“Newport baker Godfrey Wainwood purchased Robert”

At Small State, Big History, Robert A. Selig recently discussed slave sales in Newport, Rhode Island, during and at the end of the Revolutionary War.

As Selig notes, just before the war the small colony had started to move away from importing enslaved people. (Rhode Island merchants were still entirely free to transport captives elsewhere, though.)

In “Newport’s Last Slave Auction: Rochambeau’s Prizes,” Selig writes of cases like this:

According to court documents, the slave named Robert who initiated the legal proceedings ran away from his owner in early in 1781, leaving behind his enslaved mother and father. Robert hailed from Port Royal in Caroline County, Virginia . . . .

Perhaps Robert and the others thought that their chances of securing freedom would improve by boarding a French vessel but it is more likely that they mistook the French vessel for a British ship. Either way, boarding the French vessel did not mean freedom but rather more years in slavery. Destouches brought the slaves to Newport—where based on a 1774 Rhode Island law forbidding the importation of slaves they should have been freed.

Destouches was probably unaware of that law but Rhode Island and Newport authorities should have been and thus should have prohibited the sale. They did not. Maybe they did not want to annoy their “illustrious ally.” . . .

On 13 June the sale went ahead as planned. After trading bids with Henry Sherburne, Newport baker Godfrey Wainwood purchased Robert for 170 Spanish silver dollars . . .

In 1789 a dispute arose over the length of the contract Robert was supposed to work for Wainwood; Wainwood claimed nine years, Robert claimed seven years. After lengthy legal proceeding it was in the fall of 1791 that Robert was finally “[wrested] from the iron grasps of despotism and [restored] to the capacity of enjoying himself as a man.”

Mention of the Newport baker Godfrey Wainwood immediately caught my eye.

Wainwood was the man who turned in his ex-wife for trying to send a ciphered letter into Boston in the summer of 1775, setting off the investigation that unmasked Dr. Benjamin Church as a paid British agent.

A German-speaking immigrant, Wainwood managed to establish himself solidly in Newport. Purchasing an enslaved man reflected growing wealth.

“Breathe their Last within the walls of his Detestable General Hospital”

As I quoted yesterday, in September 1775 commanders of the northern wing of the Continental Army besieging Boston were upset with how Surgeon-General Benjamin Church was ordering sick and wounded men moved to his hospitals in Cambridge.

Gen. John Sullivan and Dr. Hall Jackson complained that there were sick people at those hospitals! Meaning men would be more likely to catch infections there than anywhere else.

In addition, the doctors looked down on New Hampshire men as country bumpkins, and Dr. Church and his assistant surgeons weren’t as skilled as Jackson himself.

Well, Jackson didn’t come right out and say that last part (Sullivan did), but on 16 September he lambasted the central army hospitals this way:

Not an Officer or Soldier [from New Hampshire] will go to the Cambridge Hospital, they had much rather provide for themselves at Mistick at any expense, or even die in Camp with their friends than be forced into a General Hospital cram’d with the sick of 25,000 Troops; and attended by strangers from polite Places, who have never been used to the inquisitiveness and impatience of poor Country People, and are in general to apt to conster their simplicity into impertinence: it is the mind of General Sullivan, and all the Officers from New Hampshire, that unless some alteration is made, another Regiment will never be raised in that Colony.

Capt. [Henry] Dearbourn, with many others, are gone to Canada, for no other reason than to avoid the Sickness of our Camp, and dread of the general Hospital.

The arts, contrivance, and hypocricy, of some of the M—u—setts Patriots is dam—a—ble to the last degree. “A Struggle for Liberty”!—good God! my Soul abhors the Idea! If methodically to kill the wounded; to starve the sick, and languishing because they cannot Diet on Salt Pork, or will not submit to be severed from their dearest friends and relations, if these (my Dear Friend) are the Characteristicks of an Army raised for the defence of Liberty, I frankly confess I have no claim to an employment in the glorious Cause.

When Jackson wrote those words, however, the army had already formally looked into the dispute. On 7 September, Gen. George Washington laid set out a formal process in his general orders:

Repeated Complaints being made by the Regimental Surgeons, that they are not allowed proper Necessaries for the Use of the sick before they become fit Objects for the General Hospital: And the Director General of the hospital complains, that contrary to the Rule of every established army, these Regimental Hospitals are more expensive than can be conceived; which plainly indicates that there is either an unpardonable Abuse on one side, or an inexcusable neglect on the other—

And Whereas the General is exceedingly desirous of having the utmost care taken of the sick (wherever placed and in every stage of their disorder) but at the same time is determin’d, not to suffer any impositions on the public;

he requires and orders, that the Brigadiers General with the commanding Officers of each Regiment in his brigade; do set as a Court of enquiry into the Causes of these Complaints, and that they summon the Director General of the hospital, and their several Regimental Surgeons before them, and have the whole matter fully investigated and reported—This enquiry to begin on the left of the Line to morrow, at the hour of ten in Genl Sullivan’s brigade.

That inquiry ended a week later with Church being cleared of all charges. Jackson’s letter was thus carrying on an argument he had already officially lost.

There must have been similar disputes in other parts of the army because Washington ordered the same sort of inquiry in Gen. William Heath’s brigade in the central part of the lines, then in the brigades on the south wing. The commander-in-chief evidently felt that this process would force everyone to an agreement.

The second inquiry likewise ended in praise for Church. But by then the surgeon-general had left the front, pleading illness. Church even sent in his resignation from Taunton. Adjutant-General Horatio Gates wrote the doctor a flattering letter urging him to come back.

Then suddenly the conflict was resolved by an outside factor: The baker Godfrey Wenwood came to Washington’s headquarters from Newport with a ciphered letter that his ex-wife had asked him to send into Boston. Under questioning, that woman, née Mary Butler, admitted she had handled the letter for her lover—Dr. Church!

The 30 September inquiry in Gen. Joseph Spencer’s brigade was called off “on account of the Indisposition of Dr Church.” That phrase in Washington’s general orders was cover for the fact that Church was under arrest in one of his hospital buildings (shown above) for secretly corresponding with the British military.

On 4 October, Sullivan wrote in triumph:

You will by this Post Receive Intelligence from head-Quarters of Dr. Church’es having been detected in holding a Treasonable Correspondence with the Enemy—his Behaviour Towards our Sick & wounded long since Convinced me that he either was void of humanity and Judgment, or that he was Determined by untimely Removals & Neglect of Duty to Let all those under his care breathe their Last within the walls of his Detestable General Hospital.

On 17 October, Dr. Hall Jackson returned to Portsmouth. Since June, he had been working with no rank or salary. The next month, New Hampshire’s provincial government recognized his service with a commission as chief surgeon for the colony’s troops and back pay.

COMING UP: Back to Capt. Sylvanus Lowell, wounded in 1773. But first, a Sestercentennial event.

“I am in a tremor”

This is the last of the series of postings analyzing Dr. Benjamin Church’s 24 Sept 1775 letter to Maj. Edward Cane, now preserved in the files of Gen. Thomas Gage.

As I wrote before, Henry Belcher published this letter in The First American Civil War but didn’t identify the writer. Books about Dr. Church and his spying didn’t discuss this letter. So I believe these postings are the first time this document has been analyzed in the context of Church’s life.

Toward the end of the letter Church warned his handler about a possible Continental Army attack on Boston, then pushed that off because of the gunpowder shortage:

I am very Certain it has been Concluded on in a Council of War as soon as ever they found Great Britain was determined to push Matters still farther, then they woud attack the Town, but then Sir this determenation was in Consiquence of the News that they had so large a Quantity of Powder close at hand, At present I am full as much persuaded there will be no more done this Season as that there will be, but Sir, this you may rely on I will give you the Earliest notice in my power by this ferry Man that comes over—that you must write me by him if you can trust him to deliver me a line privately which he can if he will.

Having laid out his value to the British command, Church then went on to ask for more money, to be sent out by that ferryman as discussed here.

By this point Church had been secretly delivering information to the British command for at least eight months. He had become the surgeon general responsible for the health of soldiers on one side of the siege lines while aiding the army on the other. He had seen war break out and stalemate.

Church was feeling more and more strain, as shown by his attempt to resign from the Continental Army that month and the postscripts to this letter:

N.B.—The poor people that have got out of Boston some time are in great Want Good God what are we to do I know not.

Excuse my incorrect manner of writing for I am in a tremor.

Two days after Dr. Church penned this letter, a baker in Newport named Godfrey Wenwood took a document to the Patriot authorities. Some sleuthing revealed that Church had tried to send that ciphered letter into Boston in July. By month’s end, the doctor’s career as both an army surgeon and a spy was over.

Apparently, the immediate prospect of being hanged restored Church’s sang-froid. In October he faced an army court-martial and in November a trial by the Massachusetts General Court, at both tribunals calmly insisting that he was innocent. American authorities never had enough evidence to prove his guilt, but never so little as to clear him.

Over two years later, after a proposed prisoner exchange thwarted by a riot, the state put Dr. Church on James Smithwick’s ship Welcome bound for Martinique. The ship, the captain, and the doctor were never seen again.

“To write one time no want of powder and at another not so great a plenty”

The 23 July 1775 letter from Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr., that I quoted yesterday never made it into Boston.

Church gave it to his mistress in Little Cambridge, Mary Butler, and she asked her ex-husband in Newport, the baker Godfrey Wenwood (or Wainwood), to pass it on to royal officials to take into Boston.

Instead, the baker sat on the document. But Dr. Church couldn’t know that. Just a few days later, he discovered a quicker way to send messages into Boston, piggybacking on Gen. George Washington’s own espionage route.

Eventually, Dr. Church realized the letter he’d sent by his mistress had never arrived, and he asked her about it. She asked her ex-husband. He grew even more suspicious and took the document to Rhode Island’s Patriot authorities on 26 September.

That set in motion the chain of events that led to the deciphering of the letter, Washington’s interrogation of Mary Butler, and Dr. Church’s arrest by the end of the month.

That summer, Church had sat through a series of inquiries about how he as Surgeon General ran the Continental Army hospitals. (Regimental surgeons disliked him encroaching on their territory.) On 19 September, Church asked for a leave to visit his family in Rhode Island. The next day, he sent Gen. Washington his resignation. Adjutant General Horatio Gates cited the commander’s “his unwillingness to part with a good officer” and asked Church to reconsider.

On 24 September, Dr. Church sent a new letter full of intelligence about the Continental camp into Boston. We know this one arrived because it survives in Gen. Thomas Gage’s files.

Among many other things, Church discussed the Continental gunpowder supply. As I quoted yesterday, back in July he had said there was lots of powder. In late September he wrote:

the Accot I sent you that our Army was Supplyed largely with powder is not so, instead of our peoples having Ninety Tons of powder from Philadelphia they did but Nine as I find by the Commessary and from New York Six for Sixty as is declared all over the Camp, but when it got down here it was no more than I now write you, they have got some little from different Quarters by some means but I am bould to say, not enough to stand a long Siege. We are made to believe that we are to have large Quantitys in a very short time, they have sent different ways, that I know, for powder and without every good look out they will get [difficulties?],

You will think me an odd fellow to write one time no want of powder and at another not so great a plenty—but Sir, never was a people lead on blindfold and so imposed on as this people have been with respect to Arms and Amunition: I am not alone in this matter I heard Mr. [John] Hancock Say the very day he came from Congress that we had more Powder on the Road coming to the Camp, than we could Expend in one twelve months, this was believed by all coming from Hancock.

The Army begin to inquire for themselves, about these matters, and are not satisfied to find themselves so deceived in a matter of so much importance. but our Chiefs say, it is absolutely necessary, nay Justifiable for such reports when all is at Stake, and the Courage of the Soldiers must be kept up high by some means or other.

This letter would have completely destroyed Church’s claim that his July letter showed he was exaggerating the Continental Army’s strength. After he learned about the gunpowder shortage, he passed that news on to the British commander.

It also hints at another source on the Continentals’ confidence about their gunpowder: none other than John Hancock, chair of the Congress. He visited Cambridge in mid-July and surely met with his longtime colleague there. Shortly afterward, Church sent his original dispatch describing how “Powder mills are erected and constantly employed.” By September, the doctor no longer believed that.

TOMORROW: More from Dr. Church’s letter.

New Study of Dr. Benjamin Church

John A. Nagy has written two books on espionage in the Revolutionary War: Invisible Ink: Spycraft of the American Revolution and Spies in the Continental Capital: Espionage Across Pennsylvania During the American Revolution.

For his third, he turned to the first notable Patriot to be revealed (somewhat) as secretly slipping information to the Crown: Dr. Benjamin Church, Spy: A Case of Espionage on the Eve of the American Revolution.

I say “somewhat” because Gen. George Washington and Massachusetts General Court couldn’t come up with ironclad proof of Church’s treachery. He admitted to sending his brother-in-law John Fleeming a letter in cipher that described the Continental Army in detail. But that description overstated the American strength. Did Church actually believe the figures he wrote? Was he communicating in some previously arranged code? Or was he playing a double game, trying to bluff the British out of attacking the Continental siege lines?

In the end, the American authorities couldn’t answer those questions solidly enough to convict Church of spying. (It didn’t help that the Continental Congress’s committee to write regulations for the army, originally chaired by Washington, hadn’t taken the possibility of such betrayal into account.) The Congress ordered Church confined without trial, tried to exchange him for a British officer, and finally sent him into exile.

The Revolutionary generation wrote a lot about Church, but much of it seems rooted in guesswork tinged by hindsight rather than hard evidence. Research over the past hundred years, especially after Gen. Thomas Gage’s intelligence files became available, has shed more light on the doctor’s activities. It’s clear now that Church was disclosing sensitive information to Gage before the war began. But how long before? How much did he reveal? What were his motives, and did they change?

John Nagy has gone back over all the evidence that’s come out about Church. This is the first commercial book to use my study’s revelation that Dr. Church’s mistress, who betrayed him under pressure from Gen. Washington, was most likely Mary (Butler) Wenwood of Marblehead, estranged wife of Newport baker Godfrey Wenwood. The book is sure to be thorough.

And who knows? More information may yet surface. At his blog Ed Witek has just shared images of the doctor’s younger brother Edward and his family. Edward is the doctor’s only close blood relative for whom we have a portrait, so peering at his face is the closest we’ll probably come to looking Dr. Benjamin Church in the eyes.

Another Detail of Robert v. Godfrey Wainwood

Among the documents displayed in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania’s “Preserving American Freedom” website is abolitionist Thomas Robinson’s 1788 record of oppressed African-Americans in Rhode Island. Robinson labeled his notes “9 mo,” suggesting he was a Quaker. He evidently had ties to both Rhode Island and Philadelphia.

The first case in Robinson’s notes is:

Robert, a negro man, held as a slave by Godfrey Wainwood, was captured in the late war at virginia by the French and brought here by them, the vessell he was taken in was burnt, and without his being libeled, was sold as a slave.—He denies that he was a slave in Virginia.

I discussed the dispute between Wainwood and Robert back here. Wainwood, or Wenwood, was an immigrant from Prussia who had played a crucial role in exposing the espionage of Dr. Benjamin Church in 1775. Brown University has a more detailed webpage on Robert’s case, including transcripts of the legal documents and minutes of the abolitionist society meetings.

One interesting detail from Robinson’s note is how it shows Robert complaining about his servitude to a sympathetic ear in the fall of 1788. That was months before he stole Wainwood’s copy of their contract and ran away in May 1789, setting off their court case.

Also, while the standard story says Robert had been enslaved in Port Royal, Virginia, where his parents remained, Robinson wrote that Robert “denies that he was a slave in Virginia.” Of course, Robert had freed himself practically, if not legally, when he escaped from his original master. And the laws of Rhode Island gave him an incentive to claim free status.

Hey, Kids! Here’s a Puzzle for You!

E. J. Witek posted this version of the letter from Dr. Benjamin Church that the Newport baker Godfrey Wenwood (or Wainwood) brought to Gen. George Washington’s headquarters at the end of September 1775. For clarity, each handwritten character has been replaced with a typographic equivalent.

Can you break the code?

(Highlight this line if you want a hint: It’s a simple substitution cipher, so every symbol stands for one letter of the alphabet. But you could have figured that out, right?)

TOMORROW: The minister who deciphered the message.

Godfrey Wenwood versus Robert

When we last saw Newport baker Godfrey Wenwood (also spelled Wenwood), he was trying to convince an ex-girlfriend to reveal who had entrusted her with a coded letter. It turned out that letter had come from Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr., and it ended his career as a spy for the British authorities.

Googling for more information about Wenwood brought me to this website at Brown University describing a court case from 1789 that involved him and and a former worker. Because that worker, named Robert, was an escaped slave, their dispute became a test case over slavery in Rhode Island.

Here’s how the case started:

Born as a slave in Virginia, Robert ran away from his master in the spring of 1781 with the hopes of obtaining his freedom by serving in the British army during the American Revolution. However, Robert never reached the British army and instead mistakenly boarded a French vessel. The French vessel traveled to Newport, Rhode Island, where Godfrey Wainwood purchased Robert at an auction. The two signed an agreement that Robert would become free after serving Wainwood for a period of years, but, rather than waiting for his indenture to end, Robert ran away in May of 1789.

After Robert was captured and put in jail, the Providence Abolition Society, led by Quaker Abolitionist and reformer Moses Brown (shown above), obtained his release through a writ of habeas corpus, which until recently has been a pillar of English and American law. Going to court, Robert claimed that his agreement with Wenwood was to last only seven years. Wenwood argued that it should last nine. They sued and countersued over who had the proper claim to Robert’s labor as an indentured servant.

The jury considered the law of the time and decided that Robert was still a slave—to his master in Virginia. Therefore, they said, he had no standing in court.

Shortly after that, the two men reached a settlement, with Brown signing on behalf of Robert (since he still had no legal standing). They dropped their suits, and I believe that stopped the jury’s decision from becoming a binding precedent.

Because of that private settlement, there are still a lot of questions about the case, despite all the documents on the Brown website. I’m particularly curious about the real relationship between Godfrey Wenwood and Robert. The 1790 U.S. census lists Robert as living in Newport with the surname Wenwood. Did he take that last name simply out of custom, or under pressure from the legal authorities, or was Robert actually more grateful to Wenwood than their suit would indicate? Did they go back to working together? Did Brown buy Wenwood’s acquiescence? We’ll probably never know. But the Brown website shows one way that Americans were seeking freedom within the traditions and laws of the early federal society.

Deciphering a Mystery Letter

Sometimes in July 1775, a Massachusetts man entrusted a letter to his mistress—or perhaps one of his mistresses. He told her to send it into British-occupied Boston by way of Newport. That Rhode Island port was still open for business, with Patriot and Loyalist officials in a grudging stalemate and the Royal Navy, merchant ships, and smugglers all sailing in and out of the harbor.

That woman, who has never been identified, sent the letter to an old boyfriend, the Newport baker Godfrey Wenwood (sometimes spelled Wainwood), and asked him to pass it on. He became suspicious because the letter was in code; there was, after all, a war on. On the other hand, he was about to get married, and may not have wanted to reveal an old affair by taking the document to the authorities. So he sat on it.

In September, the lady wrote to Wenwood again:

i much wonder you never Sent wot you promest to send if you Did i never reseve it so pray Lett me know By the first orpurtunty wen you expet to be hear & at he Same time whether you ever senty me that & wether you ever got a answer from my sister i am alittle unesey that you never rote thar is aserten person hear wants to Sea you verey much. . . .

if you righ Direct your Lettr to mr Ewerd Harton Living on Mr. Apthorps farm in Littel Cambrig

“Little Cambridge” was then the name for Brighton. “Apthorp’s farm” was probably the estate of John Apthorp, youngest son of a wealthy Anglican family; he and his wife had been lost at sea in 1772, leaving three children to be raised by relatives. The name of Edward/Edmund Horton appears on official documents from Cambridge in this period.

Wenwood talked with a friend who taught school, and together they went to the Secretary of the Rhode Island colony, Henry Ward. In Massachusetts, the governor, secretary, and other executive-branch officials were appointed in London, but in Rhode Island (and Connecticut) they were elected by the legislature. Ward was therefore a Patriot, not a friend of the Crown. He sent Wenwood with his letter to Gen. Nathanael Greene, the highest-ranking Rhode Islander in the Continental Army around Boston.

Greene read Ward’s letter, heard Wenwood’s story, and quickly took the baker and his packet to army headquarters in Cambridge. After a private conference with Gen. George Washington and Greene, Wenwood agreed to visit his old girlfriend and try to learn who had given her that coded letter. He failed. Washington ordered the woman to be brought to headquarters. Gen. Israel Putnam personally delivered her, mounted behind him on his horse. Washington used the weight of his authority to convince her to reveal the man behind the coded letter: Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr.

For years, Church had been one of Boston’s leading Whigs, privy to their most secret meetings. In July, he had become the head of the Continental Army’s hospital. Washington summoned him immediately. Dr. Church admitted that he wrote the letter, saying it was really intended for his brother-in-law, the Loyalist printer John Fleeming. He declined to decipher it, though.

Washington sought men familiar with codes. One volunteer was the Rev. Samuel West, a big, untidy minister from Dartmouth (now New Bedford); he was attached to the Continental Army as a chaplain. Another was Elbridge Gerry, the Marblehead merchant and politician, who also recruited Col. Elisha Porter of Hadley. All were Harvard graduates; West was even in Church’s college class.

Dr. Church’s letter turned out to be in a simple substitution cipher, one symbol for each letter of the alphabet. And since he (unlike his mistress) wrote in standard English, the proportions and patterns of the symbols matched regular English prose. Trying out the most common letters in place of the most common symbols, West and the Gerry-Porter team produced two independent decodings of the text. On 3 October, Washington received the two translations. They matched exactly.

COMING UP: What Dr. Benjamin Church’s secret letter said. (Click on the image above for a large digital copy of its first page from the George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress.)