“Authentic advices from the Camp at Cambridge”

On 15 Jan 1776, John Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet newspaper in Philadelphia published a round-up of war news for its readers.

Here are some selections:

By authentic advices from the Camp at Cambridge, of the 3d and 4th instant [i.e., written on the third and fourth of this month], we learn, that the bay and harbour of Boston yet continue open; that a man of war is so stationed as to command the entrance of Salem, Beverly and Marblehead harbours.— . . .

An intellligent person got out of Boston on the 3d instant, who informed General [George] Washington that a fleet consisting of 9 transports, containing 360 men, were ready to sail under convoy of the Scarborough and Fowey men of war, with two bomb vessels and some flat bottomed boats; their avowed destination in Boston was to Newport, but it was generally supposed to be Long-Island or Virginia— . . .

This person also informs, that they have not the least idea in Boston of attacking our lines, but will be very thankful to be permitted to remain quiet—That before General [John] Burgoyne’s departure it was circulated thro’ the army, in order to keep the soldiery quiet under their distresses, that the disputes would soon be settled, and that he was going to England for that purpose— . . .

Our advices conclude with the following anecdote:—That upon the King’s Speech arriving at Boston, a great number of them were reprinted and sent out to our lines on the 2d of January, which being also the day of forming the new army, the great Union Flag was hoisted on Prospect Hill, in compliment to the United Colonies—

this happening soon after the Speeches were delivered at Roxbury, but before they were received at Cambridge, the Boston gentry supposed it to be a token of the deep impression the Speech had made, and a signal of submission—That they were much disappointed at finding several days elapse without some formal measure leading to a surrender, with which they had begun to flatter themselves.——

When these accounts came away the army were all in barracks, in good health and spirits—That 5000 Militia had taken the places of those soldiers who would not stay beyond their time of service; that they were good troops, and the whole army impatient for an opportunity of action.

This newspaper article is a crucial piece of evidence for the raising of the “Grand Union Flag” in Somerville each New Year’s Day, as shown above. No other source names Prospect Hill as the high point where that banner flew.

The British lieutenant William Carter wrote that the flag appeared on “Mount Pisga.” This hand-drawn map of the siege at the Massachusetts Historical Society shows that was the British officers’ term for the Continental fort on Prospect Hill.

One curious detail is that the Pennsylvania Packet article says the flag went up on 2 January, not New Year’s, when Somerville celebrates it.

The American commander-in-chief’s general orders seem clear that he considered New Year’s Day to be the launch of the new army—“new” in the sense that the men were enlisted and organized into regiments to serve for all of 1776.

Most historians have therefore concluded that the flag went up on the first of January, and somehow a dating error was introduced in the chain of communication from Cambridge to Dunlap’s print shop.

I’m going to do more analysis of this article over the next few days.

TOMORROW: From “great Union Flag” to “Grand Union Flag.”

“For the Information of the Friends of the unhappy Prisoners”

On 27 Nov 1777, the Independent Chronicle newspaper of Boston reported on a ship sailing under a flag of truce:

Last Sunday returned here a Flag from Halifax, with about 60 Prisoners, whose gastly Countenances and feeble Limbs present a striking View of the Cruelties which they have endured, and the horrid Situation of those who still remain there in Confinement.

The following is a List of the misfortunate Persons who belonged to the Hancock and Boston Frigates, and other Vessels, who were killed there by Starvation in the Months of July, August and September, viz.

Three lists of male names followed:

• 46 “Belonging to the Hancock,” virtually the same list transcribed here at the Continental Navy blog, with some differences in spelling.
• 6 “Belonging to the Boston.”
• 16 “Belonging to other Vessels.”

Massachusetts sent an offer to exchange prisoners for some of the surviving men, but those negotiations dragged into the new year. (Around this same time the Continental authorities were deciding not to let the “Convention Army” of prisoners from Saratoga go home to Europe after all.)

On 14 Feb 1778, John Carter of the Providence Gazette published similar information, this time prefaced:

Mr. CARTER,

For the Information of the Friends of the unhappy Prisoners, who fell a Sacrifice to British Cruelty in their Confinement at Halifax, I herewith send you a List of their Names, and request you would publish it in your next Gazette. As I was confined among them myself, and am lately arrived from Halifax, you may rely on the List being authentic.

Your’s, &c. A. B.

A List of Prisoners, taken in American Vessels, who died in Halifax Prison, between the 23d of November, 1776, and the 26th of December, 1777.

Then came a long list of names—“Total 192” said a note at the end. It included the men on the Independent Chronicle list and many more.

These names don’t appear alphabetically. Two men with only given names and the label “a Negro” appear at the bottom, but aside from that segregation there’s no indication of sorting by, for example, what ships they had served on or what prisons they died in. The men of the Hancock appear in about the same order as the chronological list linked above. In sum, this list appears to have been compiled mostly by date of death.

About four-fifths of the way through that long column appears the name “Dr. Samuel Prescott.” Thus, this Providence Gazette item is a long sought contemporaneous source confirming that the young doctor from Concord died in a Halifax prison. Since his name wasn’t on the earlier list of men who died “in the Months of July, August and September,” Dr. Prescott almost certainly died in the last months of 1777.

 

“The Idea of seizing a Number of Persons”

Though the first report about the London government’s plan for a special commission to investigate the attack on H.M.S. Gaspee was optimistic, as described yesterday, New England newspapers soon started to spread more alarming rumors.

Isaiah Thomas’s 17 Dec 1772 Massachusetts Spy told readers:

It is currently reported, that two regiments are ordered from New-York to Rhode-Island, to support the trial of persons there suspected, or rather informed against, for being concerned in burning the Gaspee armed schooner.

The Governor and Lieut Governor of this province, two of the appointed Judges, will shortly set out for Newport.

The Lively ship of war is also to sail, on board of which, the Admiral, another of the Judges, is to hoist his flag.

None of those statements turned out to be true. No army troops moved to Rhode Island, though the ministry did alert Gen. Thomas Gage in New York to be alert to requests from that colony.

Neither Gov. Thomas Hutchinson nor Lt. Gov. Andrew Oliver was put on the commission of inquiry. Their relative Peter Oliver, chief justice of Massachusetts, and Vice Admiralty court judge Robert Auchmuty represented Massachusetts instead.

Adm. John Montagu wasn’t a commissioner, either, and he and his flagship remained in Boston harbor for the winter.

Finally, the commission was empowered to investigate the attack, not to try defendants.

The Spy added, “Others say, that these devoted persons [i.e., accused] are to be taken agreeable to a late Act of Parliament, and sent for trial to London!” That complaint was closer to the truth, but the royal commission never managed to identify any likely culprits.

The fake news didn’t stop Whig newspaper writers from preemptively deploring the threat of such proceedings. The Spy’s report ended by complaining:

Can any one hear of…subjecting the inhabitants to trial, without Juries, on matters done within the body of a county, or what is worse, if possible, transporting them beyond the seas, and think himself secure in the enjoyment of his natural and constitutional rights! — How long, O LORD——How long!

Within a couple of days, the Whigs had received more accurate information about the ministry’s plan. Writers narrowed in on the threat of accused men being taken to Britain. The 19 December Providence Gazette, published by John Carter (shown above), said:

In this Situation of Affairs, every Friend to our violated Constitution cannot but be greatly alarmed.—The Idea of seizing a Number of Persons, under the Points of Bayonets, and transporting them Three Thousand Miles for Trial, where, whether guilty or innocent, they must unavoidably fall Victims alike to Revenge or Prejudice, is shocking to Humanity, repugnant to every Dictate of Reason, Liberty and Justice, and in which Americans and Freeman ought never to acquiesce.

Again, that hadn’t happened yet and never would happen, but at last the American Whigs had found the issue to hammer on.

TOMORROW: Leaks and laments.

Betsey Heath’s Handwriting Lessons

Last month Heather Wilson wrote on the Massachusetts Historical Society’s Beehive blog about a copybook written out by Elizabeth Heath (1769–1853) in 1781, when she was a student at the Brookline school.

Wilson wrote:

The cover of her book is plain—the faded, splotched, brown paper does not even bear a title, or her name. Inside, however, Betsey’s personality shines through. At the bottom of each page, after copying lines, Betsey saved space for doodles. She always wrote her name, sometimes her school and the date, and then she added her flair.

On 3 July, twelve-year-old Betsey copied lines of “The living know that they must die” and then got to doodling, adding merry faces into two of her swirling lines.

On 9 August, she added squiggly lines, flashes of red ink amongst the black, and her school and the date crammed inside of a heart.

The doodling, however, was not the only unexpected find within Betsey’s book. On each page, above the doodles, Betsey copied down an aphorism, often one that rhymed.

Handwriting teachers assigned such aphorisms as penmanship practice—doubling, of course, as moral lessons. They even came to be called “copybook maxims.” The choice of sentiment was probably not up to the students. Still, they could reflect the spirit of the day.

The lines Betsey copied on 26 October 1781, however, were different. “Liberty, peace & plenty to the united states of America,” she wrote. The previous day’s lines had included the book’s only explicit Biblical reference (“Uriahs beautiful wife made King David seek his life”) and then the next day took on a distinctly patriotic tone. This was the only entry from her entire school year that was not a piece of wisdom, or advice. But, why?

Wilson deduced that the burst of patriotism at Betsy Heath’s school on that day came from learning about the British surrender to American and French forces at Yorktown earlier that month. Looking at other items in the M.H.S. catalogue, she noted that on 25 October John Carter printed a broadside with that news at Providence.

In fact, we can nail down the date that the news arrived at Boston.

TOMORROW: All we need is the right diary.

The Second Mobbing of Jesse Saville

After a Gloucester crowd attacked Samuel Fellows and Jesse Saville in September 1768, both men went to work for His Majesty’s Customs Service.

The Customs Commissioners were expanding their force, to collect and to use Townshend Act revenue, and steady incomes were a way to reward or compensate people who had suffered for the Crown.

Fellows became the commander of a ship that patrolled for smugglers off Cape Ann. I suspect that ship was the Earl of Gloucester, which the Customs service had seized from his former employer, David Plumer, based on his tip. The Commissioners of Customs used John Hancock’s ship Liberty the same way (until people in Newport burned it, of course).

As for Saville, the Customs service appointed him as a tide-waiter in Providence, Rhode Island. That work probably took him away from his family. On the other hand, it got him out of reach of his enemies.

But Providence soon brought Saville more enemies. (Or people or rumors might have followed him from Gloucester.) The 10 June 1769 Providence Gazette ran this legal notice:

Custom-House, Boston, June 2, 1769.

WHEREAS on the 18th of May last, in the Evening, a great Number of People riotously assembled in the Town of Providence, in the Colony of Rhode-Island, and violently seized Jesse Saville, a Tidesman belonging to the Custom-House of the said Port, who was then attending his Duty there, and having gagged and put him into a Wheelbarrow, almost strangled, they carried him to a Wharff, where they threatened to drown him if he made the least Noise; tied a Handkerchief round his Face, cut his Clothes to Pieces, stripped him naked, covered him from Head to Foot with Turpentine and Feathers, bound him Hands and Feet, threw Dirt in his Face, and repeatedly beat him with their Fists and Sticks, then threw him down on the Pavements, cut his Face, and bruised his Body, in a most barbarous Manner; during which inhuman Treatment, which lasted an Hour and a Half, he was near expiring, and now lies dangerously ill.

For the better bringing to Justice and condign Punishment the Authors of this daring and attrocious Outrage, the Commissioners of His Majesty’s Customs do hereby promise a Reward of Fifty Pounds Sterling for the Discovery of any of them, to be paid upon his or their Conviction.

By Order of the Commissioners,
Richard Reeve.

This ad was reprinted in the 19 June Boston Evening-Post and the 20 June Essex Gazette, but as a news item, not a paid advertisement.

The 24 June Providence Gazette offered a different response as a letter to printer John Carter:

I Observe in one of your late Papers as Advertisement inserted by Order of the Commissioners of the Customs, offering a Reward of Fifty Pounds Sterling for discovering the Persons who ill treated one Jesse Saville, a Tidesman, on the Evening of the 18th of May, then doing Duty in the Town of Providence, &c.

How the Board came by their Information I know not, but of this I am certain, that their Informant paid little Regard to Truth, the greatest Part of the Narrative being false and groundless. He was neither struck with a Fist or Stick, nor thrown on the Pavements, as the Advertisement sets forth, neither was he on Duty as an Officer when taken. The Affair was not intended to obstruct him in his Duty, or deter other Officers in the Execution of their Trust, so long as they keep within proper Bounds.

The Truth is, he was daubed with Turpentine, and had a few Feathers strewed on him; in but every near Respect was treated with more Tenderness and Lenity than is perhaps due to an Informer.

As the above mentioned Advertisement seems evidently calculated to call an Odium on the Town, by inserting his public Testimony against it you’ll oblige
A SPECTATOR.

Now even if we assume the truth of what happened lay somewhere between these two descriptions, it’s clear that a second crowd had tried violently to make a public example of Jesse Saville.

TOMORROW: Back home in Gloucester.

[The picture above is a detail from a drop curtain in the collection of the Rhode Island Historical Society that shows Providence in 1808.]

Colonial Newspaper Advertising Rates

In 1884 the U.S. Census Office published a report called “The Newspaper and Periodical Press” by S. N. D. North, who would become a leading statistician.

That essay offers answers to some difficult questions about the business of newspaper publishing in colonial America, starting with how much it cost to insert an advertisement:

In the colonial press it was rarely that a newspaper made any publication of advertising rates, it being customary to announce, instead, that advertisements would be “taken in” at “reasonable rates” or a “moderate price”. The inference is fair that the early printers were glad to get what they could for this kind of business, and it is certain that no such thing as a fixed standard of advertising rates was ever arrived at among them.

Some illustrations may be given: The Virginia Gazette announced that “advertisements of moderate length would be inserted for 3 shillings the first week and 2 shillings each week after”. [I looked in William Park’s Virginia Gazette in 1737, William Hunter’s paper of the same name in 1751, Purdie and Dixon’s rival paper of the same name in 1766, and William Rind’s rival paper in 1771—I found the same price information in all of them.]

The Maryland Gazette [in 1752] promised to publish “advertisements of moderate length for 5 shillings the first week and 1 shilling each time after, and long ones in proportion”. The New Jersey Gazette, as late as 1777, inserted “advertisements of moderate length for 7 shillings 6 pence for the first week, 2 shillings 6 pence for every continuance, and long ones in proportion”. 

Only in Philadelphia before the revolution was advertising a source of considerable profit to publishers. In both Bradford’s and [Benjamin] Franklin’s [Pennsylvania Gazette] papers it became such.

It’s not clear how North reached that last conclusion about profitability. I’m not even sure what North meant by “Bradford’s” paper since there were two printers in colonial Philadelphia named Bradford (Andrew and his nephew William) and they each published a newspaper (the American Weekly Mercury and the Pennsylvania Journal).

Knowing that the phrase “moderate length” was standard in announcements of advertising prices allowed me to find some additional examples from colonial American newspapers:

• Hugh Gaine’s New-York Mercury, 1756: 5 shillings.
• William Weyman’s New-York Gazette, 1759: 5 shillings.
• John Holt’s New-York Journal, 1766: 5 shillings first week, 1s. for each further.
• John Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet as announced in other newspapers, 1771: “Three Shillings each for one week, and One Shilling for each continuance”
• John Carter’s Providence Gazette, 1771: “(accompanied with the Pay)…three Weeks for Four Shillings Lawful, and Ninepence for each Week after”.
• James Davis’s North-Carolina Gazette, 1775: 3s. the first week, 2s. for each further week, same as the Virginia Gazette.
• Samuel Loudon’s New-York Packet, 1776: 5s. for four weeks.

And what about Boston? When the Boston News-Letter was launched in 1704, its publisher promised advertising rates “from Twelve-Pence to Five Shillings, & not to exceed.” That’s a big range, with no statement about the size of ad or how long it would run. And I couldn’t find any Boston newspapers publicizing their advertising prices for the next seventy-two years.

UP AHEAD: More advertising rates.

Anti-Stamp Act Protests in Rhode Island

Public protests against the Stamp Act spread outside of Boston in August 1765 so quickly that I’ve fallen behind the sestercentennial anniversaries of those events.

Since the Newport Historical Society is commemorating that port town’s protests with a reenactment today, I’m focusing on the events in Rhode Island.

On 24 August, ten days after the first protest at Boston’s Liberty Tree, A Providence Gazette Extraordinary appeared. William Goddard (1740-1817) had stopped publishing this newspaper in May. This special issue was “Printed by S. and W. Goddard,” the “S.” being William’s mother Sarah (c. 1701-1770).

Sarah Goddard resumed the weekly publication of the paper in 1766 as “Sarah Goddard, and Company.” From January 1767 to 1769, the colophon clarified that she printed “(In the Absence of William Goddard),” the son having gone on to other cities. Finally she sold the business to employee John Carter, who maintained the paper for decades to follow. Her daughter, Mary Katherine Goddard, established a print shop in Baltimore.

That issue of the Providence Gazette was extraordinary indeed, being almost entirely devoted to one political cause:

• Above the masthead it proclaimed, “Vox Populi, Vox Dei” (“The Voice of the People is the Voice of God”).
• The essays were all about the problems with the Stamp Act, including a paragraph from Isaac Barré’s speech in Parliament.
• The news was all about anti-Stamp Act protests in Boston and Connecticut, and similar disturbances in Britain.
• The paper printed five resolutions from the Providence town meeting modeled on the resolutions that the Virginia House of Burgesses had reportedly passed that spring.
• The last page described a new paper mill that the Goddards were helping to build outside Providence—a business potentially at odds with the Stamp Act.

In his history of the Revolution, the Rev. William Gordon wrote that “Effigies were also exhibited; and in the evening cut down and burnt by the populace” in Providence on this date, but I haven’t found any confirmation of that.

Instead, the next big development in Rhode Island appears to have happened down in Newport on 27 August. Here’s the description of that day published in the 2 September Newport Mercury:

Last Tuesday Morning a Gallows was erected in Queen-Street, just below the Court-House, whereon the Effigies of three Gentlemen were exhibited, one of whom was a Distributor of Stamps, which was placed in the Center. The other two were suspected of countenancing and abetting the Stamp Act.

Various Labels were affixed to their Breasts, Arms, &c. denoting the Cause of these indignant Representations, and the Persons who were the Subjects of Derision.—They hung from Eleven o’Clock till about Four, when some Combustibles being placed under the Gallows, a Fire was made, and the Effigies consumed, amidst the Acclamations of the People.—The whole was conducted with Moderation, and no Violence was offered to the Persons or Property of any Man.

A report published in London later that year offered some more physical details: “about nine o’clock in the morning, the people of Newport, in Rhode Island, brought forth the effigies of three persons, in a cart, with halters about their necks, to a gallows, twenty feet high.”

Notably, the Mercury didn’t identify the three “Persons who were the Subjects of Derision,” even by initials. But everyone in town knew who they were:

• Rhode Island’s stamp-tax collector, Augustus Johnston (c. 1729-1790).
• Martin Howard, Jr. (1725–1781), a lawyer who had written a pamphlet titled A Letter from a Gentleman at Halifax to His Friend in Rhode Island, supporting the Stamp Act—a very rare position for an American to take.
• Dr. Thomas Moffatt (c. 1702–1787), another supporter of stronger royal government.

Moffatt later identified three merchants—Samuel Vernon (1711-1792), William Ellery (1727-1820), and Robert Crook—as guarding the spectacle from local officials, just as the Loyall Nine did in Boston. The doctor also said that to build a crowd they “sent into the streets strong Drink in plenty with Cheshire cheese and other provocatives to intemperance and riot.” Yet that day ended with no other destruction than the burning of the effigies.

TOMORROW: But it wasn’t over yet.