Trouble for Henry Barnes, “an Infamous importer”

Yesterday I started to describe how the town of Marlborough started to pressure Henry Barnes (shown here, in a portrait by his former slave Prince Demah) to stop importing goods from Britain.

The men of Marlborough adopted some of the same measures as the non-importation activists in Boston, just a year or more later. They held a town meeting to formally condemn importers. They appointed a committee to inspect goods and customers. They even called a meeting that didn’t have a property requirement so more young men could participate. And some folks started to make their disapproval even clearer by damaging Barnes’s property.

Henry Barnes’s wife Christian heard rumors that this activity was being guided from Boston:

It is said that a young gentleman who has formilly headed the mob in Boston and now resides with us is the perpetrator of all this mischief, but I will not believe it until I have further profe.

Alas, I haven’t found a clue about which young gentleman that might be.

In her letter to her friend Elizabeth Smith, Christian Barnes described how Bostonians themselves had attacked her husband’s property while it was in transport:

The greatest loss we have as yet met with was by a Mob in Boston who a few Nights ago atack’d a wagon load of goods which belongs to us they abused the Driver and cut a Bag of Peppur which contain’d three hundred [pounds?] leting it all into the street then gather’d it up in their Hand’fs & Hatts and caried it off the rest of the load they ordered back into the Publick Store of which the well disposed Commity Keeps the Key

Mr. Barnes has apply’d to the Lefnt. Govener [Thomas Hutchinson] for advice and he advised him to put in a petition to the General Court he then repaired to Mr. [James] Murray [a justice of the peace who was also Smith’s brother] and beg’d his assistance in the drawing of it up he complyed with his request and it is lade before the House next week, as I have entered so largly into the affair I will send you a Coppy of the Petition, we expect no Satisfaction or redress from the General Court but only as it is a legal Method and praparatory (in case of further insults) to the appealing to Higher Powers

You would be pleased to see with what moderation Mr. Barnes behaves in his present distresses at the same time I am well assured his resolution will carry him through all difficultys without swerving from his first principles

The Merchants in Boston are now intirely out of the question in all debates at their Town Meeting, which is caried on by a mob of the lowest sort of people leaded by one [John] Balard and Doct. [Thomas] Young Persons that I never before heard off

Dr. Thomas Young had led a crowd to the McMaster brothers’ store in early June to press them to stop importing. After another crowd carted Patrick McMaster around with a tar barrel on 19 June, John Ballard administered the oath by which the Scotsman swore not to return to Boston. Barnes heard from either Ame or Elizabeth Cumings that “the other two [McMaster] brothers had fled for their lives” as well.

And the people of Marlborough were still ramping up pressure on Henry Barnes. His wife wrote:

on the 10 of June the unqualified Voters had a meeting and enter’d into the same resolves the others had done before and the next day an Effigy was Hung upon a Hill in sight of the House with a paper Pin’d to the Breast, wheron was wrote Henry Barnes an Infamous importer this Hung up all Day and at Night they Burn’d it

In the five years since the Stamp Act, only the society’s worst political enemies had the honor of being hanged and burned in effigy.

COMING UP: Another effigy, this one on horseback.

John Ballard and John Ballard, Jr.

Yesterday I quoted three successive versions from the 1870s of an anecdote about a “stable boy” or “hostler” named (according to two versions) John Ballard, who helped bring Paul Revere word of the British march planned for 18-19 Apr 1775. Was John Ballard real?

In fact, there are (at least) two John Ballards, father and son, and sorting out the references to them isn’t easy. The father appears to have been born to Benjamin Ballard and the former Anne Hudson in 1715. He married a woman named Anna Young in 1738, and had four children baptized at the New North Meetinghouse from 1740 to 1745. According to a Copp’s Hill epitaph, Anna Ballard died 15 Feb 1751, aged thirty-two. The third of her children was John, Jr., born in January 1744.

Legal records suggest that the elder John Ballard started out as a ship joiner or carpenter, then bought a wharf and was thus listed as “wharfinger.” In 1739, the selectmen licensed him to sell liquor, and fifteen years later a bunch of his friends petitioned that board to let him open a tavern, which became the British Coffee-House. The St. John’s Lodge of Freemasons sometimes met there; Ballard was a member. In 1765 the Boston bar association had its first organizational meetings at Ballard’s tavern.

Ballard was a major figure in a mob attack on Patrick McMaster in 1770, as described back here. Records of the North End Caucus show Ballard participated in its political meetings in the early 1770s.

In 1742 John Ballard had been admitted to the firefighting company that kept “the Engine which is kept in a House Adjoining to the Old North Meeting House.” He became captain of Fire Engine Company #1 on 28 Dec 1767, and his son John, Jr., joined the following year. However, on 13 Apr 1774 Boston’s selectmen learned he was stepping down:

Mr. John Ballard Master of Engine No. 1. having as the Selectmen are informed by Mr. [Joshua] Bently declined serving as he purposes to reside wholly at the Eastward, where he now is…

“Eastward” usually meant Maine, though perhaps in this case it meant Cape Ann. With the Boston Port Bill about to go into effect, Ballard may have been seeking better prospects.

But it appears he didn’t leave Boston permanently because “Capt. John Ballard” was elected a fireward in 1777 alongside other prewar activists: Paul Revere, John Pulling, Thomas Crafts, Ebenezer Hancock, Edward Procter, John Scollay, &c. In 1785 he was made one of Boston’s first Inspectors of Police. (Presumably he also commanded a militia company at some point to get the title “Captain.”)

By that time John Ballard, Jr., had entered business for himself in the South End. Legally identified as a housewright, he married Mary Coats in 1777, and started to serve in town offices like constable and then clerk of the market—a post he kept for years. In the 1780s he’s listed as a trader, and in the late 1790s as a gentleman.

In Boston’s 1780 “Takings” book, or tax roll, there are two John Ballards, one keeping a tavern and the other keeping horses. Presumably the father ran the inn, and the son the stable and related businesses. An ad in the 26 Sept 1782 New England Chronicle refers to “Mr. John Ballard’s livery stable.” Later ads announce “An elegant Coach and a handsome pair of Horses” for hire, stationed near the center of town; this was, Thomas Handysyd Perkins remembered, the first hackney stand in Boston.

The 4 Mar 1794 Massachusetts Mercury reported the death of “Mr. John Ballard, 78”, in Boston. That should make it easier to sort out the men of that name, except that at some point after the war yet another John Ballard moved into Boston from Saugus. And in 1803 the cycle starts up again, with a “John Ballard, jun.” advertising that he’s selling dry goods from the same address where his father was still handling legal business; this is probably the stable owner’s son, baptized in 1782.

So what does all that say about the anecdote of John Ballard hearing that a British officer said, “There will be hell to pay to-morrow,” and passing that news on? The Ballards were just the sort of men who would be involved in the Patriot intelligence-gathering network: they were networkers, connected to others like themselves; social strivers, trying to rise above their middling origins; and politically active. Their descendants remained in Boston, able to retell the story (though, of course, also able to exaggerate it, or totally make it up).

I suspect that the younger John Ballard was the man who picked up that news from a groom attached to Gen. Thomas Gage’s headquarters. At age thirty-one, he wasn’t a “stable boy,” and might even have been a manager.

But I also suspect a lot of the other specifics in the tale got added later: that the Province House groom overheard Gen. Gage himself, that Ballard’s hands trembled at the news. Ballard might have sent word to Revere, or Revere might just have been the most famous possible recipient of that news after 1861.

One quality of this tale that makes me think its core is authentic is that it doesn’t claim too much. Whenever he passed on this story, Ballard didn’t claim to have daringly listened in on a British strategy meeting; he just kept his ears open. He didn’t claim to have learned Gage’s whole plan, only what day the army would move. He didn’t even claim to be first with the information: he said he was the third person to reach whomever he reported to. In sum, Ballard presented himself as one part of a network of citizens gathering intelligence, a part that happened to live long enough to pass on his story. And that seems credible.

TOMORROW: A contrasting version of this tale.

“There will be hell to pay to-morrow”

Another story of how Boston’s Patriot leaders got early intelligence of the British march on 18 Apr 1775 credits a stable-worker in the center of town. The circumstances of this story are hazy, and it developed over time, but here’s as far back as I’ve been able to trace it.

Samuel A. Drake’s Old Landmarks and Historic Personages of Boston (1873) says:

A groom at the Province House [the royal governor’s mansion, shown here] dropped into the stables, then opposite the Old South on Milk Street, for a social chat with a stable-boy employed there. The news was asked of the British jockey, who, misconceiving the sentiments of his friend, replied, that he had overheard a conversation between [Gen. Thomas] Gage and other officers, and observed, “There will be hell to pay to-morrow.” This was immediately carried to Paul Revere, who enjoined silence on his informant, and added, “You are the third person who has brought me the same information.”

As usual, Drake didn’t provide a source for his anecdotes. He recorded this one over a decade after Henry W. Longfellow had made Revere famous as carrier of the news of that march. Revere wrote nothing about such a discussion in his 1798 letter about the day to the Rev. Jeremy Belknap.

The next year, Drake expanded on the story in Historic Fields and Mansions of Middlesex, adding a name:

John Ballard was the hostler at the stables on the corner of Milk and old Marlborough Streets, to whom the groom imparted the intelligence that “there would be hell to pay to-morrow”; but even he little thought how prophetic his language would become. Ballard was a liberty boy, but his informant did not suspect it. His hand trembled so much with excitement that he could hardly hold his curry-comb. Begging his friend to finish the horse he was cleaning, and feigning some forgotten errand, Ballard left the stable in haste. Not daring to go directly to Revere’s house, he went to that of a well known friend of liberty in Ann Street, who carried the news to Revere.

Drake’s first book had mentioned a man named John Ballard twice: once in regard to the “Paddock elms” planted along the edge of the Common beside Tremont Street, and once as proprietor of the British Coffee-House. But it hadn’t linked him to this anecdote.

In 1875, George William Curtis delivered a centennial oration at Concord that repeated Drake’s story about John Ballard and his trembling hand; that oration was reprinted many times over the following decades. Three years after that, in the privately published William Dawes and His Ride with Paul Revere, Henry Holland wrote:

On the afternoon of the day before the attack, [Dr. Joseph] Warren learned from several sources that the British were about to move. A gunsmith named Jasper got it from a British sergeant, and told Colonel [Josiah] Waters, of the Committee of Safety,—Dawes’s cousin; and he, of course, told Warren at once. John Ballard, in the Milk Street stable, heard one of the Province House grooms say that “there would be hell to pay to-morrow,” and made a pretext to run with the news to a friend of liberty on Ann Street (William Dawes, I think), who carried it to Revere, who told him he had already heard it from two other persons.

Holland’s version of events is, you might notice, quite Dawes-centric. He was a descendant of that Patriot.

Many authors have repeated variations of this story. But is it reliable? In particular, should we trust these authors’ identification of John Ballard as a source of information?

TOMORROW: Who is John Ballard? (Or, to be more accurate, who are John Ballard?)

The Attack on Patrick McMaster

I’ve been meaning to mention Colin Nicolson’s article “A Plan to ‘banish all the Scotchmen’: Victimization and Political Mobilization in Pre-Revolutionary Boston” since I got the 2007 issue of the Massachusetts Historical Review last fall. (Some older articles from this periodical are available online, but not the latest.)

This article focuses on the suffering of Patrick McMaster, a merchant born in Galloway in 1741 who came to Boston in 1767 and lived to regret it. Here’s a capsule history of the man, in notes about his claim to the British government’s Loyalists Commission on 26 Dec 1785:

He is a Partner in the House of James & Patrick McMaster & Co., which consisted of the three Brothers... [the third being John].

They are all natives of Scotland & went to America before 1768, and at the commencement of the troubles they carried on Trade at Boston & Portsmouth. John left America in 1772, & has remained in London ever since.

In 1770 the Witness was seized by the Mob and carted through the streets of Boston, at that time the mob forced him to take an oath that he should not return to Boston—the cause of his treatment was that the House imported British Goods.

He took shelter with the 14th Regt. at Castle William.

In 1775 the Witness was settled at Boston, John was settled at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. They were both uniformly attached to Great Britain & Patrick was enrolled in the North British Association at Boston.

He quitted Boston at the Evacuation—he has been carrying on trade within the British lines & at home ever since—he is now settled in Halifax as a Mercht.

The assault on McMaster in 1770 was a unique event in that turbulent period: he ended up nearly being tarred and feathered.

On 1 June, Dr. Thomas Young led a crowd of “hundreds of Men and Boys” to the McMasters’ shop and ordered them out of town by six o’clock on the 4th. Ever since the previous fall, the brothers had been defying the Boston Whigs’ “nonimportation” (or boycott) of British goods. They were relatively recent arrivals to town, and they were Scottish. Since March, after the Boston Massacre, there were no soldiers patrolling the town, and in May a mob led by a New London ship’s captain had tarred and feathered a Customs officer named Owen Richards.

The McMasters apparently communicated to Whig leaders that they were willing to compromise, and stayed in town. But on 19 June, a mob appeared at their shop (apparently without Dr. Young) and tore down their sign. Patrick was the only one home, so the people dragged him out and put him into a cart with a barrel of pine tar. As he was rolled around Boston, McMaster fainted, prompting a stop at an apothecary shop. According to Customs Commissioner Henry Hulton:

[McMaster] fainting away from apprehension of what was to befall him, they spared him this ignimony, and contented themselves with leading him thro’ the town in the Cart to Roxbury, where they turned him out, spiting upon him, & otherwise contemptuously & rudely treating him.

The merchant promised not to return to Boston. (That evening, a mob attacked Hulton’s home in Brookline.)

The fact that McMaster had fainted was clearly one factor in the mob’s leniency. He probably also benefited from deference to his class as a gentleman (most victims of such attacks were working-class). Furthermore, he may not have seemed like quite the right target for tar and feathers. Almost all the other victims of such attacks in Massachusetts were low- and mid-level employees of the Customs service. The McMasters had no connection to that branch of the Treasury.

McMaster wrote an account of his ordeal, dated 27 June 1770, which Nicolson reprints with his article. The merchant named three men among his attackers. One was John Ballard, who administered the oath in which the Scotsman swore not to come back to Boston. Ballard also ran a wharf that the McMaster brothers used for unloading their goods from Britain; his motivation for treating a customer this way is unclear.

Another assailant McMaster named was “Eliga Story.” Could that have been Dr. Elisha Story? It seems unusual for a genteel doctor to have been part a tar-and-feathers mob. Then again, McMaster might not have named Story as one of the mob’s leaders, merely as one of the few faces he’d recognized.

Dr. Story was born in 1743 to William Story, a local Customs official whose own house was mildly mobbed during the Stamp Act protests of 1765; after William’s career in the royal bureaucracy stalled, he retired to Ipswich and became a firm Whig. Dr. Story was also a son-in-law of John Ruddock, the “big man” of the North End. The doctor participated in the North End Caucus and helped to patrol the docks to ensure the East India Company tea would not be landed. I’ve seen his appointments book at the Massachusetts Historical Society, and he cleared his schedule in the week leading up to the Boston Tea Party. A few months after that event, Dr. Story moved to Marblehead, where he remained until his death in 1805.

As for Patrick McMaster’s fate after the war, Beamish Murdoch’s A History of Nova Scotia states:

About christmas, 1797, a small schooner was lost on the bay of Fundy shores, near Wilmot. Three mutilated dead bodies were found on the bank, and three others who had been frozen to death in the woods after escaping from the water. Mr. Patrick McMaster, a merchant of Halifax, was one of the three who had been drowned...

(I put that last bit in partly so I could include the name “Beamish Murdoch.”)