Grand Lodge’s Boston Tea Party 250th Symposium, 16 Dec.

On Saturday, 16 December, I’ll be one of the speakers at the Grand Lodge of Masons in Massachusetts’s “Boston Tea Party 250th Symposium.”

Back on 16 Dec 1773, the St. Andrew’s Lodge was scheduled to have a regular meeting at its headquarters, the Green Dragon Tavern. Its records say: “Lodge closed on account of the few members in attendance, until to-morrow evening.”

With Dr. Joseph Warren, Paul Revere, and several other steady members were most likely busy at Old South Meeting House or Griffin’s Wharf that night.

Freemasonry in Massachusetts has evolved since then, but one of its abiding traditions is a certain possessiveness about the Tea Party. Therefore, it’s partnered with the Dr. Joseph Warren Foundation to observe its Sestercentennial in multiple ways.

On Friday, 15 December, there will be a historic tavern tour in Boston, created in collaboration with Revolution 250. On Sunday, 17 December, at 10:00 A.M., Grand Chaplains will lead a non-denominational ecumenical service at the Grand Lodge in Boston. Both of those events are open to the public.

The symposium will take place on 16 December, the actual anniversary of the Tea Party. Scheduled to run from 8:30 A.M. to 5:00 P.M., with a break for lunch, this event will also be free and open to the public.

The lineup of speakers are:

• Brooke Barbier, “Radicalizing John Hancock: The Tea Act and the Boston Tea Party”
• R.W. Walter Hunt, “Freemasonry Before the Revolution”
• Boston-Lafayette Lodge of Perfection performing “Treason to the Crown”
• Jayne Triber, “Brother Revere: How Freemasonry Shaped Paul Revere’s Revolutionary Role”
• William M. Fowler, Jr., “A Fireside Chat”
• J. L. Bell, “How Bostonians Learned to Talk about the Destruction of the Tea”
• James R. Fichter, “Tea: Consumption, Politics, and Revolution, 1773–1776”
• Benjamin L. Carp, “Teapot in a Tempest: The Boston Tea Party of 1773”

The symposium is scheduled to allow people to go from the Grand Lodge to Old South Meeting House and/or the Harborwalk near the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum to see the reenactments that evening.

This symposium is free and open to the public. During the day people can also take guided tours of the Grand Lodge, with glimpses of some of its rare artifacts.

Citizens at Boston’s Civic Festival of 1793

I’m jumping around among multiple series here [whatever happened to the Saga of the Brazen Head?], but there’s no better date than 14 July to return to Boston’s celebration of republican France in 1793.

At the start of the month I quoted a suggestion in the 21 Jan 1793 Boston Gazette that the selectmen find a new name for the short street in central Boston called “Royal Exchange Lane.” The word “royal” was just so pre-Revolutionary.

That proposal appeared in the midst of reports on Bostonians preparing for a big “Civic Feast” celebrating how France had become a republic. The deposition of King Louis XVI meant that Americans could be grateful to the French nation for being a crucial ally in the war for independence without the awkwardness of supporting a despot far less constitutionally fettered than George III.

Boston’s civic holiday took place on Thursday, 24 January. That day’s Independent Chronicle reported one some of the events:

A large number of citizens will dine at Fanuiel [sic] Hall; notwithstanding which tables plentiously provided, will be laid in State Street; and whoever chooses may partake freely.

At the Stump of Liberty-Tree, an entertainment is providing for a large number of citizens, who usually have celebrated propitious events at that spot.

The Citizen Soldiers of the Independent Fusiliers, will dine at BRYANT’s Liberty Hall, Equality-Lane, (late Royal Exchange Lane.)

It looks like innholder John Bryant decided to rename the street his establishment stood on “Equality Lane” to reflect the new political ethos, even in advance of action by the selectmen.

The long, detailed report on the “CIVIC FESTIVAL!” in the 26 January Columbian Centinel showed how people were adopting that new name. That newspaper said the fusilier company “dined together at Citizen BRYANT’s, in Equality-lane.” Likewise, it referred to the nearby Dock Square as “Liberty-Square.”

Innkeeper Bryant wasn’t the only celebrant to receive the republican title “Citizen.” The newspaper reported that “citizen S[amuel]. Adams,” then lieutenant governor, presided over the feast in Faneuil Hall alongside “Citizen Letombe”—French consul Philippe André-Joseph de Létombe, who had started serving under the king and would remain in office through to the emperor. “Citizen [Josiah?] Waters” was marshal of the parade and oversaw the decorations. “Citizen [Samuel] Bradlee” commanded the company of artillery.

“Citizen Joseph Croswell, of Plymouth” provided the words of a hymn “To Liberty” while “Citizen [John] Woart” hosted another gathering at the Green Dragon Tavern where mechanics sang “God Save Great Washington.” Likewise, “Citizen Charles Jarvis,” soon to be one of Boston’s leading Jeffersonians, proposed a toast to President George Washington.

Most striking of all to me, this same page of the Columbian Centinel included a letter to the editor that proudly began “Citizen Russell.” Benjamin Russell (shown above in later life) and his newspaper would soon be pillars of the Federalist Party in New England. Yet in January 1793 they were going gaga over Revolutionary France.

Indeed, another news item on this page of the Centinel warned “24 Frenchmen” in Boston who had signed “A Protest against the French revolution” that they should be “upon their guard, in attempts of this nature,” and maintain “a respectful silence.” Nobody, not even Frenchmen, were supposed to criticize France as it finally became a republic.

COMING UP: Party poopers.

Richard Fry’s Greatest Scheme

Before going on with The Saga of the Brazen Head, I’ll zip through what happened with Richard Fry.

Under his contract for the paper mill with Samuel Waldo and Thomas Westbrook, Fry had to pay £64 a year. But making paper on the Maine frontier didn’t bring in huge profits, and the whole province was in a cash crunch. Fry managed to send his landlords fifty reams of paper in place of specie, but that wasn’t £64 in cash, was it?

Waldo and Westbrook sued Fry and won a judgment of £70. They had the sheriffs in Maine seize the paper-making equipment. And they had Fry clapped into the Boston jail as a debtor around the start of 1737. In response, Fry claimed that Waldo and Westbrook had taken that action only after they had tried to buy him out and he refused.

Waldo recruited another man to continue the paper manufactory as an employee. Then he turned on Westbrook, forcing him out of the partnership. Calling himself “hereditary lord of Broad Bay,” Waldo recruited more settlers in Europe.

Among the people who came to America at Waldo’s invitation were the German ancestors of Christopher Seider. However, whenever Britain went to war with France, which happened in 1744 and again in 1757, the Maine frontier became a risky place to live and the settlements emptied out. Waldo died in 1759. Some of his holdings descended to his daughter Hannah and then to her daughter Lucy, wife of Henry Knox.

Meanwhile, back in the Boston jail, Richard Fry produced a steady stream of petitions complaining about his Maine landlords, the sheriff and undersheriff who’d taken his stuff, and the jailer who’d locked him up.

On 22 May 1739 Fry placed yet another advertisement in the New-England Weekly Journal:

This is to inform the Publick, that there is now in the Press, and will be laid before the Great and General Court, a Paper Scheme, drawn for the Good and Benefit of every individual Member of the whole Province; and what will much please his Royal Majesty; for the Glory of our King is in the Happiness of his Subjects: And every Merchant in Great Britain that trades to New-England, will find their Account by it; and there is no Man that has the least Shadow or Foundation of Common Reason, but must allow the said Scheme to be reasonable and just:

I have laid all my Schemes to be proved by the Mathematicks, and all Mankind well knows, Figures will not lye; and notwithstanding the dismal Idea of the Year Forty One, I don’t doubt the least seeing of it a Year of Jubile, and in a few Years to have the Ballance of Trade in Favor of this Province from all Parts of the Trading World; for it’s plain to a Demonstration, by the just Schemes of Peter the Great, the late Czar of Muscovy, in the Run of a few Years, arrived to such a vast Pitch of Glory, whose Empire now makes as grand an Appearance as any Empire on the Earth, which Empire for Improvement, is no ways to be compared with this Royal Majesty’s Dominions in America.

I humbly beg Leave to subscribe myself,
A true and hearty Lover of New-England,
Richard Fry.

Boston Goal, May 1739.

What was he on about now? Fry was issuing A Scheme for a Paper Currency to solve the specie crisis and promote the local economy. Backing up the new printed money, he wrote, would be the output of “Twenty Mills” built around Boston harbor. When Fry had first announced his scheme the previous August, even calling a meeting of investors at the Green Dragon Tavern, he had only seventeen mills in mind.

One might question the value of economic advice from a man who had gone bankrupt in England and was in jail for debt. But those circumstances didn’t daunt Fry. We can read his proposal, plus a couple of the petitions he wrote in the same years, in this book. Other documents from him are in the Clements Library.

Fry’s scheme wasn’t the only attempt to address the province’s specie shortage. In 1740, Boston businessmen set up the Massachusetts Land Bank, which issued private paper currency based on land holdings. The royal government and its supporters, led by Thomas Hutchinson, worked to stifle that enterprise, and in 1741 Parliament outlawed it. Some historians have traced the enmity between Hutchinson and Samuel Adams, whose father was a Land Bank investor, to that controversy.

Fry of course saw nothing wrong with paper currency (and one suspects he hoped to win the contract to supply the paper). But he no doubt preferred his own approach to issuing it. And as long as the provincial authorities opposed the Land Bank, he was ready to take advantage of that. In December 1740 Fry pointed out to Gov. Jonathan Belcher and his Council that his jailer was dealing in Land Bank currency. (A sample shown above.)

Richard Fry died in 1745, his finances still a mess. He left a wife and at least one child.

The “Rally, Mohawks” Song of the Tea Party

In an address titled “Reminiscences of the Green Dragon Tavern,” delivered to the St. Andrew’s Lodge in 1864 and published in 1870, Charles W. Moore stated:

I have looked in vain for a copy of an old revolutionary song said to have been written and sung as a “rallying song” by the “tea party” at the Green Dragon. The following fragment, though probably not in all respects an exact transcript of the original, will indicate its general character:—

Rally, Mohawks!—bring out your axes!
And tell King George we’ll pay no taxes
On his foreign tea!
His threats are vain—and vain to think
To force our girls and wives to drink
His vile Bohea!
Then rally boys, and hasten on
To meet our Chiefs at the Green Dragon.

Our Warren’s there, and bold Revere,
With hands to do and words to cheer
For Liberty and Laws!
Our country’s “Braves” and firm defenders,
Shall ne’er be left by true North-Enders,
Fighting Freedom’s cause!
Then rally boys, and hasten on
To meet our Chiefs at the Green Dragon.

I regret not being able to give the balance of this song, but perhaps some curious antiquary may hereafter discover it, if it ever appeared in print. I am inclined to think, however, that it was a doggerel made for the occasion, and passed away when it ceased to be of use, or appropriate. The two stanzas I have re-produced, are given as nearly as my memory serves, as they were often recited more than a third of a century ago, by the late Bro. Benjamin Gleason, who, born near the time, was curious in gathering up interesting reminiscences of the revolutionary period of our history.

No other verses ever surfaced, nor any earlier printed source. Nonetheless, these lyrics were reprinted in Drake’s Tea Leaves, Goss’s Revere, Porter’s Rambles in Old Boston, and many later books to this day.

But are they authentic? Moore could trace them only to “more than a third of a century ago,” or about 1830—still more than fifty years separated from the Tea Party. Moore’s source, Benjamin Gleason, was a Grand Lecturer for the Freemasons. He was born in Boston in 1777—four years after the Tea Party. So what we have here is at least third-hand, passed on orally.

The internal evidence gives good reason to doubt that the men involved in destroying the tea sang these words that night. Why would people before or shortly after committing an illegal act declaim where they were meeting (“at the Green Dragon”) and who their leaders were (Dr. Joseph Warren and Paul Revere)?

There are more anachronisms:

• As I wrote back here, it took years for Americans to make “Mohawks” the standard label for the tea destroyers.
• In the Revolutionary turmoil, Boston’s political leaders tried to tamp down rivalries between different parts of the town, so they would discourage mentioning “true North-Enders” alone.
• The American Patriots didn’t treat “King George” as their main villain until 1776.

The lyrics strongly hint that they were written decades after the Revolution, when Warren and Revere’s memory had eclipsed those of William Molineux, Dr. Thomas Young, and other street leaders of 1773. The Freemasons in the Green Dragon Tavern had particular reason to honor Warren and Revere, who had been leaders of their lodge.

As shown by John Johnson’s picture of the Green Dragon above, Boston’s post-Revolutionary Freemasons celebrated the link between their lodge and the destruction of the tea. Older members of that lodge knew Warren, and even younger men like Gleason probably knew Revere, who lived to 1818. And I think one of those men composed this song to honor their forebears’ actions—not to rally men behind them in 1773.

Two New Pre-Revolutionary Comics to Choose Between

Tea Party: An American Story is a webcomic from Sam Machado, Cynthia “Theamat” Sousa, and Amanda Sousa Machado, signing themselves as TAS.

It’s one of the most scrupulous fictional depictions of pre-Revolutionary Boston that I’ve seen. As a measure of the level of detail, in episode 6 the Samuel Adams household includes Surry, Job, and Queue. Episode 2 shows Benjamin Burdick tending bar at the Green Dragon Tavern (or, as he advertised it, the Freemason’s Arms).

As a result, there’s not much action in the story. So far it’s shown the Boston Whigs talking seriously about the political issues of the day, largely in the terms of the time. The court party hasn’t shown up yet, limiting the conflict to the frictions internal to those activists and their families. But eventually we’ll move from the judicial salaries issue to Gov. Thomas Hutchinson’s letters to the tea.

On the other end of the comics spectrum, Dark Horse has issued the first issue of The Order of the Forge, written by Victor Gischler and illustrated by Tazio Bettin. The company’s summary:

Before he fathered a nation, young George Washington forged his legend in blood! Imbued with the mystical powers of America’s original inhabitants, George—along with his friends Ben Franklin and Paul Revere—must stop an evil governor who wishes to rule an empire!

The sell line is supposedly in young Washington’s words: “I cannot tell a lie. I f**king hate zombies.” That’s him with his little hatchet on Juan Ferreyra’s cover.

Daigler Speaks on Intelligence at Minute Man Park, 15 Oct.

On Wednesday, 15 October, Kenneth Daigler will speak on the topic of his book Spies, Patriots and Traitors: American Intelligence in the Revolutionary War at the Minute Man National Historical Park’s Visitor Center in Lexington. This event will start at 7:00 P.M. and end with a book signing.

Daigler is a retired career C.I.A. operations officer who has degrees in history from Centre College of Kentucky and the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. C-SPAN recorded one of his earlier talks.

One of our early first-hand sources on Revolutionary War espionage is a letter that Paul Revere wrote in 1798 to the founder of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Among many other things, he said

In the Fall of 1774 & Winter of 1775 I was one of upwards of thirty, cheifly mechanics, who formed our selves in to a Committee for the purpose of watching the Movements of the British Soldiers, and gaining every intelegence of the movements of the Tories. We held our meetings at the Green-Dragon Tavern. We were so carefull that our meetings should be kept Secret; that every time we met, every person swore upon the Bible, that they would not discover any of our transactions, But to Messrs. Hancock, Adams, Doctors Warren, Church, & one or two more. About November, when things began to grow Serious, a Gentleman who had Conections with the Tory party, but was a Whig at heart, aquainted me, that our meetings were discovered, & mentioned the identical words that were spoken among us the Night before. We did not then distrust Dr. Church, but supposed it must be some one among us. We removed to another place, which we thought was more secure: but here we found that all our transactions were communicated to Governor Gage. (This came to me through the then Secretary [Thomas] Flucker; He told it to the Gentleman mentioned above).

The M.H.S. has shared the images and text of that letter.

Some of the details of that letter have become distorted in the retelling. For example, Revere said that his group started meeting in the Green Dragon Tavern, but moved out after “About November” because it didn’t seem secure enough. He didn’t say where the group met in 1775, but we know it wasn’t the Green Dragon. Yet that tavern gets all the credit.

William Hallahan’s The Day the American Revolution Began says that Revere’s group was “called the Committee of Observation.” Boston 1775 readers may recall how little I think of that book, and that’s yet another statement with no basis in eighteenth-century documents. New York Patriots formed a “Committee of Observation” to enforce the boycott on British goods. New England Patriots talked about creating an “Army of Observation” in early 1775, which was a euphemism for not quite going to war, like “military advisors.” But neither Revere nor anyone else used that term for this self-appointed committee.

Daigler’s book refers to Revere’s group as “the Mechanics,” as if that were their formal name. That’s rather like calling a small group “the Working Class” or such. In fact, Revere’s phrase “cheifly mechanics” suggests that not all those men came from that social stratus, though whether the exceptions were genteel merchants, mariners, or something else isn’t clear. Again, Revere named no names, even fifteen years after the war ended. Such secrecy makes the topic of Revolutionary War espionage all the more intriguing.

Dispatch from the Green Dragon

I’m typing this in a coffee house in Carlsbad, California. But not just any coffee house—the one attached to the Green Dragon Tavern and Museum.

I reported on the plans for this complex and its opening last year. So when I made plans for a convention in San Diego, I included time to drive forty minutes up the coast to south Carlsbad and check it out for myself.

I went thinking I’d find something fairly kitschy: a replica of the original Green Dragon (as depicted by John Johnson) tacked onto a California strip mall.

And in fact the site is in an area of strip malls. Next door is a car wash with a lovely Southwestern tile roof, as seen in the background of this photo. The first thing one sees getting off that exit from I-5 is a giant windmill attached to a motel.

But the Green Dragon Tavern and Museum is a more extensive and substantive enterprise than I’d expected. In size, it’s not just part of a strip mall—it’s an entire strip mall’s worth of structures. The part made to look like the original tavern is the main restaurant dining room, two levels high, and the coffee shop and bookstore. On the far side are a series of meeting rooms for special dinners.

And in between is a museum devoted to the owner’s interests in New England history, particularly the Revolution but starting in Plymouth Colony and including the Salem Witch Trials. The displays include replicas of significant documents and many original artifacts bearing the signatures of famous historical figures: legal documents signed by Samuel Sewall, Thomas Hutchinson, John Adams, and Robert Treat Paine, for example.

Throughout the building are framed copies of early American newspapers, mostly from the last two decades of the eighteenth century. And by throughout, I mean throughout. The hall to one set of restrooms, for example, includes a 1783 issue of the Providence Gazette and two issues of Benjamin Russell’s Columbian Centinel from the early 1790s. In another issue of the Centinel I spotted a big advertisement from Samuel Gore, one of “my guys.”

Amidst those genuine period documents are reproductions of nineteenth-century popular art, posters of the most famous Founders, postcard photographs of national monuments, and so on. So there’s definitely the potential for hagiographic kitsch. But the quotations on those Founder posters all have citations to particular documents (which is more than some folks can provide). There’s a display clearly explaining the eighteenth-century long s to visitors. Some of the labels discuss how American historiography or commemoration has changed over time.

I quibble with some of the historical statements I see in the displays or literature. I don’t think of the Sons of Liberty as a “secret society” but rather an amorphous political label like “Tea Party” or “Occupy Movement.” I don’t think “Paul Revere departed the Green Dragon Tavern for his famous ride,” though he definitely spent a lot of time there. But for me the list of quibbles is small.

The bookstore attached to the coffee shop includes a lot of popular titles for both kids and adults, focusing mostly on the Founders (and including some I think are flawed). However, the selection includes ground-breaking biographies from academics, including Woody Holton on Abigail Adams and Jill Lepore on Jane Mecom. And I can’t complain about any store carrying Reporting the Revolutionary War, with two essays by me.

The restaurant has wood paneling and a fireplace, but it’s not trying to be a period site (at least at lunchtime). There are multiple televisions tuned to sports channels. The menu may have sandwiches named after Boston Revolutionaries, but they’re all California cuisine, heavy on the avocado.

Overall, the Green Dragon Tavern and Museum is a solid little private museum with a significant number of print artifacts to examine, particularly newspapers. In its emphasis on the most prominent Founders, their signatures, and genealogy, its sensibility is old-fashioned, but within that sensibility the standards are high. The site is a very short drive off I-5, so I feel confident recommending it to folks traveling between San Diego and Los Angeles and seeking a genuine taste of the Revolutionary Era (as well as California cuisine).

The Legend of the Long Room Club

Yesterday I quoted Samuel A. Drake’s 1873 description of the “Long Room Club” of pre-Revolutionary Boston and asked what was missing.

My answer is that Drake didn’t mention any source(s) for his information. He stated that a hundred years earlier some men met regularly in a large room over the Edes and Gill print shop, and readers had to take his word for that. Many authors did; the “Long Room Club” became a staple of descriptions of pre-Revolutionary Boston, and many books repeated Drake’s list of members. Repetition gave the statement the air of unimpeachable authority. I accepted it until a few years ago when Ben Carp asked me if I’d found any contemporaneous support.

So far as we could tell, no source before Drake had ever mentioned the “Long Room Club.” No contemporaneous document describes the group. A 1772 entry in John Adams’s diary shows that there was a room above the print shop. But a big room? With regular meetings of a club with a name? And those particular members? Drake’s statement was the only support for that idea.

We also have an account from Benjamin Edes’s son Peter describing a secret gathering before the Tea Party in his father’s house, not in the print shop. Under the influence of the “Long Room Club” meme, some authors shifted that gathering to the print shop.

Also missing from Samuel A. Drake’s description are the names of William Molineux and Dr. Thomas Young. All the usual, well-remembered suspects are listed: Samuel Adams, John Hancock, James Otis, Dr. Joseph Warren, Dr. Benjamin Church, the Cooper brothers, Josiah Quincy, Paul Revere, & al. But contemporaneous documents tell us that Molineux and Young were Boston’s most important crowd leaders of the late 1760s and early 1770s. Both men were gone by the end of 1774—Molineux dead and Young to the south. Both were radical and religiously unorthodox. As a result, nineteenth-century Bostonians didn’t remember them so well.

Drake’s “Long Room Club” list includes some names that don’t show up in many other lists of Boston Whig leaders, some from out of town and others a generation younger than the men listed above:

• Samuel Dexter (1726-1810) was an officeholder from Dedham, not visible in Boston and not among the province’s active Whigs. (His grandson had the same name, and would be a big politician in the early republic, but was only fourteen years old when the war began.)
  
• Thomas Fleet (1732-1797) printed the Boston Evening-Post with his brother John; they were known for their “impartiality,” as Isaiah Thomas wrote, rather than their political activism.
• Samuel Phillips (1752-1802) was a politician from Andover and is best remembered for founding the academy there during the war.
  
• John Winslow (1753-1819) was a young businessman who became prominent in federal Boston and was a big source of information about Bunker Hill.
  
• Thomas Melvill (1751-1832) was another young merchant, a Tea Party participant and official in post-Revolutionary Boston.

Those men don’t seem to have been part of the innermost circle of Boston Whigs at all. Rather, those were names that Bostonians of the early or mid-1800s probably recalled as connected in some way to Revolutionary times.

As for the “Long Room,” I suspect Samuel A. Drake or his informants might have gotten the Edes and Gill print shop mixed up with the Green Dragon Tavern. Taverns did often have long rooms for banquets and other meetings, and we know that the Green Dragon, which the St. Andrew’s Lodge of Freemasons had bought and turned into their headquarters, was one of the places where Revere convened his “committee of observation” shortly before the war.

Another possible root of the meme is Thomas Dawes’s garret, as described back here. Dawes was another name on Drake’s list, not as prominent in Revolutionary politics as the other men but definitely part of town politics before and after the war. But either way, the “Long Room Club” story seems so poorly sourced and probably garbled that I no longer think it’s reliable at all. (And now I have to go back to all the early Boston 1775 postings that referred to that group and update them.)

A New Green Dragon Tavern Planned in California

Charles Bahne alerted the Boston 1775 editorial team to this news item from Carlsbad, California, filed by Deanne Goodman:

A colonial-themed museum and restaurant based on The Green Dragon Tavern in Boston, MA is being built where Hadley Fruit Orchards sat closed for 10 years on Paseo Del Norte.

The real Green Dragon Tavern in Boston was established in 1654 and said to be a planning site for the Boston Tea Party. It still operates as a pub and restaurant in Boston.

Carlsbad City Council approved the project in 2009. The project is now in the demolition stages. Jason Goff with the City of Carlsbad Planning Division said, “we are encouraged by the redevelopment of this site especially given the economic market.”

According to public city records, Carlsbad’s Green Dragon Tavern & Museum Colonial Village has plans to hire local history teachers to teach students about pilgrims and the Revolutionary War, in addition to being a restaurant and bookstore.

There are, of course, 150 years of history separating “pilgrims and the Revolutionary War.” And contrary to the writer’s understanding, today’s Green Dragon Tavern has no connection to the eighteenth-century Freemasons’ lodge whose name it borrowed.

However, the sketch of the project indicates the architects will base their building on how the original Green Dragon Tavern looked in 1773, according to Revolutionary War artillerist and portrait painter John Johnson. Plus, some additional buildings.

The Real Green Dragon Tavern

We’ll close “Mapping Revolutionary Boston” Week with a visit to the Green Dragon Tavern. That was an important site in pre-Revolutionary political organizing, and it gets its own pin in the website/app.

That building contained a “public house” or tavern by 1714. There are period references to a Green Dragon Tavern in Boston before that date, but it’s not clear they refer to an enterprise at this location.

In 1764 the St. Andrew’s Lodge of Freemasons bought this building to use as their lodge. That was the organization of Dr. Joseph Warren, Paul Revere, and other strivers, as opposed to the more establishment St. John’s Lodge. Naturally, the Freemasons kept the Green Dragon running as a bar, too. Benjamin Burdick, who was also captain of the watch for the middle part of town, managed the establishment in the early 1770s under a short-lived new name, the Mason’s Arms. Lots of unofficial political meetings took place there.

Unfortunately, the blue pin for the Green Dragon Tavern on the “Mapping Revolutionary Boston” map is not in the right place. It should be up higher, on the part of Union Street that leads from Hanover to the Mill Pond. The pin shows the location of the modern business that uses the Green Dragon Tavern name.

That’s a common confusion because the modern Green Dragon Tavern desperately wants people to think it’s the historic site. I took the liberty of correcting the opening paragraph on its website, historically and grammatically:

The Green Dragon Tavern [that stood in another spot until nearly 200 years ago] has a long and rich history, playing an important part in the freedom of Boston during the War of Independence. Established in 1654 [actually, that’s four decades before the earliest reference][add comma] The the Green Dragon was a favorite haunt of Paul Revere (Wwhom [but points for using the objective pronoun] we consider a close Nneighbor [even though he lived on the other side of the North End]) and John Hancock [he attended very few lodge meetings after accepting membership] (who’s whose brother lived next door! [if you have to treat Ebenezer Hancock as a celebrity, you’re stretching]). Indeed, as has been ratified [I do not think this word means what you think it means] by Daniel Webster – the famous historian [he was famous as an attorney, senator, and secretary of state], [choose either em-dashes or commas for apposite phrases, not one of each] that it was in the Green Dragon that the plans for the invasion [pretty strong word for the British government sending British soldiers to part of the British Empire] of Lexington and Concorde Concord were overheard [so British officials and military commanders were hanging out with the radical activists in this tavern? I don’t think so. And that’s not even what the myth says.] [add comma] thus starting the famous ride of Paul Revere.

In fact, Revere said he had his committee of observers stop meeting at the Green Dragon in late 1774 after hearing from someone—quite possibly Henry Knox—that their activities were known to the royal authorities. That doesn’t make the original Green Dragon Tavern any less historic, of course. And it doesn’t make the current one any more so.

The Myth of Sam Ballard and the Green Dragon Tavern

In Old Boston Days and Ways (1909), Mary Caroline Crawford published what she called “A brand new and not uninteresting explanation of the celerity with which the news [of the planned British march to Concord] reached [Paul] Revere.”

Crawford’s source was “Mrs. E. Corinna Wheeler, an aged lady still living in Boston,” who had heard the story from her mother. Wheeler’s mother, I’ve found, was Rachel (Ellis) Ayer, said to be born in Boston on 12 Feb 1804. Wheeler said that Ayer in turn had heard the story from her grandmother, Lydia Lewis, born Lydia Ballard about 1760.

And the tale:

It was to her brother, a bright Yankee boy, Sam Ballard by name, that the intelligence of the Committee of Safety was due. . . .

It was a great thing in those times for the boys to hang about the inn doors to pick up a few shillings and sixpences by holding horses, while their owners went inside for a drink. On the week before the eighteenth my great-great-uncle, then a boy of thirteen, overheard in this way the conversation of two British officers. That conversation was important. For they talked of the plan to capture [John] Hancock and [Samuel] Adams.

Sam went immediately with his news to the landlord of the Green Dragon [Tavern, shown above], and he informed the Committee of Safety which had its meetings in an upper room of that tavern. Acting on this information the committee appointed a spy to hide in the rooms where the British held their councils. The spy learned the rest. Then the committee held another meeting and planned the ride of Paul Revere.

But on the night of the eighteenth the committee was carefully watched, for the British were determined that they should not do the very thing they accomplished,—that is, get news of the march to Lexington and Concord. The committee did not dare to venture out, but somehow they must send word to Revere. It suddenly occurred to Dr. [Joseph] Warren that no suspicion would be aroused to see a boy running up the causeway from the Green Dragon to Revere’s house. So, about ten o’clock, he despatched that same thirteen year old Sam Ballard to carry the message to Paul Revere!

This is a classic “grandmother’s tale,” my term for a story told by an older relative (usually female) to entertain and inspire the children in her care, probably not expecting it ever to leave the household. But those children grow up believing the tale is (a) entirely true, and (b) of national importance.

The legend of Sam Ballard is also an example of what I’ve called “memory creep.” It appears to have been inspired by the anecdote of John Ballard that I analyzed yesterday, but it got better with:

• a lot more name-dropping: Hancock! Adams! Green Dragon! Paul Revere! Dr. Warren!
• the listeners’ ancestor put at the center of the action: Sam Ballard not only overhears the British officers, but also brings that news to the Patriots himself, and finally carries Warren’s orders to Revere.

Indeed, one starts to suspect that if the storyteller had seen a way to have young Sam “hide in the rooms where the British held their councils,” she would have included that detail, too.

Furthermore, there are a lot of details that reflect a casual late-nineteenth-century understanding of Revolutionary Boston rather than the historical record.

• Gen. Thomas Gage never made a “plan to capture Hancock and Adams”; his mission was entirely aimed at seizing cannon and other matérial in Concord. Any spy who was really in the British council room would have had better intelligence.
• The “Committee of Safety” was part of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, and met outside of Boston, never in the upper room of the Green Dragon.
• The “ride of Paul Revere” was improvised, not planned. 
• By their own accounts, many Boston Patriots did “dare to venture out” on 18 Apr 1775. We have Revere’s recollection, for example. Dr. Warren’s professional daybook shows two transactions on that date. William Dawes rode out of town. Col. Percy reported hearing local men discuss the march on the Common at night, so somebody must have been up and about.

Finally, I can’t find any record of a girl named Lydia Ballard being born in Boston around 1760, or a boy named Samuel Ballard being born there around 1762. The town’s records are very spotty, but it still would have been nice to have some evidence Sam Ballard even existed besides a story set down over 125 years after the fact.

For a brief time authors accepted the tale of Sam Ballard—it was featured in the New York Times review of Crawford’s book. But historians found this legend not to be credible and stopped incorporating it into their recreations of events. It survives today only on the placemats of today’s Green Dragon Tavern, which has no connection to the establishment that existed in 1775.

Capt. Ponsonby Molesworth: officer, Freemason

Vast Public Indifference recently featured the name of Capt. Ponsonby Molesworth of His Majesty’s 29th Regiment of Foot. And that’s quite a name to feature.

Molesworth arrived in Boston in October 1768 and—according to family legend—promptly fell in love with a teenaged girl named Susannah Sheaffe. I thought I’d look for more details about him.

Fortunately, it’s easier to find information about someone named Ponsonby Molesworth than someone named, say, James Hall. Or, rather, it’s easier to determine that the information one finds applies to the right Ponsonby Molesworth.

Our Molesworth was baptized on 14 May 1744 at the church of Saint Peter and Saint Kevin in Dublin. He came from a political family that for generations represented Swords in the Irish House of Commons. Obviously, the baby was named to honor a fellow M.P. named John Ponsonby (shown here, courtesy of Wikipedia), who became speaker of that house. (Eventually the baby’s half-aunt Louise would marry the speaker’s son William, one of the most powerful Irish politicians of the late 1700s and the first Baron Ponsonby.)

Our Ponsonby Molesworth was the fifth of six sons, so he wasn’t going to inherit his father’s seat or money. That made the army a good career.

I first spotted Capt. Molesworth’s name on the rolls for the 29th Regiment because his company included Cpl. William Wemys (also spelled Wemms and Wymes), one of the men tried for the Boston Massacre. Wemms appears to have come into the regiment after April 1769. The captain’s administrative skills were haphazard enough that the rolls list Wemms as in prison starting in late 1769, but in fact he was jailed only from March to November 1770.

Capt. Molesworth’s name also appears in connection with Boston’s Freemasons. When the British troops arrived, the town’s two Masonic lodges were arguing over legitimacy. The St. John’s Lodge (Moderns) refused to recognize the St. Andrew’s Lodge (Ancients). On 30 Nov 1768 St. Andrew’s voted to consider petitioning the Grand Lodge of Scotland for permission to appoint a Grand Master of all Ancient Masons in America.

A St. Andrew’s committee met with the Ancient lodges in the 14th, 29th, and 64th regiments. Eventually, on 27 Dec 1769, the Grand Lodge of Ancient Masons was organized at a ceremony at the Green Dragon Tavern, owned by St. Andrew’s.

That gathering made Dr. Joseph Warren the Grand Master of all Ancient-Order Masons within a hundred miles of Boston. Among the many other officers chosen, Thomas Crafts became Grand Treasurer, Paul Revere Grand Deacon—and Capt. Ponsonby Molesworth Junior Grand Warden.

Thus, even after months of fights between Bostonians and British soldiers and officers, including one riot with Capt. Molesworthy in the middle, Masonic unity brought these men together.

TOMORROW: Capt. Ponsonby Molesworth falls in love.

The North End Caucus Mobilizes Against the Tea

So yesterday the North End Caucus—a group of more than sixty politically minded Bostonians—started meeting in 1772 to choose candidates for town offices. This appears to have been an outgrowth of an earlier, smaller, wealthier “Caucas Club.” That first year, the only times the North End Caucus met were just before town meetings in March and May, when Bostonians elected their officials and representatives to the General Court. The same pattern applied in early 1773. But then in late October a dire threat to British liberties loomed on the eastern horizon: tea.

On 23 Oct 1773 the North End Caucus assembled, elected shipwright Gibbons Sharp their moderator, and then:

Voted—That this body will oppose the vending any Tea, sent by the East India Company to any part of the Continent, with our lives and fortunes.

Voted—That there be a committee chosen to correspond with any Committee chosen in any part of the town, on this occation; and call this body together at any time they think necessary.—Paul Revere, Abiel Ruddock and John Lowell the Committee.

Revere was a well connected silversmith with some talent in engraving and dentistry. Ruddock was secretary of the caucus and heir to a late shipyard owner, John Ruddock. Lowell was a young lawyer (unless that was a different John Lowell). They thus represented the cross-section of their group: a well-established craftsman, a major employer, and a professional gentleman. [ADDENDUM, Dec 2008: I now believe this John Lowell was a thirty-three-year-old merchant from a Charlestown family, not a young lawyer. He had been part of a Boston town committee to promote a tea boycott in 1770.]

The North End Caucus met again on 2 November, for the first time gathering at the Green Dragon Tavern (shown above). This building had become the property of the St. Andrew’s Lodge of Freemasons a few years before, but it continued to function as a tavern. The group chose merchant Nathaniel Holmes as their moderator and then began issuing demands:

Voted—That a committee be chosen to wait upon the Committee of Correspondence of this town, and desire their attendance here. Committee, B[enjamin]. Kent, E[dward]. Proctor, and G[abriel]. Johonnot.

Voted—That a committee be chosen to wait on John Hancock, Esq. and desire him to meet with us. Committee, John Winthrop, Capt. [John] Matchet, and G. Johonnot.

Voted—That this body are determined that the Tea shipped or to be shipped by the East India Company shall not be landed.

Voted—That a committee be chosen to draw a resolution to be read to the Tea Consignees to-morrow 12 O’Clock, noon, at Liberty Tree: and that Dr. Thos. Young and [Dr. Benjamin] Church, and [Dr. Joseph] Warren, be a committee for that purpose, and make a report as soon as may be.

To deliver its messages to town officials and rich merchants, the caucus called only on its more genteel members: other merchants and professionals.

The next day the group gathered again at noon and voted to accept the recommendation of its committee of three doctors:

And the Committee reported as follows. viz. that Thos. and Elisha Hutchinson [the governor’s sons], R[ichard]. Clark & Sons, and Benjamin Faneuil [the tea consignees appointed in London], by neglecting to give satisfaction as their fellow-citizens justly expected from them in this hour, relative to their acceptance of an office destructive to this Community, have intolerably insulted this body, and in case they do not appear, forthwith, and satisfy their reasonable expectation, this body will look upon themselves warrented to esteem them enemies to their Country; and will not fail to make them feel the weight of their just resentment.

The caucus had lined up support from other activists, the town’s standing Committee of Correspondence, and the most popular young merchant around. It had given the tea consignees a chance to resign. Now the North End Caucus took their crusade “out of doors.” Instead of meeting privately, they summoned the people of Boston to a public meeting:

Voted—That Capt. Proctor, John Lowell, G. Johonnot, James Swan, John Winthrop and T[homas]. Chase be a committee to get a flag for Liberty Tree.

Voted that Thos. Hichborn and John Boit be a committee for posting up said notification.

Boston’s Whigs had made a habit of flying a flag at Liberty Tree to gather crowds in the late 1760s, but apparently that practice had fallen into abeyance since the North End Caucus needed to roust up another flag. Thomas Chase owned the distillery under Liberty Tree, and the rest of the men on his committee were merchants and professionals. In contrast, Thomas Hichborn was a boatbuilder and John Boit a shopkeeper—probably seen as more fitting for the actual work of putting up notices for this public meeting.

The North End Caucus thus started mobilizing against tea imports in October and was calling meetings in early November—weeks in advance of the arrival of the first tea. It appears that the caucus was pushing other local groups and institutions along. In addition, the first group to patrol the wharf where a tea ship docked was led by the caucus’s Capt. Proctor, and the first four volunteers and eight of the first eleven on his list were also members of the North End Caucus.

Sneaking a Peek at the Green Dragon

In 1765, the St. Andrew’s Lodge of Freemasons in Boston bought the Green Dragon Tavern on Union Street to use as a meeting-place. (Of course, they kept the liquor license. Starting in 1771, the bartender was Benjamin Burdick, Jr., otherwise busy as Constable of the Town-House Watch.) For a while the lodge tried to rename their building The Masons’ Arms, but the Green Dragon stuck because of the striking carved sign over the door.

Our visual image of the Green Dragon Tavern comes from a watercolor sketch by John Johnson or Johnston (c. 1753-1818), a Boston painter who served as an artillerist during the Revolutionary War. The original is owned by the American Antiquarian Society; I’m sharing a black and white thumbnail. Johnson’s most famous painting today is his portrait of William Dawes, Jr., now at the Evanston (Illinois) History Center, but he had steady work in the early republic. In the mid-1800s, I suspect, Johnson’s picture of the Green Dragon Tavern was the model for this engraving, showing the building from the same angle. The building itself disappeared in 1854.

The sketch is often dated to 1773, and for a fairly compelling reason: Johnson wrote that date on it, twice.

GREEN DRAGON TAVERN
Where we met to Plan the Consignment of afew Shiploads of Tea
Dec 16 1773
John Johnson
4 Water Street
Boston, Mass. 1773

I don’t think Johnson really painted the tavern in 1773, however. I think he tried to paint the building as he recalled it looking in that year, from the nostalgic perspective of the 1790s. My arguments:

• Johnson was only twenty in 1773, and thus not old enough to have been a member of the St. Andrew’s Lodge or involved in planning the Boston Tea Party. His caption was a collective claim.
• The Tea Party occurred eleven and a half months into 1773, leaving very little time for him to have painted the tavern in that year.
• Most important, destroying the tea was a secret, illegal action, and Johnson would have been foolhardy to caption his image with such a confession until after the war was settled.
• Boston addresses didn’t include street numbers until after the war.
• In front of the tavern Johnson drew three silhouettes in profile: a horse and chaise and two men talking. I think such silhouettes became fashionable in art as the century ended.

(Here’s a site offering a free paper model of the Green Dragon Tavern and other Revolutionary scenes—some assembly required.)

Dean Dillopolis Takes On John Hancock

The Superhero Historians blog is tackling the Boston Tea Party as its topic of the month. I’ve peeked in on this blog before, and have never been sure what to make of it. I like the idea of helping kids explore historical events in depth, of course. But the vocabulary and especially the syntax of some of these little essays seem rather advanced for readers who like cartoon animal superheroes like, um, Dean Dillopolis here. (Apparently he’s an armadillo.)

Some of the blog’s historical remarks seem a little overenthusiastic, as superheroes are apt to be. About John Hancock, Mr. Dillopolis says, “He also smuggled glass, lead, and tea on his ships.” We don’t actually know that, I think. The best documented smuggling accusation against Hancock—the Liberty case, involving wine—was eventually dropped by the Crown.

There’s incontrovertible evidence for smuggling by other merchants among the Massachusetts Whigs, such as Capt. Daniel Malcom, William Molineux, and Richard Derby, Sr., of Salem. Some shippers even bought insurance for trips to Holland or other forbidden zones. Some were caught by the Customs service and successfully prosecuted. So we can certainly say there was a lot of smuggling into Boston harbor. John Hancock’s fortune was undoubtedly based in part on smuggling, but that’s because his uncle engaged in the practice.

I think it’s likely that Hancock and his captains occasionally skirted Customs rules, too, but he doesn’t seem to have been desperate enough, or to have had the good business sense, to go into smuggling in a big way. Many writers on the Revolution have assumed otherwise, figuring that where there’s any smoke there must be fire. So it’s not surprising that Mr. Dillopolis would write so confidently.

As another example of a poor connection, Superhero Historian Barley Hugg told readers, “The Green Dragon Tavern is a working tavern today.” There’s indeed a tavern of that name in downtown Boston, but it has even less connection to the famous Freemasons’ lodge than the Cheers bar in Quincy Market has to the tavern Sam Malone owned; at least Cheers has an official merchandising license. The original Green Dragon fell to the wreckers two centuries ago. The present-day business is an Irish pub (hence the green), and Irishmen weren’t as populous or popular in colonial Boston.

The great thing about blogs, though, is that they can always change. Just in the last week, Superhero Historians took a big step by going without a favorable review that had come saddled with punctuation, spelling, and usage errors. (“Are you smarter than a 5th grader? Well you’re kids will be if they check this site out as their homepage.”) I’m all for quoting good reviews. [Another History Blog on Boston 1775: “Read it and you’ll see why I like J. L. Bell: he's not only smart and well-read, he can make anything interesting.”] But the editor in me insists that grammatical blurbs reflect better on the site that displays them. So now I plan to keep checking out Superhero Historians.

ADDENDUM: Pierce Hawking’s executive assistant at Superhero Historians, Mr. Norrett, alerts me that he’s clarified the blog’s description of the modern Green Dragon Tavern. Again, that’s what’s great about history on pixels—so easy to add updates. Like this here.