“Going to Mendon to put himself under the Care of Dr. Pope”

Yesterday we left Mary Forbes, wife of the Rev. Eli Forbes of Gloucester, being treated in Boston by the cancer specialist John Pope for a tumor in her breast in the spring of 1775.

On 15 April, news came that the lump “came out in a Body, near of the Bigness and Shape of a Sheeps Kidney.”

It’s not clear whether the Forbeses were still in Boston when the war began four days later. If so, they still had access to Dr. Pope, but he might not have had the materials to make his medicines. And of course there were the dangers of attack and starvation.

The Forbeses may have left just before the war began or soon after, but in any case they were in the countryside by June. So was Dr. Pope. On 30 June Mary’s father, the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman, wrote in his diary:

My Daughter Forbes goes to Mendon in search of her Doctor, Pope: her Breast has Twinges, and she wants some of his [??] salve.

On 19 July, Isaiah Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy, now relocated to Worcester, published this notice:

This is to inform the public, that John Pope who of late years hath been much noted for curing inveterate Cancers, and the most malignant Ulcers at Boston, hath by reason of the deplorable situation of that town removed to Mendon, where any who want his assistance may by enquiring at George Aldrich’s of said Mendon find the place of his Residence.

Aldrich (1715–1797) was a Quaker, son of a prominent Quaker preacher.

On 13 September, Parkman reported on a sermon, adding: “Mr. Forbes [and Mrs. Forbes?] (having been to Dr. at Mendon about her Breast) came.” 

Pope continued to have a reputation as a healer, and on 17 Feb 1776 the minister wrote: “Mr. Edwards Whipple here. He has a Cancer on his Lip—is going to Mendon to put himself under the Care of Dr. Pope—and desires public prayers tomorrow for him.”

However, by that time Mary Forbes was dead. On 19 January her father wrote:

Billy comes from Concord—with The Heavy News, and Letter from my dear son Forbes! Of my most dear Child Mary’s Departure on the 16th at Eve, between 9 and 10 o’Clock! O Lord, Help!

Mary Forbes was fifty years old when she died.

The Rev. Eli Forbes married three more times, and his last wife was Mary’s younger sister Lucy, who by that time was widow of the military engineer Jeduthan Baldwin.

TOMORROW: John Pope’s travels.

(The picture above shows Gloucester’s first meetinghouse as depicted by Fitz Henry Lane.)

“Except these boats all in a hurry”

Continental surgeon general Benjamin Church’s secret letter to Maj. Edward Cane of the British army contained three warnings about attacks on the British forces by water.

Early on in that 24 Sept 1775 missive, Dr. Church wrote:

The distroying the Ships in the manner I wrote you before they began to dispair of tho’ the former of the Machine is full of faith that he can do it, Works on hardly and so let him, I say.

This is probably the same “mashine” that engineer Jeduthan Baldwin wrote about in December:

went in the afternoon to Dotchester point to See the mashine to blow up Shiping, but as it was not finished, it was not put into the water.

Church’s letter suggests that the man forming that machine was at work months earlier, in September.

But what was the machine? David Bushnell’s submarine is one possibility. We know he was at work on that invention by August 1775, and that in October people in the American camp were hoping to see it soon. But the dates don’t quite match up; Bushnell was still toiling in the Connecticut River on 7 December, so what did Baldwin see kept out of the water one week later? The machine at Dorchester Point might never have been finished while Bushnell’s Turtle actually went into battle in September 1776.

Church alerted his Crown contacts to other water-borne threats:

This day a floating battery hid herself under Mr Tempels Wharf, from Mistick bridge.

One hundred 50 flat bottom boats are ordered to be Compleated within 30 days they are building them as fast as they can at Water town and Cambrige I see them every day, this you may depend on. And I am not a little Surprised to find them so Engaged in making these boats, for I know the people in general think it impossible ever to go into Boston, you in it. ————. . . .

Our Assembly has been sitting 3 days they have been debating by what means they can keep the Coast Clear of tenders, but have not yet Concluded.

No News from the Congress some days things look as if our General intended to do something soon, than again I am strongly persuaded that nothing will be done, in fact war you out you could not satisfy yourself there is nothing that looks like matters Except these boats all in a hurry.

“Mr. Tempels Wharf” meant the wharf on the Mystic River that led to Robert Temple’s farm in Medford, shown above in a detail from Henry Pelham’s map of the siege.

In October, a couple of weeks after Dr. Church wrote, the Continental troops did try to attack the British in Boston with floating batteries. It didn’t go well, as these posts describe.

Gen. George Washington was indeed eager for an amphibious assault on Boston, but his council of war kept voting down his plans. Even the move onto Dorchester Heights included a contingency attack across the Charles River if the British tried to counterattack. But in the end all those flat-bottomed boats were never used in battle.

TOMORRROW: The flag-raising. 

“This Retreating, Raged Starved, lousey, thevish, Pockey Army”

Sometime in the past week, Blogger tells me, Boston 1775 surpassed 1,000,000 page views. I believe those include visits by search engines, with no actual eyeballs involved, but it’s the only yardstick I got. I’m grateful to all the folks who’ve peeked in, whether one time or every day.

That news prompted me to look back at the first week of postings, from May 2006. I found poor Lt. Col. Jeduthan Baldwin, working as a military engineer with the disintegrating American army that had come down from Canada into northern New York.

On 16 July Baldwin woke up to find that someone had sneaked into his tent and stolen his chest, including a lot of genteel clothing and surveying tools. The next day he wrote in his journal:

in the Morning a part of my Compass was found break to pieces & soon after the rest of it except the Needle. this Day I wrote to Genl. [John] Sullivan to remind him of the request I had made of a discharge from the Army, desiring him to use his intrest in my behalf while at the Congress, as I am heartily tired of this Retreating, Raged Starved, lousey, thevish, Pockey Army in this unhealthy Country.

But Baldwin stuck around. Which, like the page views, shows the value of just showing up every day.

Back in 2006, Baldwin’s diary was available only in an edition printed by a society in Maine a century before, and reprinted in a small quantity by Arno Press and the New York Times in 1971. I’d happened to find a copy in my local library. Now that edition is readable through Google Books, and the Massachusetts Historical Society is sharing portions of the original. Quite a change.

In July 1776, Baldwin was planning out the Continental fortifications on Mount Independence in Vermont. The engineer’s diary is a major source of Stephen Zeoli’s Mount Independence: The Enduring Legacy of a Unique Historic Place, a little book about that historic site published last year by the Mount Independence Coalition and sold at historic sites and bookstores in the region.

I see there’s a lot of activity coming up around Mount Independence, including an archeology hike tomorrow, living history next weekend, and a memorial ceremony at Hubbardton on 11 September.

How Jeduthan Baldwin Spent Christmas 1775

One of my favorite Revolutionary War diarists is Col. Jeduthan Baldwin of North Brookfield, Massachusetts. He was an artillery engineer, which required technical knowledge, but he had a farmer’s blunt style. He tended to punctuate casually and spell phonetically. For instance, he wrote the town name Dorchester as “Dotchester”—which is, after all, still the way it’s pronounced. And he wrote down everyday details that humanize him and his fellow high officers. On 23 Dec 1775, as on example, Baldwin recorded that he “Wore Genl. [Israel] Putnams great coat.”

How did Col. Baldwin spend the next two days? As a New Englander, he had no tradition of treating Christmas as a holiday. Indeed, Congregationalists seem to have taken pride in treating the 25th of December like any other working day. But the Continental Army’s commander-in-chief observed Anglican norms. On Christmas in 1775, therefore, Baldwin both paid a visit to Gen. George Washington and did some dirty work that he saw needed doing.

24 Lords Day & a very Snowy cold Day. Cut down the orchard at Leachmor point, & laid the trees round the fort[.] had 4 oxen Drowned coming of ye point.

25 a Very cold Day. Dind with Genl. Putnam. went upon leachmor Point at Sunset, & then went to Genl Washing. in the Evning. found & Skind ye 4 drownded oxen.

(Click on the image above for a larger map of the siege, published in the late 1800s and posted on a Phipps family genealogy page. The 1906 edition of Col. Baldwin’s diary is available through Google Books.)

A Machine to Blow Up Shipping?

Yesterday I quoted Continental artillery colonel Jeduthan Baldwin’s record that on 14 Dec 1775 he “went in the afternoon to Dotchester point to See the mashine to blow up Shiping, but as it was not finished, it was not put into the water.”

It sure sounds like Baldwin really saw an unfinished machine which was eventually supposed to go into the water. Which puts me in mind of the pioneering submarine of David Bushnell, who had just graduated from Yale at the advanced age of thirty-five. Bushnell was working on his machine by August 1775, when a friend described it in a letter to Benjamin Franklin. On 23 Oct 1775, Samuel Osgood, aide de camp to Gen. Artemas Ward, wrote to John Adams from the camp at Roxbury:

The famous Water Machine from Connecticutt is every Day expected in Camp; it must unavoidably be a clumsy Business, as its Weight is about a Tun. I wish it might succeed [and] the Ships be blown up beyond the Attraction of the Earth, for it is the only Way or Chance they have of reaching St Peter’s Gate.

By the next month, a British spy named James Brattle, working as a servant of Continental Congress delegate James Duane, had sent the same news to Gov. William Tryon of New York.

However, as of 7 December Bushnell was still testing his craft on the Connecticut River, wrestling with a peculiar problem of submarine warfare: it’s dark inside a waterproof chamber, and lighting a candle uses up the oxygen supply. Bushnell, with Franklin’s advice, planned to use some bioluminescent plant materials, but they weren’t available in late fall.

Bushnell formally presented his submarine plan to the Connecticut Council in February 1776. At that time he planned to move it to Boston to engage the Royal Navy there, but the British evacuated the next month, making that trip unnecessary. The vessel, dubbed the Turtle, finally saw action on 6 Sept 1776 in New York harbor, the first submarine attack in naval history. (The picture above comes from Digital History at the University of Houston.) I haven’t come across any indication that a version of Bushnell’s machine was in Dorchester the previous December.

The machine that Baldwin saw might therefore have been another invention. There was at least one other grand scheme to attack the British fleet that fall. On 20 Oct 1775, John Hancock signed a letter drafted by a Congressional committee to Gen. George Washington:

Captain John Macpherson having informed the Congress that he had invented a method by which, with their leave, he would take or destroy every Ministerial armed vessel in North-America, [a committee of delegates] reported that the scheme, in theory, appeared practicable; and that, though its success could not be relied on without experiment, they thought it well worth attempting on the fleet in and about Boston Harbour, their destruction being an object of the utmost importance.

The Congress have therefore desired Captain Macpherson to repair immediately to Cambridge. They recommend this matter to your particular attention...

Macpherson was a Scotsman with experience in the Royal Navy who had settled in Philadelphia. His son, also named John, was an aide to Gen. Richard Montgomery in the American invasion of Canada; both men would die outside Québec at the end of the year.

On 8 Nov 1775, Washington replied that he wasn’t as optimistic about the captain’s plan as the captain was:

I laid myself under a solemn tye of secrecy to Captn. McPherson, and proceeded to examine his Plan for the destruction of the Fleet in the Harbour of Boston, with all that care and attention which the Importance of it deserved, and my Judgement could lead to: but not being happy enough to coincide in Opinion with that Gentleman, and finding that his Scheme would Involve greater expence, than (under my Doubts of its success), I thought myself justified in giving into, I prevaild upon him to communicate his plan to three Gentlemen of the Artillery (in this Army) well acquainted in the knowledge, and practice of gunnery; by them he has been convinced, that in as much as he set out upon wrong principles, the Scheme would prove abortive.

unwilling however to relinquish his favourite project of reducing the Naval force of Great Britain, he is very desirous of building a number of Row-Gallies for this purpose; but as the Congress alone are competent to the adoption of this measure, I have advised him (altho’ he offered to go on with the building of them at his own expence ’till the Congress should decide) to repair immediately to Philadelphia with his proposals; where, if they should be agreed to, or Vessels of Superior force, agreeable to the Wishes of most others, should be resolved on, he might set instantly about them, with all the materials upon the Spot; here they are to collect; to him therefore I refer for further information on this Head.

Capt. Macpherson carried this letter and others back to Philadelphia for the commander-in-chief. He could have returned to Boston by December, but I have no evidence that he did.

So what was the machine that Baldwin expected to see in use in December 1775? It might have been a prototype of Bushnell’s, or another of Capt. Macpherson’s ideas, or yet another machine created by someone else entirely. In any event, it didn’t work.

The View from Lechmere Point

Yesterday I quoted an account from inside Boston of an artillery battle between a new Continental Army battery along the Charles River, British artillery emplacements, and a Royal Navy man-of-war.

Here’s a description of those same days from Col. Jeduthan Baldwin, the engineer who laid out the American battery and the fortifications for the men inside. While Boston selectman Timothy Newell referred to the battery’s location as Phipps’s farm, Baldwin called the same place by the name of another local landowner, Richard Lechmere.

The numbers in Baldwin’s journal refer to the dates in December 1775 as he gradually built out to the point:

12 Begun the causey [causeway] at Leachmor Neck

13 Began the Covered Way onto Leachmor hill. Col. [John] Glover Regt. & Capt. [Thomas Waite] Foster Compy of the [artillery] Train Marched for Marblehead, upon hearing of 3 men of War lying at that place. bought a Watch for 8£. [This may be the same watch that Baldwin kept under his pillow while sleeping in July 1776.]

14 workt on leachmor point went in the afternoon to Dotchester point to See the mashine to blow up Shiping, but as it was not finished, it was not put into the water.

15 Came from Dotchester & went to Leachmor point to work. . . .

16 Stakt. out the Fort on Leachmor point.

17 went to work on Leachmor point, it was Very Foggy in the fornoon, & when the Fog cleared away we had a Very havey fire from the Ships, & from Boston but thro’ Divine goodness we Recd by little damage. Abel Woods was wounded in the Crotch or thigh. workt all night, got our men covered.

18 went down in the afternoon to Leachmor. . . .

19 Went upon Leachmor point to work. a No of Shot & Shells were thrown from Bunker Hill & from Boston at us & at Coble Hill, many of the Shot lodgd in our Brest work, & some of the Bumbs Brok high in the are & 2 near our works, but no Mischief done this Day.

20 went upon Leachmor Point we recd a No of 24 Ib Shot from Boston into our breastwork & others Just went over all in a direct line hit the wall. Several Bumbs burst in the air, one was thrown from Bunker Hill into Cambg by [Col. Edmund] Phineys Regt. 13 inch which did not bust . . .

21 went to Leachmor point in the morning, went to Watertown in the afternoon. it was Very cold this Day. the enemy did not fire at us this Day.

It’s also interesting to see how much Baldwin had to travel in his job, from east Cambridge all the way around the siege lines to Dorchester, and out to the legislature’s headquarters in Watertown.

(The image above is a detail from this map, published in the late 1800s and made available through a Phipps family genealogy page.)

TOMORROW: What “mashine to blow up Shiping”?

Benjamin Rice and the Boston Tea Party

Yesterday I noted how the appendix in the back of Traits of the Tea-Party (1835) listed “Benjamin Rice” among the men who had helped to destroy the East India Company tea on 16 Dec 1773. What do we know about that man?

In Tea Leaves (1884), Francis S. Drake reprinted that list, but he couldn’t find anything more about Benjamin Rice. His book offered capsule biographies of every possible participant he could identify, but not Rice.

After that, authors identified two men as being or possibly being the Benjamin Rice of the Boston Tea Party, and in neither case is the evidence strong.

The first candidate was Benjamin Rice (1723-1796) of North Brookfield. He was a militia captain and occasional town representative. On 7 Dec 1773 he was one of a five-man committee, which also included Jeduthan Baldwin, that wrote this about the tea tax:

We think it our indispensable duty, in the most public manner to let the world know our utter abhorrence of the last and most detestable scheme, in the introduction of Tea from Great Britain, to be peddled out amongst us, but which means we were made to swallow a poison more fatal in its effects to the national and political Rights and Privileges of the People of this country, than ratsbane would be to the natural body—

Therefore, Resolved, that we will not by any way or means, knowingly encourage or promote the sale or consumption of any Tea whatever, subject to a duty payable in America, but all persons whoever they may be, who shall be concerned in a transaction so dangerous, shall be held by us in the utmost contempt, and be deemed enemies to the well being of this country.

This quotation appears in J. H. Temple’s History of North Brookfield, published in 1887. That book didn’t connect Rice to the actual destruction of the tea, however.

Twenty years later, Ellery Bicknell Crane supervised the publication of Historic Homes and Institutions and Genealogical and Personal Memoirs of Worcester County, Massachusetts, one of many local histories produced by the Lewis Publishing Company for sale to libraries and prominent families in the area. And that book says:

Captain Benjamin Rice, great-grandson of Edward Rice, was of the party of “Mohawks” who threw the tea into the Boston Harbor, was a town correspondent of the committee of safety, and served in the legislature in 1776-77 and in 1783-84. He married Sarah Upham, a descendant of Lieutenant Phineas Upham, who is written of elsewhere in this work.

The four-volume set offers no evidence for that statement, however.

I suspect that Crane’s team saw Benjamin Rice’s name on the North Brookfield’s committee report and in Tea Leaves, and concluded it was the same man. But from North Brookfield to the old part of Boston is more than sixty miles. It’s hard to imagine a fifty-year-old farmer making such a journey in December 1773 on the chance that Boston’s tea dispute would still be unresolved when he reached the capital. Furthermore, the Boston radicals who planned the secret, risky raid on the tea ships surely recruited men they knew and trusted, not men who happened to show up from out of town. So I don’t find this identification convincing.

Another Benjamin Rice appears to have been in Boston in 1773. He had been born in Westborough in 1749, graduated from Harvard in July, and started to study medicine. He would marry Martha Bent in January 1774, and die eight years later. However, this Benjamin Rice had grown up in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, from the age of eleven. Like the farmer from North Brookfield, he was probably not a familiar and trusted face to Boston’s radicals. The earliest suggestion I’ve found that this Benjamin Rice was involved in the Tea Party dates from 1974, and again seems to be based on no more evidence than his name.

In sum, the list in Traits of the Tea-Party appears to be our only document or tradition dating from before 1900 to indicate that a man named Benjamin Rice participated in the Boston Tea Party.

Which brings me back to John Rice, the subject of yesterday’s posting. According to William Cooper’s notes on public meetings, Harvard student John Rice (or his forty-six-year-old father) volunteered to help keep the tea from landing in November. He held important positions in town during and after the Revolution, and married into a family of Tea Party participants. As I wrote yesterday, some current descendants of John Rice report a family tradition connecting him to the destruction of the tea.

So which story seems more likely: that John Rice joined in the Tea Party in 1773, but six decades someone misstated his first name as Benjamin, or that one of the men named Benjamin Rice participated in the Tea Party but never left any other evidence of radical political activity in Boston?

Of course, both of those scenarios are possible, and I can imagine still more ways to explain why the name “Benjamin Rice” appears in Traits of the Tea-Party. It’s quite easy to think that the Rice family tradition stems from how their ancestor patrolled the docks in November 1773, not from the tea destruction the next month. Still, I think John Rice deserves more scrutiny.

And what about the tradition “that one of his shoes, filled with tea, was in the Boston Atheneum”? A John Rice, possibly the son of the Boston official born in 1783, was one of that library’s founding members.

Jeduthan Baldwin's Luck Gets Worse, Then Better

Back in May I quoted from the diary of Continental Army artillery officer Jeduthan Baldwin of Brookfield, discovering on 16 July 1776 that most of his clothing had been stolen. He was not happy.

Colleagues provided him with enough clothes that he could continue to appear respectable in their camp up near Fort Ticonderoga. But shortly afterwards Baldwin's bad luck transfered to his guns. Here is his diary entry for 1 Aug 1776, spelled and punctuated as he wrote:

at Sunset one howet[zer] was fired on board a large Gundalow by way of experiment, the Shell brok in the air, one 13 inch Bomb was also thrown from the same Gundelow on bord of which were about 20 men, when the Bomb went of the Morter split & the upper part went above 20 feet in the Air over the mens heads into the water & hurt no man. the peice that blowd off weighd near a ton, I was nigh & saw the men fall down when the morter burst, & it was a great wonder no man was kild.

2 August:

this morning I went early to Independent Point where we Charged the other 13 inch morter, by way of tryal, when she was fired she burst Just in the same manner (only this was on land, & the other was upon the warter) that the other did near about the middel the whole length, so that we have no large Morter here now, these 2 morters were carried from this place to Cambridge & brought back & went Down to Canada & then back to this place, at an immence cost, altho they were worth nothing.

Yes, these big mortars were among the artillery pieces that Col. Henry Knox had famously hauled down from Fort Ticonderoga to the siege of Boston in the winter of 1775-76. And the only damage they were doing was to Americans. On 5 August:

in clearing the guns on bord of one of the gundelows one of the cannon went of as they were charging it & Killd the gunners mate he was blown into many peices & scatterd on the water. this afternoon I found in an old thiefs pack, who was discharged & going home my Sartoot, silk breeches & 2 pair of Stockings, the thif is now confind in Irons in the dungeon.

As shown in the end of that entry, however, Baldwin's luck had begun to turn: he found a man carrying some of his stolen clothing. The next day:

this morning I found my Hatt with a Serjant, in the afternoon a lad discoverd a pack in a Chimney which contained my Cloak, Laiced Coat & Jacquet, so that I have my Cloathing, except my Shirts, 3 pair of Stockings & som Necks. the Needle to my Compass, & Cash I have not found.

And on 7 August:

this morning 2 of my shirts were found and some evidence apeard with the finding of the Hatt & shirts, against Serjant Majr. O’briant who desarted yesterday, & Genl. Gates this Day sent an officer down to fort Edward or albany to apprehend & bring back the desarter of whome I hope to get the money & all those Stolen goods I have lost. I let Lt. have 12 Dollars to bair his expense in his Journey after the thief.

8 August:

2 of my Cotton Shirts were found & a fair prospect of finding the rest.

So this little story has a happy ending after all.

Jeduthan Baldwin loses his clothes and his temper

Here are spicy excerpts from The Revolutionary Journal of Col. Jeduthan Baldwin, 1775-1778, published in 1906. Baldwin was a farmer with a big estate in Brookfield, Massachusetts, born in 1732. At the start of the Revolution he joined the Massachusetts artillery regiment, which became part of the Continental Army in June 1775.

Around the time of Congress’s Declaration of Independence, Baldwin was in upstate New York as an engineer and artillery commander. He had recently recovered from smallpox. The American army was in retreat from Canada. And on 16 July 1776 Baldwin woke up to a bad surprise:

in the morning between day and sunrise I heard some persons say that how come that Chest open, another person answerd sombody has robd it they have pulld up the tent pins & taken the chest out, upon which I arose in my shirt & went out & found that I was robd of my Hatt, a Camblet Cloak a Surtoot, a blieu Coat & Jacoat full trimd with a narrow Gold lace, a pair of Silk breeches, a Snuff colourd Coat turnd up with white, a Velvet Jacoat, 3 cotton & 3 Wollon Shirts, 3 Stocks, 2 linen Handkfs, 2 pair of linen & 2 pair of woolen Stockings, a pair of Silver Shoe & knee buckels, a Surveyors Compass or theodiler, & between 35 & 40 Dollars in paper money, an ink pot, a knife, key & a Number of papers, & other articles.

I immediately sent to all the Commanding officers present, & at the landing, acquainting them with my loss, the Army was all turnd out & a genl. Sirch made but none of my things found. I borrowed of a friend, a Coat & Jacoat & hatt, for I had none lift, I was Stript to the Shirt, my breeches & watch that lay under my head were saved only.

Just at evning I heard that my coat turnd up with white & Velvet Jacoat was found with the buckles &c. in the pockets, hid in a blind place.

The next day brought more bad news, and Baldwin lost his temper:

in the Morning a part of my Compass was found break to pieces & soon after the rest of it except the Needle. this Day I wrote to Genl. Sullivan to remind him of the request I had made of a discharge from the Army, desiring him to use his intrest in my behalf while at the Congress, as I am heartily tired of this Retreating, Raged Starved, lousey, thevish, Pockey Army in this unhealthy Country.

In addition to being a fine show of emotion, these extracts are interesting as:

1. a nearly complete inventory of what clothing a genteel but not especially wealthy New England officer took on campaign in the army.
2. a taste of how even gentlemen of that class spelled words in the eighteenth century.

ADDENDUM: Does Col. Baldwin find his clothes?