“It was not disturbed, nor was any of their property taken”

I’ve now quoted two nineteenth-century accounts from descendants of Elbridge Gerry, Azor Orne, and Jeremiah Lee (shown here) saying that British soldiers searched the tavern in Menotomy where they were staying on the night of 18–19 Apr 1775.

The three men, all delegates from Marblehead to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, fled out the back of the tavern and hid outside in the cold.

Less than a month later, Lee died of an illness, which his family attributed to the stress of that night. That obviously made the men’s choices in the early hours of 19 April carry more weight.

There are, however, big problems with the story that part of the British army column searched Ethan Wetherby’s Black Horse tavern that night.

First, Gen. Thomas Gage’s orders for the march said nothing about looking for committee of safety members along the way. His intelligence files have no information on the whereabouts of those committee men. Rather, the general wanted his troops to get to Concord as quickly as possible.

Furthermore, none of the British army officers who wrote reports on that march described searching a tavern in west Cambridge, or anywhere else on their way out.

Finally, no contemporaneous accounts from the provincial side—neither depositions, letters, nor newspaper articles—complained about this search, either. And people made a lot of complaints in the wake of the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

There might be a seed of truth at the start of the story. Both versions say a small number of soldiers approached the tavern after the vanguard passed by. It’s conceivable that some redcoats turned aside to use the tavern’s well or outhouse before catching up with the column. But the lore goes much further than that, saying soldiers spent “more than an hour” searching every room in the building, “even the beds.”

The lore offers no corroborating evidence for that detail, such as the landlord’s testimony. In fact, the nineteenth-century versions specify that the committee men couldn’t point to anything missing as a sign that the soldiers had visited their room:

• “a valuable watch of Mr. Gerry’s, which was under his pillow, was not disturbed.”
• “Mr. Gerry’s watch was under his pillow, but it was not disturbed, nor was any of their property taken.”

Ordinarily if everything in a room looks the same as before, we treat that as a sign it wasn’t searched.

By 1916, Thomas Amory Lee might have spotted that weakness in the traditional tale because his article “Colonel Jeremiah Lee: Patriot” for the Essex Institute Historical Collections stated: “Gerry’s silver watch and French great coat disappeared.” That’s a direct contradiction of earlier Gerry family lore, and even that new version said Orne’s watch went untouched.

Given the totality of evidence, I think the Marblehead delegates were more worried about arrest than Gerry’s exchange of notes with John Hancock let on. Seeing hundreds of British soldiers outside their inn, perhaps seeing some of those soldiers coming closer to the building, they bolted for an exit.

There are reports Gerry and perhaps Lee sustained injuries in their flight. Then they stayed outside in the cold until it felt safe to return. Waiting for the whole army column to pass by and go out of sight may have felt like an hour, but it probably took less time than that.

Finally the three men came back inside, grateful to have escaped arrest. Then came news of the shooting at Lexington, the redcoat reinforcement column, the outbreak of war. The delegates fled the tavern again, this time with their possessions. Lee fell ill soon after, and died on 10 May.

Looking back on the episode decades later, Gerry and Orne—and perhaps even more so their and Lee’s descendants—would have resisted the thought that those sacrifices weren’t really necessary. That the three Marblehead men could have stayed in their warm bedroom, watched the glittering troops march by, and never faced arrest. That Lee might have lived longer.

So they convinced themselves that running outside had been necessary. Not just prudent but necessary. Which meant believing that soldiers came into the tavern and searched the bedrooms, leaving no sign of their presence.

“The soldiers searched for them, for more than an hour”

On 27 Apr 1861, the Cambridge Chronicle published an article headlined “Revolutionary Incident.” and signed “C.F.O.”

The first paragraph listed its “authentic and reliable sources,” including “the Records of the Provincial Congress, Austin’s Life of Gerry, and the niece of Col. Gerry, daughter in law of Col. Orne, and the grand-daughter of Col. Lee.”

“C.F.O.” was Caroline Frances Orne (1818–1905, shown here), a poet, local historian, and Cambridge’s librarian for seventeen years.

She was a granddaughter of Sally (Gerry) Orne (d. 1846), who was “the niece of Col. [Elbridge] Gerry, [and] daughter in law of Col. [Azor] Orne.” I believe “the grand-daughter of Col. [Jeremiah] Lee” was most likely either Louise Lee Tracy (1787–1869) or Helen Tracy (1796–1865).

Thus, this article was based on family lore, not first-hand witnesses, and the author was herself a member of the intertwined family. She consulted books like the Journals of Each Provincial Congress of Massachusetts and James T. Austin’s biography of his father-in-law, but used those to fill out a story she’d undoubtedly heard from her grandmother.

Caroline Frances Orne wrote of the British army march in April 1775:

Among the objects of this march one was to seize the persons of some of the influential members of the Provincial Congress, to hold them as hostages, or send them to England for trial as traitors, and thus to terrify and dismay their associates and friends.

Among others, Col. [John] Hancock, Col. [Azor] Orne and Mr. Elbridge Gerry had been in session, on the day preceding the march of the troops, in the village of Menotomy, then part of the township of Cambridge, on the road to Lexington, at [Ethan] Wetherby’s Black-Horse Tavern.

Col. Hancock, Samuel Adams, and some others went over to Lexington to pass the night, while Messrs. Gerry, Lee, and Orne remained at the village. The appearance of some officers of the royal army who passed through the village just before dark, attracted the attention of these gentlemen, and a message of warning was at once despatched to Col. Hancock. Of their personal danger they did not entertain an idea, but retired quietly to rest, without taking the least precaution.

As the British advance came into view of the dwelling-house, they arose and looked out of the windows, and in the bright moonlight saw the glitter of the bayonets, and marked the regular march of the disciplined troops. The front had passed, and the centre was opposite the house, when a signal was given, and an officer and a file of men marched towards it. Then the apprehension of danger first struck them, and they hastened to escape.

Rushing down stairs, Col. Gerry in his perturbation, was about to open the door in the face of the British, when the agitated landlord exclaimed, “For God’s sake, gentlemen, don’t open that door[.]” He then hurried them out at the back door, into a cornfield, where the old stalks still remained. Hastening along, Col. Gerry soon fell. “Stop, Orne,” he called in low, urgent voice, “Stop for me till I can get up; I have hurt myself.”

“Lie still,” replied Col Orne, in the same low tone, “Throw yourself flat on the ground,” proceeding at once to do the same himself, in which he was imitated by Col Lee.

This manoeuvre saved them. The soldiers searched for them, for more than an hour. Every apartment of the house was searched “for the members of the Rebel Congress,” and even the beds in which they had lain. Mr. Gerry’s watch was under his pillow, but it was not disturbed, nor was any of their property taken. The troops finally left, and the gentlemen returned, suffering greatly from cold, for it was a cold frosty night, and they were but slightly clothed.

Col. Lee never recovered from the effects of the exposure. He was attacked, soon after, by a severe fever, and died, May 10th, 1775, universally lamented. The others lived to render most important services to their country.

Three years later, the Rev. Samuel Abbot Smith (1829-1865) put a shorter version of the same story into his West Cambridge on the Nineteenth of April, 1775. He credited “Miss Orne, who received this account from the lips of her grandmother, who was niece of Elbridge Gerry, and daughter-in-law of Col. Orne.”

TOMORROW: The watch under the pillow.

“Opposite to the house occupied by the committee”

On 18 Apr 1775, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s committee of safety met “at Mr. [Ethan] Wetherby’s, at the Black Horse” tavern in west Cambridge.

Among other business that day, the committee promised “the two brass two pounders, and two brass three pounders” that had been stolen out of Boston to Lemuel Robinson’s Suffolk County artillery company. Robinson had hidden those cannon at his tavern in Dorchester earlier in the year, before they were moved out to Concord.

The committee decided to continue meeting in the same tavern at 10 A.M. the next morning. Three important members from Marblehead—Elbridge Gerry, Jeremiah Lee, and Azor Orne—chose to stay overnight since they were far from their own beds. Other members went home to Charlestown, Newton, and elsewhere. 

On the afternoon of the 18th people spotted Maj. Edward Mitchell and other army officers riding by that tavern on horseback. Gerry sent a warning note to John Hancock in Lexington, and Hancock replied. There was a widespread worry that troops might arrest leaders of the resistance. Of course, neither man’s message indicated that he was worried for himself, certainly not.

In 1828 James T. Austin published a two-volume Life of Elbridge Gerry, his father-in-law, which offered this story about what happened in the night that followed:

Mr. Gerry and colonel Orne retired to rest without taking the least precaution against personal exposure, and they remained quietly in their beds until the British advance were within view of the dwelling house. It was a fine moonlight night, and they quietly marked the glittering of its beams on the polished arms of the soldiers as the troops moved with the silence and regularity of accomplished discipline. The front passed on.

When the centre were opposite to the house occupied by the committee, an officer and file of men were detached by signal, and marched towards it. It was not until this moment they entertained any apprehension of danger.

While the officer was posting his files the gentlemen found means by their better knowledge of the premises to escape, half dressed as they were, into an adjoining corn-field, where they remained concealed for more than an hour, until the troops were withdrawn. Every apartment of the house was searched “for the members of the rebel congress”; even the beds in which they had lain were examined.

But their property, and among other things a valuable watch of Mr. Gerry’s, which was under his pillow, was not disturbed.

I can’t identify the source of the phrase in quotation marks, either in earlier books, period newspapers, or Gen. Thomas Gage’s orders. 

TOMORROW: Another family source.

Booth on Jeremiah Lee in Marblehead, 3 Oct.

On Wednesday, 3 October, Robert Booth will speak about “Col. Jeremiah Lee of Marblehead: First Leader to Die for Independence.” This event is cosponsored by the Marblehead Museum and the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati.

The event description explains:

Jeremiah Lee (1721-1775) was among the most successful American shipping merchants, drawing his wealth from the exportation of salt codfish and the importation of commodities from the Caribbean and southern Europe, with plenty of illicit commerce along several coasts.

In the 1750s and 1760s Lee, owner of the town’s grandest house as of 1766, and his brother-in-law Robert “King” Hooper were friendly rivals for the social and business leadership of Marblehead, then second only to Boston as the largest and richest town in Massachusetts. As Britain cracked down on the wide-open trade of the American merchants, Hooper and Lee diverged: Hooper cultivated the royal authorities and gained preference for his shipping, while Lee, believing that his business would be destroyed, became the leader of the anti-British faction, at the risk of all that he had amassed.

By the 1770s war seemed inevitable, and Lee, the colonel of the large militia regiment of Marblehead, prepared his men by bringing in a drill instructor. He imported munitions and weapons through his overseas contacts and traveled in Maryland and Virginia to arrange for supplies and to encourage his counterparts there toward rebellion.

Col. Jeremiah Lee became an outspoken rebel politician and served as the chairman of the Essex County rebel congress in fall 1774, which issued its own demands similar to Boston’s Suffolk Resolves. In the councils of the Massachusetts rebel congress, formed in October 1774, Lee stood very high. By the spring of 1775 he was a leader of the rebel movement intent on driving the British army out of Boston.

Lee died in May 1775, not in battle but from an illness contracted in the stress of 19 April. In the following months, some of his ships ferried Col. Benedict Arnold’s men up to Maine while others became some of Gen. George Washington’s fleet of armed schooners.

Robert Booth is a Marblehead historian, author most recently of the books The Women of Marblehead (2016), a feminist history of the town in the 19th century; Mad for Glory (2015), about Americans in the Pacific in 1813; and Death of an Empire (2011), on the 1820s demise of Salem as a worldwide center of trade.

This talk is free, though donations to support the museum will be welcome. It will start at 6:00 P.M. in the rooms of the Marblehead Museum, 170 Washington Street, across the street from Lee’s own home. Reserve tickets through this page.

Following the talk, the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati will host a buffet dinner at the Boston Yacht Club, 1 Front Street in Marblehead. The price for the dinner is $46. People who wish to attend both the lecture and the dinner must make reservations in advance. Use this page to reserve seats before Sunday, 23 September.

Anderson on the Lee Household in Marblehead, 20 Sept.

On Thursday, 20 September, Judy Anderson will speak at the Marblehead Museum about “18th-Century Women & Children, Servants & Slaves in the Lee Mansions.”

This illustrated talk will introduce the enigmatic women and children of the Jeremiah Lee family. The Marblehead merchant married Martha Swett, and over their thirty years of marriage they had nine children—though only four grew to adulthood.

Martha was a younger half-sister of Ruth Swett, rival merchant Robert “King” Hooper’s second wife. Each sister had lost her own mother by age seven. They raised their children (twenty combined!) next door to each other for twelve years until Ruth’s death at age forty-three after twenty-eight years of marriage.

About five years later, the Lee family moved into the grand residence associated with Col. Lee today, shown above in a photograph by Rick Ashley. By then the Lees’ eldest son had left for Harvard, and about three years later he married, soon starting a new generation.

This talk will include “some less familiar material” about the Lees, the Hoopers, and the Lee offspring in Marblehead. It is presented in cooperation with Marblehead Arts Association.

Anderson will speak at the museum, 170 Washington Street in Marblehead, starting at 7:00 P.M. Admission is $15, or $10 for members of the Marblehead Museum or the Marblehead Arts Association. Register through this webpage or by calling 781-631-1768.

Other Marblehead Museum presentations this month include:

• “17th and 18th C. Food and Cookery” with Salem Food Tours, Thursday, 27 September, 6:30-8:00 P.M. at the Lee Mansion, 171 Washington Street.
• “Cinders & Suds: Servant Life at the Lee Mansion,” Saturday, 29 September, 10:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. at the Lee Mansion. 

May Events at the Lee Mansion in Marblehead

Jeremiah Lee was a significant figure in the arming of the Massachusetts militia before the Revolutionary War. The wealthy Marblehead merchant was a member of the Patriots’ Committee of Supplies. He paid David Mason of Salem to prepare cannon for battlefield use.

Lee died on 10 May 1775 of an illness that his family believed he’d contracted in the early hours of 19 April from cold and fright. I discussed that here and in The Road to Concord. So May was not a good month for Lee.

This May, however, the Jeremiah Lee Mansion, which he had built for him in 1768, has some interesting talks on tap.

Thursday, 17 May, 7:00-9:00 P.M.
Saving the Lee Mansion
Local historian Stanley Goodwin will share the remarkably dramatic story of how the Marblehead Historical Society bought the Lee Mansion in 1909 and turned it into the building and grounds that we know today.

Thursday, 24 May, 7:00-9:00 P.M.
Jeremiah Lee and the Colonial Masons of Marblehead
Join Town Historian Don Doliber as he discusses the Masonic ties that drew Jeremiah Lee, the town’s leading citizens, and the middling classes together in colonial Marblehead.

The Jeremiah Lee Mansion is at 161 Washington Street in Marblehead. Admission to each lecture is $15, or $10 for Marblehead Museum & Historical Society members.

Digital Wallpaper at the Schuyler Mansion

Earlier this year Susan Holloway Scott of the Two Nerdy History Girls shared a look at the wallpaper of the Schuyler Mansion in Albany.

Philip Schuyler was, of course, a wealthy man. He wanted the mansion he commissioned in 1761 to look good. And that meant choosing fashionable wall coverings. Scott’s posting focused on the paper that Schuyler bought for his halls, upstairs and down.

Unlike most 18thc wallpaper which was block-printed, or “stampt”, this paper was painted entirely by hand in tempera paint in shades of grey – en grisaille was the term – to mimic engraved prints. In fact, the entire scheme of the papers was an elaborate trompe l’oeil to represent framed paintings and cartouches, all custom designed for the walls and spaces they would occupy.

This was, of course, extremely expensive, and as much a sign of Philip’s deep pockets as his taste. The wallpaper he ordered featured romantically scenic landscapes by the Italian painter Paolo Panini, and was called “Ruins of Rome.” The “Ruins of Rome” wallpaper was so rare and costly that there are only two examples of it known to survive in America: in the Jeremiah Lee Mansion in Marblehead, MA, and in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, which has installed the paper taken from the now-demolished Rensselaerwyck, the home of Stephen Van Rensselaer II, also near Albany. . . .

The scenic wallpaper had long been removed. But over the last few years, the state’s Peebles Island Resource Center, led by Rich Claus and Erin Moroney, has painstakingly recreated a high-quality digital reproduction of the “Ruins of Rome” based on the wallpaper from both the Lee Mansion and the Van Rensselaer installation in the Met, but redesigned to fit the Schuyler Mansion’s walls and woodwork as perfectly as the original once did. The new wallpaper was completed and hung as part of the Mansion's centennial celebration this year.

Both the Schuyler Mansion and the Lee Mansion are now closed for the season but well worth a visit in warmer months. The Met is of course open year-round.

Marblehead Resistance Walking Tour, 10 May

On Wednesday, 10 May, and twice more at the end of the month, Judy Anderson of Marblehead Architecture Heritage will lead a walking tour of Marblehead focusing on the events of 1774 and 1775.

At that time, Marblehead was the second-largest town in Massachusetts, third-largest in New England. Historically it stood out from the rest of the colony with an economy based on fishing more than farming and a population less devout than the Puritans.

The tour will quote from writings by and about Marbleheaders at that time—some secret, and some in diaries or newspapers. It will focus on the town’s resistance activities, from top to bottom.

As a significant trading port (with a bunch of smaller coves) and a large fleet, Marblehead was an important site for importing weapons and gunpowder in those years.

On 27 Oct 1774, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress appointed its first five “commissaries,” responsible for obtaining supplies for the army it was surreptitiously forming. Those men included Jeremiah Lee of Marblehead (shown here).

On 9 February, the congress added Elbridge Gerry, also from Marblehead, to what had become a whole committee on supplies. Meanwhile, another delegate from the town, Azor Orne, was on the committee of safety. And with the port of Boston closed, those three merchants and their neighbors brought in a lot of the military supplies the Massachusetts militia started the war with.

The 10 May walk is scheduled to last from 5:30 to 7:30 P.M. It will start at Abbot Hall, 188 Washington Street. It will end at Homan’s Cove, where Lt.-Col. Alexander Leslie’s troops reportedly disembarked in Marblehead Harbor on Sunday, 26 Feb 1775. That cove is between two harborside restaurants—The Barnacle and The Landing—where tour members can choose to eat before or after the event.

Anderson will repeat the walk twice on Memorial Day weekend: on Saturday morning, 27 May, 9:00 to 11:00 A.M., and Sunday afternoon, 28 May, 3:00 to 5:00 P.M. There is a suggested donation of $5 per adult for any tour. Reservations are not necessary.

“All the Province Stores Sent to Col James Barretts”

Sometime in the early spring of 1775, James Barrett of Concord, a Massachusetts Provincial Congress delegate and militia colonel, wrote down “An account of all the Province Stores Sent to Col James Barretts of Concord Partly in His Own Costody & Partly Elsewhere all under his Care.” That undated document is now at the American Antiquarian Society.

The top of the list begins with the most valuable, dangerous, and risky-to-be-caught-with items:

Two peices of Cannon Brought From Watertown to ye Town
Eight Peices of Cannon Brought to ye Town by Mr Harrington
Four Peices of Brass Cannon & Two Mortar from Col Robertsons

That last name should be Lemuel Robinson, proprietor of the Liberty Tree Tavern in Dorchester. Massachusetts Committee of Safety records confirm that Robinson had those four brass cannon and two mortars in his custody early in 1775.

Barrett was thus in possession of sixteen pieces of artillery, on top of the handful of cannon that Concord itself had bought and mounted. Such weaponry had no use other than warfare, and there was no other foe on the horizon but the royal government.

Barrett’s account also listed a great many other military supplies, including musket cartridges, musket balls, flints, gunpowder, entrenching tools, medical chests, tents and tent poles, dishes and spoons, and “Four Barrels of Oatmeal containing 20 Bushels.” He was helping to equip an army.

Barrett clearly didn’t expect this account to fall into the hands of royal agents since he listed the names of men who had sent him those illegal supplies, including:

• Jeremiah Lee of Marblehead (“thirtyfive half barrels of powder,” tents).
• Moses Gill of Princeton (tents, “axes & pick axes & hatchetts”).
• David Cheever of Charlestown (“Two Barrels of Musquit ball containing 2100 weight,” another “2900 of ball,” another “2000,” &c.).

All those gentlemen were members of the congress’s Committee on Supplies.

Barrett also kept notes of where he was storing different supplies: at the homes of his son James, Ethan Jones, Joshua Bonds, Willoughby Prescott, Abijah Brown, Thomas Hubbard, Ephraim Potter, James Chandler, Joseph Hosmer, Jonas Heywood, and so on. Again, Barrett seems to have felt that information was secure, almost twenty miles from Boston.

But Crown agents found out about those military supplies in March 1775. They gave Gen. Thomas Gage detailed information about where things were in Concord, including those four brass cannon. And on 19 April three companies of the king’s soldiers arrived at Barrett’s farm.

How all that came about, what happened next, and what mysteries remain will be the topics of my talk this Thursday, 29 September, at Minute Man National Historical Park: “Cannons in Concord, and Why the Regulars Came Looking.” That event will start at the park’s Lexington/Lincoln visitor center at 7:00 P.M., and I’ll be happy to sign copies of The Road to Concord afterward.

Jeremiah Lee’s Very Bad Night

Jeremiah Lee was a non-battlefield casualty of the fight on 18-19 Apr 1775. On the one hand, that’s appropriate because he was central to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s effort to build up an artillery force, which prompted the British army march tp Concord. On the other hand, Lee’s death was probably unnecessary.

Lee was a Marblehead merchant, militia commander, and member of the congress’s Committee on Supplies. He was the conduit for its payments to the Salem painter David Mason as he collected and mounted cannons.

On 18 April, Lee attended a joint meeting of the Committee on Supplies and the Committee of Safety at a tavern in Menotomy, the western village of Cambridge that’s now Arlington. When the meeting broke up, he and two other men from Marblehead, Elbridge Gerry and Azor Orne, decided to stay the night. Richard Devens of Charlestown later wrote:

After we had finished the business of the day, we adjourned to meet at Woburn on the morrow,—left to lodge at Newell’s [the tavern], Gerry, Orne, and Lee. Mr. [Abraham] Watson and myself came off in my chaise at sunset.

On the road we met a great number of B[ritish]. O[fficers]. and their servants on horseback, who had dined that day at Cambridge. We rode some way after we met them, and then turned back and rode through them, went and informed our friends at Newell’s. We stopped there till they [the officers] came up and rode by. We then left our friends, and I came home, after leaving Mr. Watson at his house.

Likewise, Gen. William Heath wrote of himself in the third person: “on his return home, soon after he left the committee, and about sun-setting, he met eight or nine British officers on horseback, with their swords and pistols, riding up the road towards Lexington.”

The province was abuzz with rumors that the London government had ordered Gen. Thomas Gage to arrest leaders of the rebellion—and those rumors were pretty much true. The committee men were naturally nervous. Gerry sent a warning west to John Hancock and Samuel Adams, then staying at Lexington. Nonetheless, Devens and Watson had passed through the British officers twice with no trouble.

Later that evening, a long column of British troops passed by the tavern on the way to Concord. Lee, Gerry, and Orne got out of bed to watch. Suddenly they perceived some soldiers from that column coming toward the front door. Half-dressed, the three men dashed out the back and threw themselves down in a field, hoping the stalks of the previous year’s crop would hide them. Heath wrote that he heard they suffered “some injury from obstacles in the way, in their undressed state.”

The three men remained on the ground for about an hour before they decided it was safe to return to the building. Lee, who had just turned fifty-four, took sick from the cold and stress. He died on 10 May, his family and friends blaming the events of that night.

Here’s the sad irony: those British troops weren’t seeking to arrest anyone on the Committee on Supplies. Gen. Thomas Gage’s orders for that march say nothing about arresting Provincial Congress members or searching buildings before the column reached Concord. None of the several British officers who left detailed accounts of the night wrote about such a search on the way west. Heath wrote that he’d heard the troops “halted” outside the tavern, which they might have done just to get water from a well, but he didn’t say they went inside.

In his 1828 biography of Gerry, James T. Austin wrote that British troops had searched Newell’s tavern on the night of 18 April. Of course, saying that made Gerry’s decision to hide outside in the fields seem more smart than scared. And although Austin claimed, “even the beds in which they had lain were examined,” he had to acknowledge that nothing, not even “a valuable watch of Mr. Gerry’s, which was under his pillow,” had been disturbed. No eyewitness accounts from 1775 said troops had gone into the tavern, and the Massachusetts Patriots hadn’t shied from complaining about British actions that day.

I therefore suspect that Lee, Gerry, and Orne could have stayed inside their bedroom the whole night without being disturbed. And Lee might have lived for many more years.

Anderson on Marblehead Furniture Makers and Buyers, 26 Mar.

On Thursday, 26 March, at 7:00 P.M. the Salem Maritime National Historic Site in Salem will host a free talk by Judy Anderson on “Eighteenth-Century Furniture Craftsmanship and Patronage in Marblehead.”

This talk was inspired by the Peabody Essex Museum’s exhibit of work by the Salem cabinetmaker Nathaniel Gould, which closes on 29 March. As noted back here, when genealogist Joyce King and furniture expert Kemble Widmer spotted Gould’s account books in the papers of his attorney at the Massachusetts Historical Society, they were able to match existing examples of Gould’s work with specific sales, shedding new light on both his business and his art.

One of Gould’s most important clients in the years just before the Revolutionary War was the wealthy merchant Jeremiah Lee, who was furnishing his home across the harbor in Marblehead. Anderson has been curator of the Jeremiah Lee Mansion, and in 2003 she collaborated with Widmer on a study of his town’s cabinetmakers. Her fully illustrated talk will explore furniture craftsmanship and patronage in Gould’s time. It includes “some remarkable surprises uncovered by the Gould research and several stories of compelling social history.”

Anderson will deliver the same talk on Friday, 27 March, at 11:00 A.M. at the Salem Athenaeum. For that event, she suggests $5 or $10 donations to benefit the Athenaeum.

Boston National Historical Park and Marblehead Museum Seek Volunteers

Boston National Historical Park is recruiting history-loving volunteers to help the hundreds of thousands of visitors expected to come through its new Faneuil Hall Visitor Center, opening on 25 May. These Volunteers-In-Parks (V.I.P.’s, get it?) will work alongside National Park Service employees and partners to share facts about Boston’s history, answer telephones, distribute program tickets, and provide visitors with a friendly welcome.

Volunteers can enjoy behind-the-scenes tours, continuing-education learning opportunities, and some special programs. The call says, “Tax credits, senior citizens’ reimbursements and, in some cases, reimbursements for out-of-pocket expenses may be available. The park service will provide volunteer uniforms and professional training.”

The park asks volunteers to commit to working a shift of two to four hours per week for a minimum of two years. For more information on the program, contact manager Bernadette Williams by email or at 617-242-5222.

For folks on the North Shore, the Marblehead Museum is also seeking volunteers in the Jeremiah Lee Mansion. These guides welcome visitors to that house and lead them through the three floors of furnished rooms, placing merchant and politician Jeremiah Lee within the history of Marblehead and colonial America.

The museum provides guides with training and asks them to commit to a three-hour weekly schedule any day from Tuesday through Saturday. Becoming a volunteer requires an interview and references. The museum’s Welcome Breakfast for new and returning guides is on the morning of Saturday, 5 May. For more information about volunteering, call Pam Peterson at 781-631-1768.

Of course, other N.P.S. sites and local historical museums also want dedicated volunteers, especially with the summer season coming soon, so if you’ve got time, ask your favorite nearby site.

Finding Nathaniel Gould’s Account Books

Last week the Boston Globe and New York Times both reported, in their different ways, on the discovery of the account books of Salem cabinetmaker Nathaniel Gould (1734–1781). Gould’s furniture is distinct and highly valued, but without his business records it’s been impossible for furniture historians to be sure of how many pieces he made and where they went. Now “three vellum-bound books...with lists of names, dates and prices scrawled on foot-tall sheets of rag paper” are answering lots of questions.

Had those account books been squirreled away in some descendant’s attic, or lost in the bowels of a small, underfunded local history association? No, they were in the collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, one of the country’s best and busiest. Specifically, in the papers of Salem lawyer Nathan Dane. In 1990 archivist Brenda M. Lawson catalogued them as “3 account books of client Nathaniel Gould (1758-81).”

In other words, these sources weren’t hidden at all. They just weren’t in a place where furniture experts would look for them. And the legal scholars who study the Dane collection had no reason to recognize their significance for folks in another field.

But Google’s search algorithm doesn’t care about scholarly disciplines as long as it finds the right characters. The M.H.S. put its finding aid for the Dane papers online in March 2005. Two years later, researcher Joyce King of Wakefield ran a Google search for Gould’s name, spotted the link, and told Newburyport furniture historian Kemble Widmer, “This may be important.” King and Widmer are publishing their findings in American Furniture.

Above is a desk and bookcase from Gould’s workshop, now featured at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It’s actually signed “Nath Gould not his work”—perhaps a signal that he didn’t get his own hands dirty on it, but offered genteel supervision to craftsmen working for him. Gould’s accounts show that he sold such a piece to Jeremiah Lee of Marblehead on 9 Apr 1775, nine days before Lee would be hiding in a cold field in Cambridge, fearing arrest by British officers.

Founding Fathers in Houses and Taverns

On Friday evening I went to George Washington’s Cambridge headquarters for a book talk by Hugh Howard, author of Houses of the Founding Fathers, which also features many color photographs by Roger Straus III. This oversize illustrated (i.e., “coffee table”) book offers a tour of surviving Georgian and Federal mansions connected to the first generation of Americans.

How do we define “Founding Fathers”? There are the men at the Second Continental Congress, of course, and the Constitutional Convention. And important generals, such as Henry Knox. But that still didn’t produce enough buildings to fill a book. Howard and Straus’s challenge was not just to find the houses of historically significant people, but houses that were still photogenic.

From his towering perspective (he’s very tall), Howard cast a wider net. He included the houses where Gen. George Washington slept for a significant time, such as Longfellow House or the Ford Mansion in Morristown. And then there are the mansions of regional Patriot leaders. For instance, the cover shows wonderful Drayton Hall in Charleston, South Carolina; it was home to William Henry Drayton, president of the South Carolina Provincial Congress and Continental Congress delegate for a year.

Among the Massachusetts houses that Howard featured in the book and in his talk is the Marblehead mansion of Col. Jeremiah Lee. The Marblehead Museum & Historical Society offers an online slide show of the house and actual tours from June through October. It’s an unusually large North American Georgian mansion, with seven windows across its front.

Like Drayton, Col. Lee was notable within his province but had limited influence elsewhere, dying during the war. Lee was a Marblehead merchant, militia commander, and member of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s Committee on Supplies, which before April 1775 was gathering military equipment for the militia in case there would be war. David Mason, the Salem painter chosen by the Provincial Congress in November 1774 to collect ordnance, recorded receiving money from Lee twice.

On 18 Apr 1775, Lee attended a joint meeting of the Committee on Supplies and the Committee of Safety at a tavern in Menotomy, now Arlington. When the meeting broke up, he and two other men from Marblehead, Elbridge Gerry and Azor Orne, decided to stay the night. Richard Devens of Charlestown later wrote:

After we had finished the business of the day, we adjourned to meet at Woburn on the morrow,—left to lodge at Newell’s [the tavern], Gerry, Orne, and Lee. Mr. [Abraham] Watson and myself came off in my chaise at sunset.

On the road we met a great number of B[ritish]. O[fficers]. and their servants on horseback, who had dined that day at Cambridge. We rode some way after we met them, and then turned back and rode through them, went and informed our friends at Newell’s. We stopped there till they [the officers] came up and rode by. We then left our friends, and I came home, after leaving Mr. Watson at his house.

The province was abuzz with rumors that the London government had ordered Gen. Thomas Gage to arrest leaders of the rebellion—and those rumors were pretty much true. Even though Devens and Watson had passed through the British officers twice with no trouble, the committee men were nervous about being detained. Gerry sent a warning to John Hancock and Samuel Adams, then staying at Lexington.

Later that evening, a long column of British troops passed the tavern. Lee, Gerry, and Orne got out of bed to watch. Suddenly they perceived some soldiers from that column coming toward the tavern. Half-dressed, the three men dashed out the back door and threw themselves down in a field, hoping the stalks of the previous year’s crop would hide them. They remained on the ground for about an hour before they decided it was safe to return to the building.

Lee, who had just turned 54, took sick and died on 10 May. His family and friends blamed the fright, exertion, and cold of that night.

Here’s the sad irony: the British troops weren’t seeking to arrest anyone on the Committee on Supplies. An 1828 biography of Gerry, who became a controversial governor of Massachusetts, claimed:

Every apartment of the house was searched for the members of the rebel congress; even the beds in which they had lain were examined. But their property, and among other things a valuable watch of Mr. Gerry’s, which was under his pillow, was not disturbed.

But Gage’s orders for that march say nothing about arresting Provincial Congress members or searching buildings before the column reached Concord. None of the several British officers who left accounts of the night wrote anything about such a search on the way west. I don’t know of any contemporary evidence to support that biography’s statement.

I rather suspect that if any British soldiers came to that tavern door on 18 April, they wanted nothing more than a drink of water or other refreshment, and that they never searched the building or the committee men’s room. I think that Lee, Gerry, and Orne could have stayed inside the whole night without being disturbed, and Lee might have lived in his Marblehead mansion for many more years.