Where Did Lucy Flucker and Henry Knox Marry?

As I wrote yesterday, the marriage of Henry Knox and Lucy Flucker appears on the records of King’s Chapel, Boston’s most upper-class Anglican church, dated 23 June 1774.

The next week’s newspaper reports confirm that the rector of that church, the Rev. Dr. Henry Caner, presided at the wedding.

There’s another disagreement about that marriage, however: where it took place. Writers have come to different conclusions.

The most likely site would seem to be King’s Chapel itself. Nothing in its records suggests the Knoxes’ wedding was any different from others. Most biographers who describe the ceremony state that it happened in the chapel.

However, in The Revolutionary War Lives and Letters of Lucy and Henry Knox Phillip Hamilton wrote that the marriage took place in the building on Cornhill that Henry was renting as his house and shop. Lucy’s older sister Hannah Urquhart and “Aunt Waldo” attended, but her parents didn’t.

Hamilton appears to have relied on Henry Knox’s 29 August letter to his close friend Henry Jackson, which I haven’t seen in full. It’s now in the collection of the Gilder Lehrman Institute. Barring new discoveries, that’s the closest contemporaneous source about the young bookseller’s strained relationship to his new in-laws.

There are also a couple of memoirs written in the nineteenth century by members of the extended family that preserve their understandings about the marriage.

The Massachusetts Historical Society holds a manuscript called the “Winslow Family Memorial.” It was written by Isaac Winslow (1774–1856), a first cousin of Lucy Knox, and his daughter Margaret Catharine Winslow (1816–1890). The oh-so-handy transcript (P.D.F. download) offers this story of the marriage:

they were married at the house of her uncle Mr [Isaac] Winslow in Roxbury. I always understood, that he rather favor’d this union, and aided in its favorable issue. For this friendly disposition Gen Knox, as I have been led to think, from the little I know of the circumstances of the case, evinced more grateful feeling’s towards Mr Winslows family than his lady, who though not unkind to her cousins, yet when living in a good deal of style, after the peace in Boston, did not much notice her cousins, who were then in quite narrow circumstances

Hamilton’s citations show he looked at this manuscript, but he didn’t accept its statement that the Knox wedding took place in Roxbury.

Finally, the “Reminiscences” of the Knoxes’ longest lived daughter, Lucy Knox Thatcher (1776–1854, shown above), is held at the headquarters of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution in Washington, D.C. Nancy Rubin Stuart quoted from it in Defiant Brides. It agrees that Lucy’s parents didn’t attend the wedding but says her sister Hannah and their half-sister Sallie did. Again, I’ve seen only a bit of this document and plan to check it out on a future trip.

(The portrait above shows Lucy Knox Fletcher in the mid-1800s. Because there’s no portrait of Lucy Knox, and because of the similarities of the mother’s and daughter’s names, websites often mistakenly present this as a picture of Henry Knox’s wife.)

“Last Monday evening Miss Hannah was married to Mr. Fluker”

On 27 Dec 1750, Boston ministers announced that Hannah Waldo and Thomas Flucker (shown here) intended to marry.

The Rev. Jonathan Mayhew presided over the wedding on 14 Jan 1751 at the West Meetinghouse.

In reporting that wedding, the Boston Evening-Post called the bride “a Lady of great Beauty and Merit.” The Boston Post-Boy said she was “an agreable and virtuous young lady.”

That coverage strongly implies most people sympathized with Hannah in her decision to call off her engagement to Andrew Pepperrell the preceding fall after he had delayed their wedding one too many times. They didn’t blame her as the fickle one.

Flucker was a young merchant, seven years older than his bride. He had previously married a sister of James Bowdoin and been widowed in May 1750. Aside from his daughter named Sally born out of wedlock on a date I don’t know, Hannah and Thomas appear to have had a solid genteel New England marriage, with their first baby, also named Hannah, arriving at the end of 1751. Flucker went on to become the province’s royal secretary.

Andrew Pepperrell’s cousin William Tyler sent him the news:

I inform you that last Monday evening Miss Hannah was married to Mr. Fluker and appeared a bride at the West Church, New Boston, brought in her chariot. The talk is almost over, for everybody thinks and tells me they believe it is what you wanted, but more of this when I see you.

Pepperrell doesn’t appear to have pined after his lost fiancée. He went back to his mansion in Kittery, Maine, and his rural social life. While returning from a ball in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in February, he caught a cold. That became pneumonia. The Boston Evening-Post announced that he died on 1 March “after a short Indisposition.” The local minister preached a sermon in his memory.

Later authors wrestled with why Andrew Pepperrell had strung Hannah Waldo along for so long. Was he prone to ill-timed “despondency” or depressions? Was he interested in someone else? Did he resent and resist his father’s arrangements? Most of Andrew’s papers were destroyed, making it even harder to know. (Not knowing the facts didn’t bother other authors who exaggerated the young man’s death, suggesting he went mad or died of a broken heart two days after Hannah Waldo’s send-off.)

Sir William Pepperrell was left without a son to carry on his name. He made the eldest son of his daughter Elizabeth Sparhawk heir to his fortune and baronetcy on the condition that that young man take the surname Pepperrell. The first Sir William Pepperrell died in 1759. The second became a Loyalist exile.

Hannah’s father, Samuel Waldo, also died in 1759 while overseeing his property in Maine. Most of his descendants became Loyalists, but one exception was Thomas and Hannah Flucker’s daughter Lucy, who married Henry Knox. Through careful management of family claims, the U.S. Secretary of War gained (nominal) control of most of the Waldo Patent.

And that couldn’t have happened except for the long, unhappy engagement of Hannah Waldo and Andrew Pepperrell.

“She would not marry one who had occasioned her so much mortification”

Toward the end of 1750, the families of Hannah Waldo (shown here) and Andrew Pepperrell gathered in Boston for their long-anticipated wedding.

Samuel Waldo, the father of the bride, was in London working on his large land claims in Maine and Nova Scotia, but other relatives were in Boston.

Andrew’s parents, Sir William and Lady Pepperrell, traveled down from Maine for the ceremony. The baronet had written to his friend Waldo “that he now had every reason to hope that the long talked of alliance of their two families would soon be completed, much to the joy of himself and family,” according to biographer Usher Parsons.

One important person was still missing, however: the groom. Parsons reported, “a few days before the one appointed for the wedding arrived, Andrew wrote to [Hannah] that circumstances had occurred which would make it necessary to defer it to another day, which he named, as more convenient for himself.”

Hannah Waldo had been awaiting this marriage since 1746. The engagement had been publicly announced in 1748. And here was another delay. That finally pushed her to take control of her own course.

Parsons wrote:

She returned no answer; the guests from far and near, minister and all, assembled at the appointed hour and place, when she enjoyed the sweet revenge of telling Andrew that she would not marry one who had occasioned her so much mortification, and who could not have that love and friendship for her that was necessary to her happiness.

The Pepperrells went back to Maine.

When Samuel Waldo heard the news in London, he wrote to the baronet:

I was greatly chagrined at the news of my daughter’s changing her mind and dismissing your son after the visit you mention, which I was apprised of by her, and concluded that the affair would have had the issue I had long expected and desired, and that the ship which brought the unwelcome news of a separation, would have given me the most agreeable advice of its consummation; but I find she was jealous that Mr. Pepperrell had not the love and friendship for her that was necessary to make her happy. This I understand from her letter to me, and that the last promise made when your son was in Boston was disregarded by him in not returning at the period he had fixed.

This disappointment to a close union with your family, which above all things I desired, has given me great uneasiness, and the addition thereto will be greater if I should find the fault lie on my daughter; but be that as it may, I should be very sorry to have it break friendship between us, or any of the several branches of our families;—those of yours I assure you I wish as well to as my own, and I shall, if ever in my power, convince them of it.

Back in Massachusetts, the young people had to get on with their lives.

TOMORROW: Separate ways.

“Quite exasperated with your conduct relating to your amour”

As the year 1750 began, it was more than three years since Andrew Pepperrell and Hannah Waldo had become engaged, over a full year since their intentions had been formally announced in Kittery, Maine.

Since their fathers were two of the richest, most prominent men in Massachusetts, their relationship was big news all that time. 

Andrew and Hannah had both turned twenty in 1746, young for marriage. But by 1750 they would both turn twenty-four, they still weren’t married, and the talk became more pointed.

Andrew’s brother-in-law Nathaniel Sparhawk (shown here) wrote to Sir William Pepperrell in London on 8 Mar 1750: “The love affair between Andrew Pepperrell and Miss Waldo, now of four years’ duration, is still pending, much to the annoyance of both families as well as trying to the patience of the young lady.”

Other gentlemen told Pepperrell that he couldn’t keep putting off the wedding. The older merchant Stephen Minot, who was related to the Waldos, wrote to him on 3 June 1750:

I hope, my friend, it will not be long before we have the pleasure of seeing you in town to disappoint the enemies as well as to complete the approaching pleasure which you have in view, in enjoying the society of so charming and desirable a lady as is Miss Hannah. I beg leave only to add, that could you be fully acquainted with the steady and proper behavior in your long absence (amid the ill-natured queries of the world with respect to each of you) it would ever heighten your affections for her, and endear her to you as it has done to me, and all her relations and friends here. I really wish each of you, as I believe you will be, happy, if it shall please God to bring you together in the matrimonial state.

On 14 August, Andrew’s first cousin William Tyler wrote to him about a visit to Boston by another first cousin, Joel Whittemore. “His wig was powdered to the life,” Tyler said, and at the Sunday afternoon church service “he sat and stood looking first this way and then that way to find out Miss Hannah.” (She wasn’t there.) Was that just a silly story, or a nudge that other young men might be interested in her?

Sparhawk visited Andrew Pepperrell in Maine late that summer, and on returning to Boston wrote back on 11 September:

I…have not had time to deliver your letter, or to see your lady. Let me take the liberty to inform you that the country, especially the more worthy and better part of it, are very much alarmed at, and appear quite exasperated with your conduct relating to your amour, and your friends and those that are much attached to your father and family, are greatly concerned about you, being fully of opinion that if the matter drops through and you lie justly under the imputation of it, that your character is irretrievably lost. I am sorry to say so much, but a tender concern for you obliges me.

You can’t imagine how I was attacked in a large company of gentlemen and ladies at Salem, where I was invited to spend the evening on Sunday; and what you may imagine will pass still for a justification of your conduct, that you “intend nothing but honor in the case, and will be along soon” is perfectly ridiculed.

I find you must be published again if you marry in this province, and if you intend ever to marry the lady, my advice to you is, by all means to be republished and to finish the matter at once, unless you can prevail on the lady to meet you at Ipswich, and from there proceed to Hampton [New Hampshire], which is very much questioned, though when I know your intentions it may be attempted, if there is occasion, from your ascertaining the lady’s mind and her friend’s, that you will be quite punctual, and agree to the arrangement in case she is good enough to comply. But I cannot add further than that I feel a real concern for your welfare and the support of your honor.

Massachusetts couples who were eloping from their families, or who needed to marry in a hurry, went over the border to New Hampshire. Of course, that wasn’t the most respectable sort of wedding. But by this time, Sparhawk and the Waldos were ready for anything.

All that pressure forced Andrew Pepperrell to finally make a move. He agreed to a wedding in Boston on a specified date.

TOMORROW: Can this marriage be saved?

“Your wish that the alliance between our son and your daughter were completed”

As I quoted yesterday, in early 1748 the Maine grandees Sir William Pepperrell and Samuel Waldo exchanged letters reassuring each other that their children wanted to get married.

Andrew Pepperrell’s long delay in setting a date with Hannah Waldo was starting to cause talk in Boston, as Samuel Waldo hinted in a 20 March letter:

I hope all impediments to a consummation will soon end in their mutual happiness, and to the satisfaction of their respective friends, as well as the mortification of those who are foes to every one. . . . though I have no reason to suspect his honor in the pending affair, yet the delay (the consequence of which is not to be foreseen) must be very disagreeable to us. Your own concern for the issue of it will excuse my anxiety for the future welfare as well as present peace and honor of my daughter, toward which it is my duty to contribute my best endeavors.

Hannah’s sister Lucy Waldo had married Isaac Winslow; they and their children appear above in a portrait by Joseph Blackburn now at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. Winslow wrote from Boston several times that spring passing on his sister-in-law Hannah’s regards to the man who was supposed to marry her, as on 9 May:

I had the pleasure of drinking your health last evening at my father Waldo’s, about 10 o’clock. It was at that time when your dear Miss Hannah drank the toast, with the usual becoming blush on her countenance. She desired me to send you her compliments

Winslow also suggested various trips between Boston and Kittery that would bring the young people together. But Andrew Pepperrell never suggested a firm date for those trips, either.

Finally on 3 Sept 1748, the engagement was formally announced in the Kittery meetinghouse. Usually that meant the wedding was only weeks away.

But then Andrew complained of a lingering fever. And he undertook a new shipping project. His father wrote on 16 December, “If Andrew would go and be married, I would willingly undertake one winter journey more; but he has got a vessel which he will endeavor to fit out this winter, contrary to my advice, which I am afraid will make him sick again.”

Waldo replied:

I should think that could stand in no competition with the grand affair of a settlement for life, which he has been now nearly two years engaged in, and it gives me no small concern, as the honor of either of the parties, as well as my own, are engaged therein, it should be seemingly in suspense; the many rascally stories that are industriously bruited gives great amusement to some ill-natured persons among us, and no small chagrin to the friends of either party.

Still the months dragged on. On 20 Feb 1749, Winslow wrote to his father-in-law Waldo, who was then in London:

The affair with Mr. P———ll & Miss remains much as you left It I have hitherto omitted saying any Thing of it as I’ve been at a Loss what to say; & Miss Hannah has been of Opinion yt. it was best to be silent on ye. Affair at present. Every post almost has brot. some apology for his not coming & Mr. [Nathaniel] Sparhawk still thinks favourably of him; A short time must I think determine his Intentions

The next month, Sir William wrote to Waldo:

Mrs. Pepperrell joins with me in your wish that the alliance between our son and your daughter were completed, which I do think would be a satisfaction to all their friends, and a means of putting a stop to the talk of their enemies, as there are none without some. As I have often urged him to finish the affair, and he has declined to let me know the time designated, I have no thoughts of mentioning it to him again.

But other people were definitely still talking about the situation.

TOMORROW: Clustering around young Andrew.

“The long talked of affair between Mr. Pepperrell and my daughter”

As I wrote yesterday, Sir William Pepperrell, baronet, and Samuel Waldo, militia brigadier and great proprietor, were pleased when their children, Andrew and Hannah respectively, became engaged in 1746.

Presumably they remained happy in 1747.

By early 1748, with no wedding date set, the gentlemen began to worry. At the time, Waldo was in Boston while Sir William was up at his house in Kittery, Maine, said to be the grandest in the district. (It’s shown above, courtesy of Buildings of New England.) That separation meant we have the ability to read their conversation about the family situation.

According to Usher Parsons’s biography of Pepperrell, on 9 Jan 1748 Waldo wrote to him:

As to the long talked of affair between Mr. Pepperrell and my daughter, I am at a loss what to think about it. You know matches are made in heaven, and what’s appointed must be. It is not best for any to be overanxious, but to govern with prudence, on which head no caution is necessary to you. I am very much obliged to Lady Pepperrell as well as yourself for your good liking of my daughter, and more especially that she should become yours. The proposed union gave me great pleasure, and the more so as I knew she could not fail to be happy in your family, and I promised myself it was not in her power to misbehave. I had never, Sir, any reason to doubt of yours or your lady’s heartiness in the affair, but if there be not a mutual good liking between the young people, it will not be best they should come together. But I leave the affair to them.

I am, by yours, confirmed in my former sentiments, that you had done very handsomely for your son. Above a twelvemonth ago, I think it was, I had a conversation with him when I proposed a speedy issue to the business, and assured him my intentions as to the future well-being of my daughter were not contracted. He declared himself in a very genteel and generous manner. The sum you mention is large; part of it is probably laid out upon his house. Some misfortunes he has met with in trade, and possibly he may think that the improvement of the remainder may not be a sufficient sum to support upon as your son. I had some difficulty on this head myself before marriage. I got what I could from my father, and trusted Providence for the rest. My daughter is very well and presents her duty to you and Lady Pepperrell.

The next month, Waldo assured his friend again:

I am obliged to you, Sir, and Lady Pepperrell for your good liking of the proposed alliance between our families; nothing can be more agreeable to me, and it would be an additional satisfaction could there be a speedy consummation. It has been long enough pending for the young people to know, not only their own, but each other’s mind. My good liking to it they have both of them been long acquainted with. Till lately I flattered myself that before I embarked for Europe, which I hope will be soon, (though not before I make you a visit to Kittery,) the proposed alliance would be finished.

Pepperrell wrote back on 15 March:

I observe by your letter that you are exceedingly surprised that I did not know the reason that the family affair, so long pending, was delayed; but what I wrote you is certainly true; and if ever my son will do an ill thing I cannot help it, nor ever can or will pretend to justify it; and if he never marries I will never say so much to him about it as I have said. I do think, so far as I have been enabled, that I have discharged my duty to him.

It is certain that he has laid out upwards of ten thousand pounds in a house, contrary to what I should have advised, but considerable of that I gave him, beside the twenty-eight thousand I mentioned, and my design was, that if he should marry, I should give him land that would be an immediate income, but if he does not, I look upon myself to be the best judge how to dispose of my estate, and shall act accordingly as long as it shall please the Most High to preserve my reason and senses.

It is true that he has met with considerable losses in his trade, but from what I know, his interest sent abroad is safe, that he has upwards of thirty thousand pounds, old tenor, in trade; considering that he has wharves, warehouses, etc., fitted to his hand, I think it is a handsome fitting out, and if he behave himself well, as long as I am able I shall be doing for him.

I always thought that you would be doing all in your power for all your children, and I know that you are able; but as every thing in this life is uncertain, if Providence should order it that you could not give Miss Hannah any thing, I say if this should be the case (though I hope it never will), I should be freely willing my son should marry her, and I cannot think he will ever be happy in this life if he don’t, nor can expect a blessing; but I hope he soon will, and not expose himself and friends to unfriendly remarks. If you knew the trouble it gives me to write, you would readily excuse me from enlarging.

Mrs. Pepperrell joins with me in best respects to yourself and family, and in particular to Miss Hannah.

The two gentlemen thus acknowledged that money was a factor—a big factor—in a genteel marriage, but they promised each other that their children would have enough to be comfortable. As long as there was “a mutual good liking between the young people.”

TOMORROW: The young people.

Hannah Waldo, Patent Heiress

Hannah Waldo was born in Boston on 21 Nov 1726 and baptized in the town’s First Meetinghouse. She was the daughter of Lucy and Samuel Waldo (shown here).

Samuel Waldo was a merchant who went into land speculation in a big way. In 1729, when Hannah was two years old, he acquired the controlling interest in a big land grant in Maine.

That royal grant had changed hands for many decades because simply having permission from London to claim land didn’t mean a person could actually exercise any control over it.

Waldo also bought a big land grant in Nova Scotia, but that claim was on shaky legal grounds. He spent a fair amount of the 1730s in London, arguing unsuccessfully for that patent and recruiting people to settle on his Maine (main?) claim.

One obstacle to British settlements on what became known as the Waldo Patent was danger from the French and the Native nations allied with them, or just uninterested in losing their territory. Starting in 1740, Waldo promoted a plan to attack the French fortification at Louisbourg to remove that threat.

When Britain finally went to war against France, Gov. William Shirley authorized that military expedition. William Pepperrell was the commander-in-chief, and Samuel Waldo, who had served under Pepperrell in the top ranks of Maine’s militia, was commissioned a brigadier general, second in command of the land forces.

As I discussed yesterday, that expedition was a big success. By the end of 1745, Massachusetts’s military captured the French outpost for the British Empire (though the British Empire decided to give it back in exchange for Madras). Pepperrell was made a baronet. Waldo was addressed as “general” for the rest of his life, and he could step up his efforts to recruit settlers for his land.

Among the people who came to the Waldo Patent in the next few years, before another war broke out, were Georg Frederich Seiter and Christine Salome Hartwick. They would marry and have children, including Christopher Seider. But that’s getting away from Hannah Waldo’s story.

The Waldo and Pepperell families were well acquainted. The general’s son Samuel, Jr., was in the same class at Harvard College as the baronet’s son, Andrew. Furthermore, in 1742 the baronet’s daughter, Elizabeth, had married Nathaniel Sparhawk, a son of Hannah and Samuel, Jr.’s step-grandmother through a second marriage.

In 1746, Hannah Waldo and Andrew Pepperrell became engaged. Andrew was seen as quite a catch. Writing ninety years later, Usher Parsons said: “his comely person and polished manners were a passport to the best circles; and his heirship to a fortune and a baronetcy placed him in the highest social position.”

Sir William and Gen. Waldo were both pleased with this engagement, which would bring together the district’s two leading families (with the Sparhawks tied in as a bonus). The actual wedding date was to be named later when Andrew finished building his house.

And that proved to be a problem.

TOMORROW: Waiting for a wedding.

How Andrew Pepperrell Became Heir to a Baronetcy

Andrew Pepperell was born on 4 Jan 1726 and grew up as the only son of the Maine-based merchant William Pepperrell (shown here) and his wife Mary.

When Andrew went to Harvard College in 1743, his parents moved to Boston to be closer to him. And also so William could participate in the Council.

Over in Cambridge, Andrew Pepperrell quickly got into trouble with David Phips, son of the lieutenant governor and later himself sheriff of Middlesex County. They were fined for “an extravagant drinking Frolick and afterward in making indecent Noises, in the College Yard and in Town, and that late at Night.”

Nevertheless, both Pepperrell and Phips ranked second in their respective classes, simply on the basis of their fathers’ social stature.

After graduating, Andrew Pepperrell became his father’s business partner while also working on his M.A. Meanwhile, as King George’s War began, William Pepperrell was among the gentlemen arguing for an expedition against the French fortress at Louisbourg.

That expedition set off in April 1745. Pepperrell was the commander-in-chief. Though some Royal Navy warships sailed in support, this was primarily a Massachusetts military enterprise. To many people’s surprise, it was a big success. After a six-week siege, Pepperrell and his men forced the French garrison to surrender.

In 1746, William Pepperrell received a singular honor from the Crown: he was made a baronet, or hereditary knight. Indeed, he was the only American ever made a baronet. That meant Andrew was the heir to a title, as well as a growing fortune.

Andrew Pepperrell was already investing his share of that fortune. Not always speculating wisely, his father thought, though he did make money in ship-building. One particular project was a large mansion house in Maine near his parents’ estate. The younger Pepperrell imported both labor and furnishings for this grand building.

As an impetus for that construction, it appears, in 1746 at the age of twenty Andrew Pepperrell engaged to marry a young woman named Hannah Waldo.

TOMORROW: The lucky lady.