“Subscribers towards Mr. Adams’s debt”

In 1860 the New England Historical and Genealogical Register published the text of an undated document headed “Copy of original list of subscribers toward Mr. Adams’s debt.”

The author of the surrounding article, Andrew H. Ward, believed that debt was one Samuel Adams had inherited from his father’s investment in the Massachusetts Land Bank.

The journal’s editor cast doubt on that idea in a footnote, noting that the presence of “Rev Mr Bowen” on the list must mean it dated between 1766, when Penuel Bowen was ordained at the New South Meeting-House, and 1772, when he left the pulpit and opened a provisions store. That period was long after the estate of Adams’s father was settled.

Another subscriber on the list was “A gentleman of distinction,” and Ward’s footnote said someone had inserted “Mr. T——e” above that. That probably meant Customs Commissioner John Temple. He left Boston in late 1770, further narrowing the span of possible dates.

Kay Menand’s Massachusetts Historical Review article “The Things That Were Caesar’s: Tax Collecting in Eighteenth-Century Boston” reports that in March 1768 the appeals court ordered Adams to pay the town £1,463, and that judgement was satisfied. However, as noted yesterday, in 1772 a Boston town committee found that Adams still owed £1,149.10.0.1/4 of uncollected taxes, money that the town was unlikely ever to see.

Putting all the clues together, I think this list probably dates from the late 1760s. We don’t know if all the subscribers paid what they promised, so we can’t make the sums add up. Even so, it’s an interesting snapshot of people willing to help out Adams and/or Boston.

The top subscriber by far, pledging more than four times as much as any other individual, was John Hancock. At this point he was still firmly at Adams’s side.

The next tier of donors (£60+) consisted of John Erving, James Pitts, and James Bowdoin, wealthy merchants who often served on the Council. Erving was close to the royal establishment, but unlike his sons (including George, pledging £12), he stayed in America after the siege.

Likewise, John Gray the ropemaker (£40), Nathaniel Sparhawk the Maine landowner (£40), and Harrison Gray the provincial treasurer (£20) all leaned toward the Crown in the 1760s while maintaining friendships among the Whigs. Moses Gill (£26.13) was a solid Whig.

Among the smaller donors, Dr. Joseph Warren (£13.6) stands out as a young professional among older, established, and wealthier merchants. William Whitwell (£6) is notable because he led the 1772 inquiry into Adams’s outstanding debt with Thomas Dawes (£13) on his committee. Future Loyalist Isaac Royall offered the smallest amount of any name on the list, a mere £1.8.

This list appears to date from a period before the province’s political dividing lines hardened. Men who opposed Samuel Adams’s tactics were nonetheless willing to help bleach a blot on his reputation—with the knowledge that their money wasn’t going to him personally but to their town.

TOMORROW: The elections of 1772.

“I have engag’d that it shall not be printed”

In the spring of 1773, the Boston Whigs had an incendiary document that they wanted to share with the public. But the person who supplied that document had asked them not to make copies or circulate it widely.

The document was a collection of letters from Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, Lt. Gov. Andrew Oliver, and other friends of the royal government to the British official Thomas Whately in the late 1760s. The person who had supplied that collection was Benjamin Franklin, the London lobbyist for the Massachusetts house.

On 2 Dec 1772 Franklin had sent the letters to Thomas Cushing, speaker of the house, saying:

On this Occasion I think it fit to acquaint you that there has lately fallen into my Hands Part of a Correspondence, that I have reason to believe laid the Foundation of most if not all our present Grievances. I am not at liberty to tell thro’ what Channel I receiv’d it; and I have engag’d that it shall not be printed, nor any Copies taken of the whole or any part of it; but I am allow’d and desired to let it be seen by some Men of Worth in the Province for their Satisfaction only.

In confidence of your preserving inviolably my Engagement, I send you enclos’d the original Letters, to obviate every Pretence of Unfairness in Copying, Interpolation or Omission. The Hands of the Gentlemen will be well known. . . .

I therefore wish I was at Liberty to make the Letters publick; but as I am not, I can only allow them to be seen by yourself, by the other Gentlemen of the Committee of Correspondence, by Messrs. [James] Bowdoin, and [James] Pitts, of the Council, and Drs. [Charles] Chauncey, [Samuel] Cooper and [John] Winthrop, with a few such other Gentlemen as you may think it fit to show them to. After being some Months in your Possession, you are requested to return them to me.

Chauncy and Cooper were Boston’s most respected Whig ministers. Winthrop was a Harvard professor.

On 24 March, Cushing wrote back:

I have communicated them to some of the Gentlemen you mentioned. They are of opinion, that though it might be inconvenient to publish them, yet it might be expedient to have Copys taken and left on this side the water as there may be a necessity to make some use of them hereafter, however I read to them what you had wrote me upon the occasion, and told them I could by no means Consent Copys of them or any part of them should be taken without your express Leave, that I would write you upon the subject and should strictly Conform to your directions.

Despite Cushing’s assurances, other men besides the six Franklin had specified had already seen the copies of the letters.

TOMORROW: Information wants to be free.