“The Parade was only through Part of one Street”

As reported yesterday, on the evening of Monday, 14 Nov 1768, New Yorkers paraded with effigies of Gov. Francis Bernard and Sheriff Stephen Greenleaf of Boston and then burned those figures.

The New-York Journal published by John Holt on the following Thursday ran a favorable description of that event, saying that the demonstrators had eluded army patrols to carry out their plans with “Regularity and good Order.”

When Monday rolled around again, Hugh Gaine’s New-York Gazette, and Weekly Mercury and James Parker’s New-York Gazette, or the Weekly Post-Boy came out. (Those are often referred to as the Mercury and the Post-Boy, for obvious reasons.) Rather then reprinting Holt’s report, as would be common in newspapers of the time, both carried a new report on the protest, which was now a week old.

That new report was prefaced by a note from the city authorities. The Mercury’s copy read:

Mr. Gaine,

As it would be the highest Injustice to the Inhabitants of this City, to suppose that the Exhibition of the Effigies last Monday Night, was generally approved here; and as Mr. Holt’s Representation of it may deceive Persons at a Distance; I am desired by the Magistrates to give you the Account of what passed, and to request your inserting it in your next paper.

Augustus Van Cortlandt, Town Clerk.

The city government insisted on this version of events:

On Friday the 12th Instant, the Mayor [Whitehead Hicks] had Intimations, that Effigies were intended to be exhibited that Evening: The Rest of the Magistrates were instantly summoned to meet him at the City-Hall; the Marshals and Constables were sent out to all Quarters of the Town for Intelligence; when there was no Prospect of their Appearance that Night, the Magistrates dispersed about nine o’Clock, resolving to visit their Wards the next Day for Inquiry, and discourage as much as possible the Execution of the Design.—

The Inhabitants, as far as the Magistrates could discover, seemed to be almost universally opposed to it; and the Mayor convened a Number of the Inhabitants to a Meeting with the Magistrates the same Evening, at the Hall, where a great Number attended, who, in general, declared their Disapprobation of such Proceedings, and promised to assist in preserving the Peace of the City.—

That on the Monday following, there being Cause to suspect the Promoters thereof would attempt to execute their Project, and Intelligence being obtained, that the Effigies intended to be exhibited, were in the Out-skirts of the Town, the Magistrates repaired in the Evening to the Neighbourhood suspected; the Persons concerned therein, as the Magistrates were informed, were thereby alarmed, and under Cover of the Night, went off with their Effigies into the City, with so much Precipitation, as to leave a Part of their Apparatus behind them.

That whole the Magistrates, with their Officers, were in the Neighbourhood suspected, they received an Account that the Effigies had made their Appearance near Peck’s Slip, and were going down Queen-street. The Magistrates immediately followed, and tho’ they lost no Time the Effigies were burnt, and the People dispersed, before they could overtake them.

The Parade was only through Part of one Street, so hastily performed, as not to be heard of by great Part of the City; and from the best information, they have Reason to believe, this whole Proceeding is disapproved of by the Majority of the Citizens

Boston’s seven selectmen were elected by the annual town meeting and usually on the same political side as the crowd, though more worried about the community’s image elsewhere and thus often more conservative.

In contrast, New York’s city government was headed by a mayor appointed by the royal governor. The common council consisted of an alderman and assistant elected by property-holders from each ward. The result was a government less inclined to allow public protests.

TOMORROW: John Holt’s vociferous response.

(The map above, courtesy of Untapped Cities, shows Peck’s Slip at the lower right and Queen Street, now Pearl Street in lower Manhattan.)

The Mysterious Constitutional Courant

Yesterday’s posting introduced Lawrence Sweeny, a New York newspaper carrier. He played a small but significant role in promoting resistance to the Stamp Act in 1765.

In September of that year, after protests against the Stamp Act had erupted in Boston and Newport, a fake newspaper called the Constitutional Courant appeared in New York. It was dated 21 Sept 1765, and said to be “Printed by Andrew Marvel, at the Sign of the Bribe refused on Constitution-Hill, North-America.” The Princeton University library displays its front page.

Isaiah Thomas later wrote that the Constitutional Courant was really printed in Woodridge, New Jersey, by William Goddard (1740-1815). After being trained in New Haven and New York, Goddard had run a newspaper in Providence until that spring, and the next year he tried Philadelphia. Crown officials reported hearing that James Parker (1714-1770) owned that press and, as a postmaster, sent copies to other cities.

The “newspaper” contained three anti-Stamp Act essays signed with three different pseudonyms and a brief mention of the recent change in government in London. Reportedly the established New York printers had turned down those essays because they were too incendiary. Hence the need for a special printing and secrecy.

In an exhaustive article published by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Albert Matthews reported that there were at least two reprints of the Constitutional Courant, presumably from other presses responding to local demand. One of those reprints probably occurred in Boston since the 7 October Boston Evening-Post quoted one essay and told readers, “we hear, it will soon be republished.”

Lawrence Sweeny was one of the people who sold the Constitutional Courant on the streets of New York. According to Thomas, royal officials called him in and demanded to know where that paper had been printed. “Sweeney, as he had been instructed, answered, ‘At Peter Hassenclever’s ironworks, please your honor.’” Peter Hasenclever had come to America in 1764 to manage an extensive iron-manufacturing enterprise in New Jersey.

The masthead of the Constitutional Courant was the first reappearance of Benjamin Franklin’s “Join or Die” snake since 1754, when he created the image to promote colonial cooperation and the Albany Plan. From then on, the snake promoted a united American front against new measures from London instead of against external enemies. Printers pulled out those snake woodcuts again in 1774 as the conflict with London heated up.

After John Jupp Came Home to Shirley

Yesterday I introduced the couple of John and Mary Jupp—he a deserter from the British army who had made his way to Shirley, she a woman in her late thirties who apparently had some property but no husband.

They married in late 1774 and had a daughter the following year. But in March 1777 John Jupp enlisted in the Continental Army for three years. Given that separation, could their marriage last?

Legally it did, but Pvt. John Jupp didn’t. He was discharged on 9 May 1780, recorded as having served 33 months and 22 days. (Presumably the army had deducted some time from his three years when he was away from the army recovering from illness.)

Jupp returned to Shirley and died there half a year later on 17 November. The vital records label him as an “Englishman.” James Parker’s diary records plowing and other occasional chores for Mary Jupp in the following years.

In 1785, Mary Jupp remarried to Nathan Smith, whose first wife had died the year before. Smith had seven children, his oldest sons only a few years younger than Mary. Four of those sons had served in the same regiment as John Jupp. Two, Nathan, Jr., and Sylvanus, had become captains.

On 11 Sept 1786, Parker wrote in his diary: “Nathan Smith [Jr.] marched some men to Concord In order to stop the Court Seting.” This was part of the Shays Rebellion. Though Capt. Smith made a fiery speech and was named in an arrest warrant issued that November, he didn’t emigrate from Massachusetts as other members of the movement did. Instead, he died in Shirley in 1834 at the age of ninety-six. A local historian stated that he was “coarse in habit and undisciplined in temper,” and “lost an eye in a rencounter with one of his neighbors.”

After the elder Nathan Smith died, Mary bought a new farm for herself, which she eventually passed down to the daughter of her first marriage and her grandson, Samuel Hartwell. Presumably that land eventually became the Hartwell Farm dairy in Shirley. Mary Smith died in 1826, aged 91.