Viewing the “Shot Heard” Exhibit at the Concord Museum

Last week I took in the Concord Museum’s new “Shot Heard Round the World” exhibit about the events of 18-19 Apr 1775. It was quite an impressive gathering of artifacts related to one historic day.

This is definitely a military-based show. I counted six powder horns (one pierced by a musket ball), five swords, and four muskets, versus two looking-glasses and one clockface. Some of the items are already famous, such as one of the lanterns said to have hung in the Old North Church and William Diamond’s drum.

Other objects I’d never seen before in person or photograph. For instance, John Hancock’s letter to members of the Committee of Supplies in west Cambridge shows Patriot leaders discussing the likelihood of British troops heading to Concord before they went to bed on the 18th.

A shovel sheathed in iron is labeled as probably one of the fortification-building tools the Massachusetts Provincial Congress had collected in Concord. I wondered, had James Brewer taken this shovel from deacon Richard Boynton’s forge inside Boston? (I guess I haven’t told that story on Boston 1775 yet.)

There aren’t many portraits in this exhibit, but one familiar face on the walls was the watercolor painting of Maj. John Pitcairn that I discussed earlier this year. Its label offers a new theory of its origin, and I’m curious about the evidence behind that.

It was striking how many artifacts in this show come from local historical societies, and different historical societies. New England was built with lots of separate towns, and they have their separate treasures, many loaned for this show. Thus, from Arlington (formerly Menotomy) come not just the Royal Artillery cartridge pouch discussed back here but also a panel from little Joel Adams’s door and part of the meetinghouse silverware that some British soldiers carried into Boston.

Another element of the exhibit I liked was the use of stripes on the wall to show relative size of the British and American forces in action. You can see those in the background of the photo above, from Donna Seger’s report on visiting Concord on Patriots Day. (The foreground shows the gun flints found in two lines in Concord’s training field, where militia troops lined up before moving against the regulars at the North Bridge.)

If you go to the Concord Museum for this exhibit, don’t miss two other Revolution-related rooms: the “Last Muster” photographs of aged veterans and the portion of the “Why Concord?” exhibit downstairs that deals with the shift to independence.

Christopher Monk's Catstick

While attorneys at the trial of soldiers for the Boston Massacre questioned blockmaker James Brewer, as described over the past week, one lawyer for the defense, John Adams, was taking notes. He summarized some significant parts of Brewer’s testimony like this:

Kit. [Christopher] Monk was there. I turned round to speak to Kit. Monk, and they fired and K. faltered. [Pvt. Mathew] Kilroy struck me upon the Arm with his Bayonet as they came round before they were formed. The Firing began upon the Right. I thought it was the Man quite upon the right. Kilroy struck at me. Saw no blows, nothing thrown. Monk had a Catstick in his Hand. Heard no Names called, no Threats, no shouts, no Cheers, till the firing.

What’s a “catstick”? John Russell Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms (published in 1849) defines that object this way:

Catstick. A bat or cudgel, used by New England boys in a game at ball. It is known by the same name in England, though used for a different play. I have never heard the word except here in Rhode Island.

A catstick was thus a small wooden bat, perhaps the size of those miniature bats sold as souvenirs. (The one pictured above, available from the Oddball Mall, features Nomar Garciaparra in a Red Sox uniform. I wonder why those haven’t sold out.)

Here’s the real mystery. The detail that “Monk had a Catstick in his Hand” does not appear in the published record of Brewer’s testimony. It first saw print when Adams’s notes were published in the third volume of Legal Papers of John Adams. What explains the discrepancy? I can imagine two scenarios.

First, the shorthand expert who privately transcribed the trial, John Hodgson, might have missed that part of Brewer’s testimony. Adams and merchant Richard Palmes both claimed Hodgson had made serious mistakes. Hodgson did not capture Robert Treat Paine’s summation for the Crown because the courtroom was so crowded and his hand so cramped. The Whigs already suspected Hodgson’s neutrality since he was a Scottish immigrant employed by a printer who supported and was supported by the Customs service.

But Brewer testified early in the trial, and Adams said Hodgson’s notes on the witnesses’ remarks were fine. (I suspect his notes on Adams’s summation were fine as well, and that speech simply wasn’t as brilliant as Adams wanted to remember.) Testimony that young Kit Monk had been carrying a stick, especially from a prosecution witness, would have helped the defense, so it seems unlikely that Hodgson would have missed it. Furthermore, that detail doesn’t fit with Brewer’s other testimony: he was busy denying that he’d seen any civilian on King Street with any stick.

My second scenario, therefore, is that Adams might have heard about Monk’s catstick from some other source. As he took notes on Brewer’s testimony, the attorney responded to the blockmaker’s denials by, perhaps indignantly, inserting a contradictory fact. But because no witness testified about the catstick, Adams and his colleagues never got to introduce that detail into the trial.

COMING UP: So what did New England boys use a catstick for? Besides possibly brawling with soldiers, of course.

James Brewer at the Boston Massacre, part 4

Here’s the end of Josiah Quincy, Jr.’s cross-examination of prosecution witness James Brewer at the trial of eight British enlisted men for the Boston Massacre. The pump and blockmaker continued not to recall the crowd doing or saying anything threatening on King Street on the night of 5 Mar 1770. But Quincy was able to elicit some information from him that might help the defense:

Q: Did you hear any huzzas or cheers as they are called?

B: I heard a clamour of the people, but I hear no cheers.

Q: Did you hear them call the soldiers any names?

B: No.

Q: Did you hear any body say, kill them, damn them knock them over?

B: No.

Q: Did you hear the whistling about the streets at the time?

B: No.

Q: Did you see any person strike with a club at the soldiers or any of them?

B: No.

Q: Did you see them attempt to strike their guns?

B: No.

Q: Did you hear the rattling of the guns as though a stick had struck upon them?

B: No. I heard people around call fire.

Q: Did you take that to be the cry of fire, or bidding the soldiers fire?

B: I cannot tell now what I thought then.

Q: How many guns did you hear fired?

B: I think seven.

There were indeed seven guns fired, a detail that became crucial in the final arguments. The jury could not convict the eight soldiers as a group or they would be condemning one man who was clearly innocent. But which one? The prosecution had to either identify the one man who had not fired or to prove that certain others had.

Q: Did the word fire proceed from the people or from the soldiers?

B: From the people.

Q: Was there a greater noise than usual, when the bells rang for fire?

B: I did not think there was so much. When I saw Dr. [Thomas] Young, he had a sword in his hand. When I came in King-street it was as quiet as I ever saw it in my life.

Brewer had mentioned Dr. Young earlier, but not his sword. He may have volunteered that detail in an attempt to contrast the atmosphere of danger around the soldiers’ barracks with the calm he was describing outside the Customs house. But the defense lawyer seized on that detail. Young was well known as a radical thinker—an actual democrat. Had he encouraged the crowd to be violent, or directed men to King Street? Brewer went back to not remembering.

Q: Was the sword naked or not?

B: I cannot remember.

Q: What sort of sword was it?

B: I do not remember.

Q: What did Young say to you?

B: He said it was best for every body to go home.

Q: Did any body huzza for King street?

B: No. I said, every man home, and the word went round.

Such statements like this might hint that the Boston crowd saw Brewer as a leader among them, or at least an example to follow.

Q: Did not Dr. Young say the soldiers were beat to their barracks?

B: No; He said they had made a rumpus, and were gone to their barracks.

Q: Do you know if Dr. Young went into King-street?

B: I cannot tell, I left him in the lane.

I think the phrase “beat to their barracks” probably refers to a drum signal, what Thomas Simes’s Military Medley (1768) called a “taptoo.”

COMING UP: A missing detail from Brewer’s testimony.

James Brewer at the Boston Massacre, part 3

The published transcript of the trial of soldiers for the Boston Massacre, possibly the first ever attempted in America, doesn’t indicate when the questioning of witnesses switched from prosecution to defense. So I’m guessing at that point in blockmaker James Brewer’s testimony, based on when the questions double back to the beginning of his account and start reviewing the same points.

The soldiers’ legal team—Robert Auchmuty, John Adams, and Josiah Quincy, Jr.—were trying to make a case for self-defense. So they started by homing in on why Brewer had thought sentry Hugh White seemed scared before turning to what else he might have seen. Quincy, as junior member of the team, probably handled the questioning; Adams was taking detailed notes on Brewer’s remarks, which survive.

Q: How came you to to speak to the Sentry, and tell him not to be afraid?

B: Because he was swinging his gun in that manner.

Q: Did you come up Royal-exchange-lane?

B: Yes. I saw Doctor [Thomas] Young there, and several others coming up to know where the fire was; Doctor Young said it was not fire, but the soldiers had made a rumpus, but were gone to their barracks again. [This was the fight at Murray’s barracks.] Then said I let every man go to his own home.

Q: Did you see any thing thrown at the soldiers?

B: No.

Q: Did you hear any body call them names?

B: No.

Q: Did you hear any threatning speeches?

B: No; except that the people cryed fire!—fire!—the word fire was in every body’s mouth.

Q: Just before the firing, when [Pvt. Mathew] Killroy struck you, was there any thing thrown at the soldiers then?

B: I saw nothing.

Q: Was there a number of people betwixt you and the soldiers?

B: Not many.

Q: Did you see [merchant Richard] Palmes talking with Capt. [Thomas] Preston?

B: No; I saw the molatto fellow [Crispus Attucks] there, and saw him fall.

Q: Did you see a party of people like sailors, coming down from the Jackson’s corner, with sticks?

B: No, I saw none.

Q: Where did you first see the molatto?

B: He was just before me by the gutter.

Q: Did you see any people coming from Quaker-lane with sticks?

B: I saw several inhabitants coming through that lane, but I saw no sticks.

Q: Were there any coming up Royal Exchange lane?

B: Yes, numbers, but I saw no sticks.

Q: When you first saw the molatto, did you hear him say any thing to the soldiers, or strike at them?

B: No.

Q: Had he a stick or club?

B: I did not take notice.

Many other witnesses had testified and would testify to seeing civilians, including Crispus Attucks, carrying cordwood sticks. Even though Brewer recalled Attucks standing “just before me,” he recalled nothing of the sort. Many people testified that the crowd yelled insults at the soldiers (and vice versa). Several people said that others threw snowballs and harder objects at the soldiers. Brewer, however, had developed an Alberto Gonzales-like ability to not see or remember any bad behavior by his comrades.

COMING UP: The end of the questioning—and a loose thread.

James Brewer at the Boston Massacre, part 2

Yesterday I quoted the start of blockmaker James Brewer’s testimony about what he had seen on King Street on the night of Monday, 5 Mar 1770. Here’s more from his time in the witness-box as the prosecutors led him to fill in his account—particularly a detail he’d left out earlier, but which was probably crucial to the case they were trying to make.

Q: Was it the first gun that you thought wounded [Christopher] Monk?

B: No.

Q: Did you see any of these prisoners there?

B: I think I saw [Pvt. Mathew] Kilroy, and that he was the man who struck me with his bayonet, when they came down, before they formed.

Q: Did any body near you do any violence to him?

B: No, I saw none.

Q: Had you seen Monk that evening before?

B: No, nor the day before.

Q: How near were you to the soldiers when they fired?

B: I was about ten or fifteen feet from them, I stood in the street just above Royal-exchange-lane, about six or seven feet from the gutter.

Q: Could you see the whole party?

B: Yes, they stood in a circle, or half moon.

Q: Did you take notice of the distance betwixt the first and second gun?

B: No.

Q: Was your back to them, when that first gun was fired?

B: No, my face was to them.

Q: Where did the firing begin?

B: Towards the corner of Royal-exchange-lane. I think it was the man quite to the right.

Q: Did you know him?

B: No.

Q: Did the man that struck you do it on purpose, or accidentally, do you think?

B: I think he did it on purpose, I apprehended it so; I was standing by the gutter, and he was before me.

Q: Said he anything to you?

B: No, nor I to him: he came to form, and I was closer than I wished I was, and he struck me.

Pvt. Kilroy was key to the prosecutors’ hopes of convincing the jury that the British soldiers were out for blood when they arrived on King Street. He had been at the brawl between soldiers and ropemakers the previous Friday. He had a bad reputation in Boston, shoemaker George R. T. Hewes would recall. And according to Brewer, he had struck out at the crowd with his bayonet “on purpose” and been the first to fire his gun.

(Image of musket and bayonet above from the Black Watch Regimental Museum.)

COMING UP: James Brewer’s cross-examination.

James Brewer at the Boston Massacre, part 1

On Wednesday, 28 Nov 1770, the Crown called James Brewer, blockmaker, to the witness stand at the trial of soldiers for the shootings on King Street the previous March. The prosecutors were Solicitor General Samuel Quincy and an attorney specially hired by the town of Boston, Robert Treat Paine. Their questioning started like this:

Q: Please to look upon the prisoners, do you know any of them?

Brewer: I think I remember this man. [He pointed to Pvt. Mathew Kilroy.]

Q: Was you in King-street the fifth of March last?

B: Yes, in the evening.

Q: Please to inform the Court and Jury what you saw there?

B: I came up Royal-exchange-lane, and as I got to the head of it, I saw the Sentry [Pvt. Hugh White] on the steps of the Custom-house, with his bayonet breast high, with a number of boys round him: I called to him, and said, I did not think any body was going to do him harm. I saw Capt. [Thomas] Preston and some soldiers come down.

Q: Which of the prisoners was the Sentry?

B: I cannot tell, I was not so nigh him to know his face.

Q: How many boys were there round him?

B: I think about twenty.

Q: How old were those boys?

B: About fourteen or fifteen years old, perhaps some of them older, I saw no men there except one, who came up Royal-exchange-lane with me, thinking it [the alarm bell] was fire. He went back again.

Q: What did you take to be the reason that the Sentry charged his bayonet?

B: I could not tell what the reason was; there was no body troubling him. I was at the corner of Royal-exchange-lane, and a young man went up to the Sentry and spoke to him; what he said I do not know.

Q: Was you there at the time of the firing?

B: Yes, I went toward the Sentry-box, where I saw Capt. Preston. I said to him, Sir, I hope you are not going to fire, for everybody is going to their own homes. He said I hope they are. I saw no more of him. He immediately went in amongst the soldiers.

Q: What number of soldiers were there?

B: I think seven or eight, I did not count them. [There were eight enlisted men, including White.]

Q: Did Capt. Preston lead or follow them down?

B: I think he was upon the right of them. [Preston arrived a short time after his men, who were led by a corporal.] As they came down they had their guns charged breast high. I saw Christopher Monk [a sixteen-year-old shipwright’s apprentice], who was wounded that night, I turned to speak to him, and directly they fired, and he seemed to faulter. I said are you wounded, he said yes. I replied, I do not think it, for I then apprehended they fired only powder [i.e., the soldiers had fired blanks].

NEXT: Brewer’s testimony continues.

James Brewer: pump and blockmaker

Yesterday I listed James Brewer as one of the prisoners that the British military traded for captured soldiers in June 1775, shortly before the Battle of Bunker Hill. That was only one episode in his Revolutionary career.

James Brewer was born in Boston on 18 April 1742, the son of John and Dorcas Brewer. James appears to have grown up as the eldest son, his older brother John dying before he turned four. (The family named their next boy John as well.) James and his siblings, also including Sarah and Thomas, were baptized at Old South Meeting-House.

(I should acknowledge that there was another child named James Brewer born in Boston, in 1756, to parents Giles and Charity Brewer of King’s Chapel. And a man named James Brewer married Mary Burgess at King’s Chapel in 1748, almost a month before the baptism of their child. And yet another James Brewer, born to Moses and Elizabeth Brewer in Sudbury or Sherborn in 1756, was “reportedly brought up in the family of relatives in Boston.” But I think the James Brewer who kept popping up during Boston’s Revolution was the man born in 1742.)

John Brewer was a pump and blockmaker, and his son James went into that profession as well. I’ve been trying to come up with a modern equivalent, and the best might be a tool and die maker. A pump and blockmaker was a precision woodcarver, making two machines that ships needed to sail: the block-and-tackles that could lift heavy cargo or raise sails, and the pumps that kept water from building up below decks.

Pump and blockmaking wasn’t a luxury craft, like silversmith, japanner, or upholsterer, which brought mechanics into direct dealings with gentlemen. But it required advanced technical skills, and there was probably steady demand in the seaport town. John Brewer remarried in 1768 and died at the age of 95 in 1793, leaving a significant legacy to his grandchildren through his first wife.

James Brewer was responsible for five of those grandchildren. On the first day of 1765, he married Jane (or Jean) Black at the Presbyterian Meeting-House—perhaps a reflection of Scottish heritage for the bride. They named their children James, Henry, Thomas, Jane, and Dorcas (not necessarily in that order). Thomas was born on 8 July 1781, but I don’t have exact information on any of the other children.

In 1781 the Brewers lived in “an old wooden house at the foot of Summer Street” in central Boston. As an established manufacturer, James joined the Mechanics Society, formally the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, in 1801. Though one history of the Tea Party says he died in April 1805, death notices in the Boston Gazette and other newspapers make clear he died on 4 Oct 1806.

NEXT: James Brewer at the Boston Massacre.

American Prisoners Exchanged in June 1775

Last month I wrote about a prisoner exchange on 6 June 1775, and discussed the British officers who were exchanged for American prisoners. Here’s my long-promised look at those Americans, listed in a contemporary newspaper report as:

Messirs. John Peck, James Hews, James Brewer, and Daniel Preston, of Boston; Messirs. Samuel Frost and Seth Russell, of Cambridge; Mr. Joseph Bell, of Danvers; Mr. Elijah Seaver, of Roxbury, and Caesar Augustus, a negro servant of Mr. Tileston, of Dorchester

Shortly after the Battle of Lexington and Concord, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress had issued a report that listed five men as missing. I used to wonder what that meant. Had those men been wounded and died under a bush, still not found? Had they taken advantage of the battle’s chaos to sneak away from home?

No, it turns out that all five of those missing men must have been taken prisoner by the British column as it withdrew to Charlestown. In West Cambridge on the Nineteenth of April, 1775 (written in 1864), minister Samuel Abbot Smith would add a little more detail about the capture of two of those men, probably based on what they told their families and neighbors after returning home:

Seth Russell and Samuel Frost, of West Cambridge [now Arlington], were taken prisoners. They put Frost on a horse, and cut his waist-band strings so that he could not easily run away. They were carried on board a guard-ship in the harbor, and were soon afterwards exchanged.

So the British troops kept Frost with them by making sure that if he tried to run his pants would fall down.

One of the five provincials captured in April, Breed was exchanged for a wounded British lieutenant on 28 May 1775. The remaining four—Russell, Frost, Seaver, and Bell—were part of this exchange in June. So all the American missing from 19 April are accounted for.

What about the four other exchanged men? What had caused the British military authorities to designate them as enemy combatants and lock them up?

Caesar Augustus was almost certainly an enslaved man. Perhaps he had escaped to Boston, and the authorities insisted on his return. Perhaps he wanted to go back to Dorchester. The only further information I could find is that from 1779 to 1793, the town of Dorchester paid Samuel Pierce to provide room, board, and mending to a man named Caesar Augustus. The implication of that record is that by that time Caesar Augustus had become free, and a pauper.

The remaining four men were from Boston, so had presumably been arrested within the town rather than outside it. According to Boston schoolteacher James Lovell, merchant John Peck’s offense was receiving letters about politics. In a letter to an out-of-town correspondent dated 9-10 May 1775, Lovell said:

You must however give us no State Matters; for ’tis but “you are the General’s Prisoner,” and whip! away to the Man of War; as is the Case of poor John Peck. I carry’d him Breakfast to the main Guard yesterday, and again this Morning but he was carry’d off last Evening and put on Board Ship. Inquisitorial this!

Peck’s arrest was especially odd since he was not politically active and an Anglican member of King’s Chapel (shown above). Curiously, one sponsor of his son Frederick’s baptism in that church in 1772 was “Jacob Whippel,” presumably the man captured by the Americans on Long Island in July 1775 and immediately set free. (Last month a Boston 1775 reader alerted me to a different tale about John Peck’s activities, in a recent book, but I haven’t read and evaluated that yet. There may be more to come.)

Daniel Preston was a housewright living in the North End, according to real estate records from 1774. I’ve found no clue to why he was locked up.

As for James Hews (or Hewes, as in other newspapers), there was a James Hewes (or Hughs) who married a woman named Ann Williams at the New North Meeting-House in 1767 and had a child in 1769. I know no more about him. Then I tried the spelling “Hughes.” Was the exchanged prisoner a fifteen-year-old son of a Loyalist merchant? That James Hughes later complained about the war disrupting his education, and being locked up would do that. But he seems a less likely candidate.

Finally, there’s James Brewer. Again, I don’t know what he did to cause the British military to lock him up in June 1775—but he did plenty of stuff in the preceding years. More about him to come.

British-American Prisoner Exchange

I promised to write about Ann Molineux’s marriage today, but then I realized I’d already planned to discuss an event from 1775 noted in selectman Timothy Newell’s diary:

6th [June]. Mr. John Peck, Mr. Frost, Mr. Brewer and sundry others discharged from on board the Admiral in exchange of prisoners, viz Major Dunbar, Capt Gould and a number of wounded soldiers.

This was the first negotiated exchange of prisoners in the Revolutionary War, I believe. [ADDENDUM: There was an earlier exchange of one wounded British officer for one American on 28 May 1775.] Newell didn’t have all the prisoners’ names, and one of the names he listed (Gould) was an error. Here’s a very detailed report on the day from the Patriot newspaper nearest the scene, the 9 June Essex Gazette:

Tuesday last being the day agreed on for the exchange of prisoners, between 12 and 1 o’clock, Dr. [Joseph] Warren and Brigadier General [Israel] Putnam, in a phaeton, together with Major Dunbar, and Lieut. Hamilton of the 64th on horse-back; Lieut. Potter, of the marines, in a chaise; John Hilton of the 47th, Alexander Campbell of the 4th, John Tyne, Samuel Marcy, Thomas Parry, and Thomas Sharp, of the marines, wounded men, in two carts; the whole escorted by the Weathersfield company, under the command of Capt. Chester, entered the town of Charlestown, and marching slowing [sic] thro’ it, halted at the ferry, where, upon a signal being given, Major [Thomas] Moncrief landed from the Lively, in order to receive the prisoners, and see his old friend, General Putnam:—

Their meeting was truly cordial and affectionate. The wounded privates were soon sent on board the Lively; but Major Moncrief, and the other officers, returned with Gen. Putnam and Dr. Warren, to the house of Dr. [Isaac] Foster, where an entertainment was provided for them.

About 3 o’clock, a signal was made by the Lively, that they were ready to deliver up our prisoners; upon which, Gen. Putnam and Major Moncrief went to the ferry, where they received Messirs. John Peck, James Hews, James Brewer, and Daniel Preston, of Boston; Messirs. Samuel Frost and Seth Russell, of Cambridge; Mr. Joseph Bell, of Danvers; Mr. Elijah Seaver, of Roxbury, and Caesar Augustus, a negro servant of Mr. Tileston, of Dorchester, who were conducted to the house of Capt. Foster, and there refreshed; after which, the General and Major returned to their company, and spent an hour or two in a very agreeable manner.

Between 5 and 6 o’clock Major Moncrief, with the officers that had been delivered to him, were conducted to the ferry, where the Lively’s barge received them; after which, General Putnam, with the prisoners who had been delivered to him, &c. returned to Cambridge, escorted in the same manner as before.

The whole was conducted with the utmost decency and good humor; and the Weathersfield company did honor to themselves, their officers, and their country. The regular officers expressed themselves as highly pleased; those who had been prisoners politely acknowledged the genteel, kind treatment they had received from their captors; the privates, who were all wounded men, expressed in the strongest terms, their grateful sense of the tenderness which had been shown them in their miserable situation; some of them could only do it by their tears. It would have been to the honour of the British arms, if the prisoners taken from us could with justice make the same acknowledgment.

The map above, courtesy of the National Park Service, shows the Charlestown peninsula in 1775. It centers on the Bunker Hill battlefield, of course. The prisoner exchange probably took place in the settled part of town near the bottom, where the ferry landed and gentlemen could sit down for a good meal.

COMING UP: Who were all those guys, and how had they become prisoners?