Tracking the Lovells from Nova Scotia to Natchez

Continuing my exploration of the Creating a Federal Government website, I looked up another man active among Boston Whigs before the war who I knew received a federal appointment afterward: James Lovell.

I found him, but found that his name was amalgamated with his son’s. Poking around more, I saw a good genealogy website mixing that son up with another son.

At the same time, the Creating a Federal Government site has filled in some information about the Lovells that I didn’t have when I wrote about them back in 2008. So I’m going to try to sort things out.

James Lovell (1737–1814) was the respected usher, or assistant master, at Boston’s South Latin School in the 1760s and early 1770s. He delivered the first official oration in memory of the Boston Massacre. In the summer of 1775, the royal authorities arrested him for corresponding with Dr. Joseph Warren and at the end of the siege took him to Nova Scotia as a prisoner.

Released in an exchange, Lovell was chosen by the Massachusetts General Court to be a delegate to the Continental Congress. He was very active there, basically managing the diplomatic corps for a few busy years.

When Lovell went home to Massachusetts, the national government rewarded his service with an appointment which may not have required a lot of work: naval officer for the port of Boston. He kept that post until his death, through both Federalist and Jeffersonian administrations. In January 1809, for example, he placed an advertisement in the newspapers warning that he would follow his duty in enforcing the Embargo Act, unpopular or not. (It was about to be replaced, anyway.)

Lowell signed that advertisement with his full name: “James Lovell.” However, he’s been entered into the Creating a Federal Government website under the name of his son James S. (for Smith) Lovell (1762–1825).

James S. Lovell was a merchant in Boston, selling tobacco, sugars, alcohol, and other commodities from his shop on State Street and then beside the Town Dock. By the 1790s he was investing in ships. In February 1793 he was moderator for Boston’s Civic Festival supporting the French republic, and three years later on the committee of the chamber of commerce.

James S. Lovell’s most visible governmental appointment was a local one: Inspector of Police in 1798. In that capacity he made regular reports to the public about the yellow fever epidemic. The following year, the selectmen authorized him to deal with people who wanted to buy “the Manure, to be taken from the streets of Boston.”

But then in 1801 James S. Lovell was judged bankrupt. He kept a lower profile for several years. In 1820, according to the Creating a Federal Government website, Lovell was appointed gauger, weigher, and inspector in the Boston Customs office. Two years later someone signing himself (or herself) “Radical” in the Boston Courier reported the Customs department salaries, including “James S. Lovell, weigher and guager, [$]3466.99.” At that time Lovell was helping to sell a cotton factory in Connecticut, advertising that he could meet with people “at the Custom-House, Boston, or his residence, Newton Plain.”

James S. Lovell died in Newton in December 1825, described in Boston newspapers as “the eldest and only surviving son of the Hon. James Lovell, deceased.”

But that wasn’t true. James S. Lovell had an older half-brother still living, and to add to the confusion that man was also named James.

While he was a student at Harvard College back in the 1750s, the future schoolteacher James Lovell had fathered a child with the daughter of the college steward, Susanna Hastings. That boy was born in 1758 and grew up for several years in Cambridge as James Hastings. About 1770, he came into Boston, joined his father’s household, and assumed the Lovell surname.

The younger James Lovell graduated from Harvard College himself in 1776 and then joined the Continental Army. He served under Col. Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee, gained the rank of major, and married Ann Reid, a rich South Carolina widow.

In 2008 I wrote that this James Lovell “lit out for New Orleans” when he couldn’t get his hands on his wife’s inheritance. His years in the new Louisiana Territory, from 1806 to 1811, exactly correspond to the tenure of a James Lovell in the Customs office at New Orleans. Newspapers confirm he was appointed Surveyor in May 1806, Inspector of the Revenue in 1807. So now we know how he supported himself.

The younger James Lovell went back to South Carolina in 1811, prompting his wife to take legal steps to preserve her property. Eventually they quarreled again, and he left. But he lived in Orangeburg until 1850, far outdistancing his younger half-brother.

Finally, in researching these men, I came across information to fill another hole in my old post. The senior James Lovell had another son named John Middleton Lovell, born in 1763 and thought to have died around 1799 (shown above). I didn’t have much to say about him. Now I can report that he was also in business in Boston in the early 1790s, with a shop on Long Wharf; his brother James S. handled business for him while he invested in Dedham real estate.

In March 1795, John M. Lovell joined the U.S. Army as lieutenant and adjutant of the Corps of Artillerists and Engineers. That appointment is also noted at the Creating a Federal Government website. In that capacity he advertised for deserters in the Columbian Centinel and other New England newspapers. He administered a movement of troops from Pittsburgh to Fort Adams in the Mississippi Territory in 1798.

In March 1799 Lt. Lovell was still in the Mississippi Territory, negotiating an agreement with Manuel Gayoso de Lemos, Spanish governor of neighboring Louisiana, to discourage desertion. His commander, Gen. James Wilkinson, wrote to Alexander Hamilton to boast of the results.

On 7 Jan 1800 the Massachusetts Mercury ran this death notice:

At the Natchez, JOHN LOVELL, Esq. Aid-de-Camp to Gen. Wilkinson, and son of the hon. James Lovell, of this place.

According to a 21 Apr 1800 letter from Caleb Swan, paymaster general of the army, “Mr Lovell died on the 24 of October 1799.”

The Move onto Ploughed Hill and “Poor Billy Simpson”

On the evening of 26 Aug 1775, two thousand Continental soldiers moved onto Ploughed Hill in west Charlestown, assigned to dig entrenchments. Along with them went some Pennsylvania riflemen as a picket guard.

Capt. James Chambers (1743-1805) of Pennsylvania wrote to his wife on 29 August:

I was ordered to draw fifty men out of each of the Cumberland companies, and to be ready to march at Sunset. Accordingly I did so, and marched without beat of drum to Prospect Hill, and thence proceeded with the riflemen stationed there, in all about four hundred, to Ploughed Hill, and then down the hill within three or four hundred yards of the enemy’s strongest works, to cover a party of about two thousand musket men who were at the same time to entrench on Ploughed Hill.

They labored hard all night, and at daybreak had the redoubt nearly completed. The English began a heavy cannonading, which continued all day. They killed one adjutant and one soldier with cannon, wounded three others with musket balls. William Simpson, of Paxton [Paxtang], was struck by a shot and his foot carried away, &c.

Pvt. Simpson was born about 1743, family historians guess. His older brother Michael was a lieutenant in the Paxtang company.

Maj. Robert Magaw (1738-1790) provided a more detailed account of the action:

On Saturday Night Last about 2000 of our Army with 100 of our Battalion took possession of Plough Hill—this hill lies a little to the left of a direct line from our Camp to Bunker’s Hill near Mistick river, about 3/4 of a mile from us, & very little more from Bunker’s Hill. The Possession of it has for a considerable time been deemed an object of much importance both the by the enemy and by us.

They discovered our Work only on Sunday Morning, & soon began a very heavy Cannonade from Bunkers Hill & Two Floating Batteries which continued the whole day, & altho’ their Artillery was conducted by some of the best Engineers in the British Service & shot amazingly true, all the loss sustained was two killed in the fort and two wounded nearer to the Enemy where 50 of our Rifle Men were placed all day among Orchards, Cornfields etc., sustaining and returning a heavy Fire with the Enemy’s Musketry, the Cannon Balls Shot at Ploughed Hill constantly hissing over their Heads.

Poor Billy Simpson was the only person who suffered of ours. He had his Foot and Ankle shot off by a Cannon Ball as he lay behind a large Apple Tree, watching an Opportunity to Fire at the Enemy’s Advanced Guards. There appears no Danger of his recovery.

However, by the time Magaw finished that 29 August letter he had to add: “Poor Simpson whom I heard this Morning was in a good way is Since Dead.”

Lt. Col. Edward Hand (1744-1802, shown above) was a doctor and veteran of the British army. On 29 August he reported that “Poor Simpson (beau) had one of his legs shattered by a cannon ball, The director general took it off, but the poor lad was buried this evening.”

In his memoirs, James Wilkinson wrote, “The young man was visited and consoled during his illness by Gen. [George] Washington in person, and by most of the officers of rank belonging to the army.” However, Wilkinson didn’t arrive in Massachusetts until “two or three weeks” after Simpson was wounded on 27 August, and he’s far from the most reliable figure in U.S. history.

Whether or not Wilkinson’s statement is true, Pvt. William Simpson’s death was significant. He was the first soldier who had come to the siege of Boston from outside New England to die in the Continental cause.

New Henry Burbeck Collection at the Clements Library

Earlier this year, the Clements Library at the University of Michigan acquired more than 1,600 documents in the Papers of Henry Burbeck (1754-1848), a general in the early U.S. Army.

Burbeck was born in Boston, son of William Burbeck, who became storekeeper at Castle William as well as the town’s fireworks expert. Henry did his militia service in Boston’s artillery company; I’ve used letters he dictated late in life that are now at the Massachusetts Historical Society to trace the last days of that unit in September 1774.

When the war began, Henry and his brothers joined the provincial artillery regiment under Col. Richard Gridley; their father was the unit’s nominal second-in-command, but Gridley preferred to administer through his son Scarborough.

In late 1775, Gen. George Washington and the Continental Congress replaced Gridley with Henry Knox, bypassing Lt. Col. Burbeck. At the end of the siege of Boston, the lieutenant colonel refused to march to New York and thus left the Continental Army.

But Henry, then a lieutenant, remained in the army. In fact, he stuck out the whole war and then rejoined in 1786. He commanded at West Point and Springfield, served in the Northwest Indian War, and established a number of forts on the western frontier. In 1808 he presided over the court-martial of Gen. James Wilkinson, and finally he commanded troops through the War of 1812. Most of the new Clements collection appears to come from that long army career.

The longest report I’ve found about the acquisition is from the Mackinac Island News, focusing on documents of local importance:

In 1796 he peacefully received Fort Mackinac from its British garrison and then commanded the post until 1799. He was a steady officer and strict disciplinarian. A young British lieutenant who visited Mackinac in 1799 described Burbeck as “a little man, as stiff as his boots, awkwardly consequential and [who] passed for a martinet.” Perhaps Major Burbeck still harbored some animosity toward his old foes and greeted his British visitor with reserve.

The collection includes two previously unknown plans of the fort, one by Burbeck and Winthrop Sargent and one by Wilkinson, showing how it developed in those years.

That article also says the Clements’s new collection “represents only about 60% of Henry Burbeck’s entire archive. The remainder is divided among three institutions in the Northeast.” One of those is the New London County Historical Society, but I don’t know the others. A large lot of Burbeck’s papers was sold in 2011.

The Value of Spying in America

Michael J. Sulick was the chief of counterintelligence at the Central Intelligence Agency from 2002 to 2004 and director of its National Clandestine Service from 2007 to 2010. He wrote Spying in America: Espionage from the Revolutionary War to the Dawn of the Cold War to create “one compact volume” that includes case studies from several periods of American history, something he felt was missing from the market or the classroom.

Spying in America doesn’t try to be comprehensive or to break new ground in discussing espionage in America. And it doesn’t. It leans heavily on secondary sources, most of them more than a generation old, such as the books by John and Katherine Bakeless. Other sources cited in the chapters about the Revolution include an article in the Colonial Williamsburg Journal, Thomas B. Allen’s George Washington, Spymaster for young readers, and the websites of the C.I.A. and Federal Bureau of Investigation.

In fact, Spying in America relies so much on secondary sources that chapter epigraphs from George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and other well-documented historical figures aren’t credited to the original letters but to other books that have previously quoted those letters.

The Revolutionary War section starts with a short introductory chapter. Unfortunately, it contains basic errors. Page 16, for example, mischaracterizes the American Whigs’ preferred political solution to the conflict (not representation in Parliament but more autonomy for their colonial legislatures) and misapplies the John Adams quotation about a third of Americans opposing the Revolution (citing Howard Zinn). The next page misstates the reasons behind the British march to Concord in April 1775 and says Paul Revere’s fellow observers “were dubbed the Mechanics,” as if that were a formal name rather than the generic term for their class in society.

Three long-studied case studies follow, again with unfortunate errors. In retelling the treachery of Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr., the book displays Revere’s engraving of the doctor’s namesake ancestor as if it were a portrait of the traitor himself. This chapter also states that Church was at the Boston Tea Party, but an anonymous Crown source—i.e., just the sort of informer a book about espionage might highlight—placed him inside the Old South Meeting-House instead. (I can’t knock Sulick for not including my findings about Church’s mistress, published just this year in the big Washington study.)

The study of spying in the American delegation to Paris highlights the role of secretary Edward Bancroft, but then indulges in the wish-fulfilling suggestion that Franklin was onto the man all along. We Americans not only forgive Franklin his known tricks but happily believe he was up to more than he probably was. This chapter mentions Julien-Alexandre Achard de Bonvouloir, a gentleman who came to America in late 1775 as an unofficial emissary from the French court; it doesn’t note that Bonvouloir was in Massachusetts early in that year or that British agents had filed reports on him during the months in between.

To retell the story of Benedict Arnold’s treachery, Sulick relies most on Willard Wallace’s 1954 biography, which repeats a lot of dubious legends about the man’s boyhood. James Kirby Martin’s 1997 biography, Dave R. Palmer’s George Washington and Benedict Arnold, and other recent books seem more reliable, and also offer more detail about Peggy Arnold’s role in the affair.

Spying in America jumps right from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War, leaving out the highest placed known foreign agent ever to serve in the U.S. government: Revolutionary War veteran Gen. James Wilkinson, for more than ten years the top American general and also a paid agent of Spain.

I sense an unstated, perhaps unrecognized, purpose in this compilation. Sulick focuses on espionage against the U.S. during major conflicts while skipping successful intelligence-gathering and aggressive covert action by Americans (except against the Confederacy). These stories are thus all about Americans discovering spies in our midst. The book’s message is clear in the title of its introduction: “The Peril of Disbelief.” Readers must never let their guard down or doubt the need for vigorous government counterintelligence.

Yet Sulick notes that the U.S. had no coordinated counterintelligence effort until 1939, though the country had grown tremendously during the preceding century and a half. I wouldn’t argue that the greater threats of the mid-20th century and today, with faster communications and weapons delivery and more complex systems, require vigilance. But since the world has changed so greatly, how much useful information can we really learn from thin versions of the tales of Church, Bancroft, and Arnold? Those stories seem to be included for their “Founders’ Chic” value: even Washington and Franklin had to deal with spies!

Georgetown University Press could have served this book better during editing. For instance, page 5 tells us that in 1939 Franklin D. Roosevelt assigned responsibility for counterespionage to the F.B.I., and then page 6 tells us the same thing.

On the other hand, the publisher provided a great exterior design by Tim Green of Faceout Studio. The image above doesn’t do it justice. The dust jacket is a translucent vellum with a triangular cutout for the all-seeing eye of the dollar bill’s Great Seal—looking out for us or starting out on us?

(Review based on copy provided by the publisher.)

Dueling Events on 1 October

On the evening of Thursday, 1 October, there are two scholarly events in Boston that intrigue me, but of course I can attend only one. Oh, what to do, what to do?

At 5:15 P.M., the Boston Area Early American History Seminar will launch a new season at the Massachusetts Historical Society on Boylston Street. Prof. Pauline Maier of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will share a paper titled “What Did It Take To Get the Constitution Ratified? A New Look at the Massachusetts Convention, January 9–February 6, 1788.” Prof. Richard D. Brown from the University of Connecticut will comment on it, and then there will be a general discussion of the questions it raises. These seminars are free, but you get the most out of them if you read the paper (available at the M.H.S.) in advance.

The same evening, starting at 6:00 P.M., Andro Linklater will speak at the Boston Athenaeum on the topic of his new book, An Artist in Treason: The Extraordinary Double Life of General James Wilkinson. Wilkinson’s military career began during the Revolutionary War, when he rose to be a general in the Continental Army at age twenty. He was eventually the peacetime U.S. Army’s highest-ranking officer. Historical research shows that he was also taking pay from the Spanish spy service. How did he get away with it? This event costs $10, and the Athenaeum will accept reservations after 17 September at 617-720-7600.