Independence and Enslavement in Middletown

At the end of the Revolutionary War, lots of things changed in Middletown, Connecticut.

In 1784, Hugh White left that town to start surveying an area of upstate New York that would become Whitestown. Relatives and neighbors would follow. The central part of that area would take the name Whitesboro and for a long time have an unfortunate town seal.

Other Middletown residents also moved west to lands made available by the U.S. victory over Britain and its Native allies. Retired general Samuel Holden Parsons became a director of the Ohio Land Company. He traveled to western Pennsylvania in November 1789 and drowned while canoeing.

There were also legal changes at home. The area around the Connecticut River port, where the merchants and ship-builders lived, incorporated itself as a city in 1784. Instead of a town meeting with nearly every farmer eligible to vote, the city of Middletown had a mayor, four aldermen, and ten “common-council-men” chosen from the upper class.

The first set of aldermen included two former generals—Comfort Sage and the ill-fated Parsons—plus Col. Matthew Talcott and, for old times’ sake, former militia captain Philip Mortimer.

Among the first common-council-men was the husband of Mortimer’s favored niece, George Starr, as well as Col. Return Jonathan Meigs.

Also in 1784, the state of Connecticut passed a Gradual Emancipation Act—so gradual that it didn’t actually emancipate anybody for another twenty-five years. Children born into slavery after 1 Mar 1784 would become free on their twenty-fifth birthdays.

The 1790 U.S. Census counted 2,648 people enslaved in Connecticut, alongside 2,771 free blacks. The person who owned the most other people in the state—eleven by official count—was Philip Mortimer.

Back in Boston, as we know from newspaper advertisements, Mortimer employed at least one Irish teenager at ropemaking in 1738, and he imported young indentured servants from Ireland in 1740 and 1741. Maybe he enslaved Africans then, too, but he was doing so in a big way (by New England standards) in 1790.

That number grew to seventeen by July 1792. Mortimer then listed the people working for him for free as:

• Bristol, married to Tamer
• Hagar and her daughter
• Jack, Sophy, and Sophy’s sons Lester, Dick, and John, all under age fourteen
• Amarillas and her children
• Silvy
• Peg, still under the age of twenty-six
• Peter and Prince

That first census also found that Mortimer was the only white person on his estate, the biggest in Middletown. Most of the people he claimed as property must have been his household and farm help. But Peter and Prince worked at his ropewalk as spinners.

TOMORROW: Freedom, but not yet.

Knowing Your Enemy by Name

The two pieces of testimony I quoted over the last two days have something in common besides how they both described violence between locals and soldiers near the ropewalks in central Boston.

In both cases the person describing the 3 Mar 1770 fight, putting all the blame on those nasty people on the other side, could also name one of those opponents.

Archibald McNeal wasn’t just menaced by unknown grenadiers, identifiable only by the wings on their uniforms. Rather, he referred to “One of the grenadiers, named Dixson.”

Pvt. John Rodgers didn’t say he was attacked by three anonymous Bostonians. He fingered one of them as Joseph Shed, whom we can identify as a carpenter.

That pattern reflects the extensive ties between soldiers and civilians that Serena Zabin explores in The Boston Massacre: A Family History. Since late 1768 soldiers had been living in Boston, a town of only 16,000 people. People saw each other on the streets, in taverns, in churches. In some cases soldiers worked part-time alongside locals. Their wives boarded with local homeowners. More than a few redcoats wooed or married Boston women.

As a result, some civilians knew some soldiers as individuals, and vice versa. They may not have liked each other, but their relationships went deeper than simply redcoat and local.

Another example of this phenomenon that Zabin highlights is the case of James Bailey, a sailor who was at the 3 March ropewalk confrontation and at the Massacre two days later.

At the ropewalk, Bailey was a bit of a provocateur, asking young McNeal why he didn’t answer the grenadiers’ taunts. (And then, not having a weapon to counter the soldiers’ bludgeons either, Bailey shut up.) But he could also be friendly to a soldier.

On King Street, Bailey testified, he spotted Pvt. Hugh White standing guard outside the Customs office and being badgered by angry boys. [Rightly so, I’d say, but that’s another story.] “I went up to him because I knew him, and to see what was the matter,” the sailor said—i.e., what was all this ruckus about?

When I first went up to him, I said, what is the matter? He said he did not know. The boys were throwing pieces of ice at him, and after I went to him, they threw no more; I stood with him five or six minutes.

Bailey was actually “standing along with the Sentry, on the Custom-house steps,” in effect shielding White from attack. During that time, the sailor recalled, “He said very little to me, only that he was afraid, if the boys did not disperse, there would be something very soon, he did not mention what.”

Pvt. White, in turn, looked out for Bailey. When more soldiers arrived from the main guard, one of them was Pvt. John Carroll. Bailey recognized him from the ropewalk a couple of days before, and it’s quite possible Carroll recognized him. Bailey stated:

When the soldiers came down, Carrol came up to me and clapt his bayonet to my breast, and White said do not hurt him. . . .

Montgomery…was the very next person to me, close to me. When White told him not to hurt me, he took his hand and pushed me right behind him.

Bailey was one of the witnesses who said Pvt. Edward Montgomery fired the first shot after being hit, though he disagreed with other witnesses on what happened just before that. Bailey had such a close-up view of the shooting because Pvt. White perceived him as friendly.

Two New Artistic Depictions of Revolutionary Stories

Naden Rowe teaches history at an “American” middle school overseas. He occasionally parodies popular songs with new lyrics to explain some part of his lessons.

Last year he reworked “drivers license” by Olivia Rodrigo and Dan Nigro into “Act of Violence,” narrating the Boston Massacre from the perspective of a teen-aged girl in Boston.

Rowe turned to a nearby singer who goes by the name Nyah (here’s her Tiktok feed) to record the new lyrics.

Then a sixth-grader dubbed Yakuza Baby asked to make an animated video for the song, using the Paul Revere engraving combined with new art.

All in all, it’s very impressive. Rowe’s song rightly depicts the first violence of the night on King Street coming from a soldier, analyzes what feelings the propaganda print would produce, and highlights the event’s ambiguities. Nyah’s vocal performance is affecting. And Yakuza Baby’s animation effects are varied and striking.

Another creator who caught my attention this week on Twitter was Sean Dermond, who shared “Mrs. Benedict Arnold,” an online picture book. It provides his take on the story of Peggy Shippen using cutouts within paper dioramas, a technique that reminds me of the 1970s Paddington television series. Handsome draftsmanship and photography under pandemic conditions. Check it out on Dermond’s webpage.

The Boston Massacre as Never Seen Before

The Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia just opened an exhibit of Don Troiani’s paintings of the conflict.

Troiani is not only a talented realistic artist but also one of the country’s most dedicated collectors of historical clothing, weapons, and other artifacts. His work reflects the best thinking about what things really looked like at momentous moments.

WHYY just ran an interesting story about how the museum is making its Troiani exhibit more accessible to people who can’t see those details in the paintings because of limited vision.

There’s a lot in the article, and this is just part of what it says about the presentation of one painting:

The tour at the museum started with Troiani’s painting of the Boston Massacre, the first episode of violence of the American Revolution in 1770 when British soldiers opened fire on an angry rally of Boston residents.

With the help of Trish Maunder, director of Philly Touch Tours, [testers] Mayeux and Bonenfant were first shown how large the painting is, roughly 2 feet by 3 feet. Walking along the width of the painting with their fingers on the frame, they feel in their paces the scale of the work. . . .

“We are standing in this painting behind a group of British soldiers, so imagine them in their bright red coats. There’s about six inches of snow on the ground,” said Tyler Putnam, the museum’s manager of gallery interpretation, describing the painting. “We’re looking at their backs and they are surrounded by a huge crowd.”

Because the perspective of the painting is behind the line of British soldiers, the viewer cannot see their faces in favor of the opposing colonists, whose panicked faces are lit by flashes of black gunpowder explosions.

Putnam then passed around the tactile graphic papers, so Mayeux and Bonenfant could feel the layout of the painting’s composition. Created by the Braille printhouse Clovernook, the paper had been embossed with different types of textures to indicate the surrounding brick buildings, the snow on the ground, and the flashes of gunpowder. A Braille legend in an upper corner identifies what the textures represent.

Although there are several dozen figures in the painting — the crowd of colonists reaches deep into the background of the canvas — the tactile graphic had to be greatly simplified so it could be coherent to fingertips. Only six figures are in the graphic. Most of the information Troiani had put in his painting was eliminated.

The picture above shows the graphic translation of Troiani’s Massacre scene, which folks can view here.

At the left is a sword-wielding civilian, possibly town watchman Benjamin Burdick, and then sentry Pvt. Hugh White in his overcoat. Then two of the seven grenadiers and Capt. Thomas Preston. At the right is another civilian, the apothecary Richard Palmes swiping at Preston with his cane. [Incidentally, Palmes is an important figure in the new book Espionage and Enslavement in the Revolution: The True Story of Robert Townsend and Elizabeth by Claire Bellerjeau and Tiffany Yecke Brooks.]

As the news story says, the tactile graphic leaves out a lot—most of the soldiers and all but two of the large crowd. The two visitors who tested this method of interpretation clearly preferred in-depth description and discussion, though of course most museums can’t provide that all the time.

As the article says, “The tactile graphics are in a trial phase.” As I think about this particular image, I think the layers might be the most important information—the line of soldiers in the foreground, then the first line of locals facing them, then the rest of the crowd, and finally the Town House and other buildings with their straight lines and angles in the background. That would require flipping through three or four tactile graphics. But it was a complex event, after all.

What Happened to the Boston Massacre Defendants?

After being acquitted of murder at the Boston Massacre on 5 Dec 1770, Cpl. William Wemys and five private soldiers “went their Way thro’ the Streets,” the Boston Gazette reported. They probably boarded a boat to Castle William, where the 14th Regiment of Foot was stationed.

Nine days later, fellow defendants Edward Montgomery and Mathew Kilroy joined them, each with one hand bandaged after branding.

Lt. Col. William Dalrymple of the 14th had already decided how he would send those men back to the 29th Regiment, which had been moved to New Jersey. The commander wrote:

A bad disposition appearing in the Soldiers who were confined I shall send them round by sea, we have but too much reason to suspect their ententions to desert they are not at all to be depended on.

“I do not chuse to trust them any other way,” he added on 17 December. It would be great to know why Dalrymple was suspicious, but we don’t.

Until recently, the story of those eight British enlisted men stopped there. But Don Hagist has been doing thorough research on British troops during the War for Independence, culminating in the new book Noble Volunteers. Don found more information on some of those soldiers in the muster rolls and Chelsea pensioner records, which he generously let me publish here. I’ve added information on others over the years. So here’s what happened to all the defendants.

By May 1771, William Wemys was promoted to sergeant. He was still a sergeant when the company was stationed at Chatham, England, on 29 July 1775. His company’s muster rolls end there, so we lose track of him.

In the grenadier company, John Carroll and William Macauley were both made corporals. William Warren, despite being the tallest of the defendants, transferred out of the grenadiers to another company in the 29th.

As I related in this posting from 2006, Pvt. James Hartigan died on 4 Nov 1771 at the 29th’s next assignment in St. Augustine, Florida.

The regiment was in England when the war began, and army commanders decided to send it back to North America. That could have exposed Pvts. Montgomery and Kilroy to being captured by the American rebels, their hands still bearing the brand of the Massacre. On 22 Feb 1776 those two men appeared before a board of examiners for military pensions administered by Chelsea Hospital. Montgomery, age forty-one, was deemed “Worn Out,” and Kilroy, only twenty-eight, was found to have “a Lame Knee.” The board discharged both men from the army with pensions.

The rest of the 29th Regiment sailed to Canada, where different fates awaited different companies. Pvt. Warren and Pvt. Hugh White, the sentry, spent the American war at separate stations in Canada. White was finally discharged from the army on 10 Nov 1789, then aged forty-nine.

John Carroll, promoted to sergeant by February 1777, and Cpl. Macauley were still with the 29th’s grenadier company, which was assigned to Gen. John Burgoyne’s invasion force. Those two men might therefore have become part of the “Convention Army” of prisoners of war marched from Saratoga to Cambridge at the end of that year. But there’s no record of anyone in Massachusetts recognizing those two soldiers from the Massacre trial.

I discussed the evidence about Capt. Thomas Preston’s retirement here. He started to receive an annual £200 royal pension in 1772, and it continued until at least 1790. In the 1780s Preston was living in Dublin.

Of the defendants in the third trial, I profiled Hammond Green in this posting. He evacuated Boston in 1776 as a Customs employee, and his wife and children followed the next year. The royal government gave Green a Customs job at his new home of Halifax, and he was still working there in 1807.

Thomas Greenwood was working for the Customs service in 1770 but wasn’t listed among the employees who evacuated in 1776. I don’t know anything more solid about him.

Edward Manwaring retained the post of chief Customs officer on the Gaspé peninsula until 1785 when he was succeeded by his neighbor Felix O’Hara.

John Munro carried on his business as a notary “at his Office South Side of the Town House.” The 12 Jan 1775 issue of the Massachusetts Spy reported that he had died the previous Tuesday at the age of thirty-nine after a “tedious illness.” He was buried out of Christ Church on 13 January.

“They would have brought in all Guilty…”

As described yesterday, the trial of the eight enlisted men for the Boston Massacre ended with six acquittals and two convictions.

The acquitted men were Cpl. William Wemys and Pvts. James Hartigan, William Macauley, Hugh White, William Warren, and John Carroll.

The published record of the trial states: “Wemms, Hartegan, McCauley, White, Warren and Carrol were immediately discharged.”

According to a writer in the 17 Dec 1770 Boston Gazette, “The Soldiers were discharged from the Court in high Day-Light; and went their Way thro’ the Streets, with little, if any, Notice.”

In other words, there was no mob of Bostonians disappointed in the verdict waiting to string up or otherwise punish those men. The Boston Whigs wanted to be sure the world knew that, even as Samuel Adams prepared a long series of newspaper essays as “Vindex,” rearguing the case in the court of public opinion.

The jurors had convicted the two soldiers described by witnesses as firing fatal shots:

• Pvt. Edward (called Hugh) Montgomery; multiple people said he was the first soldier to shoot, and some said his shot downed the tall man later identified as Crispus Attucks.
• Pvt. Mathew Kilroy, seen to shoot Samuel Gray. In addition, people testified he was at the ropewalk fight days before, he had muttered about getting revenge, and he stuck his bayonet into Gray’s wounded head. A bloody bayonet was found in the main guard the next morning.

The jury thus identified the two men with the most responsibility for the deaths on King Street.

(I think Pvt. White deserves some blame for starting the violence there by hitting apprentice Edward Garrick, but he wasn’t charged with that. Clonking a sassy adolescent on the head wasn’t really considered a crime in colonial America.)

That’s not to say the jury thought the other soldiers were innocent. In fact, the jurors probably came closer to finding most of those men guilty than their relatively brief deliberation might imply. Acting governor Thomas Hutchinson wrote in a 1770 almanac (eventually published in the American Antiquarian Society Proceedings):

The Court [i.e., the judges] doubted whether in any the fact could be M.S. [manslaughter] the violence offered by the people they supposed would make it se defendendo [in self-defense] in every one of the Soldiers, but it seems the Jury thought they ought to have been longer before they fired & if it had been proved that all fired they would have brought in all Guilty of MSr [manslaughter] but the general run of the Evidence was that there was only 7 Guns fired by 8

whoever the eighth was there was nothing which could involve him in the guilt of the other seven. Rather therefore than convict one of the six not proved to have fired who must be innocent the jury acquitted five who were Guilty.

In the same search of the main guard that revealed the bloody bayonet, local officials found that seven of the eight muskets had been fired. They had no way of knowing which soldier had handled which gun. If the army had a system, they didn’t share that information. (Fingerprint evidence hadn’t been developed yet, of course.)

Prosecutor Robert Treat Paine argued that Cpl. Wemys was the man who refrained from firing but admitted that wasn’t certain. And that measure of doubt was enough to spare not only the corporal but five privates.

The Boston Massacre trial is thus not only an early American example of ensuring that even unpopular defendants receive adequate legal representation but also the belief that it’s wiser to let probably guilty defendants go free than to wrongly convict an innocent person.

TOMORROW: The sentence for manslaughter.

The First Day of Testimony Against the Soldiers

The first witness in the trial of Capt. Thomas Preston for the Boston Massacre was a barber’s apprentice named Edward Garrick.

He testified about how Pvt. Hugh White conked him on the head for speaking rudely about a passing army captain.

Edward’s testimony might have been more useful in prosecuting White, showing he had was aggressive and violent toward locals before anyone threatened him. But the prosecutors at the soldiers’ trial never called the boy, and we have no indication why.

Instead, the Crown’s opening witness on 27 Nov 1770 was “Jonathan Williams Austin, clerk to John Adams, Esq.” Which is to say, an assistant and trainee of the senior defense counsel.

By modern standards, this is a clear conflict of interest. But Austin had already testified for the Crown at the Preston trial. Even though the captain was acquitted, prosecuting attorneys Robert Treat Paine and Samuel Quincy must have felt the law clerk was a solid witness because they brought him back.

“Do you know either of the prisoners at the bar?” Quincy asked as his first recorded question.

Austin replied that he recognized Pvt. William Macauley: “I was about four feet off: McCauley said ‘Damn you, stand off,’ and pushed his bayonet at me: I did so.” After the shots, Austin recalled, he saw Macauley reload.

The prosecutors asked the next two witnesses, merchant Ebenezer Bridgham and James Dodge, the same first question, and similar questions of town watchman Edward G. Langford and clerk Francis Archbald. The attorneys’ goal was to establish that the defendants were definitely among the soldiers on King Street, and hopefully among those who fired at the crowd. Thus:

• Bridgham said he saw a tall soldier he thought was Pvt. William Warren fire his gun, but didn’t see Cpl. William Wemms do so.
• Dodge named Warren and White as present, and said the first shot came from the left side of the squad.
• Langford identified White and Pvt. Mathew Kilroy, also said the first shot came from the left side, and testified that “immediately after Kilroy’s firing” ropemaker Samuel Gray fell dead, and “there was no other gun discharged at that time.”
• Archbald also testified to Kilroy’s presence.

Determining which soldiers were present and fired was crucial because on the morning after the shooting people had examined the eight muskets and found that one hadn’t been discharged. One of the soldiers therefore hadn’t killed or wounded anybody. But which one? The prosecution had to prove each shooter’s guilt.

Here are some vivid details from the exchanges.

Q. Was you looking at the person who fired the last gun?
A [from Bridgham]. Yes, I saw him aim at a lad that was running down the middle of the street, and kept the motion of his gun after him a considerable time, and then fired.
Q. Did the lad fall?
A. He did not, I kept my eye on him a considerable time.

Q. Was the snow trodden down, or melted away by the Custom-House?
A [from Dodge]. No, the street was all covered like a cake.

A [from Langford]. Samuel Gray…came and struck me on the shoulder, and said, Langford, what’s here to pay.
Q. What said you to Gray then?
A. I said I did not know what was to pay, but I believed something would come of it by and bye. He made no reply. Immediately a gun went off. . . . I looked this man (pointing to Killroy) in the face, and bid him not fire; but he immediately fired, and Samuel Gray fell at my feet.

A [from Archbald]: I saw a soldier, and a mean looking fellow with him, with a cutlass in his hand: they came up to me: somebody said, put up your cutlass, it is not right to carry it at this time of night. He said, damn you ye Yankee bougers, what’s your business:

At five o’clock, the judges adjourned until the next morning. Since most trials of the time were over in a day, that was unusual, but—after Capt. Preston’s trial—not unprecedented.

The Massacre, Black Lives, and Boys

Before departing this Massacre season, I want to call attention to Farah Peterson’s thought-provoking article in The American Scholar titled “Black Lives and the Boston Massacre.”

Peterson, a law professor and legal historian at the University of Virginia School of Law, writes:

The trial cemented [John] Adams’s reputation as the archetypal lawyer-as-hero, a man willing to be hated in order to give individuals the chance to have their cause fairly heard. And it confirmed for Revolutionary British North Americans that theirs was a cause rooted in legal ideals. We have remembered the trial this way ever since: as a triumph of principle over self-interest or impetuous emotionalism.

But an honest look at the transcript complicates the story by showing how racial prejudice contributed to the outcome. A critical part of Adams’s strategy was to convince the jury that his clients had only killed a black man and his cronies and that they didn’t deserve to hang for it.

Peterson underscores how Adams’s trial argument made the most of Crispus Attucks being a tall, muscular man of color, just as apologists for some recent dubious law-enforcement shootings have insisted that young black men or children looked dangerous.

That’s an compelling parallel to think about, and not necessarily new. Twenty years ago, the Massacre reenactment took place a month after New York police officers killed Amadou Diallo, and some people in the crowd called out the similarities.

Ironically, Peterson undercuts the argument with the way she presents the start of the confrontation on King Street:

This is how the massacre began, with a group of “boys”—that is, teenagers—surrounding a young soldier named Hugh White, who was standing stiffly in his red coat on sentry duty at the Custom House. They started shouting at him, calling him a “son of a bitch” and a “lobster” and screaming to each other (hilariously), “Who buys lobster?” They made a game of pitching snowballs and debris at him and joked about picking up the sentry box and lobbing it into Boston Harbor.

That description has (white) teenagers picking on Pvt. White for no reason. But the sentry was the first to use violence, clubbing an apprentice named Edward Garrick for speaking disrespectfully of an army captain. The article refers to “a rumor that a soldier had hurt a young boy,” immediately suggesting that rowdies might have concocted that story to rile up other Bostonians. In fact, there’s a lot of testimony about the interaction between the sentry and the apprentice.

Peterson quotes Adams reminding the soldiers’ jury about “a motley rabble of saucy boys, negroes and molattoes, Irish teagues and outlandish jack tars.” Genteel society worried about all those classes of people, seeing them as on the boundaries of society and prone to impetuous violence.

Peterson rightly notes how Adams’s argument as a defense attorney and a Whig depended on casting such a mob as unrepresentative of Boston. That was a common stance for Boston politicians; the year before, Loyalist printer John Mein had complained about their “usual sayings” that any violence “was done by Boys & Negroes, or by Nobody.” The blame never fell just on blacks—those men were always grouped with boys and/or sailors.

Thus, while rightly noting how Adams played on the prejudice against men of color like Attucks, Peterson’s recounting of the Massacre trips into replicating the similar prejudice against teenagers.

Watchman Langford “in King-street that evening the 5th March”

Yesterday we saw rookie town watchman Edward G. Langford dealing with the influx of British soldiers—and, more troublesome, British army officers—into Boston in 1768.

On 5 Mar 1770, Langford saw the conflict between the local population and the army come to a head in front of the Customs house on King Street, a short walk from the watch-house that was the base for his nightly patrols.

Langford was called to testify at the trials of Capt. Thomas Preston and the enlisted men. Here’s the record of his testimony from the latter trial, as taken down by John Hodgson:

Q. Was you in King-street that evening the 5th March?

A. Yes. The bells began to ring, and the people cryed fire: I run with the rest, and went into King-street; I asked where the fire was; I was told there was no fire, but that the soldiers at [James] Murray’s barracks had got out, and had been fighting with the inhabitants, but that they had drove them back again. I went to the barracks, and found the affair was over there.

I came back, and just as I got to the Town pump, I saw twenty or five and twenty boys going into King-street. I went into King-street myself, and saw several boys and young men about the Sentry box at the Custom-house. I asked them what was the matter. They said the Sentry [Pvt. Hugh White] had knocked down a boy [Edward Garrick]. They crowded in over the gutter; I told them to let the Sentry alone. He went up the steps of the Custom-house, and knocked at the door, but could not get in. I told him not to be afraid, they were only boys, and would not hurt him. . . . The boys were swearing and speaking bad words, but they threw nothing.

Q. Were they pressing on him?

A. They were as far as the gutter, and he went up the steps and called out, but what he said I do not remember.

Q. Did he call loud?

A. Yes, pretty loud.

Q. To whom did he call?

A. I do not know; when he went up the steps he levelled his piece with his bayonet fixed. As I was talking with the Sentry, and telling him not to be afraid, the soldiers came down, and when they came, I drew back from the Sentry towards Royal-exchange lane, and there I stood. I did not see them load, but somebody said, are you loaded; and Samuel Gray…came and struck me on the shoulder, and said, Langford, what’s here to pay.

Q. What said you to Gray then?

A. I said I did not know what was to pay, but I believed something would come of it by and bye. He made no reply. Immediately a gun went off. I was within reach of their guns and bayonets; one of them thrust at me with his bayonet, and run it through my jacket and great coat.

Q. Where was you then?

A. Within three or four feet of the gutter, on the outside. . . .

Q. How many people were there before the soldiers at that time?

A. About forty or fifty, but there were numbers in the lane.

Q. Were they nigh the soldiers?

A. They were not in the inside of the gutter.

Q. Had any of the inhabitants sticks or clubs?

A. I do not know. I had one myself, because I was going to the watch, for I belong to the watch.

Q. How many soldiers were there?

A. I did not count the number of them, about seven or eight I think.

Q. Who was it fired the first gun?

A. I do not know.

Q. Where about did he stand that fired?

A. He stood on my right, as I stood facing them: I stood about half way betwixt the box and Royal-exchange lane. I looked this man (pointing to [Pvt. Mathew] Killroy) in the face, and bid him not fire; but he immediately fired, and Samuel Gray fell at my feet. Killroy thrust his bayonet immediately through my coat and jacket; I ran towards the watch-house, and stood there.

Q. Where did Killroy stand?

A. He stood on the right of the party.

Q. Was he the right hand man?

A. I cannot tell: I believe there were two or three on his right, but I do not know. . . .

Q. Did you see any thing hit the soldiers?

A. No, I saw nothing thrown. I heard the rattling of their guns, and took it to be one gun against another. This rattling was at the time Killroy fired, and at my right, I had a fair view of them; I saw nobody strike a blow nor offer a blow.

Q. Have you any doubt in your own mind, that it was that gun of Killroy’s that killed Gray?

A. No manner of doubt; it must have been it, for there was no other gun discharged at that time.

Q. Did you know the Indian that was killed?

A. No.

Q. Did you see any body press on the soldiers with a large cord wood stick?

A. No.

Q. After Gray fell, did he (Killroy) thrust at him with his bayonet?

A. No, it was at me he pushed.

Q. Did Gray say any thing to Killroy, or Killroy to him?

A. No, not to my knowledge, and I stood close by him.

Q. Did you perceive Killroy take aim at Gray?

A. I did not: he was as liable to kill me as him.

Langford’s testimony was important in positively identifying Pvt. Mathew Kilroy as the soldier who had fatally shot ropemaker Samuel Gray. Kilroy was one of the only two defendants convicted of manslaughter and branded as a felon.

Edward G. Langford remained on the town watch payroll until November 1772. The last record I found of him showed that he died on 26 Mar 1777, aged thirty-eight. He was buried out of Trinity Church. Five years later a Mary Langford, perhaps his widow or his sister, was licensed to retail alcohol to support herself.

When I Paint My Massacre

This week the history painter Don Troiani unveiled his depiction of the Boston Massacre. Troiani is known for his careful research, which includes collecting period artifacts and clothing. He was also assisted by some of the New England reenactors who depict this event outside the Old State House museum [in years when it’s not going to be 10°F].

Note the soldiers’ headgear. Cpl. William Wemys (in the dark surtout or overcoat at the left) and Pvt. Hugh White (next to him) were from the 29th Regiment’s regular infantry companies while the other men were from the grenadier company. Often they’ve all been lumped together as grenadiers.

In recent years researchers have speculated, based on the Henry Pelham engraving and on British army paperwork, that the grenadiers of the 29th wore cocked hats like regular infantrymen since their distinctive tall caps didn’t arrive before they sailed for Boston. However, new research suggests the grenadiers of the 29th did receive their caps in time, so Troiani depicted those men wearing period caps.

Troiani also made an artistic choice to depict the scene from behind the soldiers, putting the viewer literally on their side of the confrontation. We don’t see the men and boys—some aggressive, some not—being shot off the side of the canvas.

The press release announcing this painting seems to lean even further to the side of the soldiers. It says of Pvt. White, “Having witnessed Edward Garrick verbally assault Lieutenant – Captain [sic] John Goldfinch, he reprimanded the youth with a strike to his head with his firelock.” Thus, Garrick’s rude words become an “assault” while White’s actual violence is a “reprimand.”

The same paragraph goes on to quote John Adams’s description of the crowd that gathered in response to the violence: a “motley rabble of saucy boys, negroes and molattoes, Irish teagues and outlandish jack tarrs.” But it doesn’t cite Adams by name or note that he was speaking as the soldiers’ defense attorney—i.e., that description was one side of a courtroom argument. What, we might ask, would this same event look like from the other side?

Troiani usually makes his paintings available as prints through W. Britain, and I assume this one will appear there soon. Meanwhile, the research behind this painting will also be on display tonight at this year’s reenactment. [ADDENDUM: Alas, canceled because of the frigid forecast.]

Pvt. Joseph Whitehouse’s Story about Capt. Goldfinch

Yesterday I described how Jane Crothers, an eyewitness to the Boston Massacre, married Pvt. Joseph Whitehouse of the 14th Regiment later in March 1770.

Whitehouse also went to Christ Church (Old North) that month for the baptism of a child of another 14th Regiment soldier, George Simpson, on 14 March. Christ Church was one of Boston’s three Anglican churches, preferred by the soldiers from Britain and Ireland.

By the end of that month, the 14th Regiment had moved to Castle Island in Boston harbor, thus no longer inside the town of Boston and in daily contact with its civilians. They were still there in August, and Pvt. Whitehouse was one of the soldiers who lined up to give testimony to justice of the peace James Murray (shown here) about how badly the locals had treated them.

On 25 August, Whitehouse stated:

That about the latter end of February 1769, he was assaulted in the Streets of Boston by a mob of the townsmen, throwing pieces of Ice and snow-balls at him, calling him Scoundrel, Lobster, bloody back’d dog and much more abusive language, to all which he made no reply.

And further deposeth, that on the 5th. March last in the Evening as he was going to the barracks, he saw a number of the inhabitants striking Capt. Goldfinch who was lying on the ground, his sword taken away, and his face very much bruised, on his attempting to assist him, the mob immediately fell on him, and beat him in such a manner, that it was with much difficulty he reached the barracks.

Capt.-Lt. John Goldfinch of the 14th also played a major role in the events that led up to the Massacre. According to George R. T. Hewes, an apprentice at John Piemont’s shop dressed the officer’s hair in December, and the barber promised that apprentice that he could have the payment for that job. But then Goldfinch didn’t pay immediately, nor, it seems, as soon as the bill came due in three months.

So as Capt. Goldfinch passed by the Customs house on King Street on the evening of 5 March, apprentice Edward Garrick heckled him about the bill. He “owed my fellow Prentice,” Edward called. In fact, by that evening Goldfinch had paid the bill—so recently he still had the receipt in his pocket. But he disdained haggling on the street with an apprentice, leaving Pvt. Hugh White to put an end to the topic by clonking Edward on the head.

Goldfinch was one of the many people who testified about what happened that night. He gave a deposition for A Fair Account of the Late Unhappy Disturbance at Boston, published in London. He testified at the soldiers’ trial. He had every reason to describe the Boston crowd as violent.

Yet Goldfinch never described being personally assaulted, knocked to the ground, “his face very much bruised.” He never described his sword being taken away. Instead, his story was about finding a brawl going on outside the barracks rented from Justice Murray, reestablishing order there, and then hearing the shots from King Street.

Was Pvt. Whitehouse mistaken about which British officer he saw “lying on the ground” and tried to help? That seems unlikely. And if that were so, we would expect to see Goldfinch or another officer complain about that assault on a colleague. The whole point of the Fair Account pamphlet and the depositions collected at Castle William was to paint the townspeople as violent. But there’s no complaint about such an incident on 5 March.

I suspect Pvt. Whitehouse correctly suspected what his superiors wanted to hear about the locals, and knew that Goldfinch was somehow involved in the King Street incident. So he came up with this story of the captain under attack. Whitehouse’s tale is one reason I’m as skeptical about the soldiers’ depositions as I am about the Bostonians’ testimony to their own friendly magistrates.

COMING UP: Don Hagist traces Pvt. Whitehouse’s military career.

Jane Crothers, Witness to a Massacre

In early 1770, Jane Crothers lived near the head of Royal Exchange Lane, thus near the Boston Customs House. On the night of 5 March she heard noise outside. She went out to ask the army sentry guarding that building, Pvt. Hugh White, what was the matter.

White said he didn’t know—not mentioning that earlier in the evening he’d clubbed a teen-aged barber’s apprentice, Edward Garrick, on the head.

Then Crothers saw people coming from the direction of the Town House (now the Old State House). She heard them say, “There’s the Centinel, the bloody back Rascall, let’s go kill him!” Those people had been riled up by Garrick and his friends, hoping for justice.

Crothers would later testify in court about what happened next. There are two sets of notes about what she said, mostly in agreement. An anonymous notetaker recorded:

They kept gathering throwing Snow balls, Oyster Shells and chunks of Wood at the Centinel. Beat him from out of his Box to the steps.

A space after saw a party coming from the Main Guard, an Officer which proved to be Capt. [Thomas] Preston with them. He desired his Men to halt and the Centinel to recover his Arm, fall into his Rank and march up to the Main Guard. The Centinel fell in and the men wanted to move forward to the Guard house but could not for the Riot.

The people called out fire, damn you why dont you fire, you cant kill us [all]. I steppd to the Party. Heard a Gentleman ask the Capt. if he was going to order his men to fire. He said no Sir by no means, by no means. A Man—the Centinel—then pushed me back. I step’d back to the corner. He bid me go away for I should be killed.

A Man came behind the Soldiers walkd backwards and forwards, encouraging them to fire. The Captain stood on the left about three yards. The man touched one of the Soldiers upon the back and said fire, by God I’ll stand by you. He was dressed in dark coloured Cloaths. I don’t remember he had a Surtout or any lace about him. He did not look like an Officer. The man fired directly on the word and clap on the Shoulder.

This testimony, from one of the very few women on the scene that night, helped to exonerate Capt. Preston of having ordered the soldiers to fire.

By the time of Preston’s trial, Jane Crothers was no longer Jane Crothers. On 27 March, three weeks and a day after the Massacre, she married Pvt. Joseph Whitehouse of the 14th Regiment at Christ Church (Old North). She was thus attached to the army, though not identified as such in the trial records.

Instead, those notes record another unusual aspect of Jane Whitehouse’s testimony. Under Massachusetts law, witnesses could swear to tell the truth simply by holding up their hand and reciting or assenting to an oath. But someone “said that Jane Whitehouse thought there was no obligation from Oaths administred by holding up the hand.” She was therefore “Sworn upon the Bible.” I’ve tried to find a discussion of that distinction from the period in hopes that it would say something about the woman’s religion, and I haven’t.

TOMORROW: What Pvt. Whitehouse had to say.

Ann Green’s View of the Boston Massacre

Bartholomew and Abigail Green had a number of children, some of whom lived in the Customs House on King Street with them in 1770. Among those children were two brothers, John and Hammond. (Bartholomew’s mother had been born Hannah Hammond.) I quoted John Green’s account of what he saw at the Boston Massacre last year.

The Greens also had a daughter called Ann or Nancy, and she also witnessed the shooting on 5 March. It was not how she expected her evening to go.

So far as I know, we don’t have any testimony directly from Ann Green, but we can track her through other people’s accounts. Here’s the wigmaker’s apprentice Bartholomew Broaders describing how she and a maid in the family, Elizabeth Avery, asked him to escort them on an errand:

Soon after [eight o’clock] Mr. Green’s maid and his daughter called him out of the shop, and asked him to go to the apothecary’s; and then they with the deponent returned to the custom-house; in going he met his fellow-apprentice [Edward Garrick], and they went & stood upon the custom-house steps, and Mr. Hammond Green came out, saying, come in girls; then the deponent and his fellow apprentice, by the maid’s invitation, went in also…

That pleasant visit of the two young barbers with two young maids, chaperoned by one of their brothers, was interrupted by the arrival of a man named Sawny Irving, apparently upset that he had lost his hat in a fight with soldiers. After some discussion Hammond Green showed Irving and the apprentices out.

A few minutes after that, Hammond later testified, “two other boys belonging to Mr. [John] Piemont, came into the kitchen, also my brother John.” Out in the street, as described here, Edward Garrick got into an argument with Pvt. Hugh White, the sentry in front of the Customs House. White clubbed Garrick on the head. Broaders yelled back at the soldier, which started to draw a crowd.

John and Hammond Green went out different doors of the house to see what was going on. John walked further, following the noise. Hammond described coming back to look after his sister:

I went to the steps of the Custom-house door, and Mary Rogers, Eliza. Avery, and Ann Green, came to the door, at the same time, heard a bell ring; upon the people’s crying fire, we all went into the house and I locked the door, saying, we shall know if anybody comes; after that, Thomas Greenwood [another Customs employee] came to the door and I let him in, he said that there was a number of people in the street, I told him if he wanted to see anything to go up stairs, but to take no candle with him; he went up stairs, and the three women aforementioned went with him, and I went and fastened the windows, doors, and gate; I left the light in the kitchen, and was going up stairs, but met Greenwood in the room next to the kitchen, and he said that he would not stay in the house, for he was afraid it would be pulled down…

Greenwood left the Customs house, meeting John Green, who was trying unsuccessfully to get back in. The two men went to the army’s guardhouse on the other side of the Town House for help, but found that a squad of soldiers was already on its way to reinforce Pvt. White. And to guard the Customs house itself, in case the mob started to attack the building.

Meanwhile, Ann Green and the two other women were in the upper-floor room, watching the growing violence on the street below.

TOMORROW: What the women saw at the Massacre.

The Meaning of the Whitesboro Seal

This is the seal of the village of Whitesboro, New York. It got a lot of attention this month because it appears to show a white frontiersman choking a Native American. All to represent a place called “Whitesboro.”

Village officials insist the seal isn’t about white people conquering Indians. The village is truly named after an early American settler named Hugh White (1733-1812), who moved to the region from Middletown, Connecticut, in 1784.

During the war White had invested in a privateer. Other sources say he was a commissary to the Continental Army or even a captain, but I haven’t found any independent evidence to confirm those statements.

The village seal shows White wrestling a Native man—a friendly wrestling match, it’s said. In 1838 William Tracy published this story in Notices of Men and Events Connected with the Early History of Oneida County:

Another anecdote of Judge White, may not be uninteresting in this connection. An Oneida chief, of rather an athletic form, was one day present at his house with a number of his companions, and at length, for amusement, the party commenced wrestling. After a number of trials had been made, the chief came forward and challenged the settler to a clench with him.

This was done in a manner, and with a degree of braggadocio, which convinced him, that if he refused to encounter him it would subject him to the constant inconvenience of being brow beaten by the Indian, and cost him the trouble of being believed a coward. In early manhood he had been a wrestler, but he had now become quite corpulent, and for years unused to any athletic feats. He felt conscious, however, of great personal strength, and he concluded, that even should he be thrown, yet as a choice of evils, the being thrown would be a lesser one than the acquiring a character of cowardice by declining.

He therefore accepted the challenge and took hold with the Indian, and by a fortunate trip, succeeded almost instantly in throwing him. As he saw him falling, in order to prevent the necessity of ever making another trial of his powers, and of receiving any new challenge, he contrived to fall with all his weight, he then constituting an avoirdupois of some 250 lbs., and as heavily as possible, upon the Indian. The weight, for an instant, drove all breath from the poor fellow’s body; and it was some moments before he could get up. At length he slowly arose, shrugged his shoulders with an emphatic—“Ugh! you good fellow, too much!”

I need not add, that he was never again challenged to wrestle with an Indian.

Whitesboro has used an illustration of that story on its seal since the 1890s or earlier.

In 2009 the Utica Observer-Dispatch noted that ten years before a mayor had proposed changing the seal to something less likely to cause offense. Furthermore, some Native Americans had complained about the image twenty years before that—or earlier. The newspaper added:

Whitesboro historian Judy Mallozzi said the current seal was adopted sometime in the 1970s after the village was sued by an Indian group over the depiction at that time.

“The hands of Hugh White were on his neck area,” she said of the earlier image. “So after the lawsuit, it was determined it’s part of our history, so we didn’t have to stop using the seal. We just had to move it, so it’s down on his shoulders.”

Curiously, images of the previous seal show that the new version moved White’s hands closer to the other man’s neck.

So does the Whitesboro, New York, seal reflect a history of white men overpowering Natives by force or simple weight and taking their land? No more than the existence of Whitesboro, and New York, and the U.S. of A. Which is to say, of course it does.

This particular cartoon represents one cross-cultural experience that White and his family chose to remember as a friendly moment. Indeed, the Oneida were allies of the U.S. of A. during the Revolution and in the years immediately after. But given the larger history of colonial European and American appropriation of Native territory, it’s very hard to interpret that image as just about a wrestling match between two community leaders.

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.

Don Hagist on Pvts. Montgomery and Kilroy

A few years back, Don Hagist, blogger and author of British Soldiers, American War, alerted me that the name of Pvt. Hugh White of His Majesty’s 29th Regiment of Foot appeared in army pension records digitized by the British National Archives. White’s pension paperwork showed where he was born, how old he was at discharge, and how long he had been in the army.

From that data we could calculate White’s age and military experience on 5 Mar 1770, when he was the sentry on King Street before the Boston Massacre. Suddenly a man who had been little more than a name and a caricature in the propaganda prints by Henry Pelham and Paul Revere became an individual. He was an Irishman, thirty years old, and he’d served in the British army for eleven years.

Late last year Don told me he’d found similar records for two more soldiers involved in the Massacre—in fact, the two who were convicted of manslaughter. Here is Don’s explanation of this new discovery as a special “guest blogger” posting.

The 29th Regiment’s muster rolls for the second half of 1774 are missing, and Pvts. Edward Montgomery and Mathew Kilroy do not appear on the surviving 1775 rolls. That leaves no indication of whether they were discharged, died, deserted, or were drafted into another regiment—and at that time many men were being drafted into regiments bound for America.

The discharge certificates for many army pensioners survive in the WO 97, WO 119, and WO 121 collections at the British National Archives (all indexed online), and those do not list Montgomery and Kilroy either. But those collections do not include all pensioners, only those for whom discharge certificates survive.

There’s another source on army pensioners in the National Archives: WO 116, Chelsea Out-Pension Admission Books. This collection is a chronological listing of all men who appeared before the board of examiners for out-pensions administered by Chelsea Hospital in London.

Montgomery and Kilroy both appeared before the board on 22 Feb 1776. Here is a screen shot of the PDF file of the digital scan of the microfilm of the manuscript (don’t we live in a wonderful age?).

This admission book states each soldier’s name, age, years of service, infirmity for which he was discharged, place of birth, and trade. Montgomery was born at Antrim in Ireland and was thirty-five years old in 1770, with fourteen years in the army. Kilroy was from a town in County Laois, Ireland. Twenty-two years old around the time of the Massacre, he had joined the army at fifteen, an unusually young age. Both men were listed as “labourers,” meaning they had no skilled trade.

It is also very interesting that Montgomery and Kilroy went before the examination board (which met several times a year) on the same day, suggesting some camaraderie between them, but that’s only speculative. Officially, Montgomery was “Worn out” while Kilroy had “a Lame Knee.”

I speculate that the army was happy to discharge Montgomery and Kilroy before their regiment headed for Canada and the American war. With their thumbs branded, those two men could have been recognized and singled out for punishment if they were captured.

As it happened, the 29th’s grenadier company was part of Gen. John Burgoyne’s army and did become prisoners of war, marched to eastern Massachusetts in the Convention Army. But thanks to this discharge, Montgomery and Kilroy were not among them.

Thanks, Don, for helping us see these soldiers as individuals. Keep up the excellent work!

Daniel Usher at the Boston Massacre

On Saturday I quoted Henry Knox’s testimony in the trial of the soldiers after the Boston Massacre. In response to a lawyer’s question, he said he “did hear a young fellow, one Usher, about eighteen years of age say” of Pvt. Hugh White, “God damn him, we will knock him down for snapping,” or firing his gun with no ball inside.

I went looking for the person Knox described. One possibility is Daniel Usher, who (like Knox) testified to magistrates Richard Dana and John Hill for Boston’s report on the event:

…coming into King-street about half after nine o’clock on monday evening the fifth current, he saw several persons, mostly young folks gathered between the town house and coffee-house, some of whom were talking to the centinel at the commissioners or custom-house; after some time, the boys at a distance began to throw light snow balls at him, which he seemed much enraged at, & went on to the custom-house steps where he appeared to have charged his gun giving it a heavy stamp upon the door step, as if to force down the lead, and then swore to the boys if they came near him he would blow their brains out.

About ten minutes after this, the deponent saw Capt. [Thomas] Preston leading seven or eight men from towards the town-house, and placed them between the custom-house door and the centinel box. About four or five minutes after they were posted, the snow balls now and then coming towards the soldiers, the Capt. commanded them to fire.

Upon this, one gun quickly went off, and afterwards he said FIRE BY ALL MEANS! others succeeding, and the deponent being utterly unarm’d, to avoid further danger, went up round the town-house till the fray was over. And further saith not.

Despite (or because of) this accusation of Capt. Preston, Daniel Usher wasn’t called to testify at either of the formal trials.

A Daniel Usher was baptized at the Brattle Street Meetinghouse on 5 Feb 1749, son of Hezekiah and Jane Usher. That would have made him twenty-one in March 1770, or a year older than Knox.

However, I can’t fit that baptism into the genealogy published in volume 23 of the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, which says that Hezekiah and Jane User did have a son Daniel, who died young, and that Hezekiah married another woman named Abigail in the early 1740s. Once again, there might have been multiple people with the same names.

Henry Knox at the Boston Massacre

Henry Knox was a witness of the Boston Massacre, the first time he came to recorded prominence in Boston. (The youth of the town remembered when he single-handedly shouldered one corner of the South End’s wagon during one Pope Night brawl, but that sort of feat didn’t make the newspapers.)

On 17 March 1770, the twenty-year-old Knox gave the following deposition to magistrates Richard Dana and John Hill, who were collecting testimony for a town report about the shooting on King Street. (This quotation uses the spelling and punctuation of a mid-1800s reprint, with added paragraphing.)

I, Henry Knox, of lawful age, testify and say, that between nine and ten o’clock, P. M., the fifth instant [i.e., of this month], I saw the sentry at the Custom-house charging his musket, and a number of young persons crossing from Royal Exchange to Quaker lane; seeing him load, stopped and asked him what he meant? and told others the sentry was going to fire. They then huzzaed and gathered round him at about ten feet distant.

I then advancing, went up to him, and the sentry snapped his piece upon them, Knox told him if he fired he died. The sentry answered he did not care, or words to that purpose, damning them and saying, if they touched him, he would fire. The boys told him to fire and be damned.

Immediately on this I returned to the rest of the people and endeavored to keep every boy from going up, but finding it ineffectual, went off through the crowd and saw a detachment of about eight or nine men and a corporal, headed by Capt. [Thomas] Preston. I took Capt. Preston by the coat and told him for God’s sake to take his men back again, for if they fired his life must answer for the consequence; he replied he was sensible of it, or knew what he was about, or words to that purpose; and seemed in great haste and much agitated.

While I was talking with Capt. Preston, the soldiers of his detachment had attacked the people with their bayonets. There was not the least provocation given to Capt. Preston or his party, the backs of the people being towards them when they were attacked. During the time of the attack I frequently heard the words, “Damn your blood,” and such like expressions.

When Capt. Preston saw his party engaged he directly left me and went into the crowd, and I departed: the deponent further says that there was not present in King street above seventy or eighty people at the extent, according to his opinion.

Knox’s deposition said nothing about the actual shooting. He described the apprentices’ confrontation with sentry Pvt. Hugh White, and then he described the arrival of the reinforcement soldiers from the perspective of someone at the back of that crowd.

“I stood at the foot of the Town house when the Guns were fired,” Knox later said. That was at the trial of Capt. Preston, when the prosecutors called Knox as a witness. Evidently they wanted his testimony to establish that Preston had been warned not to order his men to fire.

Interestingly, the effect of Knox’s testimony was that in the subsequent trial of the soldiers their attorneys called him as a defense witness. This is how John Hodgson recorded Knox’s words:

I was at the North-end, and heard the bells ring, I thought it was fire; I came up as usual to go to the fire; I heard it was not fire, but the soldiers and inhabitants were fighting; I came by Cornhill, and there were a number of people an hundred and fifty, or two hundred; I asked them what was the matter, they said a number of soldiers had been out with bayonets and cutlasses, and had attacked and cut the people all down Cornhill, and then retreated to their barracks; a fellow said they had been cutting fore and aft. The people fell gradually down to Dock-square. I came up Cornhill, and went down King-street, I saw the Sentinel at the Custom-house steps loading his piece; coming up to the people, they said the Sentinel was going to fire.

Q. How many persons were there at that time round the Sentinel?

A. About fifteen or twenty, he was waving his piece about, and held it in the position that they call charged bayonets. I told him if he fired he must die for it, he said damn them, if they molested him he would fire; the boys were hallowing fire and be damned.

Q. How old were these boys?

A. Seventeen or eighteen years old. I endeavoured to keep one fellow off from the Sentinel, I either struck him or pushed him away.

Q. Did you hear one of the persons say, God damn him, we will knock him down for snapping?

A. Yes, I did hear a young fellow, one Usher, about eighteen years of age say this.

Q. Did you see any thing thrown at the Sentinel?

A. No, nothing at all.

Q. Did you see the party come down?

A. Yes.

Q. What was the manner of their coming down?

A. They came down in a kind of a trot, or a very fast walk.

Q. Did they come down in a threatening posture?

A. Very threatening, at least their countenances looked so, they said make way, damn you make way, and they pricked some of the people.

Q. Did you see the Corporal [William Wemys]?

A. I saw a person with the party, whom I took to be the Corporal.

Q. Had he a surtout on?

A. Yes, he had.

That last detail from cross-examination incriminated Wemys since other witnesses said that a man wearing a surtout had given the order to fire. However, there’s good evidence that Pvt. Edward Montgomery actually shouted, “Fire!” and Wemys most likely never shot his gun at all. Montgomery was one of the two men convicted of manslaughter; Wemys and the other men were acquitted.

Come see the Massacre reenacted tonight at the Old State House in Boston starting at 7:00 P.M.!