“Once cut for the Simples, but never cured”?

I can easily recognize some of the Revolutionary Bostonians being lampooned as “Characters” in a supposed “Tragi-comic Farce” announced in the 8 May 1770 Nova Scotia Chronicle, but not others.

For example:

Samuel Plunder, a Senator, formerly a Receiver of the Tribute of the Parish, Master of the black Art, can cheat without a Mask of Honesty, supported by Contribution, and the Votes of a Mobb.

That’s Samuel Adams, whom political opponents often criticized for his performance as a tax collector in the early 1760s.

And “Charles Spiritual, Guide and Protector of the Junto,” surely meant the Rev. Dr. Charles Chauncy, minister of the First Meeting and a close ally of the Boston Whigs.

But does that make “Samuel Tubb, private Chaplain to Simple John,” the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper, minister of the Brattle Street Meeting that included John Hancock, already called “John Dupe”?

That seems almost certain, but right after “Samuel Tubb” comes “John Simple, a mighty Coxcomb, very important and bigg with Nothing, well known for the Drubbings he has received.” So is “Simple John” in one sentence different from “John Simple” in the next? This “John Simple” doesn’t resemble Hancock, but who is he?

Speaking of Hancock, that “John Dupe” is called “remarkably melancholy on his Loss of Lady Beaver.” A couple of months earlier, on 22 February, the printer John Boyle wrote in his journal:

Married, Mr. Henderson Inches, Merchant, to Miss Sally Jackson, Daugh. Of Joseph Jackson, Esq.—Mr. John Hancock hath paid his addresses to Miss Jackson for about ten years past, but has lately sent her a Letter of Dismission.

So was Sarah Jackson (1739–1771), shown above, courtesy of the Huntington) “Lady Beaver”? If so, does that let us interpret this entry among the characters:

Alderman Hemp, Son of the transported Cobler, well known for his great Judgment as a Politician, Chief of the grand Committee, by his wond’rous Capacity has cut off John Dupe’s Pretensions to Miss Beaver.

Henderson Inches (1726–1780) was a selectman (“Alderman”?) and active on merchants’ committees. He was born in Dunkeld, Scotland, and his father, Thomas Inches, brought the family to Boston when Henderson was a child. The town meeting voted to make Thomas Inches a sealer of leather for several years in the 1730s, so was he indeed involved in making shoes? But what might “transported” have meant? And why the name “Hemp,” which first made me think of ropemaker and selectman Benjamin Austin?

And as for profiles like these:

Edward Shallow, Friend and Neighbour to Squire Lemon, once cut for the Simples, but never cured, Carrier of Intelligence, full freight’d with Absurdities.

William the Gunner, or the one ey’d Philosopher, Brother to Shallow, formerly kept a chop House in one of the Danish Islands.

William Homer, Esq; the Jew, famous for his Treatise on Cuckoldom, well known for his Humanity and publick Spirit.

I’m at a loss.

TOMORROW: Did John Mein write this article?

“May not great Heats and Animosities from hence be justly feared?”

In addition to the two protests against the Solemn League and Covenant boycott that I’ve quoted over the past two days, three Boston newspapers also published a letter laying out the argument against it at more length.

That letter is written in the first person singular: “I beg Leave to lay before them the following Facts and Observations…”

However, in a 22 July private letter, John Andrews, a signatory of the milder protest, wrote that “our reasons for a dissent are given [in that essay] in a more explicit manner than in the protest.”

So even if this letter had a singular voice, and may have come from a single hand, a larger community of merchants felt it spoke for them.

That letter was sent to the printers of the Boston Evening-Post, Boston Post-Boy, and Boston News-Letter addressed to “Messirs. Fleets,” “Messieurs MILLS and HICKS,” and “Messi’rs PRINTERS,” respectively. Editors still like a sign of individual attention.

(Management of the News-Letter was in flux that summer. On 9 June Margaret Draper announced that she was continuing her late husband Richard’s partnership with John Boyle. But on 11 August she announced that she was taking over the newspaper herself.)

The letter ran through the terms of the Solemn League and Covenant, emphasizing the hardships and how signers were supposed to shun anyone who didn’t sign and continued to import goods from Britain. Then it argued:

Whoever attends to these Terms of the Covenant, wholly proscribing the Goods expected in the Fall and all those upon hand, unless an Oath is taken, must be greatly concerned lest from the Non-exception of Articles of necessity the people should be drawn into a dangerous Snare, and Perjury in many Cases fatally ensue. The multiplication of Oaths (tending to introduce a disregard of them) has been always carefully avoided by wise Legislators; it being well judged that Society cannot exist when Oaths shall cease to be religiously observed. When that dreadful Event happens among any People, their Lives, Liberties and Properties cannot be safe. . . .

It may also be observed, that if a Carpenter, a Taylor, or a Shoemaker shall refuse to sign, he is to be considered as a contumacious Importer.--Or should they sign the Covenant, they cannot serve those in the Way of their Occupation who shall not---What distress must this occasion at a Season when little or no Employ is to be procured among us without these Restrictions? . . . May not great Heats and Animosities from hence be justly feared?

Upon the whole, as I think this Covenant not adapted to procure that Relief we so greatly need, because I think it arbitrary and oppressive, subversive of our Rights and destructive of the Morals of the People, as also inconsistent with the true Spirit of Liberty and the Constitution, and not founded on the Principles of Honor and Honesty, I am led to offer these Observations to the Public, which appear to me to be founded on Reason.

Of course, the people promoting the boycott wanted it to be total. They wanted non-participants to be shunned. And one group, at least, wanted people to be bound to the movement by oath. That was the path to solidarity.

TOMORROW: The weight of an oath.

“Run over a Boy’s head & he died instantly”

Yesterday I quoted the portion of the article in Richard Draper’s Boston News-Letter for 8 Nov 1764 discussing how kids these days were too violent and divisive in the way they celebrated Pope Night.

That article also complained about the link between that year’s rowdiness and the death of a little child:

It was tho’t this [brawling] would have been prevented on Monday last, by a melancholy Accident which happened just as one of the Stages at the North-End was setting off, a Child of Mr. Brown’s, about 5 Years of Age, falling down, one of the Wheels went over his Head, and kill’d him instantly; but this did not prevent the Rabble from executing their Design.—

In the Afternoon the Magistrates and other Officers of the Town went to the respective Places of their Rendezvous, and demolished their Stages, to prevent any Disorders, which they did without Opposition: Notwithstanding, as soon as it was dark, they collected again, and mended their Stages, which being done they prepared for a Battle, and about 8 o’Clock the two Parties met near the Mill-Bridge, where they fought with Clubs, Staves, Brick-bats, &c. for about half an Hour, when those of the South-End gained a compleat Victory, carrying off not only their own, but also their Antagonists Stages, &c. which they burnt on Boston Neck.

In the Fray many were much bruis’d and wounded in their Heads and Arms, some dangerously; and a few of those who were so curious as to be Spectators, did not come off so well as they could wish; tho’ many would have fared worse had it not been a Moon-light Evening.

We have a couple of other sources on Pope Night in 1764. The merchant John Rowe wrote in his diary:

A sorrowful accident happened this forenoon at the North End—the wheel of the carriage that the Pope was fixed on run over a Boy’s head & he died instantly. The Sheriff, Justices, Officers of the Militia were ordered to destroy both So & North End Popes. In the afternoon they got the North End Pope pulled to pieces, they went to the So End but could not Conquer upon which the South End people brought out their pope & went in Triumph to the Northward and at the Mill Bridge a Battle begun between the people of Both Parts of the Town. The North End people having repaired their pope, but the South End people got the Battle (many were hurt & bruised on both sides) & Brought away the North End pope & burnt Both of them at the Gallows on the Neck. Several thousand people following them, hallowing &ct.

The young printer John Boyle wrote in his “Journal of Occurrences,” perhaps based on the newspaper report and perhaps on his own knowledge:

A Child of Mr. Brown’s at the North-End was run over by one of the Wheels of the North-End Pope and Killed on the Spot. Many others were wounded in the evening.

I’ve looked for a more official record of this boy’s death to know his name and age, but without success. (It would of course be easier if the family wasn’t named Brown.)

Importantly, this child wasn’t killed during the brawling over the wagons, as many mentions of this sad event (including some of my own) have said. Instead, the accident happened “just as one of the Stages at the North-End was setting off.” That wagon was still in friendly territory, not yet menaced by South-Enders and hours before the big fight. The boy died because of crowding or carelessness, not violence.

The News-Letter dispatch didn’t criticize the brawlers for causing the child’s death, only for the poor taste to proceed with their rumble after it happened, and against the orders of town leaders.

Nonetheless, the death of the child in 1764 was and continues to be cited as contributing to the replacement of the usual processions and brawl in 1765. Probably it did play a role, in that after the destruction of Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson’s house in August, Boston’s political leaders insisted the town had to be on its best behavior. The gangs wouldn’t stop for the Brown child, but they would stop to show their united and peaceful disapproval of the Stamp Act.

Ezekiel Price on “A Great & Glorious Event”

Yesterday’s posting raised the question of when exactly Boston heard about the American and French victory at Yorktown. The most immediate reaction would appear in people’s diaries, so I looked for my usual informants on daily events.

John Adams? In 1781 he was far away in Europe.

Merchant John Rowe? His surviving diaries end in 1779.

Printer John Boyle? He stopped compiling his “Journal of Occurrences” in 1778.

Shopkeeper and selectman Harbottle Dorr? He stopped collecting newspapers assiduously at the end of 1776, adding just a few issues from the next two years.

Robert Treat Paine was keeping his diary out in Taunton in 1781. Fortunately, the folks at the Massachusetts Historical Society have done the hard work of deciphering his handwriting and publishing pertinent entries in the Paine Papers. On 26 October, he wrote: “News came that Cornwallis had Surrendred to Genl. Washington, on 17th. Instant.”

I wanted more detail than that, and I wanted a voice from Boston. Fortunately, Harvard has preserved and digitized the 1781 almanac diary of Boston court official and insurance broker Ezekiel Price (1727–1802), who was a gossip sponge.

Price’s entry for 26 Oct 1781 appears on sequence 37–38 of the digitized version of this diary:

This Morning Mr. Thomas Hulbert [?] came to Town from Providence who brings a Hand Bill printed at Newport Yesterday in which is an Account that the afternoon before one Capt Lovett arrived there from York River who brot an account that Lord Cornwallis & his Army Surrendered Prisoners of War to Genl. Washington on the 18th. instant—

that Cornwallis had wth. him in Garrison 9000 Men with an immense quantity of Stores also that a 44[-gun warship] & one frigate & 100 Transports were Captured—

Mr. Winship who left Newport Yesterday tells me that he saw Capt. Lovett & his Mate who informed him that they say the British Flag lowered & the Continental & French Flags hoisted on the Forts at York Town—that he heard the Huzzas upon the Occasion—

they they saw the French Admiral go on shoar at the Fort that the American Vessells which lay below York Town went up to Town & that he went up so near the Forts that he could throw a Bisket on Shoar—

From all these Accts. it is beyond a doubt that Lord Cornwallis & his great Army with Vast quantities of Artillery & Military Stores are in Possession of our illustrious Genl. Washington & the Allied Army—A Great & Glorious Event—

On this Joyful occasion all the Bells in Town were rang most part of the day & the Sons of Freedom showed evident marks of their felicity. In the Evening the Coffee house was illuminated & Fireworks displayed.

Mr. [John?] Marston tells me that a French Gentleman acquainted him he had received a Letter from a Person who was in York Town at the time of the Surrender & adds that Genl. Washington had ordered 1200 Horse to the Reinforcement of Genl. [Nathanael] Greene.

Price recorded additional information on 27 and 31 October. He came to date Cornwallis’s surrender to the 17th, like Paine. That was when the British general first raised the white flag. It wasn’t until the 19th that the commanders signed surrender terms and the Crown troops gave up their arms, but we now treat that date as the significant one.

“I sincerely thought I was serving the interest of my country”

Yesterday I followed the narrator of The Wonderful Appearance of an Angel, Devil and Ghost through his encounter with an Angel early on the morning of 15 Oct 1774.

The next stretch of the little book begins:

I continued in my chamber till ten o’clock, my usual hour of rising, then came down and desired my breakfast might be got ready by my return, which would be in about half an hour.

I fully sympathize with the man as a late riser, but can’t imagine going out in the morning without having had breakfast.

Later, the narrative shows the gentleman starting midday dinner at 4:00 P.M., and the editor adds a footnote to assure readers this is common “for these kind of gentry.” That suggests readers of 1774 would have found the character’s habits unusual but not impossible to believe.

The narrator continues:

Afterwards I took a walk (which hath lately been my practice) round the camp in the common, having a card of permission…

There was indeed a contingent of the British army camped on Boston Common; this was the first time I recall reading about a “card of permission” letting civilians walk around that camp.

The gentleman asks a “Captain ———” about any mysterious noises the night before. The captain responds, “you know you was very drunk last night.” Another officer steps in to say, “I was in company with him, and assisted in carrying him part of the way home.” A colonel invites the narrator to dine with him the next day. These details show that the narrator is friendly with the army in October 1774, and thus a Loyalist.

The narrator’s politics come to the foreground in the following pages. He rereads “the late acts of parliament” but “could not discover…that the parliament had any design of distressing the people of America.”

At 12:30 A.M., the gentleman hears “a most terrible shout,” and a Devil appears at his bedroom door. (This apparition carries a book and halter, as shown in the accompanying woodcut, but those details are never significant in the text, suggesting the booklet was written around illustrations printer John Boyle had on hand.) This Devil says he has been ordered there by the Angel “to converse with you concerning the crimes you have been guilty of towards your country.”

The gentleman insists he is “one of the best friends the country has.” As an example, he mentions writing letters to London supporting laws “whereby the inhabitants of the American colonies might be upon an equal footing with their brethren in Great-Britain.” A footnote to this line says acidly, “In regard to TAXES, I imagine.”

The Devil and the man discuss the Stamp Act, Declaratory Act, Townshend duties, and the destruction of the tea. The gentleman complains about how mobs attacked “our late worthy governor H[utchinson], lieutenant-governor O[liver], the honourable Mr. H[allowell], Justice S[tory], &c.” The booklet thus lays out the preceding nine years of conflict through Loyalist eyes, concluding that the Patriots “will expose themselves to the severest punishment in this world, and to damnation in the next.”

The editor pushes back against this view in the footnotes, but the Devil simply tells the gentleman he’s wrong. If he continues to stick to that political position, he’s bound for hellish torment. Rather than try to tempt the man into further wrongs, this unusual Devil says, “I conjure you desist, before it is too late.”

The next night the gentleman receives his third supernatural visitor, a “GHOST of one of my deceased ancestors” (shown here). This specter voices a standard argument of the New England Patriots, still echoed today: that the early English settlers, “for the sake of of enjoying that liberty which was denied them at home, were content to leave everything else that was dear behind, and seek it in the hospitable wilds of America.” The sacrifices of that generation gave the people of 1774 “their liberties and properties,” which they had to preserve and pass on.

The Ghost thus shames his descendant, and the gentleman finally bursts out:

VENERABLE SHADE! ’Tis true, (with shame I acknowledge it) I have gone on in the way you have described; but believe me, I never till the last night had the least apprehension that I was doing wrong, I sincerely thought I was serving the interest of my country.

The narrative closes with its central character “determined, if I could withstand the shining temptation, to be once more an honest man.”

The supposed editor then adds a paragraph hoping the man’s repentance sticks, and the publication ends with thirteen lines about the reality of hell from the British poet Elizabeth Rowe.

All in all, the booklet leaves me wondering about its intended audience. Though there are a couple of hints that the gentleman was paid by a secret cabal to promote stricter laws on America, it never shares details of that conspiracy or how it worked. Instead, it presents the main character as sincere in his belief that obeying those laws is the colonists’ best course. Was this written for other Loyalists who needed converting? For Patriots who enjoyed the sight of an opposing gentleman scared into submission? Did its author mean to change anyone’s mind or confirm readers’ righteousness?

“Having on the usual garb of an ANGEL”

The Wonderful Appearance of an Angel, Devil and Ghost described the experiences of an unnamed “Gentleman of Boston” over the course of three days and nights, 14–16 Oct 1774.

On the morning of 17 October, that man reportedly narrated his experiences to a friend, identified by the initials S.W., in front of three witnesses: S.P., J.W., and P.R.

S.W. prepared the manuscript for publication, adding “a few Marginal Notes,” a preface, and a paragraph and poem at the end. He completed his work on 1 December, and John Boyle advertised the book on sale a week later.

At least, that’s what the booklet said. All but the most credulous readers knew that this presentation was a sham, designed to lend a wild cautionary tale some veneer of veracity.

There was in fact a genre of pamphlets about supernatural visitations, as Robert Girouard studied in a paper published by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts in 1982. The printer Ezekiel Russell was especially active in issuing these, and he soon reprinted A Wonderful Appearance.

In the 1769–1791 period Girouard studied, most of the supernatural visitors voiced a mix of religion and politics, as did those in A Wonderful Appearance. There were also older ghostly booklets with more purely religious messages, such as the oft-reprinted Prodigal Daughter.

This gentleman’s story starts with him “supping abroad among a select company of my jovial acquaintance” and returning to his “lodgings”—he doesn’t have a wife or appear to own his home. As the man gets ready for bed:

I heard an uncommon noise, which to me appeared but at a little distance from the house; the sound, though awful, was very harmonious; it continued I apprehended about ten minutes; I was amazingly terrified at it, not knowing how to account for such an unnusual sound. However, being very anxious of knowing what it was, I immediately went to the window, opened it, and looked out, but before I was able to unfasten it the noise ceased, though my astonishment still continued.

The noise recurs for short bursts as the gentleman goes to bed at midnight. (The booklet is interesting evidence about sleeping hours, at least for a wealthy gentleman in Boston.)

Then, “just after the town-clock struck two,” the noise returns along with “a violent wrap against the window next my bed-side.” The shutter bursts open.

About two minutes afterwards a person appeared outside of the window, having on the usual garb of an ANGEL, (with a sword in one hand, and a pair of scales in the other) who unfastened it, and entered the room—— . . .

He…taking a large chair which stood by the bed-side, seated himself close by me, and said, “Arise man from your bed—put on your cloaths—take a chair and seat yourself down by me—I have something to communicate of the greatest importance—your temporal—your eternal welfare are interested in it.”

I like the detail of the Angel (shown above) being able to appear in midair in the midst of unearthly harmonies but needing to unfasten the window and pull up a chair.

The Angel tells the gentlemen he brings a warning to “you, and through you, all those of your cast,…such abandoned, such hell-deserving wretches as you are”:

“…unless prevented by a speedy repentance, and restitution being made to the many hundreds who are now groaning under the weight of that oppression you have been instrumental in bringing upon them, you may expect (and that justly) to meet with the severest punishment, if not in this, in the future state, the hottest place in hell being reserved for all those who have proved themselves TRAYTORS to their KING and COUNTRY.”

The gentlemen begins to repent of being “tempted as I have been, to sell my country for unrighteous gain.” A footnote explains that some suspected he “received an annual stipend for his unwearied endeavors to carry into execution the wicked designs of a cursed Cabal.”

But once the angel “flew rappidly out at the same window” at “about three o’clock in the morning,” the gentleman starts thinking the visitor “might be nothing more than a delusion, as I had drank a little too freely in company the last evening.” He concludes: “I at last determined…to sit up the next night and if the Devil should chance to come, as the Angel had predicted, to arm myself with courage, and stand, if possible, the combat, like a man of spirit and resolution.”

TOMORROW: Oh, yeah, that’ll work.

John Boyle’s Big Publication for December 1774

On 8 Dec 1774, with the Massachusetts government riven, the port of Boston closed, and more redcoat soldiers arriving in town from other parts of North America, Isaiah Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy newspaper ran this advertisement:

This day was published, (price Half a Pistareen) and sold at JOHN BOYLE’s Printing-Office, next door to the Three Doves in Marlborough-street.

THE WONDER of WONDERS!
Or, the WONDERFUL APPEARANCE of an Angel, Devil and Ghost, to a Gentleman in the Town of Boston, in the Nights of the 14th, 15th, and 16th of October last: To whom in some measure may be attributed the Distresses that have of late fallen upon this unhappy Metropolis.

Related to one of his neighbours the morning after the last visitation, who wrote down the narrative from the Gentleman’s own mouth; and it is now made public at his desire, as a solemn warning to all those, who, for the sake of aggrandizing themselves and their families, would entail the most abject wretchedness upon MILLIONS of their fellow creatures.

Adorned with four plates, viz. 1. The Devil. 2. An Angel, with a sword in one hand, a pair of scales in the other, 3. Belzebub, holding in his right hand a folio book, and in his left a halter. 4. A Ghost, Having a white gown, his hair much dishevilled

The young printer Boyle ran almost exactly the same advertisement through early January in the Boston Evening-Post, the Boston Gazette, and even the Loyalist-leaning Boston News-Letter. He arranged for the printers of the Essex Gazette of Salem and the Essex Journal of Newburyport to advertise and sell the book.

In 1775 The Wonderful Appearance of an Angel, Devil and Ghost was reprinted in Marblehead by Ezekiel Russell and in New York by John Anderson.

This 32-page booklet purported to be the account of a wealthy friend of the royal government whose sleep was disturbed by three supernatural visitors warning him to change his ways and start caring more about his neighbors.

COMING UP: Extracts for the holidays.

Non-Importation to the End

In the summer of 1770 the Boston Whigs were dealing with the challenge of mixed results. As young printer John Boyle recorded in his chronicle of events on 10 June 1770:

An Act of Parliament is received for repealing part of an Act for granting Duties upon Glass, Paper, Painters Colours, &c

The Duty on Tea is to be continued.

Was this partial repeal of the Townshend Act enough of a victory to call off the non-importation boycott? The Whigs decided it wasn’t. One aspect of Whiggish thinking is a fear that any compromise with an oppressive government could start a society on a slide into political slavery. So they couldn’t accept taxation without representation on a commodity like tea, even though enjoying it depended on the global reach of the British Empire.

But New York merchants could accept that compromise. As I discussed yesterday, despite heavy criticism from that city’s radicals and from nearby towns, the leaders of non-importation in New York voted to end their pact on 9 July. That not only made the North American boycott less effective, but it also meant New Yorkers would be the first to profit from pent-up demand for British goods.

Bostonians still had hope of a further repeal by Parliament, but on 22 July more news came. Merchant John Rowe (shown above) wrote in his diary:

Capt. Smith of the Nassau arrived from London & gives an accot. of the Prorogation of the Parliament the 20th of May without Repealing the Duty on Tea—the people I hope will have Virtue enough never to make use of it as Long as the Duty is demanded.

The Boston Whigs called a public meeting on the afternoon of 24 July. This wasn’t an official town meeting, nor a meeting of the merchants like Rowe, but a gathering of “the Body of the Trade”—anyone doing business in Boston.

But first, Rowe reported, the Whigs started with a public demonstration:

just before some of them Proceeded through the streets with Dr [Thomas] Young at their head, with Three Flags Flying, Drums Beating & a french Horn—Thos. Baker carried one of them, for which he is much Blamed by me—The meeting today will I believe prove very Prejudicial to the Merchants & Trade of the Town of Boston.

As usual, Rowe was trimming back and forth politically. That month he had a private meeting with Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, who offered Rowe a commission. Two days later Rowe met with Samuel Adams, William Molineux, Dr. Joseph Warren, and Dr. Young, the most radical Whig leaders, who were recruiting for another committee. Rowe kept away from both offers, still not choosing a side.

The Whigs’ own description of their event appeared first in the 26 July Boston News-Letter:

THERE was as full a Meeting of the Trade Tuesday last, at Faneuil-Hall, as ever was known, to take into Consideration the Reports relative to the Defection of New-York, and what Measures were necessary to be pursued for re-shipping the Goods which had been stored as being imported contrary to the Merchants Agreement.——

At this Meeting a Letter was read from four Persons in New York,…informing that a Majority of the Inhabitants of New-York were for an Importation of Goods, and that many Orders had been actually forwarded; but as this Intelligence was not sufficiently authenticated, as the said four Persons had not even declared themselves to be authorized to be this Information either by the standing Committee or any other Body, said Letter was regrad as designed to impose upon this and the other American Colonies, and to induce them to break through the most salutary Plan of Non Importation, upon which the Security of our invaluable Rights and Privileges so much depend.——

It was therefore Voted unanimously, that the said Letter in just Indignation, Abhorrence and Detestation, be forthwith torn into Pieces and thrown to the Winds as unworthy of the least Notice: Which Sentence was accordingly executed.

In essence, the Boston Whigs shouted, “Fake news!” No one should believe that report from New York, they suggested. To be sure, they also voted to send a message to New York’s committee exhorting them to make people countermand any orders sent to Britain, so the Whigs must have believed at least some of this news.

The Body then agreed to stick to the non-importation agreement “against all Opposition and every Discouragement whatever.” Organizers claimed that local merchants who had agreed to store their goods until the boycott ended “have already given Orders for their being immediately trucked to the Vessel provided for that Purpose,” so they were in for the long haul.

The report for the News-Letter concluded by declaring, “There never was greater Unanimity or more Spirit discovered for the general Interest of America than at this Meeting.”

TOMORROW: Protesting too much.

“On Election Day a Sermon will be preached”

Election Day was a holiday in colonial Massachusetts. Not the day that people voted for their General Court representatives—that happened in town meetings, and each town could choose its own date.

Rather, Election Day was when the new legislature assembled for the first time and elected the new Council, as well as the speaker and clerk of the lower house.

That day usually involved a banquet for the legislators and guests, a procession, and an “Election Sermon” by a prominent clergyman. Did New Englanders know how to party or what?

On 30 May 1770, 250 years ago today, acting governor Thomas Hutchinson convened the General Court across the Charles River in Cambridge. All the official events would be taking place there. What was Boston to do?

The Whigs decided to arrange their own unofficial observations instead. On 29 May, they paraded an ox through town, “to be roasted whole” the next day. That meat was designated “to be given to the Poor and Prisoners.”

The 28 May Boston Gazette announced:

A Number of Gentlemen, Friends to the Rights of America and Mankind, taking into Consideration the unprecedented Removal of the General Election of Counsellors for this Province from its Ancient Seat, and being desirous of celebrating the usual Festivity of said Election, request the Favour of the Company of the Gentlemen of the Clergy of all Denominations who may be in Town, to dine with them at FANEUIL HALL on Wednesday next, the 30th Instant, at Two o’Clock precisely.

According to young printer John Boyle, the ox was taken over to Faneuil Hall after roasting. Probably the gentlemen and clergy dined inside, the populace outside (and, we hope, some meat was sent to the jail).

Before that hour, Edes and Gill also promised, “On Election Day a Sermon will be preached at the Old Brick Meeting House, by the Rev. Dr. [Charles] CHAUNCY.” That was the church right beside the Town House, where the legislature usually met, and Chauncy was its highly respected minister.

Edward M. Griffin’s biography reports that Chauncy created a thirty-five-page sermon titled Trust in God, the Duty of a People in a Day of Trouble, based on a verse from the 22nd Psalm. He directly addressed the governor’s choice to move the legislature to Cambridge, but he wound up on the most anticipated event of the time, the upcoming trials for the Boston Massacre.

Chauncy preached:

If there should have been, in any measure, a failure in this respect, since the King’s troops were stationed in this town, from whatever cause, it is now hoped that “justice and judgment will run down our streets as a stream”: And I the rather mention this, because the opened earth in one of our streets, in the month of march last, received the streaming blood of many slaughtered, and wounded innocents. So shocking a tragady was never before acted in this part of the world; and GOD forbid it should ever be again!

Who the sheders of this blood were may possibly appear, upon the tryal of those who are under confinement, as being supposed to be the guilty persons. We wish them as fair and equal a tryal as they themselves can desire. And should they all, or any of them, be found guilty, though their sin be as “scarlet, and red like crimson”, we heartily wish their repentance, that, of the mercy of GOD in Jesus Christ, they may escape the second death; though our eye is restrained from pitying them so as to wish their deliverance from the first death. For the supreme legislator has said, “whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed”—“life shall go for life”—“No satisfaction shall be taken for the life of a murderer—He shall surely be put to death.

SOME have whispered a suspicion, as though a reprieve from death would be granted, should the guilt of blood be fastned upon some who are supposed to have been actors in this horrid wickedness—But it is an high indignity offered to him, who has the power of giving a reprieve, so much as to suspect he would do it in the case of BLOOD GUILTINESS, clearly proved upon any, in consequence of a fair and impartial tryal.

Surely, he would not counter-act the operation of the law both of GOD and man. Surely, he would not suffer the Town and Land, to lie under the defilement of blood! Surely, he would not make himself a partaker in the guilt of murder, by putting a stop to the shedding of their blood, who have murderously spilt the blood of others! All such suspicions should be suppressed. They are virtually a scandalous reproach reflected on him, of whose integrity, and regard to public justice, we should entertain a more honorable opinion.

Justice of the peace James Murray referred to this sermon as “the pains taken by the Revd. Doctr. Chauncey and others to prejudice the People of Boston against Capt. [Thomas] Preston.” But it was equally a warning to Hutchinson not to pardon that officer.

TOMORROW: Meanwhile, over in Cambridge.

Sufferers from the Great Boston Fire of 1760

The scope of the Boston fire of 20 Mar 1760 really comes out in the list of victims that the newspapers published in the following week.

The list was actually a guess, based on November 1759 property assessment records. The printers acknowledged that “Several Widows and a few others are probably omitted.” And of course the names are the heads of household, not the relatives, servants, and boarders also affected.

In his later account the young printer John Boyle added, “The House of Col. Joseph Ingersol catch’d on Fire, but being Brick it was preserved. Here the Flames ended.” Ingersoll’s house was also the Bunch of Grapes tavern.

Other notices in the newspapers testify to the disruption the fire caused throughout the town.

It is desired by the Inhabitants of the Town, That those who live in the Neighbourhood where the late Fire was, would collect and send to the Town-House, all the Buckets & Bags that belong to any Society, where a Person will receive them for the respective Owners.

The town rewarded the firefighting society which was the first on the scene of a fire, and at the end of the month the selectmen gave that award to the “Master of the Marlborough Engine.”

All Persons who have had any Goods or Household Furniture deposited with them during the late Fire, and are at a Loss to whom to return them, are desired either to send them to Faneuil-Hall immediately, or give Information of the same to the Person who will attend there for that Purpose, and where proper Care will be taken that the right Owners shall have them.

The printers were looking for their own customers:

As several Customers to the Boston Evening-Post are burnt out by the late terrible fire, and the publishers not knowing what part of the town they are in, it is desired they would send for their papers

Even before that newspaper was published on 24 March, some Bostonians were looking accusingly at people living in the house where the fire started—the Sign of the Brazen Head.

COMING UP: Finger-pointing, engraving, and what this all meant for The Road to Concord.

The Fate of Levi Ames’s Body

Last month I took another look at the crimes and execution of Levi Ames, but I neglected the important topic of what happened to his body.

Back in 2009 I discussed how groups of medical students competed to seize Ames’s body for dissection. In a postscript to his letter describing the chase, William Eustis wrote:

By the way, we have since heard that Stillman’s gang rowed him back from the Point up to the town, and after laying him out in mode and figure, buried him—God knows where! Clark & Co. went to the Point to look for him, but were disappointed as well as we.

“Stillman” was the Rev. Samuel Stillman, minister of Boston’s second Baptist meeting. Ames had begged him to preserve his body from the anatomists, and he succeeded.

So what happened to the corpse? The printer John Boyle left us an answer: “His Body was carried to Groton after his Execution to be bury’d with his Relations.”

Levi Ames was the son of Jacob Ames, Jr., and Olive Davis of Groton. They married in Westford in 1749. Levi was their second child, born on 1 May 1752. In his confession, Levi Ames said his father died when he was two years old., though there are no vital records to confirm that.

On 9 Oct 1765, Olive Ames married Samuel Nutting in Groton. Nutting was a Waltham widower with children born from 1752 to 1761. Levi Ames and his little brother Jacob thus became part of a blended family—presumably in Waltham, where Samuel and Olive Nutting had a little girl named Olive in 1770.

In his dying speech, Ames described committing some minor thefts in his childhood and promising his mother he would stop. At some point in his teens he was apprenticed into a household he didn’t identify and didn’t like. He stated:

Having got from under my mother’s eye, I still went on in my old way of stealing; and not being permitted to live with the person I chose to live with, I ran away from my master, which opened a wide door to temptation, and helped on my ruin; for being indolent in temper, and having no honest way of supporting myself, I robbed others of their property.

Ames robbed “Mr. Jonas Cutler, of Groton” and “Jonathan Hammond, of Waltham,” as well as householders in other towns where he didn’t have family.

Levi Ames’s corpse was buried among his Groton relatives in 1773. There was no marker.

Levi Ames and the Clarke Family’s Silver

The Revolution250 coalition has a Twitter account and a Facebook page. I’m one of the people who contributes to those feeds, promoting upcoming events and celebrating past ones, like the “Boston Occupied” reenactment earlier this month.

Last year, I started posting a “resource of the day,” sometimes an upcoming event exploring Revolutionary Massachusetts but more often a website or quotation pegged to a past happening on that date. I figured that would keep the accounts active even when we don’t have a big commemoration to crow about. Sometimes the challenge is coming up with a proper event and link; sometimes it’s choosing among several possibilities.

In August the news of the day was the capture of a young criminal named Levi Ames in 1773. Then, drawing on the notes kept by Boston printer John Boyle, the Rev250 feeds noted each milestone in Ames’s legal journey through trial, sentencing, and hanging. For his story in detail, visit Anthony Vaver’s Early American Crime.

Those Rev250 postings caught the eye of Sarah McDonough, Programs Manager at the Lexington Historical Society. This week on the society’s staff blog she shared a local link to the story that Boyle didn’t mention:

It wasn’t until May 22nd of 1773 that Ames made it to Lexington. He went straight for homes with money, starting with Reverend Jonas Clarke. While the family was asleep, recovering from a measles outbreak, Ames broke into the home and stole Lucy Clarke’s wedding silver, including a tankard, pepper box, and sugar tongs. The spree continued over the next few months, until the burglar was caught in August with stolen goods belonging to a man named Martin Bicker.

And that was when Rev250 took up the tale. But another strand of Ames’s story leads back to the Clarke house in Lexington (shown above):

After hearing of the sentencing, Reverend Clarke travelled to Boston to convince Ames to repent before his execution. We now know Clarke as a dynamic public speaker, but this was one of his greatest achievements – not only did he convince Ames to confess to stealing the family silver, but Ames also revealed where it was hidden, and Clarke happily returned home with his stolen goods that same day.

Richard Kollen discusses Clarke’s perspective on events in the biography The Patriot Parson of Lexington, Massachusetts.

TOMORROW: More digital detection about Ames in Lexington.

“His honour the Lieut. Governor, condescended to come”

And speaking of Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, on 19 Oct 1768—250 years ago today—he entered the conflict over the Manufactory House in Boston.

Even before the regiments arrived, some army officers had scouted that big, province-owned building for use as barracks. On the 14th Regiment’s first night in town, they had gathered outside it before moving to Faneuil Hall. Later, the young printer John Boyle pegged the news “The 29th. Regt. have laid Seige to the Manufactory-House for several days” to 12 October, though he may have set those words down years later and inaccurately.

Everyone knew the army wanted that building, and the royal authorities wanted them to have it. Everyone knew that the people inside, supported by local radicals, wanted to keep possession.

The Boston Whigs wrote in their “Journal of Occurrences” about 19 October:

The people dwelling in the Manufactory House, again secured themselves with bolts and bars. His honour the Lieut. Governor, condescended to come with Sheriff [Stephen] Greenleaf, and to use many arguments and devices in order to effect their removal; but he was plainly told, that it was their opinion and that of others, that they could not be legally turned out of doors in consequence, of the vote of Council, which was not an act of the General Court, and that it surely could not be intended that they should be ousted in any other way; to which his honour replied, that the remaining part of Government had given the order.

The 24 Oct 1768 Boston Gazette reported that this conversation took place with Brown and other people leaning out of the building’s hall windows and calling down to the royal officials. The sheriff also rapped on the east door of the building but got no answer.

In lieu of a warrant, Sheriff Greenleaf read out the minutes of the relevant Council meeting. Brown asked for a copy of that document. The sheriff said he would have to obtain one from the province secretary, Andrew Oliver. But that of course would mean Brown would have to leave the building.

In 1770 the Whigs brought up Hutchinson’s actions on that day, and he replied with a more detailed description of what he did and why:

The governor had for some days been endeavouring to prevail on the council to join with him in providing quarters for the troops: at length, the council advised that a house belonging to the province should be cleared, in part whereof one Mr. [Elisha or John] Brown remained a tenant at sufferance, and into other parts whereof, certain persons, some of them of bad fame, had intruded. The governor had been informed that these people had been instigated to keep possession of the house by force, notwithstanding the advice of council.

On Wednesday the 19th of October, he desired me to go to the house and acquaint the people with the vote or advice of council, and to warn them of the consequences of their refusal to conform to it; and he said he thought it probable they might be prevailed on to remove, and all further trouble would be prevented. The sheriff was directed to attend me.

I went and acquainted Mr. Brown with the determination of the governor and council, and told him that, in my opinion, they had the authority of government, in the recess of the general court, to direct in what manner the house should be improved, and advised and required him to remove without giving any further trouble.

He replied, that without a vote of the whole general court, he would not quit the house.

I told him he made himself liable for the damage which must be caused by his refusal, and he and his abettors must answer for the consequences.

I remember that two persons were in the house, and, whilst I was speaking to Mr. Brown, came into the yard. One of these persons, whose name I afterwards found to be Young, inserting himself in the business, I asked him what concern he had in the affair. His reply was, that he came there as a witness. Nothing material passed further, nor was anything said of my appearing as chief justice.

I returned to the governor, and informed him of the refusal of the people to quit the house; and upon his asking my opinion what was the next proper step, I acquainted him that the superior court was to be held at Cambridge, the Tuesday following, and that I thought it advisable to let the affair rest, and I would then consult with the other justices of the court upon it. I supposed it would rest accordingly, and went the same day to my house in the country [i.e., Milton]…

The man named Young was Dr. Thomas Young, one of the most radical of the Boston Whigs. He had come to Boston from the Albany region in the fall of 1766, attracted by the bigger, more politically active community. According to Harbottle Dorr, he wrote the Boston Gazette’s description of this day. In the next several months Young would rise to the top echelon of the Whigs, one of the two gentlemen seen as closely linked to the crowds in the streets.

It’s striking how the dispute over the Manufactory building was still hinging on a minute point of constitutional law: When the lower house of the General Court was not in session (because the governor had closed it early), could the governor and Council speak for the whole provincial government?

Brown the weaver said no; according to the Gazette, he stated that “his counsel were of the ablest in the province, and he should adhere to their advice be the consequences what they would.” Hutchinson the chief justice (though not a lawyer) said yes, but even then he planned to “consult with the other justices of the court” on how to proceed.

Meanwhile, the Gazette stated, Brown “kept his doors and windows shut.” However, some of the men who worked in the Manufactory cellar decided to “keep one of the lower [window] sashes moveable, to pass from the cellar to the yard.” Perhaps they needed to get to the outhouse.

TOMORROW: The sheriff returns.

William Dawes After His Ride

Most histories of the start of the Revolutionary War don’t say much about William Dawes after he escaped the British army officers who caught Paul Revere. (I discussed Dawes’s amusing anecdote about that episode here.)

According to David H. Fischer, after losing his horse and his watch, Dawes went back to Lexington and went to bed. There’s a family story that a few days later he went back to the site in Lincoln where he fell off his horse and found his watch. But anything else?

In 1878 descendant Henry W. Holland, relying on family traditions and published sources, wrote:

Dawes at once joined the Continental troops at Cambridge, and, it is said, fought at Bunker Hill, but never, I believe, took commission in the regular army. When Boston became unsafe, he moved his family to Worcester, one of the great centres of rebellion; and when the siege ended, and the war was removed from New England, he was appointed commissary at Worcester by Congress.

Holland’s sources were older relatives born after the war, so he relying on thirdhand information. I’m not sure about that Bunker Hill thing (so many family insisted their ancestors were at Bunker Hill), and I suspect Dawes did take a formal military role.

Below are the entries in Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors in the Revolutionary War for men named William Dawes. Each has a separate entry in the state archives. However, some of these could pertain to the same man. And of course some could pertain to multiple men with the same name.

Clearly we can connect the assistant commissary of August 1779 with Dawes, based on his family recollection (as well as a period complaint about how he shortchanged prisoners of war).

But what about the adjutant? What about the major of the Boston militia regiment?

We know that in 1768 Dawes joined the Ancient & Honorable Artillery Company, then an organization of men who wanted extra training to become militia officers. In April 1772 the printer John Boyle listed Dawes as “Junr. Adjut. Lieuts. Rank” in the Boston militia regiment. In early 1775 Massachusetts Committee of Safety contacted Dawes about getting cannon out of Boston [as discussed in my upcoming book, The Road to Concord], and of course Dr. Joseph Warren sent him out to Lexington.

In short, Dawes had experience in military administration and the trust of the Massachusetts Patriots. And there was a war on. It makes sense for him to serve as Gen. William Heath’s adjutant in the first months of the war, and to become a major (another position of administrative responsibility) in the Boston militia regiment after the British evacuated. But then he resigned and went to Worcester.

As for the first entry, that William Dawes was a junior officer in the Continental Army from January 1777 to May 1778, with a possible short service in late 1776. That stretch doesn’t directly contradict the other entries, but they seem to refer to a younger man.

The Danger of Pope Night in 1765

As I described earlier in the week, Boston’s civic leaders were very nervous that the fifth of November in 1765 would bring on a riot. As it usually did.

On that date young British males traditionally observed Guy Fawkes Day or Pope Night by carting around effigies of the nation’s political and religious villains and burning them. Boston’s youth took that patriotic display two steps further than anyone else by dividing into South End and North End gangs and having a big brawl after sunset.

In 1764, one of the Pope Night carts ran over and killed a little boy named Brown, described by different sources as five to nine years old. That happened early in the day, and the holiday proceeded anyway, including the brawl. Tradition, you know.

In the following August, Pope Night rituals spread into the town’s anti-Stamp Act protests: twin effigies hanged and burned, processions through the center of town, bonfires. But instead of just threatening to break windows if householders didn’t treat them well, the crowds broke into three or four mansions and smashed all the furniture.

Sheriff Stephen Greenleaf detained the captain of the South End gang, a shoemaker named Ebenezer Mackintosh, after the riot against Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson on 26 August. But then the town authorities worried that arrest would only rile up the rioters, so they set Mackintosh free. He was prominent in the anti-Stamp demonstrations at Liberty Tree in the following months. But what would he, his comrades, and their cross-town rivals do on Pope Night?

Mackintosh seems to have enjoyed his new role as a political leader and the respect that went with it. He probably appreciated the town leaders’ concerns about keeping Boston’s reputation safe. He definitely appreciated what they offered the gangs if they behaved well.

So Mackintosh made a deal with Henry Swift, captain of the North End gang. The young printer John Boyle described the result: “A Union established between the South and North End Popes. Capt. McIntosh on the Part of the South, and Capt. Swift, on the Part of the North. . . . This Union and one other more extensive [the Stamp Act Congress?], may be looked upon as the only happy Effecte arising from the Stamp Act.”

TOMORROW: A new way to celebrate the fifth of November.

“Carried Miss Suky Sheaffe to Hampton”

In early 1769 William Sheaffe, Deputy Collector of Customs for Boston, refused permission for his daughter Susannah and Capt. Ponsonby Molesworth to get married. After all, as I described yesterday, they had just met the previous October, and she was only fifteen.

But, according to Sheaffe family traditions recorded by Lorenzo Sabine, Susannah had had an ally:

Her governess, to whom she entrusted her grief, espoused her cause, and favored immediate union; and the result accordingly was, the flight of the three to Rhode Island, where the loving pair pronounced their nuptial vows.

Usually Boston couples eloped across the border to New Hampshire if they wanted to marry in secret, and indeed that’s where the merchant John Rowe said Ponsonby and Susannah went in his diary entry for 21 Apr 1769:

Capt. Molesworth of the 29th. carried Miss Suky Sheaffe to Hampton.

But Rowe may just have been guessing. The young printer John Boyle also noted this marriage in his “Journal of Occurrences in Boston” on 27 April, perhaps the day they returned to Boston.

Ponsonby and Susannah Molesworth had a child baptized at Trinity Church on 23 Feb 1770. They called this boy William Carr Molesworth, honoring the colonel in charge of the 29th Regiment (as well as, arguably, the Deputy Collector).

Ten days later, a corporal from Capt. Ponsonby’s company, William Wemys, and several other soldiers from the 29th were caught up in the shooting that became known as the Boston Massacre. To defuse tensions, army commanders moved the whole regiment to Castle William, and then to New Jersey, and eventually to Florida.

Capt. Molesworth went with them, but what about his young wife and child? A incomplete genealogy of the family says that Ponsonby and Susannah Molesworth had a child named Eliza about 1772—perhaps in Boston. But maybe the young wife traveled with her husband. In any event, Sabine concludes:

Molesworth sold his commission [and retired from the army] in 1776, and in December of that year was in England with his wife. Their married life proved uncommonly happy; and they lived to see their children’s children.

Which makes us think how relatively rare it was in that time to see one’s grandchildren grow to a significant age. Susannah died in 1834, Ponsonby sometime before that.

Back in Boston, William Sheaffe “died of a fit of the Palsey” in November 1771, in the words of artist Henry Pelham. He left his widow and several other children in poor straits.

COMING UP: What happened to the Sheaffes?

Courting Indifference

I’ve been enjoying Caitlin GD Hopkins’s studies of early American gravestones at the Vast Public Indifference blog. Two easy ways to find those postings are to read the entries labeled gravestones and 101 Ways to Say “Died”. The 18th century track is fun, too.

Above all, there are Caitlin’s quotations from young printer John Boyle (1746-1819). Boyle kept a marvelously miscellaneous and gossipy “Journal of Occurrences in Boston” between 1759 and 1778. He probably started it in the early 1760s while apprenticed to John Green, then went back and filled in what he’d missed. The New England Historical and Genealogical Register published the whole in 1930-31. An entry that probably interests both Caitlin (for her interest in deathways) and me (for my interest in Gores) appeared on 3 Sept 1771:

This Morning (Tuesday) Mr. John Gore, Junr. intending an Excursion in the Country with his Friends arose vigorous and cheerful: being casually detained longer than he expected, his friends Set out without him, with the expectation that he would soon overtake them, but alas! his bounds were determined that he could not pass He was seized with an Apoplectic Fit at ten o’Clock, and expired at four in the Afternoon.

After looking at lots of colonial and Federalist gravestones, you’ll be ready to take this Vast Public Indifference quiz:

I’ll give you some names and you tell me whether they belong to people born in Connecticut between 1701 and 1800 or to Muppets who have appeared on Sesame Street.

1. Herbert Birdsfoot
2. Sherlock Doolittle
3. Hannah Hobby
4. Vincent Twice
5. Herman Bird
6. Orange Wedge
7. Alice Braithwaite Goodyshoes
8. Bathsheba Bird
9. Bathsheba Bugbee
10. Appleton Osgood . . .

Follow the quiz link for the rest of the list, and the answers.

Where Did the Fifth Regiment Live?

A colleague from the reenacted His Majesty’s 5th Regiment of Foot asked me where the original unit lived in Boston in 1774-76. After nosing around, I thought that inquiry shed a little light on the challenge of finding quarters for troops in a less than friendly town. And of course I’m always desperate grateful for stuff to blog about.

On 4 July 1774, Boston merchant Joshua Green wrote in his almanac diary (now at the New England Historic Genealogical Society): “The 38th: regiment landed & encamp’d on ye: common.” The next day he added: “The 5th: ditto.” So the regiment first lived in their tents on Boston Common.

They were still there on 8 August, when Col. Percy wrote to a friend in Surrey:

As Gen. Gage is obliged by orders to reside at Salem, I have the honour of commanding the Troops encamped here, wh[ich] consist of the 4th., 5th., 23d., 38th., & 43d. Regts., besides 3 cos. of artillery, who have with them 4, 12-pounders 12, 6-pounders & 4 howitzers.

Gage had to be in Salem as royal governor; the ministry in London had told him to convene the provincial legislature there as a way to punish Boston after the Tea Party. Gage returned to Boston in late August and very shortly lost all practical authority outside that town.

More regiments arrived in Boston in autumn 1774, and the New England winter was approaching. Capt. W. Glanville Evelyn of the 4th Regiment wrote to his father on 31 Oct 1774:

As it was found difficult to furnish quarters for so many men, it was resolved (to avoid extremities) to build barracks on the Common, where we are encamped; for some regiments timber was provided, and the frames pretty well advanced, when they thought proper to issue their orders to the carpenters to desist from working for the troops, upon pain of their displeasure. And one man who paid no attention to their order, was waylaid, seized by the mob, and carried off, and narrowly escaped hanging.

However, the Government have procured distilleries and vacant warehouses sufficient to hold all the regiments, and our own artificers, with those of the men-at-war, and about 150 from New York and Halifax, are now at work upon them, and we hope to get into them in ten days or a fortnight.

Indeed, on 15 Nov the young Patriot printer John Boyle wrote in his journal of events, published in the NEHGS’s Register:

This day the Troops broke up their Encampments in the Common, &c. and are gone into Houses, Stores, &c in different parts of the Town, Vizt.

4th. (or King’s own) Regt. at Lechmere’s Distill-House at New-Boston [i.e., the west part of town]
5th. Coffin’s Distill-House, South-End.
10th. Long-Lane. 18th. (or Royal Irish) Back-Street.
23d. (or Royal Welsh Fuzileers) and 39th. near Fort-Hill.
43d: Sloane’s Distill-House and Gould’s Store, Back-Street.
52d. From Liberty-Tree to the Fortification [on Boston Neck].
59th. Doane’s Stores in King-Street.
64th. To remain at Castle-William.
47th: Near the Market. 65th. Town-Dock.
Regt. of Marines, North-End.
Regt. of Artillery, Griffin’s Wharf [site of the Tea Party].

There were many underused warehouses in Boston because the port was closed to traffic from Europe, the Caribbean, and other distant ports. There were also many underused distillery buildings because the molasses-producing Caribbean colonies had started to distill their own rum for export, cutting out the New England processors. The rum business was already in a doldrums, it appears, before the Revolutionary turmoil—though not for want of local demand.

Those barracks were for the enlisted ranks only. British army officers rented rooms for themselves in private homes and inns.

TOMORROW: The myths and realities of the Quartering Act.

The Boston Regiment in late 1774

After last week's posting about war games on Boston Common, Alfred F. Young wrote to ask, “Do you have any idea of how many militia companies there were in Boston?” So I looked it up in Mills and Hicks’s British and American Register for the Year 1775.

These were the officers of the “BOSTON REGIMENT” when that little reference book was printed in late 1774:

Col. John Erving (shown here in a postcard from Smith College)
Lt. Col. John Leverett
Maj. Thomas Dawes
Captains
Richard Boynton (with the rank of major)
Jeremiah Stimpson
Josiah Waters
Martin Gay
Samuel Ridgway
Samuel Barrett
John Haskins
Ephraim May
David Spear
Andrew Symmes
Edward Procter
Job Wheelwright
Adjutant William Dawes, Jr. (with the rank of lieutenant)

There were twelve captains in all, one for each company. After each captain’s name the Register listed his lieutenant and ensign (the equivalent of a second lieutenant).

There’s a similar rundown of the Boston regiment’s officers as of 1 Apr 1772 in young printer John Boyle’s “Journal of Occurrences in Boston,” printed in volumes 84 and 85 of the New England Historical & Genealogical Register. A close look shows why Boyle was so pleased to record this information: he'd just been commissioned as an ensign in one company. (By late 1774, he was a lieutenant.)

Comparing the two lists show that the captains and all superior officers remained the same, but three lieutenants had been succeeded by men who had been ensigns and one by an entirely new name. Of the twelve ensigns in 1774, only five had held that rank in 1772.

Boston also had some specialized militia units, which Mills & Hicks listed in this order:

• The grenadier company, founded in 1772. Maj. Dawes of the main regiment was also captain of this company (which might have been why blacksmith Capt. Boynton got the brevet rank of major).
• The train, or artillery company, under Maj. Adino Paddock. According to an inside source, however, this company had basically dissolved in Sept 1774 when its cannons disappeared.
• The South Battery company, under Maj. Jeremiah Green, which staffed the fort overlooking the southern end of the wharfs; by late 1774, British army units were using that battery.
• The North Battery company, under Maj. Nathaniel Barber, still overseeing the smaller battery in the North End.

In addition, Boston was home to the Ancient & Honorable Artillery Company, then functioning as a private training organization for militia officers; the governor’s troop of horse-guards, fourteen strong and probably no more than ceremonial; and the Independent Company of Cadets, in flux after most members had resigned when Gen. Thomas Gage dismissed John Hancock from his role as company captain.

All told, that’s seventeen functioning companies, though the two battery companies might have needed fewer men than the rest. The 1765 census found 2,941 white men over the age of sixteen in Boston. The law exempted some of those men (sexagenarians, clergymen, etc.) from militia service, but the mystery for me is what informal customs militia officers followed in running the regiment.

Did Samuel Adams, whose hands shook with palsy, carry a musket alongside his neighbors? (Would you want to drill in front of him?) We know African-American men served in militia units outside of Boston. Did they also drill in the big town’s musters? How easy was it to skip militia training by paying a small fine or simply not showing up? How did the system deal with illnesses or absences for, say, going out on a fishing boat? In sum, the law said nearly every white male inhabitant between sixteen and sixty was supposed to turn out for militia training, but how many actually did?