New Light on the North End Caucus

As Appendix C to his two-volume 1891 biography of Paul Revere, Elbridge H. Goss printed the “Proceedings of the North End Caucus,” which he said had been provided by A. O. Crane, a Boston publisher. Those documents have since disappeared, and historians have used Goss’s transcription as their best source.

This weekend I stumbled across an earlier publication of the same documents in the 25 Nov 1826 Boston News-Letter and City Record, also available through Google Books. The newspaper credited “a gentleman at the North End” for sharing his reminiscences. (The historian Richard Frothingham saw another version of those documents while preparing his 1849 history of the siege, but didn’t publish a transcription.)

There are many small deviations between the two transcriptions, such as in italicization or spelling proper names—enough to suggest that they were separate efforts and Goss wasn’t just reprinting from a newspaper provided by Crane. I also saw three significant differences.

In the first entry, dated 22 Mar 1772, the caucus appointed a committee to inquire into the “Minovery” of the town according to the 1826 transcription. Eighteenth-century dictionaries define that word as a form of trespass “by hand,” as in cutting wood or setting traps on land one doesn’t own. In the 1891 transcription that obscure word became “Minority,” which makes more sense in a political context but still raises questions. The clause appears to be about consulting with others in Boston about when to have a town meeting and what its business should be.

On 4 May 1773, the Boston News-Letter transcription says, the North End Caucus voted “the Pleasant-street [in the far South End] be not accepted as a town-street.” That item doesn’t appear at all in the Goss transcription. Perhaps that’s connected to the fact that the North Enders’ position lost when this issue came up for a vote. At the very least, it’s significant evidence that the North End Caucus couldn’t carry the town meeting on all issues—i.e., they didn’t always represent a majority.

On 9 May 1774 the caucus voted to oppose a petition from a man named Leonard. In the News-Letter he is named as “Geo. Leonard,” and in Goss he is “Gen. Leonard.” The records of the next day’s town meeting show that Boston rejected George Leonard’s petition to build a grist mill on Fort Hill in the South End. Leonard had managed the mill beside the North End earlier, but he had shown himself to be a Loyalist. [Not the most prominent Loyalist of that name, however.]

The Goss transcription includes a couple of blanks where individuals’ names have been deliberately left out. Alas, the News-Letter transcription has blanks in the same places, indicating that they were included in the North End Caucus’s original record.

TOMORROW: But some contextual study can fill them in.

Mill Dam, Mill Pond, Mill Creek, Mill Bridge

In 1643, thirteen years after the British settlement of Boston, the town granted land on the peninsula’s westerly side to a group of inhabitants on the condition that they erect a grist mill powered by the tide. The town also promised that it wouldn’t let any other mill be erected.

Those grantees built up a muddy causeway that Natives had used to cut across part of the Back Bay into a Mill Dam, creating the Mill Pond. The Mill Creek cut across the peninsula to connect the pond to the main harbor on the east side. Tides filled up the pond and then let its water run out. Later people built a windmill in the area as well.

There were two bridges over the Mill Creek, called “the draw bridge” and “the mill bridge.” (I don’t recall ever reading about the drawbridge being raised, but it might have been.) The creek defined the boundary of the North End.

In 1769, Boston’s selectmen determined that the heirs of the original grants had let the mills deteriorate. They therefore took over the property and assigned George Leonard to refurbish the mills and grind all the grain that the town owned. (Such practices should give pause to anyone who still thinks that early America had a laissez-faire economy.)

In the early 1800s the new Mill Pond Corporation filled in the pond with earth from Beacon Hill and Copp’s Hill. Soon that shallow area was dry land, to be developed as part of West Boston.