The Journey of Phillis Wheatley’s First Published Poem

As related in yesterday’s posting, a storm in September 1767 pushed a schooner packed with whale oil onto Cape Cod.

But that ship wasn’t lost, the cargo was preserved, and nobody died. Not much drama after all.

Nonetheless, the stories of two survivors—evidently Nantucketers Stephen Hussey and Richard Coffin—contained enough emotion to inspire John Wheatley’s enslaved teen-aged servant Phillis to write 24 lines of poetry (plus a prose interlude).

Titled “On Messrs. Hussey and Coffin,” that poem appeared in Samuel Hall’s Newport Mercury on 21 Dec 1767—the first recognized publication by Phillis Wheatley. You can read the lines here alongside Amelia Yeager’s essay about the publication for the Newport Historical Society.

David Waldstreicher starts his new study of the poet, The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley, with this poem and returns to it often as a touchstone of her work, particularly for her braiding of classical and Calvinist motifs and her ocean imagery.

The poem and its publication raise some small questions beyond the identity of the two men, discussed yesterday. One is why Hussey’s name appears first in the poem’s title and in the anecdote published with it in the newspaper even though Coffin was the ship’s captain and the only person named in the reports of the grounding.

I suspect this was a matter of personality. Hussey seems to have been a sociable man, connecting the Boston and Nantucket business communities before the war; serving in Whig political gatherings; speaking for Nantucket businessmen to both the British and Patriot governments during the war (islanders wanted to stay neutral for both economic and religious reasons); and eventually taking a post with the federal Customs bureau. I suspect he just told the story better.

Another question is whether Phillis Wheatley and the family who owned her sought this publication. I think the answer to that is clear in how the poem appeared in the Boston Post-Boy when that newspaper reprinted it on 11 Jan 1768. The “Wheatley” name was eliminated:

• “belonging to one Mr. Wheatley of Boston” became “belonging to a Gentelman [sic] of Boston”
• “being at Mr. Wheatley’s, and, while at Dinner” became “being at Dinner”
• The name at the bottom of the poem changed from “Phillis Wheatley” to simply “PHILLIS.”

Obviously printers John Green and Joseph Russell thought the Wheatleys didn’t want their surname linked to the poem. They may even have heard directly from the family. However supportive of their protégée and property the Wheatleys became later, at the start of 1768 they were still reticent about what we’d call publicity.

I suspect that’s why this poem didn’t appear in a Boston newspaper until after it could be credited as “From the Newport Mercury.” John Wheatley was a wealthy merchant who occasionally advertised, the sort of gentleman local newspaper printers would want to keep happy.

Still, someone must have circulated the poem privately in manuscript for it to get from Boston to Newport. That might have been the Wheatleys, sharing the news among friends and expecting it to stay private. Conversely, the poem might have been spread by Hussey and Coffin within their Quaker network. (I doubt the teen poet had developed her own out-of-town network yet.)

I tested a couple of other possible explanations for the first publication in Rhode Island:

• Did the Newport Mercury run poetry while the Boston papers weren’t yet in that habit? No, Boston printers shared a lot of poems in the 1760s.
• Was Capt. Coffin’s near-shipwreck bigger news in Rhode Island than in Boston since it involved a Nantucket ship? Not only is Nantucket closer to Newport, but both places had large Quaker communities. However, Samuel Hall didn’t pick up the Boston reports about the schooner grounding. (The Providence Gazette for 10 October did carry the second item, reporting Coffin’s ship was safe.*)

In the end, I think someone in Newport who didn’t know the Wheatleys learned about the poem and the story behind it, and asked the local printer to publish it. Hall in turn was beyond John Wheatley’s reach.

What would have prompted such a Newporter to send to poem to Hall? That person was clearly struck by how the author was “a Negro Girl,” and enslaved at that. That’s not merely a footnote to the poem; it’s in the preface, the implicit reason for printing it.

Even the name “Phillis Wheatley” at the bottom of the poem might be significant. Many other early publications credited the poet only by her first name. For example, Ezekiel Russell’s broadside of her elegy to the Rev. George Whitefield said: “By PHILLIS, a Servant Girl of 17 Years of Age, Belonging to Mr. J. WHEATLEY, of Boston.” By 1770 the Wheatley family had become comfortable having their names attached to such publications, but the prevailing style was still not to formally acknowledge enslaved people’s surnames.

Those details make me think whoever asked Hall to print the poem wanted readers of the Newport Mercury to know an enslaved girl had written it—and perhaps to see that that girl was an individual. And, though nothing about the presentation commented on the injustice of slavery, was it possible to avoid that thought?

(* In the database that I access through Genealogy Bank, the 10 October and 3 October Providence Gazettes are mushed together. Looks like something went wrong when they were photographed for microfilm.)

Press Coverage of the Owen Richards Riot

On 21 May 1770, Green and Russell’s Boston Post-Boy reported:

Last Friday Night Owen Richards, one of the Tidesmen belonging to the Custom-House, was Tarred, Feathered and Carted thro’ the Town for several hours, for having as ’tis said, given Information against a Connecticut Sloop which was Seized.

In contrast, the same day’s Boston Gazette from Edes and Gill said:

Last Friday Night one Richards, a Tide-Waiter, having ’tis said informed against a Connecticut Sloop, was tarred, feathered and carted thro’ the Town for two or three Hours.

No full name for the victim, no acknowledgement that the ship had actually been judged to be smuggling, and an ordeal of “two or three Hours” instead of “several.” 

Here are three more items from the newspapers reporting on different legal fallout from the 18 May 1770 attack on Richards.

In the Boston Post-Boy, 28 May:

At a Council held at the Council-Chamber on Monday last, His Honor the Lieutenant-Governor [Thomas Hutchinson], with the Advice of His Majesty’s Council, sent for His Majesty’s Justices of the Peace of in the Town of Boston, and enjoined them to meet, and make strict Examination into the Affair of taring, feathering & carting Owen Richards, as mentioned in our last, and to bind over such Persons, as shall appear to have been active in it, to answer the same in due Course of Law; and that in all Respects they pursue the Steps of the Law, in order to bring the Offenders to Justice.

The Same Day and the Day following His Majesty’s Justices met at the County Court-House, and sent for several Persons as Evidences, but could obtain no Intellgence of any one that was concerned.

In the Boston Post-Boy, 11 June:

Court of Vice-Admiralty
at Boston, June 2, 1770.

ALL Persons claiming Property in the Schooner Martin, and 17 Hogsheads, 4 Tierces and 2 Barrels of Brown Sugar, seized for Breach of the Acts of Trade, are hereby notified to appear at a Court of Vice-Admiralty to be held at Boston, on the 13th Day of June instant, at Ten o’Clock beforenoon, to shew cause, (if any they have) why the said Schooner and Sugar should not be decreed to remain forfeit pursuant to an Information filed in said Court for that purpose.

By Order of Court, Ezekiel Price, D. Reg’r.

That was the ship Richards had seized for the Customs office.

Finally, the Boston Gazette on 24 December (250 years ago today):

One Owen Richards, a petty Officer in the Customs, who was tarred and feather’d some Months ago, we hear has commenced an Action of Damage for Three Hundred Pounds lawful Money, against a young Gentleman of this Town, whose family Connections are among the better sort of folks, the friends of Government.

This Lad was taken by a single Writ and held to Bail—Upon his application to several of his near relations who are persons of fortune, to become sureties for him, we are told, they absolutely refus’d. But others had compassion upon him; for two Gentlemen were bound for his Appearance at Court.

I haven’t yet figured out who this young man might be. It’s striking how Edes and Gill criticized his relations for not bailing him out for an assault they presumably disapproved of on both personal and political grounds.

COMING UP: The court cases.

“My Eyes never beheld such a funeral”

Yesterday I described how the Boston Whigs prepared for young Christopher Seider’s funeral procession on Monday, 26 Feb 1770.

The first newspaper published after that date was the 1 March Boston News-Letter, and it reported on the event this way:

a great Multitude of People assembled in the Houses and Streets to see the Funeral Procession;—it began about 3 o’clock from Liberty-Tree, (the Dwelling-House of the Parents of the deceased being but at a little distance from thence) the Boys from the several Schools, supposed to be between 4 and 500, preceded the Corps in Couples;—after the sorrowful Relatives and particular Friends of the Youth, followed many of the principal Gentlemen and a great Number of other respectable Inhabitants of this Town, by Computation exceeding 1300; about 30 Chariots, Chaises, &c. closed the Procession:

Throughout the Whole there appeared the greatest Solemnity and good Order, and by as numerous a Train as was ever known here.

Richard Draper at the News-Letter had evidently received complaints about his first report on the shooting, composed as the event unfolded, not condemning Ebenezer Richardson as much as people wanted. So this issue had more criticism of Richardson and mourning for his victim.

The Whigs supplied a longer, even more slanted report on the funeral to two Monday newspapers, the Boston Gazette and Boston Evening-Post. (The Boston Post-Boy printers, Green and Russell, had already stated, “We are extremely cautious of publishing any thing which may raise a Prejudice in the Minds of People” while a trial was in the offing.)

The Boston Whigs insisted that “About Five Hundred School boys” led the procession of, “in the Estimation of good Judges, at least Two Thousand of all Ranks, amidst a Crowd of Spectators.” Merchant John Rowe agreed with the latter number, which would be the equivalent of one of every eight people in Boston.

John Adams, having ridden to Boston from legal business in Weymouth, wrote in his diary:

When I came into Town, I saw a vast Collection of People, near Liberty Tree—enquired and found the funeral of the Child, lately kill’d by Richardson was to be attended. Went into Mr. Rowes, and warmed me, and then went out with him to the Funeral, a vast Number of Boys walked before the Coffin, a vast Number of Women and Men after it, and a Number of Carriages. My Eyes never beheld such a funeral. The Procession extended further than can be well imagined.

This Shewes, there are many more Lives to spend if wanted in the Service of their Country. It Shews, too that the Faction is not yet expiring—that the Ardor of the People is not to be quelled by the Slaughter of one Child and the Wounding of another.

The Rev. William Gordon later wrote that the procession was a quarter-mile long. It ended at what is now called the Granary Burying-Ground, and the small coffin was placed in a tomb owned by the town of Boston.

In the newspapers, the Whigs declared of Christopher Seider:

His tragical Death and the peculiar Circumstances attending had touched the Breasts of all with the tenderest Sympathy, a few only excepted, who have long shown themselves void of the Feelings of Humanity.

Tributes continued. Phillis Wheatley wrote a poem, “On the Death of Mr. Snider Murder’d by Richardson.” The Boston Gazette assured the public that

a Monument will be erected over the Grave of young Snider, with an Inscription, to perpetuate his Memory; A Number of patriotic Gentlemen having generously subscrib’d for that Purpose…the Overplus Money, if any, will be given to the Parents.

No such monument was built. Over a year later, in the 21 Mar 1771 Massachusetts Spy, a writer asked what happened to “the Money so collected.” That letter said the man who had collected the cash was “a Gentleman who had a considerable share in the popular transactions of the year past”—which sounds like William Molineux. By then he was developing money troubles.

The Whigs’ report on the Seider funeral appeared in the Boston Gazette and Boston Evening-Post on Monday, the 5th of March. The passionate description no doubt shaped the public mood that day and evening, which culminated in the Boston Massacre. Those deaths overshadowed Christopher Seider’s, and soon there were five more bodies in the tomb where his coffin lay.

[Photo from the Granary Burying Ground in winter courtesy of Boston Ghosts tours.]

“Having made Seizure of a Sloop named the Sally”

As I’ve been relating, July of 1769 was not a good month for the royal Customs service in New England.

On 19 July, a Newport mob had ruined the Customs patrol ship Liberty after threatening its captain and crew. The next day, with no armed vessel to stop them, sailors “rescued” a sloop named Sally that the Liberty had seized. The captain of another ship detained at the same time, the brig Thames, successfully demanded that his vessel be released for lack of evidence.

On 25 July, a smaller mob in New London beat up one Customs officer and intimidated others. And on 31 July, the hull of the Liberty caught fire and burned to the waterline, rendering it beyond repair.

It took a while for the Commissioners of Customs in Boston to respond, but in August they made a move. On 14 August this advertisement appeared in the Newport Mercury:

WHEREAS William Reid Commander of the Sloop Liberty, employed in the Service of his Majesty’s Customs, having made Seizure of a Sloop named the Sally, Edward Finker Master, belonging to New-London, loaded with a Cargo of prohibited Goods, carried the same into the Harbour of Newport, Rhode Island, where a great Number of People, riotously and tumultuously assembled together, in the Evening of the 19th of July last, and having, by Force and Arms, attacked and secured the said Captain Reid and his Men, and taken Possession of both Vessels; they set Fire to, and sank the Liberty, and carried off the Sloop Sally:

For the apprehending, and bringing to condign Punishment, the Persons concerned in this daring and atrocious Outrage, The Commissioners of his Majesty’s Customs do hereby promise a Reward of One Hundred Pounds Sterling, to any Person or Persons who shall inform against any of the Offender or Offenders (except Nathaniel Shaw, Joseph Packwood and —— Angel;) to be paid on his or their Conviction.

By Order of the Commissioners,
RICHARD REEVE, Sec’ry.

This advertisement and Capt. Reid’s report to the head office referred to the captain of the Sally as Edward Finker. However, other sources make clear his name was Edward Tinker. A handwriting error, or had he given the authorities a false name?

As for the other men named in the ad, Nathaniel Shaw, Jr., was the owner of the Thames and the Sally. Joseph Packwood was captain of the Thames. James Angel or Angell worked for Shaw as a captain after 1774; at this time he might have been a mate. The parenthetical phrase with their names is placed ambiguously, but I think the commissioners meant those three were ineligible for the reward since they had carried out the crime.

As good bureaucrats, the commissioners also set out to close the books on the Liberty project. On 4 September, this ad ran in the Boston Evening-Post:

All Persons who have any Demands for Stores, Carpenter’s Work, Provisions, &c. upon Account of the Sloop Liberty, lately employed in the Service of his Majesty’s Customs, are hereby desired to send in their Accounts forthwith to Messrs. Green & Russell, Printers at Boston. Sept. 2. 1769,

Green and Russell were the printers of the Boston Post-Boy, which got the bulk of the Customs office printing business—at least until John Mein came to town. It’s striking that they were collecting bills for work on the Liberty rather than the Customs staff, but probably more artisans felt safe walking into their print shop than into the Customs house on King Street.

According to Joseph R. Frese’s article, in all the Customs service paid £980 to fit out the Liberty as a patrol vessel, plus £371 for “maintenance.” To be sure, most of that money went to shipwright Robert Hallowell, brother of Customs Commissioner Benjamin Hallowell.

Then the Customs service caught a break—and a ship. The 11 September Boston Evening-Post reported:

We hear from Norwich, that last Wednesday se’nnight a small Sloop was seized there by Duncan Stewart, Esq; Collector at the Port of New London, upon information that it was the same Sloop lately seized by Capt. Reid, in the Sloop Liberty, and carried into Newport, and thence rescued.

The Customs service had the Sally in custody again.

TOMORROW: Nathaniel Shaw wanted his sloop back.

“The Occasion of the foregoing Proceedings at New-York”

In November 1768, New York newspapers went back and forth over the accuracy of their reports on an effigy-burning in that city.

Remarkably, the effigies were of two royal officials in Massachusetts: Gov. Francis Bernard and Sheriff Stephen Greenleaf. Since the people of Massachusetts had the most reason to care, how did the Boston press react to that event?

The first Boston newspaper to run the story was Richard Draper’s Boston News-Letter, which reprinted the New-York Journal’s initial article on 24 November. After that story came another news item from New York:

It is also said that among the Toasts drank at a Meeting of Ninety-two reputable Tradesmen at New-York, was the following, Confusion in General G[reenlea]fe, & Success to [John] Brown, the Brave Weaver of Boston.

Those toasts and the effigies showed that the Boston Whigs’ reports on the Manufactory siege had had the intended effect of riling up sympathetic Whigs in other parts of America. Draper leaned toward the Crown, so the News-Letter immediately took aim at the Whigs “Journal of Occurrences”:

Our Readers may be ignorant of the Occasion of the foregoing Proceedings at New-York, we would inform them that a Journal of the Proceedings in the Town of Boston since the first Arrival of Troops, with Remarks on many Paragraphs, are sent weekly there, and published in the New-York Gazette, which Journal has not been printed here, & only a Part in the Paper of any other Government.—The Articles in said Journal may properly be called INTELLIGENCE VERY EXTRAORDINARY—many of them being of an extraordinary Nature—some extraordinary New to People in this Town—some very true—and some very false.

Copies of the two newspapers called the New-York Gazette must have reached Boston shortly after that, casting doubt on the initial New-York Journal report. I haven’t found any mention of the effigy-burning in Edes and Gill’s Boston Gazette, the newspaper closest to the Whigs, so I’m guessing they decided the story was too hot to touch.

Instead, the 28 November Boston Gazette published a response to the News-Letter’s insinuations about the Whigs’ dispatches:

Messrs. Edes & Gill,

If Mr. Draper, or the elegant Editor of the Paragraph in his last Paper, respecting the JOURNAL published in New-York, can point out a single Instance of a false or unfair Representation of the Conduct of his Majesty’s Troops, or of any Person or Matter therein, taken Notice of, it is desired it may be done in the next Thursday’s Paper, otherwise Mr. Draper must be content to be looked upon as having attempted to deceive the Public, who have a Right to an immediate Recantation.

N.

Eventually the Whigs’ “Journal of Occurrences” spread word of the New York effigy-burning, but only out of town. That news item didn’t circle back to Boston for months.

The 28 November Boston Gazette also included a more florid description of the tradesmen’s gathering in New York, credited to a Philadelphia newspaper on 14 November (which I can’t access):

A Correspondent writes us from New-York, that at a late Meeting of Ninety-two respectable Tradesmen there, (who dined together on Beef-Stakes, and drank nothing but American Porter) they came to the Resolution of purchasing no British Manufactures of any Sort or Kind, ’till there is a Dissolution of the cowardly and treacherous Governor B——d’s Military-Civil Government in Boston, and Change of Measures relative to this Country in general—that they are determined never to rescind from their Resolution—and are persuaded there are not seventeen TRADESMEN in the whole Province, so lost to all Sense of Virtue and Love for their Country, as to dissent from them in Opinion.—And that among a Number of spirited and humorous Toasts, characteristic of British Independence, they gave—Confusion to General G—nl—fe, and Success to Brown, the brave Weaver of Boston.

The emphasis on the ninety-two diners, the no more than seventeen who might dissent, and the word “rescind” all alluded to the previous big bone of contention in Massachusetts politics, the Circular Letter. The early summer of 1768 must have seemed so far away by then.

Green and Russell’s Boston Post-Boy had the last word on the effigies, in their 5 December issue:

His Excellency Sir HENRY MOORE, Governor of New-York, has, with the unanimous Advice of His Majesty’s Council, issued a Proclamation offering a Reward of £50 to any Person who shall discover any of the Rioters, who on the Evening of the 14th ult. [i.e., of last month] carried about certain Figures or Effigies, & burnt the same near the Merchants Coffee-House in that City.

The official record of that reward, quoted yesterday, didn’t actually mention effigies or the Merchants’ Coffee-House, just a general riot. But even with imperfect, politically shaped journalism, everyone knew what the governor was talking about.

“Pre-Revolutionary Newspaper Wars” in Jamaica Plain, 4 Dec.

On Tuesday, 4 December, I’ll speak at the Loring-Greenough House in Jamaica Plain on the topic of “Boston’s Pre-Revolutionary Newspaper Wars (and What They May Tell Us About Today’s News Media).”

This is part of the site’s “Tuesday in the Parlor” lecture series. Here’s the description we came up with:

In the period leading up to the Revolution, colonial journalists produced a lively array of print publications aimed at keeping the populace informed about—or inflamed by—the political news of the day.

On the left were The Boston Gazette and The Massachusetts Spy while The Boston News-Letter, The Boston Chronicle, and Boston Weekly Post-Boy espoused viewpoints from the right. The Boston Evening-Post tried to maintain a centrist voice. The newspaper business could be a nasty and dangerous one, prompting rivalries between printers and occasional violence.

Join us for J. L. Bell’s enlightening talk about the how America’s early news medium operated in the volatile pre-Revolutionary environment and the significance of this history for today’s information media.

We’re scheduled to start promptly at 7:00 P.M. After the talk, there will be a book signing and light refreshments.

Tickets for this event are $5 for members of the Loring-Greenhough House and $10 for the public, plus a small processing fee to Eventbrite. Folks who join now will of course enjoy discounted tickets for events all the coming year.

“Evidence that his country was once as ours is”

In 1838 a contributor to the Southern Literary Messenger who signed himself (or, less likely, herself) “J.A.” set out to fill column inches by describing two “Relics of the Olden Time,” as the headline had it. Both were in the hands of “A gentleman in the county of Albemarle,” Virginia.

The first was a copy of Henry Pelham’s engraving of the Boston Massacre, shown here. The second was a copy of Green and Russell’s Boston Post-Boy for 27 June 1768, with news of John Wilkes’s election in London, the Circular Letter, and the Virginia House of Burgesses’ response to it.

But it’s clear from the space the correspondent devoted that the real interest lay in that newspaper’s advertisements about escaped slaves and slave sales. The magazine quoted three ads in full, concluding with this one, which ran in the other Boston newspapers as well:

On Thursday next, 30th Inst, at Three O’clock Afternoon, Will be sold by Public Vendue, at the Auction Room in Queen Street, A Variety of GOODS, among which are, Irish Linnens, Calicoes, Lutestrings, black Sattins, black corded Silk, stripe Hollands, Kenting Handkerchiefs, Scotch Threads, Dowlass, Duroys, Druggets, Breeches Patterns, Men’s and Women’s fine Cotton Hose, Felt Hats, Men’s and Women’s Saddles, Portmanteaus, Housings and Holsters, Cases with 15 Bottles, a Cask of very good Indigo; also a Negro Girl, 13 years old.
J. Russel, Auctioneer.

At Private SALE, Two Pipes of Sterling Madeira, a Negro Man 40 years of age, a Boy of 14, and two Girls about 12 Years of Age, a second-hand Chaise and Harness, and sundry riding Habits, trimm’d with Gold and Silver Lace.

“J.A.” then commented:

Men, boys, and girls, classed among ‘GOODS’s!!–and this, not in New Orleans—not in Charleston—not in Richmond: but in Boston!

‘But,’ some “philanthropist” may say, on seeing this evidence that his country was once as ours is, ‘we have put away that evil from us. We declared a general emancipation in 1780.’

And how many of that species of GOODS did Massachusetts have, at that time? Why, not quite five thousand. Virginia has little, if any fewer than five HUNDRED thousand: just an hundred for one! How could she follow the example of her northern sister? Other considerations, make the contrast, and the impossibility, yet more striking: the difference of climate; and the inmensely greater disproportion of the whites to the blacks (in Massachusetts sixty to one; in Virginia not two to one.)

The facts here presented are designed to rebuke only the intermeddlers—not the rational and forbearing part—of the northern people. I am among those who believe the latter sort to be a majority there; not only in numbers, but still more in virtue and intelligence.

I believe today we’d call that article “trolling.”

“The most early advice of this interesting event”

One of the earliest public accounts of the Boston Tea Party was written on 17 Dec 1773, the day after the event, but not published until it appeared in a New York newspaper on 22 December. Here’s the text from the 27 December Pennsylvania Chronicle:

Gentlemen,

Yesterd we had a greater meeting of the body than ever. The country coming in from twenty miles around, and every step was taken that was practicable for returning the teas. The moment it was known out of doors, that Mr. [Francis] Rotch could not obtain a pass for his ship, by the Castle, a number of people huzzaed in the street, and in a very little time, every ounce of the teas on board of Capts. [James] Hall, [James] Bruce, and [Hezekiah] Coffin, was immersed in the Bay, without the least damage to private property.

The Spirit of the people on this occasion surprised all parties, who viewed the scene.

We conceived it our duty to accord you the most early advice of this interesting event, by express, which, departing immediately, obliges us to conclude.

By Order of the Committee.

P.S. The other vessel, viz. Capt. [Joseph] Loring, belonging to Messrs. [Richard and Jonathan] Clark, with fifty-eight chests, was, by the act of God, cast on shore, on the back of Cape-Cod.

This letter was clearly written by Boston’s anti-tea activists to their counterparts in New York. The ports to the south had gotten ahead of Boston in ensuring the tea was shipped back to Britain, confiscated, or burned. In Massachusetts, Gov. Thomas Hutchinson and the Customs service had cut off those possibilities. The Boston Whigs were reported that they had caught up.

This letter leaves out a detail that’s crucial to our national image of the Tea Party. It implies that the “number of people [who] huzzaed in the street” were responsible for destroying the tea, but it never states that they were disguised—much less disguised as Indians.

Another early report in the 18 December Providence Gazette was even more explicit about who destroyed the tea:

By a Gentleman from Boston we learn,…on Thursday Evening the Populace assembled, and proceeded to the Long-Wharff, where they threw a great Quantity of the Tea overboard, destroyed what remained, and then dispersed. The Quantity shipped in these two Vessels was about 300 Chests.—This is the best Account we have yet been able to obtain of this very interesting Event.

There were three vessels, and they were at Griffin’s Wharf, so this gentleman’s information wasn’t accurate. But for this discussion the pertinent detail is that he blamed “the Populace” rather than outsiders with paint on their faces.

By Monday, 20 December, when the Boston Gazette was published, the town’s political leaders were making sure to give themselves cover. One page before the account I quoted yesterday, Edes and Gill’s newspaper carried a long description of the event over the signature “An Impartial Observer.” That writer claimed that he had “accidentally arrived at Boston upon a visit to a friend” just before the tea meetings started. That’s almost certainly false. The whole letter lays out how the Boston Whigs wanted people to perceive the event.

Here’s how “An Impartial Observer” described the end of the tea meeting:

Previous to the dissolution, a number of persons, supposed to be the Aboriginal Natives from their complection, approaching near the door of the Assembly, gave the War Whoop, which was answered by a few in the galleries of the house where the assembly was convened; silence was commanded, and a prudent and peaceable deportment again enjoined: The Savages repaired to the ships which entertained the pestilential Teas, and had began their ravage previous to the dissolution of the meeting

This account put on record that the destruction of the tea began before the meeting at Old South Meeting-House ended. That meant everyone inside Old South, including the political organizers visible at the center of the room, had an airtight alibi during the actual property destruction. In addition, this writer insisted that the meeting returned to being “prudent and peaceable” after only a brief disturbance.

This Gazette article called the tea destroyers “Aboriginal Natives” and “Savages.” Likewise, the same day’s Boston Post-Boy declared that they were “a Number of very dark complexioned Persons (dressed like Mohawks or Indians),” as I quoted yesterday. Yet that striking detail was not part of the very first reports to other towns.

TOMORROW: Paint and plausible deniability.

Gov. Bernard’s Book of Poetry

In 1760 George III ascended to the throne of Great Britain, and the following year he married Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.

Also in 1760, Francis Bernard (shown here) became governor of Massachusetts, coming from the same post in New Jersey.

His career dependent on making a good impression in London, Bernard started sucking up to the king and the new royal establishment. He proposed that Harvard College run a contest for the best poems about George III, his new bride, and the death of his grandfather, George II.

According to the 1855 Cyclopaedia of American Literature:

A proposal was set up in the college chapel inviting competition on these themes from undergraduates, or those who had taken a degree within seven years, for six guinea prizes to be given for the best Latin oration, Latin poem in hexameters, Latin elegy in hexameters and pentameters, Latin ode, English poem in long verse, and English ode.

Oxford and Cambridge had similar competitions, which was no doubt where Bernard got the idea.

The resulting best poems were collected with some prose addresses as Pietas et Gratulatio Collegii Cantabrigiensis apud Novanglos. The print shop of Green and Russell produced a handsome volume at quarto size, and in early 1762 the college corporation voted to send a presentation copy to the king himself. The Cyclopaedia says George III “does not appear to have made any special acknowledgment of it.”

There was a generally positive review of Pietas et Gratulatio in the July 1763 Monthly Review in London, though the praise was sometimes faint:

It must be acknowledged, after all, that this New England collection, like other publick offerings of the same kind, contains many indifferent performances; but these, though they can not be so well excused when they come from ancient and established seats of learning, may, at least, be connived at here; and what we could not endure from an illustrious university, we can easily pardon in an infant seminary.

The original volume didn’t identify any authors of the poems, but a number of copies with credits written in by hand circulated around Massachusetts. A detailed retrospective in the Monthly Anthology for June, 1809, used a copy owned by Harvard professor Stephen Sewall to identify the poets, including himself.

That article stated that the English poem numbered “XXIX.” was by “Thomas Oliver, afterwards judge and lieutenant governour.” A number of literary reference books repeated that information over the next century.

Since I was studying Lt. Gov. Oliver for my talk on Thursday, I was struck by this attribution. Because nothing else I’d read about Oliver suggested he was at all interested in poetry.

TOMORROW: Digging deeper.

“The old Year is past”

Continuing a Boston 1775 tradition, here is a “carrier address” from the turn of the year 1766. That was a bit of poetry that printers’ workers wrote, printed, and carried around in their quest for tips at the start of a new year.

New-Year’s Wish
From the Carrier of the Boston Post-Boy, &c.

GEN’ROUS Customers, I run
To serve you as I begun,
With the freshest of News from the Press;
In Hot, and in Cold,
With News, new and old
I readily shall you address.
Ah! the Times are hard,
But we’ll pay no regard
To the Stamps, Mobs, Devils, or Popes;
The freedom of Press
Will gain the Success,
And fully Accomplish our Hopes.---
The old Year is past,
The new come at last;
I wish you full Bumpers, and Bowls,
With every Thing good,
Which serveth for Food
For your Bodies, as well as your Souls,
Then while you are Eating,
And each other greeting,
With Things which you richly enjoy,
Pray freely dispense
Of some Shillings or Pence,
To your faithfull unwearied Boy.

John Green’s View of the Massacre

On 24 Mar 1770, five days after a draft of Boston’s report on the Massacre was submitted to the town meeting, justices of the peace John Ruddock and John Hill quizzed John Green about what he’d seen on the night of the 5th.

I spent some time earlier this week trying to figure out who John Green was, and this is my best guess. He was descended from a line of three Bartholomew Greens. His great-grandfather and grandfather were both newspaper printers, and his uncle John (1731-87) was still in that business as co-publisher of the Boston Post-Boy until 1773. But, as Isaiah Thomas described, John Green’s father had carved out his own niche:

Bartholomew, the eldest [son]…, never had a press of his own. The following peculiarity in his character introduced him to a particular intercourse with the merchants of the town; he made himself so well acquainted with every vessel which sailed out of the port of Boston, as to know each at sight. Perpetually on the watch, as soon as a vessel could be discovered with a spyglass in the harbor, he knew it, and gave immediate information to the owner; and, by the small fees for this kind of information, he principally maintained himself for several years. Afterwards he had some office in the custom house.

John’s ship-spotting father Bartholomew looked after the Customs office on King Street, with his unmarried daughter Ann helping out. The printer John Green also had ties to the Customs service; its officials granted him printing contracts, and his newspaper tended to support the royal government.

The younger John and his brother Hammond, who had been given their grandmother’s maiden name and was legally a “boat-builder,” both went to the Customs office on the evening of 5 Mar 1770, probably to make sure their relatives were all right. This is how John later described his experience to the magistrates in a deposition:

I, John Green, of lawful age, testify and say, that on Monday evening the 5th instant [i.e., of this month], just after nine o’clock, I went into the Custom-house, and saw in the kitchen of said house two boys [Edward Garrick and Bartholomew Broaders] belonging to Mr. [John] Piemont the barber, and also my brother Hammond Green;

upon hearing an huzzaing and the bell ring, I went out, and there were but four or five boys in King street near the sentinel [Pvt. Hugh White], who was muttering and growling, and seemed very mad. I saw Edward Garrick who was crying, and told his fellow-apprentice that the sentinel had struck him.

I then went as far as the Brazen-Head [importer William Jackson’s shop sign], and heard the people huzzaing by Murray’s barrack [rented to the army by James Murray on behalf of his sister Elizabeth Smith], I went down King-street again, as far as the corner of Royal Exchange lane, by the sentry, there being about forty or fifty people, chiefly boys, near the Custom-house, but saw no person insult, or say anything to the sentry; I then said to Bartholomew Broaders, these words, viz.: the sentry (then standing on the steps and loading his gun), is going to fire;

upon which I went to the Custom-house gate and tried to get over the gate, but could not; whilst standing there, I saw [Customs tide waiter] Thomas Greenwood upon the fence, to whom I said, open the gate; he said that he would not let his [own] father in, and then jumped down into the lane and said to the deponent, follow me; upon which I went down the lane with him, and round by the Post-office, to the main-guard;

he went into the guard-house and said, turn out the guard, but the guard was out before, and I heard that a party was gone to the Custom-house; I then heard the guns go off, one after another, and saw three persons fall;

immediately after, a negro drummer [of the 29th regiment] beat to arms, upon that the soldiers drew up in a rank (and I did not see Greenwood again, until the next morning), after that I saw the 29th regiment drawn up in a square, at the south-west corner of the Town-house; soon after I went home; and further I say not

When John Green testified, Boston officials suspected that Customs service employees had killed people in the crowd by firing guns from an upper window of the building. Green’s brother Hammond and Thomas Greenwood were indicted for murder—despite Green putting Greenwood at the guard-house when the shooting started.

At the end of the year those two men stood trial alongside Customs official Edward Manwaring and notary John Munro, all accused on the basis of dubious testimony from a teen-aged servant named Charles Bourgate. They were quickly acquitted.

The statements of John Green, his relatives, and Thomas Greenwood fit well together and also match testimony from other witnesses, unrelated and unindicted. Those accounts helped to inform the script of tonight’s reenactment of the Boston Massacre outside the Old State House.

Revisiting the Long Room Club

As long as I’m discussing how Boston’s pre-Revolutionary Whigs organized, I should go back to the Long Room Club. Back in 2013 I said that:

• the earliest printed reference to this group was in Samuel Adams Drake’s Old Landmarks and Historic Personages of Boston (1873), which cited no source for that information.
• Drake’s list of members included two men too young to have been in the top political leadership of the 1770s or before, two from outside Boston, and a printer known for being politically centrist, not Whig.

A commenter kindly alerted me that Hannah Mather Crocker wrote about the Long Room Club before her death in 1829 in the manuscripts published in 2011 as Reminiscences and Traditions of Boston. Drake cited “Mrs. Crocker’s memoir” for other information in his book, so she was almost certainly his source on the Long Room Club as well.

Crocker left multiple overlapping manuscripts, which editors Eileen Hunt Botting and Sarah L. Houser assembled in one volume. All its mentions of the Long Room Club offer the same basic information. As Crocker understood it, the group was formed in 1762 by Samuel Adams. Members included:

[Benjamin] Edes and [John] Gill…, [John] Green and [Joseph] Russell…, [John] Hancock, James Otis, Samuel Dexter of Dedham…, Colonel James Warren of Plymouth, Dr. Joseph Warren, Dr. [Charles] Jarvis, Dr. [Benjamin] Church, the honorable Ben Austin…, Dr. Sam Cooper, William Cooper town clerk, Josiah Quincy…, Thomas Daws…, Mr. Sam Phillips Savage, Capt [Samuel] Partridge, Thomas Fleet, Royal Tyler, Samuel Whitewell, William Mollineaux, John Winthrop, Paul Revere, Adam Coulston, and Thomas Melvell—we think the only survivor of the Long Room Club.

Crocker credited the Long Room Club with opposing the policy to station soldiers in town in 1768 and determining to destroy the tea in 1773. She wrote that the club dissolved before the war, but the leaders “formed the first provincial congress.”

Drake listed fewer members than Crocker had, leaving out Green, Russell, Jarvis, Partridge, Austin, Whitwell, Molineux, and Colson, and listing only one Warren. Drake rendered Samuel Phillips Savage as Samuel Phillips and John Winthrop as John Winslow.

Crocker wrote, “The long room over the printing office was devoted to the use of a political society.” In both versions of that statement, the printers she had just written about were Green and Russell, who published the Boston Post-Boy until 1773. Drake interpreted Crocker to mean instead that the club met in a room over Edes and Gill’s print shop, which is how the story came down to us. But what if Crocker meant Green and Russell? They weren’t as politically active or radical, which would cast a different light on the organization.

Crocker may have gotten her information from Thomas Melvill. She called him “a standing monument of the Long Room Club and the only left to tell.” Yet Melvill was born in 1751, meaning he was only eleven when the group was reportedly founded and just twenty-four when it disbanded. Thus, although Melvill was an active young man in the Revolution and the war, he probably was never in the top echelon of the Whigs.

That still leaves questions about the accuracy of our information about the Long Room Club. Crocker’s manuscripts let us push back the earliest reference to it by about half a century, to a time when veterans of the Revolutionary War were still alive. But there are still a lot of odd details, and we’re still dependent on one fallible source. (The footnotes in Reminiscences and Traditions of Boston cite Esther Forbes’s Paul Revere and the World He Lived In as another source, but that book’s description of the Long Room Club matches Drake, who evidently relied on Crocker.)

Meeting John Fleeming

Earlier this year, E. J. Witek shared a three-part profile of John Fleeming, a Scottish printer in Boston during the years before the Revolution. He was the partner of John Mein, another immigrant from Scotland; Mein vociferously supported the royal government in 1768-1770 and was driven out of town. Fleeming never had mobs on his tail, but he was a natural Loyalist and left America in 1776.

Since I find myself unable to leave comments on Ed’s blog, I’m adding some responses to his profile here. On Fleeming’s marriage, Ed wrote:

Somehow, during all of this turmoil, Fleeming managed to find romance and on August 8, 1770, married Alice Church, sister of Dr Benjamin Church, Jr. The wedding took place in Portsmouth, N.H., perhaps to avoid any possible incidents since Fleeming’s flight to Castle William was still very recent. Given Benjamin Church’s prominence as a leader of the Whig camp, the prominence of the Church family in New England, and the fact that John Mein had lampooned  Church as “The Lean Apothecary”, this is an astonishing event.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, Massachusetts couples went to Portsmouth and other towns just over the New Hampshire border when they wanted to get married quickly with no questions asked. That doesn’t explain what questions this particular couple wanted to avoid. They were probably too old for parental disapproval, but perhaps there was a child well on the way. Notably, the other inexplicable marriage between vociferously Whig and Loyalist families—that of Ann Molineux and Ward Nicholas Boylston—also took place in New Hampshire.

Mein and Fleeming’s Boston Chronicle got a lot of ads from the Customs office, as well as news tips about which merchants were importing goods in possible violation of their boycott agreement. After that newspaper closed, Fleeming continued to cultivate that source of patronage:

He remained the stationer to the Customs Board and attempted to gain the printing contract as well. But he faced the determined resistance of John Green and Joseph Russell, the publishers of The Boston Weekly Advertiser who had been very supportive of the British Government and the Tory cause.

O. M. Dickerson’s 1951 article “British Control of American Newspapers on the Eve of the Revolution” explains how the Customs office contracts helped keep Green and Russell’s newspaper, usually called the Boston Post-Boy, and the Chronicle afloat. (Of course, Edes and Gill of the radical Boston Gazette benefited in the same way from being the town government’s favored printer.) Given that patronage relationship, it makes sense that, as Ed reports, Fleeming tried to land a job with the Customs service after his printing business failed.

TOMORROW: Fleeming’s most famous publication, and the man responsible for it.