Rewards Offered in 1798

As quoted yesterday, in July 1798 David Stoddard Greenough offered a “ONE DOLLAR REWARD” for the return of his teen-aged indentured servant Dick Welsh.

I wanted to know how that compared to rewards other newspaper advertisements announced for other people. So I looked up the word “reward” in Massachusetts newspapers from June and July 1798.

Here’s what advertisements offered for people of different sorts, sorted from smallest reward to largest:

• John Scofield, 19 years old, indented to John Neat, Boston: 1¢.
• Eber Potter, 15, indented to Eliel Gilbert, Greenfield: 1¢.
• Stephen Mulforde, 13, indented to Daniel Pepper, Boston: 1¢.
• Elisha Roberts, 16, indented to cordwainer Enoch Mower, Lynn: 1¢.
• Silas Nowell, boy, indented to printer Edmund M. Blunt, Newburyport: 5¢.
• Jacob Phelps, 16, indented to Jonathan Whitney: 6¢.
• Joseph Larrabee, 19, indented to John Newhall, Lynn: 20¢.
• John Sturgis, 16, from the sloop Nancy: $4.
• Walter Spooner Belcher, 18, indented to carpenter Marlborough Ripley: $5.
• John Holbrook, 22, and Ebenezer Hollis, 20, soldiers deserting from Castle Island: $8.
• Prince, 20, enslaved to Joseph Willcox, 2d, Killingworth, Connecticut: $10.
• Ebenezer Buckling, 19, indented to papermaker Hugh McLean, Milton: $20.
• John Barton, adult, sailor who had taken $20 advance pay from Capt. Stephen Curtis: $20.
• John Wilcot, adult, accused of stealing a horse from Caleb Easty: $50 for man and horse, $30 for horse and tackle alone.
• Frank, 25, sailor enslaved to Elijah Grinnelds of Virginia: $50.
• Joseph Haslett, adult, suspected forger: $100.

Greenough’s one-dollar reward for Dick Welsh was much more than some masters offered for their missing apprentices, but that probably reflected Greenough’s wish to be seen as a wealthy landed gentleman. He could afford to toss out a dollar where other men offered only a penny.

Nonetheless, Greenough’s message was probably the same as that from Neat, Gilbert, and the other masters at the top of the list above: this runaway is worthless, and I bought this newspaper notice only as a legality and to make life on the run more difficult for the lad.

For pocketbooks, horses, watches, and other property, people offered substantial rewards—sometimes for the goods alone, sometimes more for the goods and the thieves. Greenough himself advertised a $50 reward in May 1791 for thieves who had broken into his house and stolen a lot of gold and silver items. For people who could just walk away again, not so much.

It’s notable that masters were willing to pay far more for enslaved workers than apprentices. After all, those black men had taken many more years of free labor away with them. Not until the case of the slave-child Med in 1836 did Massachusetts law hold that people enslaved in other states became free if their owners brought them into the commonwealth.

One last observation: Ebenezer Buckling must have learned a lot of the valuable trade of papermaking to be worth $20.

Unpaid Taxes and a Stolen Horse

As I said yesterday, I searched Massachusetts newspapers for any mention of the Quock Walker cases in July 1783 or any other month of that and preceding years—without success.

I searched not only for Walker’s name but also for the names of Nathaniel Jennison and John and Seth Caldwell, the white men involved.

I didn’t find reports of the case. But I did come across advertisements showing some of what those men were dealing with in 1783.

On 30 Dec 1782, Jotham Houghton, constable for Petersham, sent out a long, detailed notice about the taxes on tracts of land in that town and how much tax was owed on them. It was printed in the 16 Jan 1783 Independent Chronicle in Boston.

According to Houghton’s accounts, “Nathaniel Jennison, of Barre,” owed more than £30 going back to June 1780, plus “for hiring a soldier, 1s 5d.”

In apparent response, Jennison placed an advertisement in the 3 July 1783 Massachusetts Spy offering fifty acres in Petersham and “A LOT of new LAND lying in Rutland” for sale “for State securities or good private security, hard money will not be refused.”

On 2 July, Jennison was on the eastern side of the state. The 10 July Independent Chronicle ran this ad from him:

STOP THIEF!
Twenty dollars reward,
STOLEN from a pasture in Roxbury, on the 2d of July instant, a large dark bay HORSE, sixteen hands high, black mane and tail, trots and paces, high carriage, about nine years old. Any person who shall take up said horse, and give intelligence to Nathaniel Jennison, of Barry, in the county of Worcester, shall receive ten dollars, with all necessary charges; and if the thief is apprehended, and brought to justice, they shall have the above reward of twenty dollars…

It wasn’t turning out to be a great year for Nathaniel Jennison, even beyond the judgment against him in the Walker cases. 

But Jennison wasn’t the only figure having troubles. On 19 February, David Puket, the tax collector of Greenfield, issued a notice, printed in the next day’s Independent Chronicle, that he was selling “One farm belonging to John Caldwell, Esq;” for unpaid taxes. As a measure of inflation, Duket calculated the tax bill to be worth:

• “79l. 4d. old emission.”
• “4l. 6s. 11d. State’s money.”
• “16s. silver.”

The sale was to take place on Monday, 17 March.

On 10 June, John and Sarah Caldwell bought a notice in Isaiah Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy (published first on 12 June), saying that they would sell “By PUBLICK AUCTION” three horses and “A NUMBER of good likely COWS” at “the house of Mrs. SARAH CALDWELL, widow, in BARRE.”

Finally, the 26 June Independent Chronicle ran a notice from Daniel Wells, new tax collector in Greenfield, stating that “John Caldwell, Esq;” now owed nearly £2.13s., and he would sell off the man’s property on 21 July if that bill was still unpaid.

Because of the number of Caldwells in Barre and nearby, I’m not sure those three notices involved the same John Caldwell involved in the Quock Walker cases. Nor can I figure out how this John Caldwell was related to the widow Sarah Caldwell; her late husband was possibly William, who died young in 1780.

Despite those genealogical uncertainties, those advertisements show how farmers in central Massachusetts, including relatively prosperous men who had been able to invest in land in different towns, were under economic pressure by 1783. That was part of the background to the Quock Walker decisions.

One bit of pleasant news: Seth Caldwell married Mary (Polly) Jones of Worcester in 1782, and they started a large family the next year. He died in 1805 at age forty-seven, styled a militia major. She died in 1828 at age sixty-four.

The Problem with Ens. Eliphalet Hastings

Yesterday I quoted Capt. Moses Harvey’s newspaper advertisement from November 1775, minutely describing five soldiers who had deserted from his Continental Army company.

Harvey surmised that those men had left for these feeble reasons:

They have been apt to make excuses for their running away, and intimate they took a dislike to one Eliphalet Hastings, who was put in Ensign over them, and found much fault with the continental allowance.

Of course, it’s a soldier’s prerogative to grumble about food and pay. But what was the problem with the new ensign?

Eliphalet Hastings (1734-1824) was a veteran soldier. He had enlisted early in the French and Indian War, a decision that didn’t turn out well. In January 1760 the Massachusetts legislature voted to pay him £8 because

in the Year 1757 being a Soldier in the pay of this Province, he was taken Prisoner by the Indians near Fort William Henry by whom he was sold to the French and carried to Quebeck from whence he was sent to France where he remained till October 1758 when he was sent to England; and did not return home till May 1759

Hastings’s descendants understood that he had also participated Gen. James Wolfe’s Québec campaign and even “assisted in carrying General Wolfe to the rear, when mortally wounded.” But the timing for that would be awfully tight.

In April 1775, Hastings had marched as a minuteman, then rose to sergeant as Massachusetts formed its army. According to his pension application, he

was in the battle of Bunkers hill, commanded a company in Col Jonathan Brewers Regt in the Massachusetts line, had twenty-nine killed and eleven wounded besides myself out of seventy nine in that action, had my right arms and collar bone shot to pieces

Col. Brewer’s regiment was stationed mostly between the provincial breastwork and the rail fence. It got pretty shot up, with Brewer (d. 1784) and Lt. Col. William Buckminster (1736-1786) both wounded. But a Massachusetts report in 1775 said that in all the regiment suffered twelve dead and twenty-two wounded, far less than the figures Hastings recalled for one company decades later.

Col. Brewer had already gotten into hot water for aggressive recruiting tactics in Middlesex and Worcester Counties. He in turn complained about other colonels, on 4 July petitioning the Massachusetts legislature about how

a number of men that enlisted in different Companies in my Regiment have, through the low artifice and cunning of several recruiting officers of different Regiments, re-enlisted into other Companies, being over-persuaded by such arguments as, that Colonel Brewer would not be commissioned, and that if they did not immediately join some other Regiment, they would be turned out of the service; others were tempted with a promise to have a dollar each to drink the recruiting officer’s health; others by intoxication of strong liquor; by which means a considerable number have deserted my Regiment, as will be made to appear by the returns therefrom, as also the different Companies and Regiments they are re-enlisted into.

Around the same date, on 1 July, Eliphalet Hastings was appointed an ensign in the company of Capt. Moses Harvey. I can’t tell which company Hastings had been a sergeant in—perhaps Capt. Edward Blake’s—but it wasn’t Harvey’s.

Capt. Harvey was a late addition to Brewer’s regiment, not listed among his officers in early June. He had also come late to the Battle of Bunker Hill. A soldier from that company named Moses Clark recalled, “I was on the march towards Bunkers Hill on the day that battle was fought we arrived there just after the battle ended, while our men were carrying away the wounded.”

Col. Brewer appears to have assigned Ens. Hastings to Capt. Harvey’s company, rewarding a wounded veteran and filling out that company’s ranks so he could have more soldiers under him. But that created a problem.

Moses Harvey had been born in Sunderland, in the part of town that became Montague in 1754, and he had recruited men from that area. Of the five soldiers in his deserter ad, three had enlisted in Sunderland: John Daby; Gideon Graves, born in that town in 1753; and John Guilson, born in Groton in 1750 and married to Graves’s sister in 1769. Simeon Smith came from Greenfield and Matthias Smith from Springfield, other towns in the Connecticut River Valley. Capt. Harvey knew them so well he could describe them in acute detail.

In contrast, Eliphalet Hastings lived in Waltham, on the eastern side of Middlesex County. Harvey’s men didn’t know him. By tradition, New England soldiers enlisted under neighbors they knew and trusted. They expected to elect their own officers instead of having someone assigned over them. So over the summer of 1775 those five men decided to head back home to western Massachusetts.

Capt. Harvey was lenient enough not to advertise for their return right away; he didn’t even report them as deserted until 27 September. But as November came around, there was new pressure from Gen. George Washington to recruit soldiers for the coming year. Harvey might have thought his own hopes to remain in the army depended on showing that he could maintain discipline in his company. So on 8 November he finally put his neighbors’ names and descriptions into the newspaper. Did he really expect them to return, or did he just want to make their lives in and around Sunderland a little less comfortable?

TOMORROW: What became of those deserters?

“Deserted from Col. Brewer’s regiment…”

On 9 Nov 1775 and again a week later, the New-England Chronicle ran this advertisement, which offers characterizations of Continental soldiers worthy of a Smollett novel:

Deserted from Col. [Jonathan] Brewer’s regiment, and Captain Harvey’s company, one Simeon Smith of Greenfield, a joiner by trade, a thin spar’d fellow, about 5 feet 4 inches high, had on blue coat and black vest, a metal button on his hat, black long hair, black eyes, his voice in the hermaphrodite fashion, the masculine rather predominant:

Likewise one Matthias Smith, a small smart fellow, a sadler by trade, grey headed, has a younger look in his face, is apt to say I swear! I swear! and between his words will spit smart; had on a green coat, and an old red great coat; he is a right gamester, although he wears something of a sober look:

Likewise one John Daby, a long hump shoulder’d fellow, a shoemaker by trade, drawls his words, and for comfortable says comfable, had a green coat, thick leather breeches, slim legs, lost some of his fore teeth:

Also one John Guilson, a man well known in Sunderland, wears a watch, midling stature, a cooper by trade, has a black beard, wears a light colour’d coat and jacket and has a surly look:

Likewise his brother in law, Gideon Graves, about a midling stature, somewhat stocky, his looks, jestures and words generally crabbed, had a sad red coat, a pale blue vest, dark brown thickset breeches, and had a large cutlass.---

They have been apt to make excuses for their running away, and intimate they took a dislike to one Eliphalet Hastings, who was put in Ensign over them, and found much fault with the continental allowance.

Whoever will take up said deserters and secure or bring hem into the camp, shall have two dollars reward for each, and all necessary charges paid by me,
MOSES HARVEY, Capt.
Prospect-Hill, Nov. 8, 1775.

P.S. Said deserters have been gone some time, and because I expected they would return, I have omitted advertising them.

According to Massachusetts records, John Gilson deserted on 14 July; Gideon Graves, Matthias Smith, and John Daby in early August, and Simeon Smith on 16 September. So Capt. Harvey (1723-1795) had indeed waited for months before advertising for them in November.

Not that he had to get so personal.

TOMORROW: What was the problem with Ens. Hastings?