“Success in this troublesome affair”?

When I broke off yesterday, Capt. Simeon Potter of Bristol, Rhode Island, had just hit the Rev. John Usher in the face.

And then he did it again.

According to the minister’s son, Hezekiah Usher, that “made the blood fly out of his Mouth.”

The younger Usher described rushing out from his doorway:

I run and catch him [Potter] by the collar & took him off from my Father and received two blows in my Face from sd. Potter.

The captain’s father, Hopestill Potter, aged about seventy-one, also joined the fray. Eventually the minister and captain were pulled apart.

In the fall of 1761, the Rev. John Usher sued Capt. Simeon Potter for the punches “…And also the left Thumb of the Plaintiff at said Time & Place did Sprain by all which the Plaintiffs Life was despaired of.” He asked for “Fifty Thousand Pounds current Money of New England” in damages.

Capt. Potter threw up every roadblock. He argued that he’d been an unarmed man acting in self-defense. That Usher shouldn’t have sued in Newport. That “this Cause might be continued to next Court as he is not provided with an Attorney and his principal Evidence is at Sea.” Ultimately Potter put up no defense and defaulted, and the county court awarded Usher £1,000 plus costs.

Both parties appealed to the Rhode Island Superior Court of Judicature, Usher “because the Damages given were not adequate to the Injury recd.” and Potter because the verdict was “wrong and erroneous and ought to be reversed.”

Meanwhile in January 1762 a grand jury in Bristol County considered criminal assault charges against Capt. Potter. I can’t tell how far that process got.

In the summer of 1762 Potter called in a big legal gun from Massachusetts: Robert Treat Paine (shown above, later in life). Paine’s 6 August letter assured Potter that he could appeal both criminal and civil cases with “the Deposition you have of the Jurys dissatisfaction in their Verdict.” Paine called Usher “a Crafty powerfull Antagonist” and closed “wishing you success in this troublesome affair & that you may finally prevail against Ecclesiastical or Political Tyranny.”

On 10 September, Paine traveled to Newport to argue for Potter. The captain was presenting testimony from several witnesses not heard at the original civil trial.

TOMORROW: Examining the evidence.

“You shake it within an Inch of my Nose”

Some years back, I mentioned Simeon Potter’s dispute with John Usher, but I was relying on a secondary source that I’ve come to see as unreliable.

I’m therefore retelling that story in more detail using the court documents published by the Rhode Island Historical Society in 2006 (available as a P.D.F. from Family Search) and other sources.

In 1761 Potter was a wealthy gentleman in Bristol, Rhode Island. He’d been born in that town forty-one years earlier to a poor or middling family. He’d therefore grown up without much schooling, trained to be a cooper. But because of a privateering windfall at the start of King George’s War, Potter had made himself into one of the richest men in the whole colony.

Reflecting his new genteel status, Capt. Potter took on prestigious positions in politics and the church. He became a warden of the local Anglican church, St. Michael’s. Few New England towns of Bristol’s size—about 1,200 people in 1774—had an Anglican church, but this was at the coast and therefore served mariners.

The minister of St. Michael’s was the Rev. John Usher. He was the son of a wealthy bookseller who had risen to be lieutenant governor of New Hampshire. After graduating from Harvard College, Usher had joined the Church of England, defying the New England orthodoxy. The missionary Society for the Propagation of the Gospel paid part of his salary, and his congregants sometimes paid the rest.

In 1761 Usher was over sixty years old. His exact age is unclear since his tombstone says he was seventy-five when he died in 1775, but a memorial plaque later installed in his church says he was eighty. Either way, he’d been the minister at St. Michael’s since 1724, when Simeon Potter was still a little boy.

According to Usher’s report back to the S.P.G., the trouble started because

Notwithstanding he [Potter] has an agreeable wife, he has by report for some years back kept a criminal conversation with a young woman, one of my parish. . . . After many general hints from the Pulpit…I told her what reason I had to suggest she was guilty of the notorious sin of Adultery. . . . Upon this she told the man immediately what I had said

Frankly the minister shouldn’t have been surprised by that.

On the morning of 14 August, Charles Munro said, “the Rev. Mr. John Usher and Capt. Simeon Potter…engaged in warm words or Differing” on the street. Richard Smith added that Usher told Potter, “wherever he went there was whoring carried on.” Smith also quoted the men as saying:

[Potter:] if it wont for your Age and Gown I would not have your Cane shook over my head

[Usher:] I don’t shake it over your head nor mean to shake it over

[Potter:] you shake it within an Inch of my Nose

Simeon Potter, despite his fearsome reputation, was “small in stature,” according to Father Elzear Fauque. Also, in the manners of the time clubbing another man with a cane implied that the caner was a gentleman and the canee was not; given Potter’s background, his class status might have been a sensitive spot.

The minister’s son, Hezekiah Usher, called this “Ill treatment” of his father. Potter may also have said something about the minister’s daughter, but I can’t find another trace of her.

On 18 August, Usher and Potter met yet again on Church Lane. They picked up where they had left off. Hezekiah Usher stated:

I heard my Father say to sd. Potter if ever he cast any more reflections on his Family especially on his daughter twould cause him to reflect on his family and upon that the said Potter came up to my Father who was then on the edge of the Gravell’d Walk and said who of my Family and my Father said Your Father

Potter’s father, Hopestill Potter, was in fact sitting in a chair at his own front door nearby.

The quarrel caught the ears of several neighbors, though trees along the street blocked some people’s views. Witnesses agreed that Usher was holding his walking-stick in the middle, waving it around as he spoke. Some said this was “Usher’s naturall way of Shaking his Cane at any Person when he is earnest in talk.” One said the cane was “up as if he was agoing to strike.” But all the trial witnesses agreed they never saw the minister actually touch the captain.

According to Hezekiah Usher, after his father mentioned the captain’s father, Capt. Potter “rusht close up to my Father and said what reflections can you cast on him”? Usher replied, “I’ll blow him up.”

The captain then punched his sexagenarian minister in the face.

TOMORROW: In court.

The Attack on Customs Officer John Malcolm

I’m interrupting what turned into Amputation Week at Boston 1775 to address a Sestercentennial event.

On 25 Jan 1774, the Boston crowd attacked Customs officer John Malcolm. Coming weeks after the Tea Party, this assault became one of the most notorious incidents in the months of political debate in London leading up to war, with multiple prints published. It helped to cement Parliamentarians’ image of Bostonians as showing no respect for the law.

Today the event is not as widely remembered. The main victim was a Loyalist, he wasn’t killed, and that day’s violence, though horrible, was soon overshadowed by years of warfare.

Here’s the first report of the attack in the 27 January Massachusetts Spy:

Mr. [Isaiah] THOMAS,

Last Tuesday about two o’clock Mr. George-Robert-Twelves Hewes was coming along Fore-street, near Captain [Isaac] Ridgway’s [inn at Dock Square], and found the redoubted John Malcom, standing over a small boy, who was pushing a little sled before him, cursing, damning, threatning and shaking a very large cane with a very heavy ferril on it over his head.

The boy at that time was perfectly quiet, notwithstanding which Malcom continued his threats of striking him, which Mr. Hewes conceiving if he struck him with that weapon he must have killed him out-right, came up to him, and said to him, Mr. Malcom, I hope you are not going to strike this boy with that stick.

Malcom returned, you are an impertinent rascal, it is none of your business. Mr. Hewes then asked him, what had the child done to him. Malcom damned him and asked him if he was going to take his part? Mr. Hewes answered no further than this, that he thought it was a shame for him to strike the child with such a club as that, if he intended to strike him. Malcom on that damned Mr. Hewes, called him a vagabond, and said he would let him know he should not speak to a gentleman in the street.

Mr. Hewes returned to that, he was neither a rascal nor vagabond, and though a poor man was in as good credit in town as he was. Malcom called him a liar, and said he was not, nor ever would be. Mr. Hewes retorted, be that as it will, I never was tarred nor feathered any how.

On this Malcom struck him, and wounded him deeply on the forehead, so that Mr. Hewes for some time lost his senses.

Capt. [Isaac?] Godfrey, then present, interposed, and after some altercation, Malcom went home, where the people gathering round, he came out and abused them greatly, saying, you say I was tarred and feathered, and that it was not done in a proper manner, damn you let me see the man that dare do it better! I want to see it done in the new-fashioned manner.

After Malcom had thus bullied the people some time, and Mr. [Hezekiah] Usher the constable had persuaded him into the house, Mrs. [Ann] Malcom threw up a sash, and begged the people to go away, and Malcom came suddenly behind her and pushing his naked sword through the opening, pricked Mr. Waddel [John Wardell, d. 1816?] in the breast; the bone stopping its course, which would otherwise have reached his vitals. Mr. Waddel on this made a stroke at the window with his cane, and broke a square of glass, through which breach he again made a pass, and slightly wounded Mr. Waddel, who a second time returned the blow, and Malcom withdrawing the people dispersed.

Mr. Hewes after having his wound taken care of, went to Justice [Edmund] Quincy and took out a warrant for Malcom, and gave it to a constable, who went to Malcom’s house to serve it, but found the doors shut against him, and was told by him, from a window, that he would not be taken that day, as he should be followed by a damned mob, but would surrender to-morrow afternoon.

Here the matter appeared to subside, till in the evening the people being informed of the outrages he had committed, the threatnings and defiances he had uttered, and among other things, that he would split down the yankees by dozens, and receive 20l. sterling a head for every one he destroyed, they mustered and went to his house, which being barred against them, and he menacing with his loaded pistols, which he declared he would fire upon them if they came near him, they got ladders and beating in an upper window, entered the house and took him without loss of blood, and dragging him out put him on a sled, and amidst the huzzas of thousands, brought him into King-street.

Several Gentlemen endeavoured to divert the populace from their intention, alledging that he was open to the laws of the land which would undoubtedly award a reasonable satisfaction to the parties he had abused; they answered he had been an old, impudent and mischevious offender—he had joined in the murders at North-Carolina—he had seized vessels on account of sailors having a bottle or two of gin on board—he had in office, and otherwise, behaved in the most capricious, insulting and daringly abusive manner—and on every occasion discovered the most rooted enmity to this country, and the defenders of its rights—that in case they let him go they might expect a like satisfaction as they had received in the cases of [Ebenezer] Richardson and the soldiers [at the Massacre], and the other friends of government.

With these and such like arguments, together with a gentle crouding of persons not of their way of thinking out of the ring they proceeded to elevate Mr. Malcom from his sled into a cart, and stripping him to buff and breeches, gave him a modern jacket [i.e., tar and feathers] and hied him away to liberty-tree, where they proposed to him to renounce his present commission, and swear that he would never hold another inconsistent with the liberties of his country; but this he obstinately refusing, they then carted him to the gallows, passed a rope round his neck, and threw the other end over the beam as if they intended to hang him: But this manoeuvre he set at defiance. They then basted him for some time with a rope’s end, and threatened to cut his ears off, and on this he complied, and they then brought him home.

See reader, the effects of a government in which the people have no confidence!

Immediately after that account Thomas printed three short letters describing ways that Malcolm had threatened people or abused his government position. Obviously people were anxious to justify the attack on the following day, and the printer was happy to help.

TOMORROW: John Malcolm’s version.

[The image of the crowd removing Malcolm through a window into a cart around town was published in France in the mid-1780s to illustrate a page on the “Origine de la Révolution Américaine.”]