The Last of the Last Royal Governor of New Hampshire

As evening fell on 14 Dec 1774, New Hampshire militiamen finished their (first) raid on Fort William and Mary.

They loaded over a hundred barrels of gunpowder into a flat-bottomed boat. Just before embarking, they released John Cochran, commander of the fort, and his wife Sarah from confinement in their house.

But first they told Cochran to “go and take care of the Powder they had left.” As he reported that evening to Gov. John Wentworth (shown here), the raiders had left “one barrel.”

The royal governor lost most of his authority that day. He couldn’t even get men to row him out to the fort on his official barge.

Wentworth soon knew the identities of many of the raiders, but he didn’t foresee prosecuting them. “No jail would hold them long, and no jury would find them guilty,” he wrote. The most he could do was fire them from their appointed positions.

H.M.S. Canceaux and H.M.S. Scarborough arrived in Portsmouth harbor over the next week, preventing further attacks. The result was a stalemate, with the Patriots leaving Gov. Wentworth alone as long as they could proceed with their plans.

Those activists had already called a province-wide meeting in July 1774 to send delegates to the First Continental Congress. They did that again in January 1775 for the Second Continental Congress. Another meeting in late April endorsed the New Hampshire militia companies already heading toward Boston.

Gov. Wentworth convened the official New Hampshire legislature on 4 May 1775, then prorogued it. He tried to make peace between Capt. Andrew Barkley on the Scarborough, who was seizing supplies and sailors from ships, and the Patriot militiamen, now fortifying Portsmouth harbor against attack from the water.

On 13 June, Wentworth offered shelter to John Fenton, a retired British army captain and a New Hampshire militia colonel. A crowd gathered outside his mansion, pointing a cannon at the front door. Fenton gave himself up. The governor and his wife fled out the back, carrying their infant son.

The Wentworths took refuge at Fort William and Mary, still commanded by John Cochran. The governor reported, “This fort although containing upward of sixty pieces of Cannon is without men or ammunition,” but it was protected by the Scarborough.

Wentworth continued to try to exercise gubernatorial authority, sending messages to the provincial assembly as if he were in his mansion nearby rather than on an island in the harbor. The legislature ignored him and his declarations that their session was adjourned.

Soon it became clear that there was no point in staying in New Hampshire. Capt. John Linzee and H.M.S. Falcon arrived to carry away the fort’s remaining cannon and keep them out of rebel hands. On 23 August the Wentworths boarded a warship to sail to besieged Boston.

With Gov. Wentworth went John Cochran, commander of Fort William and Mary.

Cochran’s wife Sarah and their children weren’t in the fort that summer, however. They were on the family farm in Londonderry.

TOMORROW: A Loyalist family’s troubles.

“They well know that a guinea never glistened in my eyes”

Because there was barely any copyright protection in early America, once a piece of writing was published, basically any other printer could publish it just by going to the trouble of setting it in type again.

Joseph Delaplaine’s short biography of Samuel Adams reappeared in whole or in part in books from Thomas Rogers’s A New American Biographical Dictionary (1824) to The National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans (1839) and John Sanderson’s Biography of the Signers to the Declaration of Independence (1847). Some compilers even credited Delaplaine.

An abridged version, including the bribe story, appeared in The Family Magazine, or Monthly Abstract of General Knowledge in 1837, a version issued by Eli Taylor of Cincinnati.

That might have prompted the editor of the Cincinnati Evening Post, Ebenezer Smith Thomas (1775-1845), to publish his own reminiscence of Adams. Thomas was a nephew of Isaiah Thomas and apprenticed with him in the early republic. From Massachusetts he moved on to South Carolina, Maryland, and finally Ohio, editing and publishing newspapers.

In his last of many years as head of the Cincinnati Evening Post, E. S. Thomas published a series of essays about famous events and men he had encountered. These articles were collected and republished as Reminiscences of the Last Sixty-Five Years in 1840.

Thomas started with a profile of John Hancock, and sometime early in October or November 1837 turned his attention to Samuel Adams. I can’t access the Cincinnati Evening Post for that year, but the profile was reprinted in the Newark Daily Advertiser on 16 November and then in many other newspapers around the U.S. of A.

Thomas addressed the question of royal authorities trying to bribe Adams this way:

It is recorded of Mr. Adams, that a large sum was offered him by agents of the British government, to take sides with it against his native land, but it was indignantly spurned, and on a subsequent occasion, when a similar circumstance was alluded to, he exclaimed, “they well know that a guinea never glistened in my eyes.” It was well for our country, and for mankind, that there were such men, in whose eyes guineas did not glisten; they appear to have been raised up for the occasion, and having accomplished the great work given them to do, have disappeared from the face of the earth, and there have arisen in their stead, a race of men so unlike them, that it seems scarcely possible they can be the descendants of such sires. 

This passage merely alludes to the actual bribery, not offering concrete details about who made the offer or when. But it’s evidence that in later years Adams and people around him discussed how he had refused such an offer.


So did Gen. Thomas Gage really send John Fenton to Adams with a warning not to continue opposing the Crown and a promise of reward if he stopped, as Delaplaine had written? I suspect that Adams believed Gage had done so, even if Fenton was acting on his own or just feeling him out. And I have absolutely no doubt that Adams spurned any such offer. Which was, after all, the point of the story. 

(The photo above shows E. S. Thomas’s bookplate in one of his own copies of his Remininscences, later owned by the sculptor Daniel Chester French, on sale through North Star Rare Books of Great Barrington.)

“The same facts of…the late Samuel Adams”

In 1815 and 1816, Joseph Delaplaine (1777-1824, shown here) published one and a half volumes of Delaplaine’s Repository of the Lives and Portraits of Distinguished American Characters.

The first biography in the second volume was about Samuel Adams. It included this paragraph:

Some years before the revolution, it was reported, that Mr. Adams was offered a lucrative place under the British government, if he would change his political conduct, and abandon that cause and interest, in which he was engaged. That this offer was made after the dissolution of the general assembly of that year, soon after its first session; that, in consequence of this last circumstance, he was deprived of a stipend allowed to him by the representatives, as clerk of the house, which, though small, was still a great part of his support. But yet, in this critical condition, he reprobated the offer, choosing rather to subsist by individual, or common beneficence, or even perish, than to sacrifice the cause of truth, and betray the liberty of his country.

That appeared in the midst of paragraphs about the late 1760s and 1770, suggesting it refers to 1768, when Gov. Francis Bernard shut down the Massachusetts General Court abruptly after that assembly (under Adams’s leadership) refused to rescind its Circular Letter.

Delaplaine went on to tell a related story set in 1774:

Every method had been tried to induce Mr. Adams to abandon the cause of his country, which he had supported with so much zeal, courage, and ability. Threats and caresses had proved equally unavailing. Prior to this time there is no certain proof that any direct attempt was made upon his virtue and integrity, although a report had been publicly and freely circulated, that it had been unsuccessfully tried by governor Bernard. [Thomas] Hutchinson knew him too well to make the attempt. But governor [Thomas] Gage was empowered to make the experiment.

He sent to him a confidential and verbal message by colonel [John] Fenton, who waited upon Mr. Adams, and after the customary salutations, he stated the object of his visit. He said that an adjustment of the disputes which existed between England and the colonies, and a reconciliation, was very desirable, as well as important to both. That he was authorized from governor Gage to assure him, that he had been empowered to confer upon him such benefits as would be satisfactory, upon the condition, that he would engage to cease in his opposition to the measures of government. He also observed, that it was the advice of governor Gage, to him, not to incur the further displeasure of his majesty; that his conduct had been such as made him liable to the penalties of an act of Henry VIII. by which persons could be sent to England for trial of treason, or misprison of treason, at the discretion of a governor of a province, but by changing his political course, he would not only receive great personal advantages, but would thereby make his peace with the king.

Mr. Adams listened with apparent interest to this recital. He asked colonel Fenton if he would truly deliver his reply as it should be given. After some hesitation he assented. Mr. Adams required his word of honour, which he pledged.

Then rising from his chair, and assuming a determined manner, he replied, “I trust I have long since made MY PEACE WITH THE KING OF KINGS. No personal consideration shall induce me to abandon the righteous cause of my country. Tell governor Gage, IT IS THE ADVICE OF SAMUEL ADAMS TO HIM, no longer to insult the feelings of an exasperated people.”

That is, of course, the same story that appeared in William V. Wells’s 1865 biography of Adams. The latter version included fewer details, such as Adams’s request to deliver his exact answer to Gov. Gage. It didn’t include the erroneous description of Fenton as commander of one of the royal army regiments that arrived in Boston in 1774.

Wells identified the story as “Narration by Mrs. Hannah Wells in 1818.” But most of those words were in print two years before that date. Did Hannah Wells, Adams’s aged daughter, copy down the story from Delaplaine’s book? Or was she Delaplaine’s source? Unfortunately, he didn’t specify his sources.

Delaplaine corresponded with many surviving Revolutionary figures while he worked on his book. On 24 Dec 1815 he wrote to John Adams requesting an interview, biographical data, and “the same facts of your brother the late Samuel Adams Esqr.” That of course prompted a correction. Eventually the former President provided basic information about his second cousin, but his surviving letters don’t contain stories like this one. Delaplaine presumably talked with others.

Delaplaine wanted to publish engraved portraits of all his subjects, so he commissioned Samuel F. B. Morse and other artists to paint them. (Eventually he opened a museum in Philadelphia he called a “National Panzographia.”) If a subject had already died, Delaplaine asked his sources about existing portraits. John Adams directed him to Hannah Wells as the owner of John Singleton Copley’s portrait of her father, so the biographer probably contacted her. But that still doesn’t clarify in which direction the information flowed.

TOMORROW: An alternate version of the tale.

Colonel Fenton’s “confidential and verbal message” for Samuel Adams

In 1865 William V. Wells published a biography of his great-grandfather: The Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams. It’s both a highly laudatory, one-sided portrait of Adams and a necessary source for any subsequent scholars.

Among the stories Wells told is one about an attempt by Gov. Thomas Gage to bribe Adams in the summer of 1774:

Gage was perhaps privately instructed in England to make the attempt, if an opportunity should offer. The occasion seemed to present itself after the dissolution of the Assembly in June of this year, for thenceforth Adams was deprived of his stipend as its Clerk; and this, added to the distress which the closing of the harbor had entailed upon the town, left him with scarcely the means of feeding his little family.

“By Colonel Fenton, who commanded one of the newly arrived regiments, the Governor sent a confidential and verbal message. The officer, after the customary salutations, stated the object of his visit. He said that an adjustment of the existing disputes was very desirable, as well as important to the interests of both. That he was authorized by Governor Gage to assure him that he had been empowered to confer upon him such benefits as would be satisfactory, upon the condition that he would engage to cease in his opposition to the measures of government, and that it was the advice of Governor Gage to him not to incur the further displeasure of his Majesty; that his conduct had been such as made him liable to the penalties of an act of Henry the Eighth, by which persons could be sent to England for trial, and, by changing his course, he would not only receive great personal advantages, but would thereby make his peace with the King.

[“]Adams listened with apparent interest to this recital, until the messenger had concluded. Then rising, he replied, glowing with indignation: ‘Sir, I trust I have long since made my peace with the King of kings. No personal consideration shall induce me to abandon the righteous cause of my country. Tell Governor Gage it is the advice of Samuel Adams to him no longer to insult the feelings of an exasperated people.’”

The passage in quotation marks was credited as “Narration by Mrs. Hannah Wells in 1818.” Hannah (Adams) Wells (1756-1821) was the politician’s last surviving child. Since her grandson William V. Wells wasn’t born until 1826, either she wrote down the story in this form or an intervening relative passed it along orally.

In one respect, at least, details got mangled. “Colonel Fenton” wasn’t an active British army officer who “commanded one of the newly arrived regiments.” John Fenton (d. 1785) was an army captain, born in Ireland, who retired at the end of the French and Indian War. In 1755 he had married Elizabeth Temple, a daughter of Robert Temple of Medford. Though officially a Customs officer at Albany, New York, in the 1760s, Fenton stayed in the Boston area and did little government work.

In 1772 Fenton received a large grant of land in Plymouth, New Hampshire, from Gov. John Wentworth. He moved there and started to promote a settlement. Wentworth granted him several civic and militia titles, so in April 1774 John Adams wrote of him as “Collonell Judge, Clerk, Captain Fenton.”

In that letter Adams relayed news from Fenton to Robert Treat Paine: “He says that the spirit runs like wild Fire, to the very Extremities of N. H[amp]shire and that their Government is as determined, as ours”—presumably to oppose whatever Parliament was planning in response to the Boston Tea Party.

The new Massachusetts governor, Gen. Gage, arrived the next month with the Boston Port Bill. By June Gage had shut down the Massachusetts legislature and the work of its clerk, Samuel Adams. (The house’s last act was to choose a delegation to the First Continental Congress. Since Adams was one of the delegates, he still had plenty to keep him busy.)

Fenton’s correspondence with John Adams suggests that he, though allied with the Crown, still had enough links to the Massachusetts Whigs to sound out Samuel Adams about toning it down a bit.

If indeed the conversation described in Wells’s biography ever happened. No one has found corroboration for it in Gage’s papers, other British documents, or contemporaneous New England sources.

TOMORROW: An earlier source?