“We went to see Mr. Davis in Jail”

As I wrote back here, the lore in Benjamin Davis’s family was that his third wife, Alice, left him soon after their marriage in 1768 because she couldn’t stand how he worshipped with the Sandemanians.

Reportedly the men of the sect agreed that Davis could remarry if he chose. In a profile of Davis written for the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Henry H. Edes said:

If Mr. Davis married a fourth wife, it is probable that she was Katharine Overlick, whose Intention of Marriage with Benjamin Davis was entered 24 April, 1773, but as we find no record of a marriage, and do find that Catharine Overlick,—presumably the same woman—entered her Intention of Marriage with John Clows 10 November, 1774, it is doubtful if Mr. Davis made another matrimonial alliance.

Alice (Whipple) Davis died in Cranston, Rhode Island, in 1795.

When captured on the Peggy sailing from Halifax to New York in July 1776, Benjamin Davis was accompanied only by his son and an enslaved man. In contrast, a couple of other merchants on the same ship were traveling with their wives, most notably Robert and Mary Semple, formerly Mary Wheat of Lincoln.

In her journal, published by the Essex Institute in 1868, Mary Holyoke (1737–1802, shown above) of Salem wrote:

July 28. Mr. Ben. Davis taken and put into Jail at Boston, and on the 31st Mrs. Davis spent the day with us at Mrs. Minott’s; we went to see Mr. Davis in Jail.

It appears that this “Mrs. Davis” wasn’t Benjamin Davis’s wife but a friend and/or relative of Mary Holyoke whom she mentioned many other times. But this Mrs. Davis could also have been related to Benjamin, giving him a courtesy call.

Life in the Boston jail wasn’t easy. The mates on the British transport ship Anne, James Young and John M’Kurdy, escaped from custody in Massachusetts and provided this intelligence on 24 August:

That Mr. Benjamin Davis, and several others were passengers, and that they treated Mr. Davis very ill. That they do not give the prisoners sufficient provisions, but offer them good wages to enter on board their privateers, and that many do enter.

The captain of the Peggy, James Kennedy, even petitioned the Massachusetts Council on 13 August for release on the grounds that he didn’t deserve to be associated with his passenger:

As your Petitioner had a Man on Board by the Name of Davis whose Character he did not know till he was brought into this Place, he beleives is the Occasion of his receiving different punishment from other Masters of Vessells.

Kennedy was indeed let out of the jail. According to the Naval Documents of the American Revolution editors, four other men gained release through “similar petitions.”

TOMORROW: Junior.

“Fell in with two Arm’d Schooners”

Yesterday I wrote about Benjamin and Edward Davis, two brothers who were mercantile partners in Boston until religion and Revolutionary politics split them apart.

Benjamin became a Sandemanian, devoutly guided not to oppose British Crown policies by, for instance, signing on to the non-importation boycotts.

Edward remained an Anglican, attending Trinity Church. By late 1774 the Whigs coopted him into helping to enforce their strongest boycott, the Continental Association.

Both brothers remained in Boston during the siege. But when the British military evacuated, Edward stayed while Benjamin sailed away to Halifax, Nova Scotia. In April 1776 the Patriot authorities ordered magistrates to question Edward about his loyalty, but evidently he passed muster.

Around the start of July, Benjamin Davis boarded the ship Peggy, headed for New York. Along with him came his son Benjamin, Jr., who turned twenty that year; an enslaved man; half a dozen other Loyalist men; and a few Loyalist women.

Evidently those refugees saw business opportunities supplying the huge British and Hessian army assembling at New York. The Peggy was loaded with provisions, including 2,648 “mutton hams,” 311 “tierces salted beef,” fish, flour, snuff, cloth, stockings, and a large quantity of alcohol in various forms.

The Peggy also carried six 3-pounder and two 2-pounder cannon. It sailed in convoy with dozens of other merchant ships and troop transports, all escorted by two Royal Navy warships. The sea voyage probably seemed safe.

We have the ship captain’s account of what happened next:

I James Kennedy, Master of the Ship Peggy, in the Merchant Service, declare that I left Hallifax about the first Inst. [i.e., of this month] under Convoy of the Renown of Fifty Guns, with a Fleet of sixteen [torn] Transports containing the 42nd & 71 Scotch Regiments & Fraziers new rais’d Regiment, about 3000 in all, & three Large Ships with Hessian Troops on board, about 600 in all, & one Ship with 5 companys of English foot Guards, & four Victualling Ships, the whole Fleet bound for New York.

Off Nantucket Shoals we fell in with the Flora Frigate of Thirty Guns & four Transports with Highland Troops, these had been in Boston Bay, where they got information from a Fisherman that the Town was Evacuated, on which they Stood for Hallifax untill they met with us, they then joyn’d our Fleet for New York.

The Scotch Troops were all to be of Coll [Archibald] Campbells division (of the Grand Army in America, the whole of which Army I was informd, would by the last of July, amount, to 50,000.) the Hessian Troops left England about the 12th of May, some of the Officers informd me they came out with 304 Sail under the Command of Commodore Hawtham [William Hotham], on board of whom were 10,000 Foreign Troops & some English Troops (number unknown).

last Fryday sennight [19 July] in a gale of wind & thick weather I lost the Fleet & on monday [22 July] I fell in with two [American] Arm’d Schooners, Capts. [John] Skimmer & [Samuel] Tucker, to whom I surrendered after a short engagement, in which I had only one man Wounded.

The day after the Fleet left Hallifax, I saw from my Deck forty Sail of Ships standing in for that Harbour, & which I suppose to be part of the Fleet under Commodore Hawtham.

Skimmer commanded the Franklin and Tucker the Hancock, schooners originally launched under the authority of the Continental Army commander. They were now sailing for Massachusetts.

The Patriot authorities who took Capt. Kennedy’s deposition were evidently pumping him for intelliegence on what other British ships and troops were out there rather than details of his engagement with the schooners.

For Benjamin Davis, all that mattered now was that he was a prisoner of the state he’d left four months before.

TOMORROW: The gingerbread man.