“Walk’d with Mr: English, as clerk of the market”

For evidence of what the job of clerk of the market in Boston actually entailed, we need to find a man not only conscientious enough to accept that job but also dedicated to write down and preserve his daily activities.

Fortunately, in 1792 the Boston town meeting elected “John Q. Adams” to be a clerk of the market.

Adams was then twenty-five years old, a young lawyer. He had seen a lot of Europe as a teenager working for his father and Francis Dana, the U.S. of A.’s minister to Russia. His father was now Vice President. He had just started to serve on town committees. And it was time for him to inspect bread.

Adams was not one of the twelve men chosen as clerks of the market in the first session of Boston’s big town meeting on 12 March. But some of those men begged off, and he was elected last among five new men on the afternoon of 27 March.

Adams didn’t record that election in his diary. In fact, he wasn’t even in town, having ridden out that morning to Worcester. (“Dined at How’s Marlborough. Singular couple he 6 1/2 feet long. She as much round.”) So I have no record of how he took the news. Maybe he was chosen because he wasn’t present to object.

Nonetheless, John Quincy embarked on his civic duty. The first mention appeared in his diary for 23 April:

Walk towards Eveg: Clerks of the market met at Coleman’s [tavern], but were interrupted by a cry of fire. Adjourned till to-morrow. fire soon extinguished.

The next day he wrote:

At Court all day. No business of much consequence done. Met the clerks of the market as by adjournment. Agreed upon our proceedings. To walk with Mr: [Thomas] English.

This tells us a couple of things. First, it took almost a month after election for the new clerks of the market to get organized. Second, they paired off to “walk,” or patrol the Faneuil Hall Market and the area surrounding it.

Adams made his first patrol on Tuesday, 1 May, and it was eventful:

Walk’d with Mr: English, as clerk of the market at 6. A.M. before breakfast, and again at 11. Seized a quantity of bread. A busy forenoon.

Clerks of the market were empowered to seize loaves of bread they deemed underweight for their prices. Sometimes this led to conflicts, as in this notice in the selectmen’s minutes for 29 Nov 1769:

Mr. [Joseph] Barrel, [Joseph?] Calf & [Benjamin] Andrews, a Committee from the Clerks of the Market Complain of Mr. Harris the Baker & his Servant Robert Davis, as having abused Mr. Barrel & Andrews, by charging the former with stealing their Bread & other ill Language & also Mr. Sircombs man named Cook—abused Mr. John Bernard.

The selectmen summoned all three of those bakers and presumably admonished them. (John Bernard was the son of the highly unpopular departed governor, but he was also a duly chosen town officer.)

John Quincy Adams didn’t record such friction. It’s tempting to think he and English took strict action on their first day to make sure the bakers understood their authority.

Adams never mentioned his market duty again until 2 November:

Eve & supper with Clerks of the market. Dull time.

And then on Wednesday, 28 November:

Snow almost gone. Walk’d with [Simon] Elliot as Clerk of the Market. 

Such sporadic references suggest that a clerk of the market didn’t patrol every day or even every week. Of course, it’s possible Adams did walk by the market stalls more regularly, but he was pretty thorough in recording his daily activities.

In March 1793 the Boston town meeting chose twelve new men to be clerks of the market for the following year. Again, John Quincy Adams didn't mention that election in his diary. His next remark about the position suggests that a year later he felt a little nostalgia for it, enough to attend an event on 28 March 1794:

Dinner of the Clerks of the market. Convivial; but too numerous; attended electioneering meeting.— returned to C[oncert?]. Hall. Stayed not long there. 

But only a little nostalgia.

Meeting the Clerks of the Market

Last week at dinner, the conversation turned to the question of what colonial Boston’s clerks of the market did. This is the kind of the dinner I like.

The post of clerk of the market was established in English law well before the kingdom colonized America, and it came to the colonies in different ways. In Philadelphia, the city charter of 1701 gave the mayor the power to appoint those officials. In contrast, the Boston town meeting elected clerks of the market, starting with two men in 1649. By the mid-1700s, there were twelve, one for each ward.

Clerks of the market were among the town’s lowest-ranking elected offices. But the post was a stepping-stone for young gentlemen seeking higher positions in politics or society. Many prominent men once served as clerks of the market for a year.

In March 1769, for example, the new clerks of the market included John Singleton Copley, Elisha Hutchinson, John Bernard, and John Gore, Jr. In 1770 the nod went to John Pulling, John Andrews, Nathaniel Wheatley, and Henry Jackson, among others.

The main stated duty of the clerks of the market was to ensure that the loaves of bread and the butter sold at the town market conformed to the selectmen’s stipulations. Each year, those officials announced what would be a fair weight for a loaf of bread of a standard price and quality. The price stayed the same, but the weight varied depending on the cost of grain, with a fair profit for the bakers mixed in.

For instance, in February 1773 the selectmen

Ordered that the Assize of Bread be set at Wheat at 7/ [seven shillings] p. bushel, and that 6d. [sixpence, or about 7%] p. bushel be allowed to the Bakers for their Charges Pains and Livelihood, which is computed as follows Vizt.

• A Loaf of Brown Bread 3/4 Wheat 1/4 Rye meal must weigh 2 [lbs.] 8 [oz.]
• a 4d. Ditto not above 1/2 Indian Meal must weigh 3 [lbs.] 8 [oz.]
• Bisket of a Copper price 4 [oz.] 2 [drachms]

This was a long-established form of price-fixing, designed to avoid food riots like those in the 1710s. The selectmen tried to balance the needs of the populace against those of the bakers, as we can see in this extract from the town records in 1789:

On the application of Majr. [Edward] Tuckerman & Mr. [William] Breed two of the Town Bakers — It was agreed by the Selectmen that there should be 4 ounces instead of 2 ounces difference in the weight between 4d. white Loaf Bread & 4d. Superfine Brick Bread — and the Clerks of the Market were accordingly acquainted with this alteration, for their government in the weighing the same —

As that entry shows, the clerks of the market were supposed to enforce the bread rules. The law empowered them to seize loaves that were underweight, and even to go into any bakery or house where they knew bread was being baked for sale and check on how heavy the loaves were.

But did the elected clerks of the market really do that work? Usually a few of the men selected on the first round excused themselves by pleading inability and/or paying a fine, necessitating a second round. That suggests that many of those gentlemen weren’t actually that keen on the honor of serving their town that way.

Boston already had a full-time clerk of Faneuil Hall Market administering the rent on stalls, maintaining the infrastructure, and overseeing the maintenance staff of one. So were the gentlemen chosen to be clerks of the market actually out inspecting the bakers’ stalls every week? 

TOMORROW: Reading a clerk of the market’s diary.

[The image above comes from Food and Streets’ posting about making and tasting bread from an eighteenth-century recipe.]

“Play up the Yankee Doodle tune”

This series started with a letter from three of Boston’s wardens reporting an incident of martial music played on Sunday, 11 June 1769.

As I’ve been quoting, the Boston Whigs complained about that noise disrupting church services almost since army regiments arrived in town the previous October. That incident wasn’t the only conflict.

The Whigs’ “Journal of the Times” addressed the event the wardens wrote about, but not until the dispatch dated 24 July 1769, or six weeks afterward. That dispatch said:

Some Sabbaths past, as the guards, placed near the Tavern-House, were relieving, there was a considerable concourse of people, chiefly boys and Negroes to partake of the entertainment given by their band of music;

the wardens having by their laudable exertions dispersed the rabble, soon perceived that Mr. John Bernard, our Governor’s second son, had made one among them, and still kept his standing; upon which they very civilly accosted him desiring that he should walk off, lest his being suffered to remain, should give occasion for their being taxed with partiality in the execution of their trust;

Mr. Bernard then seemed to be walking away, when Capt. M—s—h, who commanded the guard, called to him, desiring that he would come into the square, where he should be protected from the wardens; the young man accepted of so pressing and polite an invitation; but the wardens called to him as he was going into the square, praying him to desist, as they would otherwise be put to the disagreeable necessity of returning his name to a magistrate, the Monday following;

upon that the officer of the guard, in a sneering manner, called upon the musicians to play up the Yankee Doodle tune, which compleated the conquest of the military, and afforded them a temporary triumph.

The wardens made good their promise, and discharged their duty, by entering a complaint with a magistrate, against Mr. Bernard, for breach of Sabbath, when he was convicted, and punished agreeable to law.

The wardens’ letter referred to “a Young Gentleman an Inhabitant of the Town,” but this newspaper item makes clear that man was John Bernard (1745-1809), son of Gov. Francis Bernard. He had served as his father’s personal secretary and then set himself up in business. In early 1770 he was one of the handful of merchants who defied the nonimportation agreement.

The wardens spelled out the name of “Capt. M—s—h,” letting us identify him as Ponsonby Molesworth of the 29th Regiment. In April he had eloped with fifteen-year-old Susannah Sheaffe, beautiful daughter of a Customs official, but then they came back to town to start life as a married couple.

The wardens’ letter said Molesworth ordered the regimental musicians to play “the Yankee tune.” The Whigs’ article confirms Lance Boos’s guess that meant “Yankee Doodle.” However, in his essay on the letter for the Massachusetts Historical Society’s blog, Boos interpreted the tune as intended to insult the “Young Gentleman.”

The “Journal of the Times” item shows that in fact the officers saw themselves as protecting Bernard’s right to enjoy the army music, and they called for “Yankee Doodle” as a way to defy and insult the wardens. In Boston’s political conflict, the governor, Customs officials, the army, and their family members were allies.

On the other side, wardens Thomas Walley, John Joy, and Henry Hill had the responsibility to ensure people observed the Sabbath, a reflection of Boston’s Puritan traditions. They couldn’t order the army to keep quiet; they and the selectmen could only make requests of the army commanders. But they could charge “an Inhabitant of the Town” like young Bernard with violating the Sabbath by not going home when they asked him to.

It’s interesting to note that in 1774 warden John Joy (1727-1804) became a Loyalist, probably inspired by his past military service to the Crown. His namesake son returned to Boston after the war and gave his name to Joy Street on Beacon Hill.

The Last of the Boston Chronicle

On 25 June 1770, 250 years ago today, this announcement appeared in the Boston Chronicle:

The Printers of the Boston Chronicle return thanks to the Gentlemen, who have so long favoured them with their Subscriptions, and now inform them that, as the Chronicle, in the present state of affairs, cannot be carried on, either for their entertainment or the emolument of the Printers, it will be discontinued for some time.

Printer John Mein had left for England the previous fall. His partner John Fleeming had carried on publishing the newspaper, still including documents from the Customs office. Each issue started with a list of the leaders of the non-importation committee, formatted like the Boston Gazette’s accusatory list of the remaining importers. But Fleeming no longer carried political essays from local authors, instead reprinting news from Europe and the letters of Junius.

Financial pressure was mounting on Fleeming. John Hancock was still pursuing his lawsuit against Mein as an agent of London creditors, seizing printing equipment and supplies. The only people still advertising in the Boston Chronicle were friends of the royal government. The 21 June issue contained only two ads: one by John Bernard, the departed governor’s son, announcing that he was leaving Massachusetts, and one for an auction in Nova Scotia.

When most of the Customs Commissioners and their administrators moved to Castle William after the 19 June attack on Henry Hulton’s home, that probably deprived Fleeming of another form of financial support.

Finally, Fleeming faced physical threats. He had been with Mein when angry merchants confronted him back in October. And then there’s this item from the 8 Jan 1770 Newport Mercury, also reprinted in some other American newspapers:

From Boston we hear, that on the Evening of the 29th Ult. [i.e., December 1769] Mr. —— Fleeming, Printer of the Boston Chronicle, was attacked in one of the Streets of that Town, by a Number of Ruffians, who abused him very much; and, ’tis thought, he would have died of his Wounds on the Spot, had not a humane Negro, who knew him, taken him up and helped him to his Home.

Boston 1775 reader John Navin set me on the path to this article through Facebook. As far as I can tell, the news was never printed in Boston, not even in Fleeming’s own paper.

E. J. Witek quoted Fleeming as telling Lord North in 1773 that his “life was threatened and finding the power of Government too weak to protect him against the fury of a lawless mob, he fled to Castle William.” Witek dated the time of Fleeming’s move to the Castle to the end of June 1770, just after closing the Chronicle.

So I might have been wrong when I wrote back in 2011 that, unlike Mein, Fleeming “never had mobs on his tail.” I’m still not certain whether he was actually attacked or merely threatened. The Newport news item came from someone who didn’t even know Fleeming’s given name and thus might not have heard all the facts straight, and his own petition doesn’t appear to have mentioned an actual assault. But he had reason to flee.

Whatever the exact circumstance, Fleeming shut down the Boston Chronicle two and a half centuries ago today, silencing Boston’s most aggressive newspaper support for the royal government.

“Voted to proceed to the Business of the Meeting”

On 23 Jan 1770, as described yesterday, the Bostonians meeting about non-importation in Faneuil Hall received a letter from acting governor Thomas Hutchinson declaring their gathering to be illegal and ordering them to disperse.

In response, those men “unanimously voted to proceed to the Business of the Meeting.” Sheriff Stephen Greenleaf asked moderator William Phillips for a written message to take back to the governor. The meeting came up with this note, addressed to the sheriff:

It is the unanimous Desire of this Body, that you inform his Honor the Lieutenant-Governor, that his Address to this Body has been read and attended to, with all that Deference and Solemnity which the Message and the Times demand; and it is the unanimous Opinion of this Body, after serious Consideration and Debate, that this Meeting is warranted by Law: And they desire you to inform his Honor, that they had determined to keep Consciences void of just Offence towards God and towards Man.

In Smugglers and Patriots, John W. Tyler stated that letter was written in the fine hand of John Hancock (shown above). The previous week, he shied from leading a crowd to the governor’s house. Now Hancock was ready to stand at the front of the movement.

Before leaving, Greenleaf made sure to tell the people he wanted “to be considered in the Light only of the Bearer of his Honor’s Letter.” In other words, Hutchinson stood alone, his show of authority ending in a resounding defeat.

The “Body of the Trade” then proceeded through a series of votes. In response to accusations that someone had tried to burn down the store of importer William Jackson, the meeting offered a £100 reward for the arsonist. A further resolution suggested that an enemy of the community—Harbottle Dorr suggested it was Jackson himself—had planted the evidence of that crime.

Another resolution asked people “totally to abstain from the use of Tea upon any pretence whatever” since tea accounted for “the greatest Part of the Revenue” from the Townshend duties.

But the main business of the meeting was about naming and shaming the shopkeepers who were still defying the non-importation committee.

The first group was the merchants Jackson, Theophilus Lillie, John Taylor, and Nathaniel Rogers. The meeting deemed them “obstinate and inveterate Enemies of their Country, and Subverters of the Rights and Liberties of this Continent.” It declared that people should respond by “withholding not only all commercial Dealing; but every Act and Office of common Civility” from them. The resolution went on for a long time. You can read it here in the Boston Gazette.

Then the meeting turned to a second group of defiant businesspeople:

• John Bernard, a grown son of the departed governor, Francis Bernard.
• James and Patrick McMaster, brothers from Scotland who had set up as “factors,” or wholesalers, in Boston.
• Ame and Elizabeth Cumings, sisters from Concord who had opened a shop to support themselves; their late parents had also come from Scotland.
• John Mein, printer from Scotland, still in hiding at Castle William after a fight with merchants back in October.

Most of those people were “strangers in this Country,” the meeting declared. They had “in the most insolent manner too long affronted this people, and endeavoured to undermine the liberties of this country.” Invoking Biblical language (Isaiah 51:1), the gathering declared “that they deserve to be driven into that obscurity, from which they originated, and to the hole of the pit from whence they were digged.”

The next day, Lt. Gov. Hutchinson wrote to Lord Hillsborough, the Secretary of State, about his attempt to stop the meeting. He said he’d spoken with Phillips, his Council, and the town’s justices of the peace about how such meetings would lead to “high treason,” but no one had agreed with him. He acknowledged his letter had failed to disperse the crowd. But Hutchinson insisted that “it made them more anxious to restrain all disorders.”

In the coming weeks, we’ll see how that worked out.

A British Comedian on the “New England Stage”

John Bernard (1756-1828) was a British actor of middling success known chiefly for comedies. He toured the U.S. of A. starting in 1797 and wrote his memoirs of the country in a manuscript published as Retrospections of America in 1887.

The New England Historical Society blog quoted Bernard’s account of his journey across the Atlantic, including worry about pirates. He found travel within the United States more relaxing:

I accordingly started in one of those longitudinal inventions termed a “New England stage,” built without springs on the plan of an English covered wagon, to contain “a full company,” eighteen, inclusive of the driver. This, with a ton of luggage at its tail, was capable of being pulled up-hill with the speed of a whirlwind by four shaggy, scrambling, equine devils that required neither whip nor rein, but seemed to enjoy the joke.

The structure of this machine, placing all upon a level, exhibited a republican principle which as yet was not at variance with a state of means by which a certain class require distinct accommodation. The differences between it and the English stage-coach were not always in the latter’s favor. True, it had no outlet but its mouth, at which it gorged and disgorged like some great Leviathan, and the seats being transverse and supplied with backs, the last-comers, men or women, had to stride over the shoulders of the earlier ones to reach a seat, for each being desirous of keeping as near as possible to the driver, the law of gravity was suspended in this vehicle, and very few of the passengers who came in first found their way to the bottom.

When Mrs. Bernard and myself were at last established in the extreme seat (not unlike the back of the Covent Garden gallery), we discovered that the floor was lumbered with a mail-bag and a valuable assortment of earthen and hardware jugs, kettles, fire-irons, and other articles consigned to a “store” in the interior, which had the effect, before the vehicle had been ten minutes in motion, of dyeing our shins all the colors of the rainbow. The irritation was perhaps augmented by fifteen tongues going, at the rate of ten words a second, upon politics, commerce, and agriculture, broken by the coughing and hawking of those who were further exciting themselves by cigars and pigtail.

But above all this storm, like the deep-toned notes of a powerful bassoon, rose the oracular responses of the “driver.” As American roads have not yet produced any specimens of the Old Bailey chivalry called highwaymen, the luggage needed not that extortionate good genius the English “guard,” the indefatigable driver combining the offices and being the ministry in one. . . .

the New England “driver”…was usually a thin, wiry, long-backed, leather-skinned fellow, sharing the front seat with the company, and flying in and out of the vehicle with the crack of a harlequin. No one more abhorred a superfluity of clothes. A straw hat was his creed, and he would often wear nankeens and shoes in frosty weather. I can remember one—a tall Vermonter, in a village where I resided some time—who, when winter was whistling his sharpest airs, would stand up amid a well-clad undergrowth of travellers, lank as a leafless elm. Placed upon their level, he sympathized with all his company, yet not intrusively. He was a general book of reference, almanac, market-list, and farmers’ journal; a daily paper published every morning, a focus which, by some peculiar centripetality, drew all things towards it.

I see nothing of a joke in the assertion of a New England driver being a major in the army. Europeans forget that, in its European sense, the army in America is not a highly respectable separate profession. Butchers there are sui generis. Men became soldiers during the war because they had something to lose. The driver was frequently the owner of a farm or inn, and of a share in his conveyance. As he took no fees (the brand of slavery in England) he was never regarded as a servant. As a rivet to his influence very often the driver was a wag, who had a joke for his passengers, perhaps as old as his stage, and as little likely to stop running. He had rambled in his youth half over the Union, and could tell you strange stories of Indians and rifles, and planters and panthers, of deer-killing and horse-racing, and the art and mystery of making mint-sling. The reserve of an English conveyance is proverbial, the animation of the one in which we found ourselves offered the greatest possible contrast.

Scholars of the American theater reported that Bernard’s memoirs of his performances don’t always accord with period sources, and it could well be that his description of stage-coach travel was also exaggerated for comic effect. But unlike some British travelers, he seems rather taken with America’s republican ways.