of April 18 of 1775, Paul Revere and dozens of other night riders carried the Lexington alarm into the countryside. Rather than a spontaneous uprising, the local militia were carefully organized and well led.

Both lectures start at 7:00 P.M. in the Costin Room of the Framingham Public Library, 49 Lexington Street. No registration is required. There will be refreshments.

Still Standing in Framingham

From Along the King’s Highway and the Metrowest Daily News, I learned of the following event last Friday:

A Framingham man told police yesterday that he had a “couple too many” before he crashed his car into the Blacksmith Minuteman statue on Union Avenue, police said. . . .

The force of the crash turned the statue 45 degrees, Pereira said.

But the blacksmith was tough enough to survive undamaged. He’s a blacksmith, after all.

According to Framingham Historic Preservation, this Minuteman statue was designed by Henry Kitson, who also did Lexington’s, and executed by his wife Theo Alice Kitson. It was dedicated in 1905 and moved to its current location in 1941, before being moved again very slightly last week.

ADDENDUM: But Universal Hub shows that a colonial-era milestone in Allston wasn’t so lucky, and now needs to be remounted. Charles Bahne tells me:

Despite the date mentioned on the web, it’s a 1729 milestone erected by Paul Dudley, marking six miles from the Old State House. Research I did a few years ago showed that it was discovered in 1916 during excavation of a nearby lot. It’s one of four stones still surviving between Roxbury Crossing and Harvard Business School, all erected by Paul Dudley in 1729. . . . This was the only one of the Dudley stones that was erected this close to the street—all the others are set back behind the sidewalk, some embedded in brick walls.

Dudley (1675-1751) was a son of a colonial governor and former colonial attorney general sitting on the Superior Court when he installed a set of milestones. They can be recognized by his initials or name under the travel information.

Identifying the Soldier Named “Salem”

In 1819, Samuel Swett identified the American soldier who shot Maj. John Pitcairn of the British Marines as “a black soldier named Salem.” It didn’t take long for a local historian to claim that man for his town.

Gov. Emory Washburn (shown here) wrote this in his Topographical and Historical Sketches of the Town of Leicester, published in the Worcester Magazine in 1826:

There was residing here, till within a few years, a black man, who, we have good reason to believe, was the one who shot Maj. Pitcairn, whose death forms so affecting an incident in that bloody affray. History relates that he was shot by a negro, and from the story of the one we allude to, and many corroborating circumstances, we are led to conclude that he was the person who did the deed.

The person to whom we refer was named Peter Salem; he was a servant of Gen. [John] Nixon during the revolution, was a native of Framingham, and removed here a few years since, where he died. Major Pitcairn was shot as he was mounting the redoubt, and fell into the arms of his son.

William Barry followed up that lead with more information in his A History of Framingham, Massachusetts, published in 1847. He wrote:

Peter Salem—alias Salem Middlesex—was originally the slave of Capt. Jeremiah Belknap, and was sold by him to Maj. Lawson Buckminster. He married in 1783, Katy Benson, a grand daughter of Nero [Benson], and lived for a time, where is now a cellar hole on the farm of the late Mr. Richard Fiske, near the pond. He served in the war of the Revolution as waiter to Col. Thomas Nixon, of Framingham; and at the opening of the war was present at the battle of Bunker Hill.

Barry then quoted Washburn’s passage and concluded: “Peter died in Fram., Aug. 16, 1816.” Other sources say he died in Framingham’s poorhouse, having been forced to return to his native town when he could no longer support himself.

Washburn and Barry disagreed about which of the Nixon brothers Salem worked for—Gen. John of Sudbury or Col. Thomas of Framingham. But he could have worked for each in turn. More troubling about Washburn’s identification of Peter Salem as the soldier who shot Pitcairn is that he didn’t describe any of his evidence: no remarks about people having heard Salem describe the battle, for example. Washburn wrote at length about Salem as an older man in his 1860 Historical Sketches of the Town of Leicester, describing how he’d told his “stories of the war”—but again the only clear link from him to shooting Pitcairn is the name “Salem.”

A Sketch of the History of Framingham, published in 1827, says nothing about Peter Salem/Salem Middlesex being at Bunker Hill, though it does list the name of at least one other black private, Cato Hart. Salem is on the rolls of the Nixon regiment, and that unit was in the battle, so there’s no reason to doubt he was there. But somehow those earlier Framingham chroniclers didn’t find him significant enough to name.

By a strange coincidence, Peter Salem had been owned in youth by the father of the Rev. Dr. Jeremy Belknap, the historian who first recorded that Maj. Pitcairn had been shot by a black man. But Belknap didn’t write down anything about such a family connection, which he surely would have mentioned if he knew. He also believed the shooter had come from Groton. So either he and his sources didn’t know about Peter Salem’s past, or they were discussing another man named Salem.

TOMORROW: Another man named Salem.

“By You and Them I Mean to Be Cared For”

Yesterday I quoted Samuel Adams’s descendant William V. Wells on an African-American woman named Surry, who came to the second Elizabeth Adams as a slave and remained with the family after emancipation. Wells wrote that when the Adamses gave Surry freedom papers, she “threw them into the fire, indignantly remarking that she had lived too long to be trifled with in that manner.”

That story put me in mind of some anecdotes in William D. Piersen’s book Black Yankees: The Development of an Afro-American Subculture in Eighteenth-Century New England. Piersen pored through many sources, particularly local histories, for clues to how black New Englanders lived in the late colonial and early republican periods.

In particular, he described other resisting attempts to free them:

Slaves who became old in service to a white family often refused a “reward of freedom because they felt at home in their master’s household and because they could have assurance there that they would be cared for in their old age. Prince Jonar [also called Prince Yongey], an African-born slave owned in succession by Joseph Buckminster and his son Thomas, managed a farm in Framingham, Massachusetts, where he lived in a small cabin overlooking a meadow he had picked for cultivation because it reminded him of the soil of his native country. Offered freedom in his old age, Jonar refused by sagaciously citing a proverb common to Yankee slaves in this situation: “Massa eat the meat; he now pick the bone.”

As William Brown, the son of a Rhode Island slave, explained, “The old bondsmen declared their master had been eating their flesh and now it was the slaves’ turn to stick to them and suck their bones.” Mose Parson’s slave avoided the African proverbial intricacies by commenting more bluntly: “You have had the best of me, and you and yours must have the worst. Where am I to go in sickness or old age? No, Master, your slave I am, and always will be, and I will belong to your children when you are gone; and by you and them I mean to be cared for.”

Domestic slaves were especially apt to remain with their masters or return shortly after gaining freedom. The refusal of freedom was, as might be expected, more common among older women since they would have greater difficulties outside the family and because they usually retained close bonds to the white children they had helped raise.

Wells dated his story to after “the institution of slavery was formally abolished in Massachusetts,” or 1783. He also said that Surry had arrived in the household about 1765 as a “servant girl” and remained “for nearly half a century,” or well into the 1800s. So Surry was apparently only in early middle age when she destroyed the freedom papers. But she felt “she had lived too long to be trifled with.”

The Ransom of John Loring

As I’ve been relating, Jamaica Plain native John Loring was a midshipman in the Royal Navy, fourteen or fifteen years old, when he was captured by Massachusetts militiamen off Martha’s Vineyard in April 1776. The Massachusetts Council ordered him and his superior officer confined in the jail at Concord.

However, Midshipman Loring was from an old Massachusetts family with connections on both sides of the conflict. Among his mother’s brothers was Obadiah Curtis (1724-1811), a Boston merchant. Curtis’s descendants later said that he was active in the Patriot movement, but I’ve been able to find only one piece of evidence to support that: he volunteered to patrol the docks during the tea crisis of 1773.

In any event, Curtis convinced the authorities to take pity on his young nephew and let him out of jail. John Loring was instead sent to the farm of Curtis’s father-in-law, Joseph Buckminster (1697-1780) of Framingham, to wait until a prisoner exchange was arranged or some other disposition.

So in his late seventies Buckminster became responsible for a teen-aged boy who had grown up in privilege and then spent several months in His Majesty’s navy, living without parental supervision among people he viewed as political enemies. This did not make for a peaceful situation. According to an 1869 history of the Curtis family:

the boy was so insolent to the neighbors, calling them “rascally rebels,” and other bad names, that his kind host was in danger of having his house pulled down, though himself a good patriot.

Indeed, Buckminster was among Framingham’s most prominent and respected men: militia colonel, selectman for a quarter-century, town clerk for three decades, General Court representative for nineteen years, charter member of the town’s Committee of Correspondence. But John was obnoxious enough to overcome that record.

No doubt Buckminster and his neighbors were pleased to see John Loring exchanged late in 1776 for a prisoner held by the British—I haven’t found out who. John became a lieutenant in the Royal Navy before the end of the Revolutionary War, a captain in Britain’s wars with revolutionary France, and a commodore in the wars against Napoleon. (His nephew John Wentworth Loring, son of the Commissary of Prisoners, eventually became an admiral.) John Loring died on his estate in Fareham, Hampshire County, Britain, in 1808.

What We Know About Crispus Attucks

Aside from legal documents and newspaper reports surrounding the Boston Massacre, the only information we have about Crispus Attucks from the eighteenth century is an advertisement that ran in the Boston Gazette on 2 Oct 1750.

It reads:

RAN-away from his Master William Brown of Framingham, on the 30th of Sept. last, a Molatto Fellow, about 27 Years of Age, named Crispas, 6 Feet two Inches high, short curl’d Hair, his Knees nearer together than common; had on a light colour’d Bearskin Coat, plain brown Fustian Jacket, or brown all-Wool one, new Buckskin Breeches, blue Yarn Stockings, and a check’d woollen Shirt.

Whoever shall take up said Run-away, and convey him to his abovesaid Master, shall have ten Pounds, old Tenor Reward, and all necessary Charges paid. And all Masters of Vessels and others, are hereby caution’d against concealing or carrying off said Servant on Penalty of the Law. Boston, October 2, 1750.

On 13 and 20 November, Brown bought space in the Gazette again, shortening the ad by four lines. He dropped the pro forma warning to sea captions, as well as a few more words here and there. He added that Crispas was “well set.”

Of course, in the middle of the 1700s the Boston newspaper ran many notices for runaway slaves, apprentices, and indentured servants. Why do most historians accept that this ad referred to Crispus Attucks, killed on 5 Mar 1770? Because that dead man was also said to be an unusually tall, husky “mulatto” from Framingham, and Crispas/Crispus was not a common name. The odds that two men met that description seems small. Of course, we also want more information about Attucks.

Researchers spotted this ad in the mid-1800s, part of a burst of new interest in Attucks as the nation fought over rights for African-Americans. As writers noted right away, Brown’s estimate of his enslaved worker’s age meant that Attucks was in his mid-forties when he was killed, and not a rowdy young man.

The Mysteries of Crispus Attucks

As we look ahead to this year’s anniversary and reenactment of the Boston Massacre (announcements to come), today’s Boston Globe ran an article headlined “Two towns claim Crispus Attucks.” Its main point is how very little we know about Crispus Attucks, the best known victim of the Massacre. We can’t even be sure whether he lived in what is now Framingham or Natick.

In fact, I think we know even less than the article states. Michele Morgan Bolton reported:

historians continue to debate the historic role of this son of an African slave father and Natick Praying Indian mother in the bloody skirmish with the British.

I don’t believe we have any solid evidence about Attucks’s parents. Because he was apparently enslaved as a young man, he was probably born into slavery. That would mean that his mother was enslaved, but his father may have been free. If young Crispus inherited the surname Attucks from his father, the man was likely a Natick Indian—the word means “little deer” in the native language. However, some enslaved children with surnames inherited them from their mothers, as in the case of Sally Hemings’s children.

It seems significant that this description of Attucks’s parents—African father, Native Christian mother—matches what’s in Dharathula Millender’s biography of Crispus Attucks. Many eager readers have taken that book as genealogically reliable, but it’s fictionalized biography for young readers.

The article continues:

A 1972 “Negro History Bulletin” stated that Attucks was believed to have been a slave in Framingham who lived with his family in a cellar hole on what is now Route 9, near Route 30.

This refers to Bill Belton’s article “The Indian Heritage of Crispus Attucks,” which in turn cites J. H. Temple’s 1887 History of Framingham. That book states:

Crispus Attucks...was a mulatto, born near the Framingham town line, a short distance to the eastward of the state Arsenal. The old cellar-hole where the Attucks family lived is still visible. He was probably a descendant of John Auttuck, an Indian, who was taken prisoner and executed at the same time with Capt. Tom, in June, 1676. Probably the family had intermarried with negroes who were slaves, and as the offspring of such marriages were held to be slaves, he inherited their condition, although it seems likely that the blood of three races coursed through his veins. He had been bought by Dea. William Brown of Framingham, as early as 1747.

Note the repeated use of “probably.” Temple felt Attucks was “probably” descended from John Auttuck. But can we assume his family used surnames the same way English colonists did, passing them down along male lines? Was Attucks a rare name in the community? (There were people in Framingham surnamed “Peterattucks” in the early 1700s.) Why assume Crispus was a direct descendant of John, except that both were recorded by the authorities?

As for Temple’s date of 1747, The Negro in the American Rebellion, published in Boston in 1867 by William Wells Brown (no relation to the Framingham deacon), also said that Brown owned Attucks in that year. But neither book offered documentation. We do have clear evidence that Brown claimed Attucks in 1750, when he placed an advertisement in the Boston Gazette reporting that his enslaved worker “Crispas” had freed himself.

The Globe article continues:

All accounts agree Attucks excelled as a cattle and horse trader and was a valued employee of William Brown, a grist-mill owner. But after attempts to buy his freedom failed, Attucks, at 27, is believed to have fled to sea in 1750. Some believe he sailed on a whaler off Nantucket. Or was it the China trade, by way of the Bahamas?

According to lore, Attucks reappeared just before the massacre, likely finding dock work as a rope maker. But trouble was already flaring between the British “lobster backs” and colonists, culminating in the deadly confrontation outside the Customs House on March 5, 1770, that kicked off the American Revolution.

Our only account of Attucks’s skill as a livestock trader comes from an unidentified descendant of William Brown whom Temple questioned in 1887. There’s no record of him trying to buy his freedom or working in Boston’s rope-making industry. The “China trade” didn’t exist until after the Revolution, when American merchants needed to find markets outside the British Empire. The term “lobster backs” appears to be an anachronism.

There is one indication that Attucks worked on a New Bedford whaling ship, but that account raises as many questions about the man as it answers. Traits of the Tea-Party (1835) credits a Boston barber named William Pierce with this information:

Attucks..., he says, was a Nantucket Indian, belonging on board a whale-ship of Mr. Folger’s, then in the harbor...

Pierce also told the author that he had never seen Attucks before the night of the Massacre, so he was recalling secondhand information. In 1770, Boston’s newspapers reported that Attucks was “lately belonging to New-Providence, and was here in order to go for North-Carolina”—nothing about Nantucket. So Pierce might have heard the wrong facts or become confused over sixty-five years.

American culture has come to see Crispus Attucks as a hero, martyr, and very important person. But he had to live his life in the shadows—as a slave, a runaway, and a hard-working sailor. Now we’re almost desperate for information about him, and grasp at almost any statement as if it were reliable. But we still know very little.

Noah Eaton Brings Home a Prisoner

Last week I might have appeared to be picking on Framingham, but I just happened to see some boosterish comments about that town. I could just as easily have written about the local traditions of any other Middlesex County municipality since most local histories find inordinate importance in local events and people. What really mattered in the Battle of Lexington and Concord was how those towns worked together.

As I quoted yesterday, in February 1775 British officer Henry DeBerniere wrote sarcastically about the Framingham militia’s lack of “coolness and bravery” and their “pot-valour.” But the locals got the last laugh. On 19 Apr, DeBerniere was with the advance companies of the British column in Concord, and thus had to endure the whole withdrawal back to Boston under attack from town militia companies—including Framingham’s.

While looking into that history, I stumbled across this intriguing anecdote from William Barry’s history of Framingham, published in 1847:

Noah Eaton, 2d, and his brother Jonas, were at Lexington. The former, having discharged his piece, retired behind a knoll to reload, where he suddenly encountered a British regular, with a loaded gun.

Noah presented his empty musket, threatening to kill the soldier; when the latter surrendered, returned with his captor to Framingham, and lived in his service.

I’ve read of two other British regulars defecting like this on 19 Apr 1775, melting into a Middlesex County community. It’s fun to imagine the conversation when a militiaman returned with his prisoner:

“Darling, I’m home!”

“Oh, I thank the Lord you’re safe! Ever since you went out with your gun this morning, I’ve been worr— Who’s this?”

“Oh, yeah. I brought home a grenadier! His name’s Tom. Right?”

“Actually, it’s Tim, sir.”

“Tim. His name’s Tim, Sarah. He says he’s ready to help around the farm. You always wanted me to have a hired man, right? You’ll have to sew him a new set of clothes, but in exchange you can cut up that big red coat and use it for something.”

“Yes. Silas, may I speak to you privately?”

“Of course, Sarah. Please excuse us, Tom.”

“Yes, sir. It’s Tim, sir.”

“Silas, I truly wish you would ask me before making such big decisions that affect the house.”

“Come on, Sarah! Do you expect me to run home in the middle of the battle? ‘Darling, may I take a prisoner? No? Then I’ll go back and shoot him!’ No offense, Tom.”

“None taken, sir. And, it’s Tim.”

In at least one of those other cases, the former British soldier ended up marrying into the family he worked for. Barry doesn’t name Noah Eaton’s prisoner or say what happened to him, but perhaps the answer lurks in Framingham’s vital records.

From what I can tell, in the spring of 1775 Noah Eaton (1733-1814) was married to his second wife, May (or Polly) Tilton. Their daughter Molle (Molly) was baptized 11 Nov 1771, three days short of nine months after the couple had married on 14 Feb. With his first wife, Noah had a son named Noah, born in 1758. He may have had other children, but since there were two sets of Noah and Hannah Eaton in town—this man and his parents—it’s hard to separate out the baptisms. Did Noah have a daughter or sister in her teens or early twenties when he brought this soldier home? Is there a man marrying into the family who doesn’t seem to come from anywhere else in the vital records?

(Evocative thumbnail from Patrick Donnelly’s shots of a reenacted Battle of Guilford Courthouse.)

When British Spies Came to Framingham

On 22 Feb 1775, Gen. Thomas Gage (shown at left, courtesy of NNDB.com) ordered two British officers, Capt. William Brown of the 52nd Regiment and Ensign Henry DeBerniere of the 10th Regiment (both men’s surnames are spelled differently in different documents), to scout the road to Worcester while disguised as local civilians. They took an enlisted man as a servant, set out on foot, and were promptly recognized by a serving-woman at a tavern in Watertown.

Not letting such a little thing bother them, Browne and DeBerniere pressed on. Eventually they reached the town of Framingham. This is what DeBerniere later wrote about that night:

We arrived at [Joseph] Buckminster’s tavern about six o’clock that evening, the company of militia were exercising near the house, and an hour after they came and performed their feats before the windows of the room we were in; we did not feel very easy at seeing such a number so very near us; however, they did not know who we were, and took little or no notice of us.

After they had done their exercise, one of their commanders spoke a very eloquent speech, recommending patience, coolness and bravery, (which indeed they much wanted) particularly told them they would always conquer if they did not break, and recommended them to charge us cooly, and wait for our fire, and every thing would succeed with them—quotes Caesar and Pompey, brigadiers [Israel] Putnam and [Artemas] Ward, and all such great men; put them in mind of Cape Breton [i.e., the capture of Louisburg in 1745], and all the battles they had gained for his majesty in the last war, and observed that the regulars must have been ruined but for them.

After so learned and spirited an harangue, he dismissed the parade, and the whole company came into the house and drank until nine o’clock, and then returned to their respective homes full of pot-valour. We slept there that night and no-body in the house suspected us.

In his 1847 history of Framingham, William Barry repeated only the part about “a very eloquent speech, recommending patience, coolness and bravery.” He overlooked the fact that DeBerniere was writing sarcastically.

Later local historians have read this passage as evidence that Framingham’s militia was unusually large, but the numbers don’t support that assumption. In fact, “the whole company” managed to fit inside the tavern, so they couldn’t have been that numerous. DeBerniere and Browne admitted that “did not feel very easy at seeing such a number [of militiamen] so very near us,” but they were spies. Worrying about being suspected as Crown agents wasn’t the same as feeling nervous about whether your army could defeat rebels in battle. On that score, frankly, the officers seemed pretty confident.

Browne and DeBerniere’s report made no recommendation to Gage about whether an army column could march successfully to Worcester. Scholars have therefore had to guess why the general ordered a raid on Concord instead. The enthusiasm of the local militia is one factor people have suggested; others include how Worcester was much farther away, the road to it offered less shelter, and (my own pet theory) the field-pieces that Gage wanted to recover were in Concord. Browne and DeBerniere located those guns on their next scouting mission, a month later.

The Framingham Militia [citation needed]

“Wikipedian Protester” from xkcd.com.

I did a little rewriting in the “History” section of the Framingham entry on Wikipedia yesterday. Previously, its paragraph of Revolutionary history said:

Framingham has been at the center of rebellion on two occasions. Prior to the beginning of the American Revolution, Framingham had the largest contingent of Militia outside of Boston. In 1774, the British General Thomas Gage had sent spies out to survey the situation beyond Boston. Two spies, while having a drink in Buckminster Tavern, watched with foreboding as the local villagers mustered in the square. Their report back to General Gage was to avoid Framingham or be prepared for a fight.

There was no citation for these statements, which were entered in November 2006.

Calling Framingham the “center of rebellion” reminds me of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.’s remarks in The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table about the way Bostonians looked at their home:

A jaunty-looking person...said there was one more wise man’s saying that he had heard; it was about our place, but he didn’t know who said it. . . . “Boston State-House is the hub of the solar system. You couldn’t pry that out of a Boston man, if you had the tire of all creation straightened out for a crowbar.”

Sir,—said I—I am gratified with your remark. It expresses with pleasing vivacity that which I have sometimes heard uttered with malignant dulness. The satire of the remark is essentially true of Boston,—and of all other considerable—and inconsiderable—places with which I have had the privilege of being acquainted. Cockneys think London is the only place in the world. . . . It is quite as bad with smaller places. I have been about, lecturing, you know, and have found the following propositions to hold true of all of them.

1. The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each and every town or city.

2. If more than fifty years have passed since its foundation, it is affectionately styled by the inhabitants the “good old town of” ——— (whatever its name may happen to be.)

3. Every collection of its inhabitants that comes together to listen to a stranger is invariably declared to be a “remarkably intelligent audience.”

4. The climate of the place is particularly favorable to longevity.

5. It contains several persons of vast talent little known to the world.

This passage gave Boston its nickname of the Hub, but Holmes’s point was that every city and town’s native inhabitants believe that the known universe revolves around it.

Was Framingham really “at the center of rebellion” in 1775? Specifically, did it have “the largest contingent of Militia outside of Boston”?

Militia service was legally required of almost all white males between ages sixteen and sixty, so the larger the town, the more militiamen. The Massachusetts census of 1765 found 306 white males over age sixteen in Framingham, plus 84 black males of all ages. (Since blacks weren’t supposed to be in the militia, the census-takers didn’t bother dividing out the males old enough to serve—even though black men were beginning to drill in arms alongside their white neighbors.)

By comparison, the three largest towns in Middlesex County were Charlestown (486 white men), Sudbury (436), and Reading (400). Also larger than Framingham in that year were Concord, Cambridge, Woburn, Marlborough, Groton, and Newton. Billerica was exactly the same size, and then there were many small towns, including Lexington (228), Watertown (179), and Natick (99, plus 10 black and 13 Indian males of all ages). In other words, Framingham was middling in size.

According to William Barry’s history of Framingham and Samuel Adams Drake’s history of Middlesex County, on 3 Oct 1774 the town voted to organize “two Militia Companys beside the Troop.” (I think “the Troop” refers to a small cavalry unit, but that’s just a guess—citation needed.) One company contained 70 men, the other 60. On 19 Apr 1775, one militia captain marched with 77 men, the other with 49. So we can put the number of the Framingham militia at about 130.

As a comparison, Drake wrote that in March 1775 the larger town of Sudbury mustered 60 men in the North Company, 75 in the East Company, 92 in the Lanham Company, 21 in the Troop—248 in all.

So Framingham did its part, like most other Middlesex County towns. But it did not have “the largest contingent of Militia outside of Boston”; it had a militia proportional to its size. It was not a “center of rebellion” in 1775; it was one of many Massachusetts towns behaving the same way.

(I also added more detail to the Wikipedia article on Abolitionist meetings in Framingham before the Civil War. In that period, the town was a significant gathering-place.)

TOMORROW: What about those spies in Buckminster’s tavern?

A Myth in the Making in Framingham?

Sunday’s Boston Globe West Weekly section (i.e., stories that aren’t even important enough for our whole readership, just one region) ran a story headlined:

Revolutionary secrets unfold
Researchers' finding: Framingham had independent spirit of its own

Revolutionary secrets? Of course I’m interested! Unfortunately, it turned out to be a case of trying to make 1 + 1 = 6. Or perhaps even 0 + 1 = 6.

The research started here:

[Framingham] Homeowners Rollin and Betsy Johnson were looking through a folder of historical notes on the house that had been assembled by a previous owner.

The notes included an intriguing suggestion—that [John] Trowbridge, who owned the house during colonial times, may have hosted secret meetings of the Committee of Safety—a group founded by rebellious colonists in 1772 to galvanize towns outside of Boston against the British.

So there are no primary documents yet, just unsourced notes from an interested party. Furthermore, if that’s an accurate description of the notes, they should immediately have raised doubts. In late 1772 Samuel Adams urged Boston to form a “Committee of Correspondence,” which wrote to other Massachusetts towns inviting them to do the same. “Committees of Safety” weren’t formed by the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and some individual towns until late 1774 when there was a threat of imminent war.

Framingham’s town meeting responded to the Boston Committee of Correspondence’s letter by forming an ad hoc committee to draft a reply on 1 Mar 1773. (Boston’s committee answered in turn on 13 April, the same day it responded to many other towns.) Framingham created its sitting Committee of Correspondence on 18 May 1774, when Massachusetts was hearing about the Boston Port Bill and Massachusetts Government Act. Those were official, public acts of the town, which was the point of such committees—they were supposed to have the force of law behind them, and to represent the whole town.

John Trowbridge (1730-1807) wasn’t selected for either of those committees. In 1776 he was commissioned as an officer in the Continental Army, and on 23 June 1777 Framingham voted “that Maj. John Trowbridge inspect any that shall be thought inimical to the U.S. of America.” So by that year the town clearly considered him important and reliable. But the question being investigated was whether Trowbridge had been involved in something like a “Committee of Safety” in 1772.

The Globe describe’s one researcher’s results this way:

[Kevin] Swope found a tantalizing mention of town moderator Captain Josiah Stone contributing muskets to Boston safety committee members. But nothing more.

As town clerk, Stone carried out business for Framingham. (For example, the Boston Committee of Correspondence’s letter in April 1773 was addressed to him.) This mention might refer to town business or private business, therefore. But this description offers no source, no date, and no connection to Trowbridge.

The Globe gave more importance to another researcher’s discovery:

[Fred] Wallace finally hit paydirt in the Framingham town clerk’s office, where he spent hours poring over original Town Meeting minutes from 1772 to 1776, recorded in amber-colored quill-and-ink script.

It was in a brief entry marked Oct. 9, 1775, recording that [Joseph] Buckminster had asked to be relieved of his Committee on Correspondence duties and that Trowbridge was named to take his place.

This is “paydirt”? A change in committee assignment in October 1775 says nothing about Trowbridge’s activities in 1772. Or about the prewar activity of anyone else in Framingham.

It’s reasonable to consider whether Trowbridge might have hosted town Committee of Correspondence meetings after late 1775. How centrally located was his house? Did he have a liquor license (as Buckminster had)? Significant meetings at Trowbridge’s house were even more likely in 1777 once he was appointed to “inspect” national enemies. But that wasn’t leading the way toward Massachusetts’s independence before the war; that was enforcing loyalty to the new nation during it.

The Globe article positions this historical question as whether Framingham deserves to have the same place in history books as towns where the first fatal battle of the Revolution was fought. It’s no reflection on Framingham (good or bad, colonial or modern) that the war began elsewhere. Gen. Thomas Gage sent troops to Concord because he had good intelligence about Provincial Congress weapons there. Simple as that.