“Going to Mendon to put himself under the Care of Dr. Pope”

Yesterday we left Mary Forbes, wife of the Rev. Eli Forbes of Gloucester, being treated in Boston by the cancer specialist John Pope for a tumor in her breast in the spring of 1775.

On 15 April, news came that the lump “came out in a Body, near of the Bigness and Shape of a Sheeps Kidney.”

It’s not clear whether the Forbeses were still in Boston when the war began four days later. If so, they still had access to Dr. Pope, but he might not have had the materials to make his medicines. And of course there were the dangers of attack and starvation.

The Forbeses may have left just before the war began or soon after, but in any case they were in the countryside by June. So was Dr. Pope. On 30 June Mary’s father, the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman, wrote in his diary:

My Daughter Forbes goes to Mendon in search of her Doctor, Pope: her Breast has Twinges, and she wants some of his [??] salve.

On 19 July, Isaiah Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy, now relocated to Worcester, published this notice:

This is to inform the public, that John Pope who of late years hath been much noted for curing inveterate Cancers, and the most malignant Ulcers at Boston, hath by reason of the deplorable situation of that town removed to Mendon, where any who want his assistance may by enquiring at George Aldrich’s of said Mendon find the place of his Residence.

Aldrich (1715–1797) was a Quaker, son of a prominent Quaker preacher.

On 13 September, Parkman reported on a sermon, adding: “Mr. Forbes [and Mrs. Forbes?] (having been to Dr. at Mendon about her Breast) came.” 

Pope continued to have a reputation as a healer, and on 17 Feb 1776 the minister wrote: “Mr. Edwards Whipple here. He has a Cancer on his Lip—is going to Mendon to put himself under the Care of Dr. Pope—and desires public prayers tomorrow for him.”

However, by that time Mary Forbes was dead. On 19 January her father wrote:

Billy comes from Concord—with The Heavy News, and Letter from my dear son Forbes! Of my most dear Child Mary’s Departure on the 16th at Eve, between 9 and 10 o’Clock! O Lord, Help!

Mary Forbes was fifty years old when she died.

The Rev. Eli Forbes married three more times, and his last wife was Mary’s younger sister Lucy, who by that time was widow of the military engineer Jeduthan Baldwin.

TOMORROW: John Pope’s travels.

(The picture above shows Gloucester’s first meetinghouse as depicted by Fitz Henry Lane.)

“To consult him on her Sad Case, of her Breast”

Here’s another clergyman’s account of how John Pope, a cancer specialist, treated a patient in pre-Revolutionary Boston.

These extracts come from the diary of the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman of Westborough, which is all transcribed and analyzed at its own website. These extracts were found and organized by Ross W. Beales, Jr., Professor Emeritus at Holy Cross, and his colleagues.

Parkman knew of John Pope by May 1772, when he wrote of “Mr. Smith being at Boston under the operations of Mr. Pope (a Quaker) for the Cure of his Cancer.”

However, Pope’s skills became personal when Parkman’s oldest daughter Mary (Molly), who had married the Rev. Eli Forbes (1726–1804, show here) of Gloucester in 1752, developed some form of breast cancer.

On 10 Jan 1775, Parkman wrote in his diary:

My Son Forbes and his Wife came from Cape Ann, but last from Mr. Brooks’s at Medford.... My Daughters Trouble in her Breast somewhat mitigated, by Methods used by Friend Pope of Boston. Thanks to the Supreme Healer!

The month of March brought lots of news, not all good.

[13 March:] Mr. Forbes and my Daughter Set out on their Journey to Boston, designing to go to Mr. Pope, to consult him on her Sad Case, of her Breast. . . .

[22 March:] A Second Letter from my Son Forbes at Boston, that his Wife has gone through a Second Dressing by the hard Plaister and “by appearance these two have en[crusted?] the Schirrous Tumor about 1/4 of an inch. This dead mass must be separated from the live Flesh by digestive lenient Dressings before another hard Dressing is applyed: which will require a Week or ten Days.” . . .

[24 March:] Received another Letter from Mr. Forbes, dated the 20th…that “moment” whilst She was actually “under the painfull Operation of the 2d hard Plaister, and is as full of pain as She can well bear, though She endures (he writes) with more patience and fortitude than I feared. The Doctor says all Things work very kindly, and he doubts not with the Blessing of God he shall be able to effect a Cure: but will require some time, at least two Months.

[“]At present she is extremely agitated. Last Night she had no sleep, and this Night (Sabbath 2 o’Clock) She has been much worse -- but by the help of an Anodyne she gets a little sleep—hope She will be supported and carryed through—I am encouraged, but verily Sir, it is hard Work—and we hope in God.”

“Six o’Clock in the Morning. We have got through the Night. It has been pritty distressing, though through the great Goodness of God mine and your dear Molly has had several refreshing Naps of Sleep, and is now Comfortable—and does not expect to have any more of these hard Plaisters for a Week or ten Days, and I hope the worst is past. However, Sufficient to the Day is the Evil thereof.” . . .

[28 March:] Put up at [Joshua] Bracketts [tavern]: hastened to Samuels to see Mrs. Forbes. She was under the lenient Plaister—was calm and easy. I saw the sore dressed. . . .

[29 March:] Mrs. Forbes has Comfort, and is cheerfull. We lodged there.

Parkman went home, so the next news came by post on 15 April:

A Letter from Mr. Forbes (by Ripley, who is come to us from Boston and Cambridge) that on the 13th the Remainder of the Cancer in my Daughters Breast came out in a Body, near of the Bigness and Shape of a Sheeps Kidney—the Breast in an healing way. All Praise and Thanks to the glorious God our Healer!

Four days later, war broke out, cutting off Boston from the countryside.

TOMORROW: Can this patient be saved?

“His hat and clothes were covered with tea dust”

The Rev. Dr. John Prince (1751–1836, shown here) had an unusual path to the pulpit, and an unusual sideline afterward.

He was apprenticed and trained as a tinsmith and pewterer in Boston before entering Harvard at age twenty-one, several years older than a typical undergraduate of the time. After college and a master’s degree, Prince became a minister for Salem’s First Meeting.

Prince’s early practical training allowed him to become an expert on scientific instruments in the early republic. He invented, produced, evaluated, brokered, and repaired apparatus for several institutions, including his alma mater.

Back while he was an undergraduate, Prince was a close witness of the Boston Tea Party and its aftermath. He preserved his recollections of the event in a letter published in the Salem Gazette on 24 Sept 1833:

Mr. Editor,—There is a mistake in the Salem Mercury of last Wednesday, where, in speaking of the tea, it is said “there is a venerable Clergyman in Salem who took a part in the tea frolic, and assisted in emptying the chests into the sea”—

As there is but one clergyman now in Salem, who was a boy old enough to have assisted in the destruction of the tea at that time, viz. Dec. 16, 1773, it is evident who is meant by the “venerable Clergyman,” and he sends you this note to correct the mistake, and inform you that he was only a quiescent spectator of the transaction, and had no hand in destroying the tea. He stood upon the quarter deck of the vessel, leaning over the rail which crossed the deck, while the persons, disguised as Indians, were unloading her, and could plainly see what was doing, though it was principally in the evening.

Two men stood at the hatchway on the main deck, with axes in their hands, and as the chests were hoisted out of the hold they knocked off the tops and emptied the tea into the dock, and threw the chests after it. The tide was out, and the tea was piled up on the flats by the side of the ship as high as her gunwales.

The boy, as the Clergyman is called, was then more than 22 years old, and was not “an apprentice at that time.” He crossed the vessel’s deck in going on shore, and so much of the tea was scattered on it as to be over his shoes, which he found full when he got home; and his hat and clothes were covered with tea dust as a miller is with meal in his mill.

He went on to the wharf the next morning, where a great concourse of people was assembled to view what had been done the night before, (by the Mohawk Indians, it was said). Amongst the people assembled was the old British Admiral, ([John] Montague) who looked with astonishment on the scene of devastation, and said, the Devil is in this people, for they pay no more respect to an act of the British parliament, which can make England tremble, than to an old newspaper, and then went off of the wharf.

In the morning after the tea was thrown overboard the ebb tide carried most of it away, and the empty chests were seen floating down the harbor on the Dorchester shore in a line, extending to the castle. The business of destruction of the tea was conducted without any tumult or great noise; nor was any damage done to the vessel, or to any other effects whatever. The writer of the above knew several of the Indians who did the patriotic work.

Although the Salem Gazette didn’t print Prince’s name with this letter, the Gloucester Telegraph reprinted it on 28 September and blew his anonymity. Prince wrote several more reminiscences of the Revolutionary period for the Salem Gazette, their authorship not confirmed until his death notice.

This 1833 letter put Adm. Montagu at Griffin’s Wharf while complaining about the locals on the morning of 17 Dec 1773, as I discussed yesterday.

As part of its program to mark the graves of seemingly all known, suspected, rumored, or claimed Tea Party participants, the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum has included Prince as an “honorary participant.” I think that’s more than fair, given that he was actually on board one of the ships and would surely have faced criminal charges if there had been a royal police force to break up the action.

Samuel Plummer and His Father’s Sword

Here’s one more story from my foray up the coast from Boston to Gloucester.

Dr. Samuel Plumer, the man who was keeping George Penn enslaved in 1770, had a son, also named Samuel. The younger man tended to spell his surname Plummer.

Young Samuel Plummer attended Dummer Academy and then Harvard College, graduating in 1771 with a nearly spotless record. He was awarded his master’s degree from Harvard in July 1774. Plummer set out to train in medicine with his father.

Here’s the legend he left behind, as told by John J. Babson in his 1860 History of the Town of Gloucester, Cape Ann:

A female negro slave, belonging to his father, had been discovered to be in a state of pregnancy; and not returning one night from the Poles pasture, to which she had gone for the cows, a diligent search for her revealed the horrible fact that she had been murdered. A sword, with which the deed was done, was found in a crevice in a large rock. It was known to belong to Dr. Plummer; and the name of his son was immediately associated with this act of double wickedness.

As no legal measures were taken to investigate the case, he did not leave home immediately; but the increasing mutterings of the people at length aroused apprehension of arrest, and he was obliged to flee to escape the possible consequences of the awful deed which had been committed. He left the town by the way of Squam Ferry and the Ipswich Road, and never again but once returned to it.

Thirty years afterwards, on a Sunday morning, he made his appearance in his native place once more, and stopped at a tavern at the Harbor. His stay was short, extending only to the next day. No disguise was necessary, of course, after this lapse of time, to make him seem to others, as he must have felt himself, a stranger. It is not known that he avoided recognition, or that he sought to exchange greetings with the friends and acquaintances of his youth whom death had still spared. In company with a cousin, to whom he made himself known, he visited the spot of his birth and the haunts of his early years. Around these scenes he lingered several hours: but no visible emotion disclosed the state of feeling which they awakened; and he took his departure from them and from his companion, without leaving any information of himself by which his previous or subsequent career can be traced.

According to Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, Samuel Plummer was reported as dying in 1815, the year he would have turned sixty-three.

The local tradition Babson recorded didn’t preserve the victim’s name or the date of her death. Dr. Samuel Plumer died in 1778 intestate; his probate file doesn’t mention his son Samuel or any human property, so the killing probably happened in the four years between 1774 and 1778. I’ve found no reference to such a murder in the Gloucester vital records or the Massachusetts newspapers from the late 1700s.

Whatever Happened to Jesse Saville?

On 7 Apr 1770, acting governor Thomas Hutchinson sent the Massachusetts General Court documents from Essex County justices of the peace describing the previous month’s mobbing of Jesse Saville.

Hutchinson said Saville “had been most inhumanly treated for seeking redress in the course of the law for former injuries received.” He complained that Gloucester was becoming a violent town.

In his history of Massachusetts, Hutchinson complained, “The house suffered the message to lie more than a fortnight; but, two or three days before the assembly must, by the charter, be dissolved, they sent a very long answer.”

This was delivered by a committee that included strong Whigs John Hancock, Joseph Hawley, and James Warren. In part, they complained:

…we cannot think it consistent with the justice of this house, to come into measures which may imply a censure upon individuals, much less upon a community hitherto unimpeached in point of good order: or even to form any judgment upon the matter, until more light shall appear than the papers accompanying your message afford. The house cannot easily conceive what should determine your honour so particularly to recommend this instance to the consideration of the assembly, while others of a much more heinous nature and dangerous tendency have passed altogether unnoticed in your message…

The committee then took the opportunity to renew all the complaints about the king’s soldiers sent to Boston in 1768. It was, after all, the year of the Boston Massacre. The exchange was reprinted in British periodicals, making the third mobbing of Jesse Saville an element in the larger imperial conflict.

But Gov. Hutchinson never mentioned Saville’s name. He was, after all, just a tanner. The General Court committee likewise didn’t name this Customs employee. And that conflict was soon lost in the wash of other disputes, surviving only in the Essex County courts.

When I started the research for this series of postings about Jesse Saville, I found a secondary-source reference to yet another mob attack on him in 1771. But studying that reference further showed me it used language from the 1769 attack, so I think that was just an error.

Therefore, I have no sources on Saville’s experiences as Massachusetts’s conflict with the Crown heated up in the early 1770s, and as the war started. In fact, I’m not even sure he continued to work for the Customs service. He certainly didn’t move into Boston and evacuate with other revenue officers.

And that’s the biggest surprise of this story: Jesse Saville, mobbed three times in three years for helping His Majesty’s Customs Office, didn’t become a Loyalist. In fact, his son John, born in 1768, is reported as having gone to sea at 1782, being taken by a British frigate, and never returning.

Jesse Saville stayed in Gloucester. When his first wife, Martha, died in 1785, he remarried the next year to a woman named Hannah Dane and had a couple more children. When he died in 1823, Saville’s property included half of a house, half of a barn, a couple of pastures, and “1/4 part of a Pew in Squam Meeting House.”

Furthermore, he merited a fairly long obituary in the 26 March Columbian Centinel:

Mr. Saville was possessed of an uncommonly strong mind, and a very retentive memory. There was not a man perhaps in Gloucester who possessed such a perfect recollection of ancient transactions, grants, and land marks, as did Mr. Saville; for he seemed to have contained in his head, a successive record of all events; and more especially those of a local nature, for more than 70 years.—

In his political character, he was an undeviating FEDERALIST, adhering strictly to the sentiments of the immortal WASHINGTON, whom he always considered the polar star in the American political hemisphere.

In his religious theory, he was a Universalist, having the most unwavering belief in the great doctrine of reconciliation by JESUS CHRIST, as taught by the late Rev. JOHN MURRAY.

Murray’s meetinghouse, built in 1806, appears above.

Not everyone was as admiring as New England’s Federalist newspaper. In his 1860 local history, John J. Babson noted Saville’s work as a Customs officer and stated:

The strict performance of what he considered his duty made him odious to his townsmen, and for it he suffered severely in his person and property. It also subjected him to annoyance in later days, as the hostile feelings engendered by his official acts long survived the events which called them forth.

Nonetheless, Babson deemed Jesse Saville as having “lived a useful but retired life.” 

The Disappearance of George Penn

After George Penn sat on the Salem gallows for an hour and was whipped twenty times, as described yesterday, the authorities sent him back to the Essex County jail to finish another part of his sentence for rioting: two years’ imprisonment.

At the time, Penn was “(a Mulatto) aged thirty, five Feet nine Inches, and remarkably stout for his Heighth.”

We have that description from the 18 Aug 1772 Essex Gazette. It appeared there because of an event reported in the same paper:

The several Prisoners confined in his Majesty’s Gaol in this Town made their Escape last Saturday Night [15 August].

They were all committed on criminal Actions, viz. Charles Lee, Francis Lewis, Samuel White, William Campbell, and George Mitchell, for Theft, and George Penn, a Mulatto, for being concerned in a Riot at Cape-Ann two or three years ago. For the better Security of them, Mr. Brown, the Prison-Keeper, had them all confined in the two lower Apartments, which were deemed the strongest of any in the Prison.

They however, by Means of a Gimblet and Chizel, made a Hole through the Partition, which divided the two Rooms, and thereby all got together: They then bored off a square Piece of Plank in the Floor, and with the Chizel cut it quite out. Having thus got through the Floor, they applied themselves to work out a Passage through the Stones and Earth, and finally forced their Way through the Underpinning of the Building, quite into the Yard, which is inclosed with a very high Fence; they however, with their united Strength, forced open the Gate, and went off entirely undiscovered.

County sheriff Richard Saltonstall ran an advertisement in that paper describing the six escapees and offering a reward of $10. Those men ranged from “a French Lad, (as will be discovered by his speech) aged twenty” to a man “about forty Years old.”

The same newspaper also reported that a married couple who had arrived in town with the suspected thief Mitchell, “with much pretended Innocence,” had departed town suddenly, leaving behind some scraps of cloth. Also, a Danvers man reported finding a pile of clothing “hid in the Corner of a Wall,…near where Mr. Putnam found the Goods supposed to be stolen by Campbell.” So those thieves were very much on the locals’ minds.

It’s notable that the newspaper referred to the man previously called “a Mulatto Servant [i.e., slave] of Samuel Plummer, Esq; of Gloucester, named George,” with a surname. Did the full name George Penn indicate that Dr. Plumer had freed him? Or simply disowned him?

In the eighteenth century the word “stout” referred to muscle, not fat, so for George Penn to be “remarkably stout for his Heighth” suggests he contributed a lot of the “united Strength” that forced open the prison gate.

Once outside, the men presumably scattered. The harbors of Salem and neighboring towns offered plenty of opportunities to move. Sheriff Saltonstall’s advertisement appeared in the newspaper for several more weeks, into September. But so far as I can tell, George Penn was never apprehended to serve out the rest of his sentence.

TOMORROW: Whatever happened to Jesse Saville?

ADDENDUM: The vital records of Ipswich report an intention of marriage on 16 July 1777 between George Penn and Flora Freewoman. There’s no racial label for either of those people, but this town may have used the appelations Freeman and Freewoman for former slaves. In the 1770s and 1780s listings are Prince, Cesar, and Titus Freeman, the latter marrying Katherine Freewoman. So George Penn may not have completely disappeared after the jailbreak, just laid low in a nearby town until the government changed.

“Being concerned in a Riot at Cape-Ann”

After his Gloucester neighbors mobbed him a second time, dragging him through town and tarring him in 1770, Jesse Seville stopped suing people for the previous assault, back in 1768.

He didn’t show up in court when his case (previously dismissed) came up for appeal at the end of March.

But that wasn’t the end of the legal process. Because once again some government authorities prosecuted the people who attacked Saville for assault. Or at least one person.

That criminal case came to trial 250 years ago this month. The 13 Nov 1770 Essex Gazette reported:

At the Superior Court held here last Week, a Mulatto Servant of Samuel Plummer, Esq; of Gloucester, named George [Penn], was convicted of aiding and assisting in seizing the Person of one Jesse Saville, in the Month of March last,…

Then came the description of the crime I quoted yesterday. The article concluded:

George would not or could not discover any of the Persons concerned with him: They being all disguised, except himself, prevented their being known.———

On Saturday last the said Servant George was sentenced, by the Court, to receive 39 Stripes, sit upon the Gallows one Hour, suffer two Years Imprisonment, and find Surety for his good Behaviour for the Term of seven Years.

Dr. Samuel Plumer (1725-1778) was the older brother of David Plumer, the merchant who had overseen the first attack on Saville’s home. It’s possible the judges sentenced George Penn to prison, not a common penalty at the time, as a way to punish Dr. Plumer by depriving him of the man’s labor.

It took over a year for the corporal punishment to be carried out. The 21 Jan 1772 Essex Gazette described the hanging of a rapist in Salem the previous Thursday and added:

George, a Mulatto, at the same Time sat on the Gallows, with a Rope round his Neck, for the Space of one Hour, and afterwards received 20 Stripes under the same, but being concerned in a Riot at Cape-Ann, some considerable Time since. He was sentenced to receive 39, but his Excellency the Governor [Thomas Hutchinson] was pleased to remit 19.

Penn resisted all pressure to identify the other men who had mobbed Jesse Saville in 1770.

Through these incidents we see the plight of enslaved blacks in Gloucester. During the first assault, Dr. Samuel Rogers threatened Saville’s “Servant” with his dental tools. In the second assault, the attackers reportedly disguised themselves as men of color—“Indians and negroes”—providing witnesses with plausible deniability. A black man was the only one identified and convicted.

TOMORROW: The disappearance of George Penn.

The Third Mobbing of Jesse Saville

After the attack on Jesse Saville’s house on 7 Sept 1768, the Essex County authorities brought charges against eight men for assault, as Joseph E. Garland described in Guns Off Gloucester.

The criminal case came to trial in the summer of 1769. The jury acquitted one defendant, Paul Dudley Sargent, and convicted the seven others. The wealthiest, including merchant Joseph Foster and Dr. Samuel Rogers, were fined £10 to £15 and ordered to post £50 bonds for good behavior. Four working men were fined £5 and ordered to post £20 bonds.

The organizer of the mob, David Plumer, was never criminally charged with assault, but he lost his cargo and ship to the Customs Office for smuggling.

That didn’t completely satisfy Saville, however. He pursued another avenue of redress—personal damages. He sued all seven convicted men plus a neighbor named Thomas Griffin.

That case came to court in Newburyport in September. This jury decided that Saville—now a Customs officer himself—had gotten all the satisfaction he deserved. They found the defendants not liable and ordered him to pay court costs.

Saville appealed that verdict, and the case was scheduled for a higher court at the end of March 1770.

Meanwhile, the Boston Massacre occurred in Boston. It’s not clear whether that had any effect on the mood in Essex County, but it might have made people more angry about the royal authorities or (after the army regiments were withdrawn to Castle William) more bold about confronting those authorities.

The result was the third and most violent attack on Jesse Saville, as described with minimal sympathy in the 26 March Boston Gazette:

We hear from Cape-Ann, that on Friday night last [March 23], a number of People there, who knew that Town had sustained great Damage by the Misdoings of one Jesse Savil an informer, and that he deserved Chastisement therefor, went in a Body to his House for that purpose, about 10 o’Clock, and finding him in Bed, took him from thence, and walk’d him barefoot about 4 Miles to the Harbour, then placed him in a Cart they had provided for that Purpose, and putting a Lanthorn with a lighted Candle in his Hand, that every one might see him, they carted him thro’ all their Streets, and stopping at every House they roused the inhabitants, and obliged him to declare and publish unto them that he was Jesse Savil the Informer; and having gone round in this manner, they then bestowed a handsome Coat of Tar upon him, and placed him upon the Town-Pump, caused him to swear that he would never more inform against any Person in that or any other Town, and then dismissed him, after having received his thanks for the gentle Discipline they had administered to him.

A report in the 13 Nov 1770 Essex Gazette recounted the same event with slightly different details:

…seizing the Person of one Jesse Saville, in the Month of March last, taking him out of his Chamber, in the Night, without Shoes, and almost naked, dragging him over Hills, Dales and Fences, some Times by the Hair of his Head, for about 4 Miles, and then carting him through the Streets of Gloucester. It is said further, that after elevating Saville upon a Pump, and insisting on his swearing not to steal any more Leather, nor to prosecute any Person for thus abusing him, he was tarr’d and dismissed.

Another detail, possibly in the court record but first published in James R. Pringle’s 1892 History of the Town and City of Gloucester, said the mob came for Saville “disguised as Indians and negroes.”

TOMORROW: The legal fallout.

The Second Mobbing of Jesse Saville

After a Gloucester crowd attacked Samuel Fellows and Jesse Saville in September 1768, both men went to work for His Majesty’s Customs Service.

The Customs Commissioners were expanding their force, to collect and to use Townshend Act revenue, and steady incomes were a way to reward or compensate people who had suffered for the Crown.

Fellows became the commander of a ship that patrolled for smugglers off Cape Ann. I suspect that ship was the Earl of Gloucester, which the Customs service had seized from his former employer, David Plumer, based on his tip. The Commissioners of Customs used John Hancock’s ship Liberty the same way (until people in Newport burned it, of course).

As for Saville, the Customs service appointed him as a tide-waiter in Providence, Rhode Island. That work probably took him away from his family. On the other hand, it got him out of reach of his enemies.

But Providence soon brought Saville more enemies. (Or people or rumors might have followed him from Gloucester.) The 10 June 1769 Providence Gazette ran this legal notice:

Custom-House, Boston, June 2, 1769.

WHEREAS on the 18th of May last, in the Evening, a great Number of People riotously assembled in the Town of Providence, in the Colony of Rhode-Island, and violently seized Jesse Saville, a Tidesman belonging to the Custom-House of the said Port, who was then attending his Duty there, and having gagged and put him into a Wheelbarrow, almost strangled, they carried him to a Wharff, where they threatened to drown him if he made the least Noise; tied a Handkerchief round his Face, cut his Clothes to Pieces, stripped him naked, covered him from Head to Foot with Turpentine and Feathers, bound him Hands and Feet, threw Dirt in his Face, and repeatedly beat him with their Fists and Sticks, then threw him down on the Pavements, cut his Face, and bruised his Body, in a most barbarous Manner; during which inhuman Treatment, which lasted an Hour and a Half, he was near expiring, and now lies dangerously ill.

For the better bringing to Justice and condign Punishment the Authors of this daring and attrocious Outrage, the Commissioners of His Majesty’s Customs do hereby promise a Reward of Fifty Pounds Sterling for the Discovery of any of them, to be paid upon his or their Conviction.

By Order of the Commissioners,
Richard Reeve.

This ad was reprinted in the 19 June Boston Evening-Post and the 20 June Essex Gazette, but as a news item, not a paid advertisement.

The 24 June Providence Gazette offered a different response as a letter to printer John Carter:

I Observe in one of your late Papers as Advertisement inserted by Order of the Commissioners of the Customs, offering a Reward of Fifty Pounds Sterling for discovering the Persons who ill treated one Jesse Saville, a Tidesman, on the Evening of the 18th of May, then doing Duty in the Town of Providence, &c.

How the Board came by their Information I know not, but of this I am certain, that their Informant paid little Regard to Truth, the greatest Part of the Narrative being false and groundless. He was neither struck with a Fist or Stick, nor thrown on the Pavements, as the Advertisement sets forth, neither was he on Duty as an Officer when taken. The Affair was not intended to obstruct him in his Duty, or deter other Officers in the Execution of their Trust, so long as they keep within proper Bounds.

The Truth is, he was daubed with Turpentine, and had a few Feathers strewed on him; in but every near Respect was treated with more Tenderness and Lenity than is perhaps due to an Informer.

As the above mentioned Advertisement seems evidently calculated to call an Odium on the Town, by inserting his public Testimony against it you’ll oblige
A SPECTATOR.

Now even if we assume the truth of what happened lay somewhere between these two descriptions, it’s clear that a second crowd had tried violently to make a public example of Jesse Saville.

TOMORROW: Back home in Gloucester.

[The picture above is a detail from a drop curtain in the collection of the Rhode Island Historical Society that shows Providence in 1808.]

“My mother Cry’d out Jesse is dead”

As I described yesterday, on 7 Sept 1768 the Gloucester merchant David Plumer directed a mob to a house in the Annisquam village, seeking the Customs informant who had cost him a shipload of undeclared molasses.

When those men couldn’t find that man, Samuel Fellows, they attacked the family he was staying with, the Savilles. The head of that family, Jesse Saville, was out. Though officially a tanner, he, like a lot of Cape Ann men, probably also worked at fishing.

Here’s the rest of Jesse Saville’s description of that day:

I was not at home but was about two miles of by water, neither could i git home by reason of the tide. I came home about ten a Clock at night, very Darck and Raney. Had ocation to go out of Doors so tock my gun for I was affraid without her.

Meanwhile, two men in the mob, Joseph York and Thomas Griffin, woke up a neighbor and friend of the Savilles called George Dennison. According to Saville, they “told him they were coming to tare Down our house.” Dennison said he would be right with them. Then “After giting them out of Doors, [Dennison] fastened his Doors, went to Bed.”

But there were still dozens of men ready to confront Jesse Saville:

A few minuets after I was gone out a Doors they Sorounded our house attemting to Come in. My father was then in bed. He told them They Should not Come in Such a maner but they might three or fore of them come in and Sarch the house. A grate number flocked in headed by Dudley Sargent, marchant. Daniel Warner they Chose as Clark. Thomas Griffin above menteioned & Joseph York: were preasious in this mob.

I love the detail that this crowd mobbing a house chose a clerk, as if they were a town meeting or a charitable society. That reflects how they thought they were doing important community work.

I Stod a Little way of them, heard them Sware they would Tare Down the house, but what they would have him. I made a pass to go into the Door. They Sorounded me. I asked them who was there, was ansered by Dudley Sargent, half a Dozen of us. I asked what half a Dozen of such black gard Did there. They ansered me, Dam you we will tell you. They said where is Sam Fellows. I ansered none of your bysness.

They Imeadatily Seased me. About Eight or thereaway told me to Let go the gun I posessed. Desierd a pass into the house. My mother Cryd. out Jesse is dead. My wife fainting away. They nocked me Down, Toock away my gun, fired it of, broak it in peaces over a Rock. My father halled me into the house by the feet as I Lay on the ground.

It was Terable to See the wimans Countanences and the Cryes of the Children for part of the Children was at School in the Day time. So they Left the house after I threating them in the Law. Job Gallaway of the sd. town Told my wife he new the Person Struck me Down and broak my gun.

We were affraid to go to Sleep Ever Since Safly for word has been threatned to tare Down the house Several times and if Ever they Cached me in the harbor they would Serve me as bad as they would Capt Felows or if they Ever Could find out I Conseald him or by any means aided him or gave him any Sustanance they would tare Down the house and mob me which Since I Daresnot appear to profacute my Bysness but Shall be obliged to Leave the Town. If I want to go out of Town I am obiliged to go and Come in the night or on the Sabbath Day.

Three days after the attack on the Saville home, locals “rescued” or grabbed back another shipload of molasses that the Customs office had seized.

But then the tide turned. At the end of September, Royal Navy ships carrying two regiments of the British army arrived in Boston harbor. Some of those ships started to patrol around Cape Ann. Royal officials became more bold. By the end of the October, the Salem Customs office had seized David Plumer’s whole Earl of Gloucester ship for smuggling.

Around 1 October, Jesse Saville went into Plumer’s shop. In his characteristic spelling, Saville stated, “I told him he must mack good the Dammage I had sustained.” Plumer replied that if the tanner wanted satisfaction he’d have to sue; also, “he said they wanted another frolick, they Did not Desier no beter Sport.”

On 14 October, Saville wrote out a long complaint about what had happened to his family for the Customs Commissioners in Boston. He named names, including prominent men like Plumer, fellow merchants Paul Dudley Sargent and Joseph Foster, physician Samuel Rogers, and as many more as he could identify and remember:

• “Elichander Smith, Block macher”
• “Lebeday Day, mason”
• “William Lowder, tinman”
• “David Day, shoemaker”
• “Philemon Haskel, Black Smith”
• “Daniel Warner, Black Smith”

Saville also filed suit in the local courts against Plumer and other neighbors. In early November a grand jury sitting in Ipswich indicted eight Gloucester men “and others unknown” for attacking Saville’s house. The defendants included Rogers, Sargent, Foster, four other men Saville had singled out as violent, and two additional names: cordwainer Parker Knights and yeoman William Tarbox.

David Plumer wasn’t charged with assault, probably because he’d refrained from going into the Saville house or physically attacking anyone himself. But the Customs Office hauled him into Admiralty Court for smuggling. Plummer hired John Adams as his lawyer but lost the case in December. The Customs office put his schooner Earl of Gloucester up for auction in April 1769.

Since all those developments were bound to make him unpopular locally, Jesse Saville threw his lot in with the royal government. By the spring of 1769, he was working for the Customs service.

TOMORROW: And how did that go?

The First Mobbing of Jesse Saville

Another event of 1770 that I neglected on its 250th anniversary this year was the mobbing of Jesse Saville.

Or rather, the mobbing of Jesse Saville in March 1770, because we have to distinguish that mobbing from several others.

To start at the beginning, in the summer of 1768 a Gloucester sea captain named Samuel Fellows told the Customs Office in Salem that the schooner Earl of Gloucester was about to arrive with undeclared molasses. Fellows used to command that ship for the merchant David Plumer, and evidently he was peeved at being replaced.

Samuel Fellows had been born in Ipswich in 1736, but was described as “of Gloucester” when he married Mercy Treadwell of Ipswich in 1763. Their first two children were sons born in Gloucester in 1764 and 1765. Samuel Fellows had also served as an ensign at Crown Point in 1755.

Acting on Capt. Fellows’s tip, Customs surveyor Joseph Dowse went to Gloucester on 6 September and seized more than thirty-three barrels of molasses from the Earl of Gloucester. At some point the Commissioners of Customs also talked to Fellows about coming to work for them. With more powers and more revenue under the Townshend Act, the department was expanding.

The next day, Plumer and several dozen friends came after Capt. Fellows. Which meant they came to the house of Jesse Saville, up on the Annisquam peninsula, where Fellows was staying.

Saville was a tanner, born in 1740 as the twelfth and youngest child of a cooper. In 1763 he married Martha Babson, and they had sons Thomas (1764), Abiah (1766), and John (April 1768), with more children on the way. The household appears to have included some of Jesse’s adult relatives, and he also spoke of “my Servant,” the usual euphemism for a slave. So I can’t tell if this was a wealthy family with a big house and a staff, or a poor family with boarders and everyone crowded together into one building used for both living and manufacturing.

This is how Saville described the confrontation at his house on 7 Sept 1768, with his own creative spelling, as published in the Essex Institute Historical Collections:

…a number of men came To my House,…the number of about 70, all of Sd. Gloucester, as nigh as could be Judged. They asked Leave to go into the house to Sarch for Capt. Fellows, wich they Did, not then ofering any abuse onely in Talek.

My wife Sent my Servant of an erant [and] David Plumer Seized him by the Coller Refusing to Let him go. His mistress called him Back [but] they would not Let him Come but Sd. If he was Sint he should not go unless they knew hiss bysness but Docter [Samuel] Rogers Tock out his Instrements, the wich he halls Teath with, [and] threatened to Hall all his teath out unless He told where Capt. Fellows was, threatening to Split his head open with a Club, Holding it over his head. Then they left the House.

[In] about an Hour, in wich Time Capt. Fellows Road up to our house, Thomas Griffin, Shore man, Seeing him Ride up that way Ran after the mob, told them he was gone up there. In about one hours time they Returnd wich my wife Seeing them told Capt. Fellows of. He ameadaately Run out of Doors as fast as posable.

No Person was in the house Excapt my wife & my mother, Dorcas Haskel, Mary Savell, with two of my Small Childredn. They Came up to the Doors and Sorounded the house with Clubs & axes. The wimen Seing them Run in Such a maner affrited fastning the Doors & windows.

They Crys with Shouting we got him. They Cryed opin the Doors.

They Refused declaring to the mob ther was no man bodey in the house Except a Child of 5 months old they could give oath.

That child was obviously baby John, but what about his older brothers, aged four and two? And who was the little girl Saville mentioned later? Was “Mary Savell” Jesse’s mother, already mentioned, or his older sister?

Mr. Plumer Told them, Gentlemen why Dont you walek in. Mr Plumer Did not go into the house himself.

My mother Told them they Come in upon the Peril of there Lives if they oferd To break Down the Doors. They immeadately Stove Down one Door and Entered a grate number of the abouve persons & William Stevens, Brick Laior, Like wise and a grate many Strangers wich they Didnot no. They Like wise beat of a Lach & buttons of another Door, struck the pole of the ax into the Door & Caseing very much Dammageing. The Same Broak a Seller window to peaces, a Chain, thro’d over barils, Chests, Tables & tubs, Ransacked the house, all parts of it, Broak a bundle of Dry fish to peaces, Destroyed a good deal of the Same, Tock a Gun and broak it by throghing it out of the garit window.

Benjm. Soams, B[arrel]. Cooper, pinted it, a Loadin Gun, Toward my wife, ordered her out of Doors, A Little gairl of about tow or three of ours so terified, Cryed To my wife fainting a way. They call’d my mother [and] my wife all the hoors and all the Dam’d biches and Every Evil name that they Could think of Stricking Down their Clubs on the flour Each Side of them. My mother beg’d they would Spare her Life for it was not Posable She Could Live one hour. They would not listen to her intreateys.

They Sarched the house over & over Several times Halling all the Beds into the flours. After awile they left the house, then went Down to the meeting house. There Joseph York, shoe macker, gave them vitels & Drink and was back and forward with them while absent from our house wich Generally is Judg’d he was ordered to Do what he Did by his father[-in-law] Deacon Samuel Griffin of sd. Town. Our folcks Sent for Some of the nabors to come for they Expected to be killed if they came again. Some sd. they were glad. Some was affraid to Come So a bitter afternoon they had.

TOMORROW: Where was Jesse Saville?

[The photo above shows the Edward Haraden House, built on Annisquam in the mid-1600s and expanded in the mid-1700s and later.]

“Not to write for any goods after the first of June”

Boston’s patriotic celebration of the king’s birthday on 4 June 1768 papered over a deep political divide.

That divide had opened when the Townshend Act imposed tariffs on certain commodities imported into the colonies. North Americans protested on the practical ground that those tariffs hurt the economy, particularly by moving hard currency to Britain. And they protested on the philosophical ground that even Parliament had no right to raise revenue from populations not represented in Parliament.

North Americans had made the same basic complaints about the Stamp Act of 1765. They had convinced a new government in London to repeal that tax through a combination of formal protests, boycotts, and riots. So they were going back to the same playbook.

On 4 Mar 1768, John Rowe (shown above) recorded in his diary what he and his fellow import merchants had agreed to do:

In consideration of the Great Scarcity of mony which has for several years been so Sensibly felt among us & now must be Rendred much Greater not only by the immense Sums absorbd in the Collection of the Dutys lately imposd but by the great checks given thereby to Branches of Trade which yeilded us the most of our mony & means of Remittance,—

In consideration also of the great Debt now standing against us which if we go on Increasing by the excessive Imports we have been Accustomd to while our Sources of Remittance are daily drying up, must terminate not only in Our Own & Our Countrys Ruin but that of many of our Creditors on the other side of the Water [i.e., in Britain]—

In consideration farther of the Danger from Some Late Measures of our Loosing many Inestimable Blessings & advantages of the British Constitution which Constitution we have ever Rever’d as the Basis & Security of all we enjoy in this Life, therefore Voted

That we will not for one Year send for any European Commoditys excepting Salt, Coals, Fishing Lines, Fish Hooks, Hemp, Duck, Bar Lead, Shot, Wool Cards & Card Wire and that the trading towns in the province & other provinces in New England together with those in New York New Jersy & Pensilvania be Invited to Accede hereto—

2nd That we will encourage the Produce & manufactures of these colonies by the use of them in Preference to all other manufactures—

3d That in the Purchase of Such Articles as we shall stand in need off, we will give a Constant Preference to such Persons as shall subscribe to these Resolutions—

4 That we will in our Separate Capacitys inform our several Correspondents of the Reasons & point out to them the necessity of witholding our usual Orders for their Manufactures—the said Impediment may be Removd & Trade & Commerce may again flourish—

5 That these Votes or Resolutions be Obligatory or binding on us from & after the time that these or other Singular or tending to the same Salutary Purpose be adopted by most of the Trading Towns in this & the neigbouring Colonies—

6 That a Comittee be appointed to Correspond with merchants in the before mentiond Towns & Provinces & forward to them the forgoing Votes & that sd Committee be Impower’d to call a meeting of the merchants when they think Necessary—

The word went out as planned, and on 2 May Rowe wrote that he

met the Merchants at the Townhouse in the Representatives Room—agreed to the Resolutions of the City of New York—not to write for any goods after the first of June, nor Import any after the first Day of October, untill the Act Imposing Dutys on Glass Paper &c be Repeald

The merchants of Gloucester made the same commitment that day.

Thus, as June 1768 began, Boston’s mercantile community had just committed to “non-importation” of all goods from Britain, with a few exceptions of raw materials and tools that the local fishing and weaving industries needed.

It’s notable that, although the merchants met “at the Townhouse in the Representatives Room,” they were not an elected body. They were more like a chamber of commerce. They didn’t represent the whole population of Boston. Political leaders from outside the business community—such as James Otis, Jr., Samuel Adams, and the newcomer Dr. Thomas Young—weren’t involved.

That division would become an issue in the coming years.

“Unfolding Histories” at the Cape Ann Museum

The Cape Ann Museum in Gloucester is hosting its first major archival exhibition, showcasing notable documents from its collection and those of seven other local institutions.

“Unfolding Histories: Cape Ann before 1900” is organized around ten themes: Native American history, education, religion, African-American history, literary imagination, charity and welfare, women’s history, temperance, warfare, and transportation. The museum says:

Organized thematically, Unfolding Histories lets the documents tell the stories of Cape Ann, thereby highlighting often neglected experiences and perspectives. This archival record richly depicts the political and social structures of our nation before its founding, through its early years and on up to 1900, and provides windows into the working and cultural life of a place that would become a haven for artists and writers.

The Boston Globe reported, “The show consists of some 80 items: letters, books, maps (one of them executed by no less than Samuel de Champlain), official documents, photographs, diaries, Native American artifacts, even stereopticon cards.”

The Cape Ann Museum’s Twitter feed has been sharing items from the exhibit under the hashtag #unfoldinghistories. Highlights from the Revolutionary era include:

• this note about the outbreak of war inserted into Gloucester’s town records.
• a love letter from 1776.
• a handwritten certificate of emancipation in 1777 (shown above).
• taxation to support a Continental soldier in 1782.
• records of payment for housing a black mother and child in 1783 (the same year the Massachusetts courts made slavery unenforceable).

The exhibit was curated by Gloucester resident Molly O’Hagan Hardy, who is also director for Digital and Book History Initiatives at the American Antiquarian Society. The other organizations lending documents for the exhibit are the Annisquam Historical Society, Essex Historical Society and Shipbuilding Museum, Essex Town Hall, Gloucester City Hall, Gloucester Lyceum & Sawyer Free Library, Manchester Historical Museum, Sargent House Museum, and Sandy Bay Historical Society.

“Unfolding Histories” will be on display until 9 September.

Down to the Sea in Deerfield with the Dublin Seminar, 24-26 June

On the weekend of 24-26 June, Historic Deerfield will host the annual Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife, this year’s topic being “New England at Sea: Maritime Memory and Material Culture”:

Focusing on how the region remembered its maritime past, the weekend begins with a keynote address by the historian W. Jeffrey Bolster on the pivotal role that Gloucester, Massachusetts, played in the memory of its fishing industry.

It continues with individual topics such as chart making, the keeping of ship logs, and ship-design technologies. Later sessions address subjects such as whaling, slaving, privateering, and maritime family life; the rise of marine societies and efforts to preserve old ships; and the growth of maritime antiques businesses. The conference concludes with minorities’ experience of seafaring and maritime laboring and the material culture of sailors’ (and diplomatic) dress.

An optional workshop presented on Friday afternoon will examine the history of celestial navigation including a detailed exploration of the sextant, and Mystic Seaport’s digital resources used in genealogical and maritime-related research.

The main program of nineteen lectures (with discussion periods after each grouping) will begin in the Deerfield Community Center at 7:00 P.M. on Friday evening and will continue until around noon on Sunday. The conference registration fee includes lunch and dinner on Saturday, June 25, plus coffee and (really good locally made) doughnuts each morning.

The Dublin Seminar casts a wide net for researchers and for attendees, including university scholars, other educators, curators, collectors, librarians, preservationists, students, and the general public. Selected papers from this event will be published in a couple of years as the 2016 Annual Proceedings of the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife.

For more information and to register, visit this webpage.

Mrs. Murray’s Medium in Gloucester

In 1795, two years after the Boston’s first theater opened on Federal Street, it hosted its first play “Written by a Citizen of the United States.”

The anonymous author of The Medium: or, Happy Tea-Party (the subtitle later changed to Virtue Triumphant) was Judith Sargent Murray, already busy as an essayist. Boston Literary History states:

Murray suffered through the hastily rehearsed performance and then had to cope with a potentially damaging review that implied that the author was her husband John Murray, a Universalist minister. Beyond the brouhaha that followed, the play is worthy of study because it conveys Murray’s feminist outlook, especially in the character of Eliza Clairville. Notably, because Eliza wants her marriage to be a union of equals, she refuses to marry the man she loves until she reaches personal financial stability.

Despite that early experience, Murray wrote two more plays. The second, The Traveler Return’d, also has a notably independent and intellectual female lead. Murray published them in her collection The Gleaner, but they didn’t stick around in the repertoire of American drama.

This month the North Shore Folklore Theatre is mounting the first-ever theatrical revival of The Medium in Murray’s home town of Gloucester. The performances will take place at the Magnolia Library & Community Center on Lexington Avenue on weekends from Friday, 4 December, through Sunday, 20 December. Check this webpage for times and tickets, or buy season tickets to the North Shore Folklore Theatre here.

The Legacy of Judith Sargent Murray

And speaking of Judith Sargent Murray, her modern editor Bonnie Hurd Smith will speak about that pioneering American feminist this month as part of the Old Town Hall Lectures in Salem.

Here’s the event description:

Thursday, January 20, 2011
Forming a New Era in Female History: The Life & Legacy of Judith Sargent Murray
Illustrated lecture and book signing

Using excerpts from Murray’s letters, Smith traces the remarkable life of the 18th-century essayist from Gloucester, Massachusetts, who called for women’s full and equal participation in the new American nation.

Independent scholar Bonnie Hurd Smith is currently editing Murray’s letters for publication. Her many published works on Murray include I am Jealous for the Honor of Our Sex: A Brief Biography (2010), Mingling Souls Upon Paper: An Eighteenth-century Love Story (2008), and editions of Murray’s letters.

Those books are available through HistorySmiths.

Two More Suspects in the Death of Maj. Pitcairn

And here are two more claimants to the honor of having killed Maj. John Pitcairn at the Battle of Bunker Hill. The last two I stumbled across on my own. For these two names I’m indebted to the research of Mark Nichipor of the National Park Service, as reported in George Quintal’s Patriots of Color.

David Noyes’s History of Norway, Maine (1852) recorded this story from a man named Phinehas Whitney, who died in 1830 at age eighty:

He was in the battle of Bunker Hill, and I have often heard him tell the story of that memorable contest. He said that just as he had put his last charge into his gun, the British forces had about reached their rude breastwork; a British officer mounted the embankment, and cried out to his soldiers to “rush on, as the fort was their own;” Whitney then took deliberate aim at him, and, to use his own language, “let him have it,” and he fell into the entrenchment. He [Whitney] then clubbed his musket, and cleared his way the best he could, and finally made good his retreat.

That account doesn’t single out Pitcairn, but Charles F. Whitman made the connection in his own 1924 history of the Maine town. Whitney’s story dovetailed so nicely with what Samuel Swett had first printed in 1819—except for the anecdote involving another provincial soldier.

But that’s not all! James R. Pringle’s History of the Town and City of Gloucester (1892) credited local son Benjamin Webber with shooting Pitcairn:

At the rail fence, young Webber’s attention was drawn to a British officer on horseback actively engaged in directing the movements of his troops. It was Major Pitcairn, brave, but somewhat boastful. “Do you see that officer on horseback?” remarked Webber to a comrade, “Well, I am going to try and bring him down.” Raising on his knee, the young farmer took unerring aim, fired with deadly effect and Major Pitcairn fell mortally wounded. . . .

Such is the story told the writer some eight years ago by the late Mr. Benjamin Webber, a man of the highest respectability and veracity, whose descendents still occupy the old homestead erected on the land granted to their ancestor Michael, at Fresh Water Cove. This account is here given to the public for the first time

This story greatly resembles an incident in Gen. Henry Dearborn’s account of the battle, published in 1818:

An officer was discovered to mount near the position of Gen. [William] Howe, on the left of the British line, and ride towards our left; which a column was endeavoring to turn. This was the only officer on horseback during the day, and as he approached the rail fence, I heard a number of our men observe, “there,” “there,” “see that officer on horseback”—“let us fire,” “no, not yet,”—“wait until he Sets to that little knoll,”—“now”—when they fired and he instantly fell dead from his horse. It proved to be Major Pitcairn, a distinguished officer.

However, the letters of Lt. John Waller show that Pitcairn was with his Marines, not near Howe; on foot, not mounted; and killed at the redoubt, not along the rail fence.

Furthermore, if I read Pringle’s words correctly, he spoke to Benjamin Webber in 1884, or more than a century after the battle. Perhaps the author meant a descendant of the same name, in which case the story came to him second- or third-hand. All in all, I find Webber’s account less than convincing.

TOMORROW: Why we remember Peter Salem instead of all these other guys.

The Royal Navy Heads for Cape Ann

Two hundred thirty-two years ago, Boston selectman Timothy Newell wrote in his diary:

This morning two bomb Ketches and several armed vessels with some sailors sailed on a secret expedition, it is said to demand a Ship belonging to Portsmouth, retaken by our whale boats, and carried into Cape Ann—also to demand of that town 40 seamen which they took from the man of war—if not delivered in 24 hours to bombard the town.

Although the British and Continental armies had continued to make plans, build fortifications, fire artillery, and occasionally skirmish, the real action at this point in the war was at sea.

British naval vessels were trying to keep the army in Boston supplied by escorting transports and merchant ships from Britain. The first generation of American privateers were trying to capture those ships full of food and weapons. That meant the navy was trying to hunt the privateers.

In this case, the provincials had also apparently taken “40 seamen” from a naval ship. Perhaps those men had been impressed by the Royal Navy, perhaps they were simply tired of life in the navy, perhaps they wanted to try the American cause.

Admiral Samuel Graves was already eager to take aggressive action against the New England rebels. On 1 Sept 1775, he had written to Gen. Thomas Gage:

With your Excellency’s approbation and Assistance, I propose to lay Waste such Sea Port Towns in the New England Governments as are not likely to be useful to His Majesty’s Stores and to destroy all the Vessels within the Harbours. To this End I must beg your Excellency to assist me with such Men, Vessels, Artillery Forces &ca as His Majesty’s Squadron is not provided with, and are really requisite under for the intended Service.

Graves particularly resented having most of the Marines deployed on land instead of on his ships.

The small squad of ships that left Boston on 3 October was spotted off Gloucester later that week, as Newell feared. However, its commanders apparently thought that town would be too difficult to shell. The ships headed further up the coast.

Tea Party Ship Under Construction

Alerted by a message from Scott on the New England Revolution (NEREV) email list, I went looking for reports on the building of a new ship for the Boston Tea Party Museum.

The Tea Party Museum’s webpage contains photographs of the work through April 2006, and of the finished ship that is serving as a model for the ship’s very nice aft.

Work has proceeded apace in a Gloucester shipyard, and Scott posted some more recent photos he took to the NEREV list. However, for public access I must refer folks to the pictures from “goodharbor” on Flickr.