“What says the psalm-singer and Johnny Dupe”?

I’ve been working through my thoughts on a page from the 8 May 1770 Nova Scotia Chronicle, lampooning the Boston Whigs in much the same way that John Mein’s Boston Chronicle had done the preceding October.

Mein got assailed on the street and then chased out of Boston for that, so he couldn’t have written similar items in the Boston Chronicle in early 1770 or this article published in Halifax.

The obvious candidate for carrying on Mein’s work in 1770 is his printing partner, John Fleeming.

Of course, Fleeming might have helped to compose the original character profiles in October 1769. But I sense a little more sloppiness in May 1770: references to characters never introduced, aliases too similar to each other.

One possible pointer to Fleeming is how in October 1769 the Boston Chronicle dubbed Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr., the “Lean Apothecary,” and Mein described him privately as:

One of the greatest miscreants that walks on the face of the Earth who has cheated & back bitten every Person with whom he ever had the least Connection—Father Mother & friend & more than once foxed his Wife &c &c &c.

In contrast, I can’t identify any of the characters in the May 1770 article as Church.

Three months after the Nova Scotia Chronicle publication, John Fleeming married Dr. Church’s sister Alice. Might the printer have held off on lambasting Dr. Church for the sake of his future wife?

Fleeming and Church joined the same new Freemason’s lodge in 1772. They were on friendly terms in 1775, corresponding across the siege lines (which was too friendly for the Patriot authorities). And in the letter that Church introduced as evidence at his inquiry before the Massachusetts General Court, Fleeming wrote:

What says the psalm-singer and Johnny Dupe to fighting British Troops now?

Those terms referred to Samuel Adams and John Hancock, and “John(ny) Dupe” appeared in both the October 1769 and May 1770 character profiles. While not proof that Fleeming created the Nova Scotia Chronicle item, that certainly points in his direction.

Back in the spring of 1770, Fleeming was under threat from the crowd and from Mein’s creditors, represented in Boston by Hancock. In June, the printer shut down the Boston Chronicle and took refuge in Castle William.

“Rescued from the Tyrants by the real Friends of Liberty”

Most of the “Characters in high Life, some in low” in the 8 May 1770 Nova Scotia Chronicle were derogatory.

Even when I’m not sure what this newspaper item said about someone (“Private Inspector of Glass and Shoes for a neighbouring Province, and grand Inspector of the original Curiosities in Noah’s Ark”), the tone seems negative.

But three personas stand out for being sympathetic.

I’ve mentioned two already: “Maria—…a worthy virtuous good Woman,” almost certainly points to Ruth Otis, wife of James Otis.

“John Plain Dealer, a Bookseller flying the Country,” was Boston Chronicle publisher John Mein, driven out of Boston by a gang of merchants.

And right after that entry appears:

John Dipe, persecuted by his Enemies for the glorious Liberty of the Press, rescued from the Tyrants by the real Friends of Liberty.

That was most likely Mein’s printing-house partner, John Fleeming. At the time of this publication he was still putting out the Boston Chronicle, but he had to give up in June as John Hancock took legal action to seize Mein’s goods.

These character profiles echo those John Mein had published in October 1769 as “Outlines of the characters of…the Well-Disposed.” Mein explicated those in a document filed in the papers of Customs official Joseph Harrison and now at Harvard’s Houghton Library.

In early 1774 the Public Ledger in London published dozens of essays signed “Sagittarius” sprinkled with similar gossip about the Boston Whigs. Those letters have long been credited to John Mein.

These profiles are also like the brief, catty identifications of the Boston Patriots chosen to promote the Continental Association in late 1774 published by the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1898. There’s no evidence about who wrote those, but Mein is certainly a candidate.

So my first instinct on seeing this page in the Nova Scotia Chronicle was that John Mein wrote it, too. But the timing doesn’t work.

According to John E. Alden’s article ”John Mein: Scourge of Patriots”:

Mein sailed from Boston on November 17 [1769] aboard the schooner Hope, on which he had first taken refuge. The vessel arrived at Halifax the following Friday, November 21, and was reported off Spithead about the middle of the following month.

Letters from London in January 1770 confirm that he was there. In fact, the book publisher Thomas Longman arranged for him to be confined in that city because of a debt.

The Nova Scotia Chronicle article appears to refer to Henderson Inches’s marriage to Sarah Jackson on 22 Feb 1770, as discussed yesterday. Mein couldn’t have written about that and left the article with printer Anthony Henry as he passed through Nova Scotia the previous November.

But equally, since a typical Atlantic crossing was six weeks, Mein couldn’t have received that news from Boston, incorporated it into an article in London, and sent that paper to Henry in Halifax in time to be printed in early May.

The “Characters in high Life” must have been composed in North America.

TOMORROW: A string of articles.

“The First BIBLE ever printed in America”?

As I quoted yesterday, Isaiah Thomas grew up as an apprentice printer hearing stories about how his master, Zechariah Fowle, had helped to secretly print a New Testament in the late 1740s.

Thomas also heard about a complete Bible completed by another Boston printing partnership, also surreptitiously, by 1752.

However, it’s worth noting that in his History of Printing in America (1810), Thomas admitted about the New Testament publication, “I have heard that the fact has been disputed.” While he claimed John Hancock had owned a copy of the full Bible, he couldn’t point to any extant examples or describe how they might be recognized.

Indeed, in 1770 another Boston printer publicly denied the existence of any previous American-made Bible. The 3 Dec 1770 Boston Evening-Post included a large advertisement that began:

The First BIBLE ever printed in America.

PROPOSALS
For printing by Subscription, in a most beautiful and elegant Manner, in two large Volumes Folio.
The HOLY BIBLE,
Containing the OLD and NEW TESTAMENTS,
Or a FAMILY BIBLE,
With Annotations and Parallel Scriptures.
By the late Rev. SAMUEL CLARK, A.M.

The following paragraphs promised large and elegant type and paper manufactured in America—or “superfine Imperial Paper” for those few ready to pay double for extra quality. The book was to be delivered in seventy installments of five pages each, starting two weeks after three hundred people had subscribed.

The printer making this offer was John Fleeming, late of the Boston Chronicle, now working out of “his PRINTING OFFICE, in Newbury-street, nearly opposite the WHITE-HORSE Tavern, Boston.” He had married Alice Church in August and was probably looking for a way to support a family.

The annotator Samuel Clarke (1626-1701) had been a Nonconformist minister in Britain who first published his edition of the Bible in 1690. That book was reprinted in Glasgow in 1765, which is probably how Fleeming, a Scotsman, got the text. The Rev. George Whitefield praised Clarke’s work, and of course Americans widely admired Whitefield. Indeed, almost half of Fleeming’s advertisement was a quotation from Whitefield.

Within the next two months, the same ad appeared in many other New England newspapers and in New York. However, Fleeming must not have collected the subscriptions he hoped for. In modern terms, his Kickstarter campaign failed. That edition was never published.

In 1782 the Philadelphia printer Robert Aitken likewise announced that he would print the first English Bible in America. And he actually completed the job that September. The Continental Congress and George Washington both praised the enterprise. Many copies survive.

Obviously Fleeming and Aitken didn’t acknowledge the editions that Isaiah Thomas had heard about. Thomas would have said that was because the Kneeland and Green Bible, and the Rogers and Fowle New Testament that preceded it, had been disguised as London publications in order to get around a special grant to certain British printers.

In different writings Thomas specified that the Boston Bible appeared in 1749 and carried the imprint “London: Printed by Mark Baskett, Printer to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty”—but that man didn’t start publishing Bibles until the 1760s. Was this a mistake for Thomas Baskett, who did issue Bibles in the 1740s? Or is its main significance as evidence that Thomas hadn’t actually seen the Bible he believed did exist?

Many book collectors have searched for the fake Baskett Bible that was actually printed in Boston. Presumably this means finding a Bible with a London Baskett imprint but with typography that didn’t match copies known in Britain.

However, only one candidate for such a book has been found, surfacing in 1895, according to an article in the Boston Globe. Three decades later, Dr. Charles L. Nichols’s close examination showed that was actually a genuine Baskett Bible from 1763 that someone had altered by removing one volume’s title page and clumsily changing the date on the other to 1752. See his findings delivered to the Colonial Society of Massachusetts.

Nonetheless, as Nichols stated in a follow-up paper for the American Antiquarian Society (P.D.F. download), he remained convinced that there was a Bible published surreptitiously in Boston, even if Thomas didn’t have all the details right.

Subsequent scholars, including Randolph C. Adams in The Colophon in 1935 and Harry Miller Lydenberg in the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America in 1954, were more skeptical. They concluded that Thomas’s report was simply wrong.

Perhaps the digitization of books will produce the anomalous copy of a Baskett Bible that collectors have sought. More likely, however, Zechariah Fowle just lied to little Isaiah about how he’d labored long and hard over a secret publication of the Bible.

The Marriage of John Fleeming and Alice Church

The 17 Aug 1770 issue of the New Hampshire Gazette of Portsmouth included this announcement:

Last Week was Married in this Town, by the Rev. Dr. HAVEN, Mr. JOHN FLEMING, of Boston, Printer, to Miss. ALICE CHURCH, Daughter of Mr BENJAMIN CHURCH, of the same Place, Merchant,----an agreeable young Lady, adorn’d with the Qualifications requisite to render that honorable State happy.

Records of the Rev. Samuel Haven’s meetinghouse specify that the couple were married on 8 August—250 years ago today.

Boston newspapers reprinted that news in the following week, with the 21 August Massachusetts Spy (cramped for space) leaving off the encomium to the bride but identifying her father as an “Auctioneer.”

Alice’s father, Benjamin Church, Sr., was indeed well known in Boston for his vendue-house. He wasn’t a native of the town but had been born in Bristol, Rhode Island, in 1704. His father died when he was two, and he grew up mostly in the household of his paternal grandfather, also named Benjamin Church, famous in New England for leading guerrilla war against Native nations in the late 1600s.

After graduating from Harvard College in 1727, the younger Benjamin Church went into business in Newport. He married Elizabeth Viall that October, and they had two children before she died in 1730. Church married again in 1732, to Hannah Dyer of Boston. He continued to develop his auction house in Newport.

Around 1740, Church moved his business and family to Boston. He owned various real estate, invested in the Land Bank, and established a new vendue-house in the South End. He specialized in selling cloth and other goods just off the ships. Church also served in public posts: as a minor town official and a deacon in the Rev. Mather Byles’s Hollis Street Meetinghouse. He penned Latin poems and a biography of his grandfather.

Benjamin and Hannah Church had eight children. Benjamin, Jr., was the first boy, born in 1734 and graduating from Harvard twenty years later. He became a physician and, by the late 1760s, one of the leaders among Boston’s Whigs, known for his genteel manners and satirical verse. In March 1770 Dr. Church performed an autopsy on the body of Crispus Attucks.

Alice Church was one of Benjamin and Hannah’s younger girls, baptized at the Hollis Street Meetinghouse in 1749. That meant she was around twenty-one years old when she married printer John Fleeming. He was older, but we don’t know by how much, only that he had been in business since arriving in Boston from Scotland in August 1764.

There are some mysterious aspects of this wedding. First, John Fleeming had been partner to John Mein in printing the Boston Chronicle. In that newspaper and subsequent political pamphlets, Mein sneered at Dr. Church the “Lean Apothecary.” Some have interpreted that to mean Dr. Joseph Warren, but Mein’s own handwritten “Key” to the pamphlet (now in the Sparks Manuscripts at Harvard) states he meant Church and further described him as:

One of the greatest miscreants that walks on the face of the Earth who has cheated & back bitten every Person with whom he ever had the least Connection—Father Mother & friend & more than once foxed his Wife &c &c &c

So right away we can ask how John Fleeming and Alice Church ever became friendly.

The next big question is why did they get married in New Hampshire. Massachusetts couples went over the border if they were eloping or needed to marry quickly because a baby was on the way. There’s no evidence to confirm either of those possibilities, but we know little about the Fleemings.

Church researcher E. J. Witek noted a possible third factor. John Fleeming had taken refuge on Castle Island at the end of June after shutting down the Chronicle, so he might not have felt safe going to a church in Boston. Still, I think he could have found a minister closer to home than Portsmouth.

John Fleeming was connected to the Sandemanian sect while Alice Church had been raised in the Congregationalist faith. They were married by a Congregationalist minister. But the Fleemings had a daughter named Alicia baptized at King’s Chapel, an Anglican church, on 17 July 1772 (and Dr. Benjamin Church was one of the baby’s sponsors). Again, questions but no answers.

The family link between John Fleeming and Dr. Benjamin Church became an issue of state in 1775 when Gen. George Washington and his staff realized that Church had tried to send a ciphered letter into Boston via his mistress, Mary (Brown) Wenwood. Deciphered, that letter turned out to be to Fleeming. In his defense, Church turned over a letter he had received from his brother-in-law. It said things like:

Ally joins me in begging you to come to Boston. . . . your sister is unhappy under the apprehension of your being taken and hanged for a rebel . . . If you cannot pass the lines, you may come in Capt. [James] Wallace, via Rhode Island, and if you do not come immediately, write me in this character, and direct your letter to Major [Edward] Cane on his Majesty’s service, and deliver it to Capt. Wallace, and it will come safe. . . . Your sister has been for running away; Kitty has been very sick, we wished you to see her; she is now picking up. I remain your sincere friend and brother…

That reads like a genuine familial friendship even though the men were on opposite sides of the war. And the link was forged 250 years ago today.

(While researching the Church genealogy, I realized that Dr. Church’s older half-sister Martha was stepmother to the teen-aged assistant teacher at the South Writing School in 1774, Andrew Cunningham. Both Dr. Church and young Cunningham, his step-half-nephew, are players in The Road to Concord, one helping to conceal the Boston militia train’s stolen cannon and the other helping Gen. Thomas Gage hunt for them.)

The Last of the Boston Chronicle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When Hancock Moved on Mein

John Mein arrived in Boston from Scotland in 1764. He first set up a shop with Robert Sandeman, though he wasn’t a member of the Sandemanian sect.

The next year, Mein took over the London Book Store on King Street, formerly co-owned by James Rivington. Later he became partners with printer John Fleeming, another Scotsman, to publish books.

Finally, in 1767 Mein and Fleeming launched a new newspaper, the Boston Chronicle. It soon became the voice of the royal government in Massachusetts. The Customs office gave Mein and Fleeming its printing business, providing them with financial support.

At the same time, Mein owed a lot of money to his London suppliers, the publisher and book dealer Thomas Longman (d. 1797) and the stationery firm Wright & Gill. He ordered more than £2,000 worth of books and paid off only £419. In that respect, Mein was a lot like other North American merchants.

Then came the non-importation controversy of 1768 and 1769. The Boston Chronicle published Customs documents showing that many of the town’s merchants, including several involved in enforcing the boycott, were still having goods shipped to them from Britain. Mein added some choice insults.

Meanwhile, in July 1769 Thomas Longman wrote to John Hancock, asking if he was willing to be the firm’s Boston agent in collecting the money Mein owed. To sue John Mein for debt? To seize his goods? To potentially send him to debtors’ prison? Why yes, Hancock was happy to.

It took a while for Hancock and Longman finalize their arrangement. Other Boston merchants acted more directly, threatening Mein and Fleeming in the middle of town on 28 Oct 1769, as described here. Mein went into hiding on Castle Island and sailed for home the next month.

Once in London, Mein called on Longman and told him how he’d had to shut down his Boston business. He promised to pay off his debt, no doubt asking for more time. But Longman was already moving against him.

On 1 Mar 1770, Hancock received legal powers of attorney from Longman and Wright & Gill. That same day, Hancock’s lawyer John Adams filed the paperwork to have deputy sheriffs seize Mein’s property in Boston—his stock of books and his printing equipment.

The Loyalist magistrate James Murray negotiated with Hancock and Sheriff Stephen Greenleaf. He appears to have wanted the suit to be handled in London courts, far from Boston juries. Those discussions were going on in the same week as the Boston Massacre.

Murray’s action allowed Fleeming to continue the Boston Chronicle, “much to the Surprize and Disappointment of Mr. H—— and his party,” he wrote.

But Hancock took all he could. On 18 May, 250 years ago today, he wrote to Longman:

Your favours of Dec. 2d. 1769, & Jany 3d. 1770 are now before me, & duly note the Contents. In Consequence of the Rect. of the former, as Mr. Mein was absent, I immediately attached everything I could find of his Effects for the benefit of you & Wright & Gill & the matter is now in the Law.

The Effects are in the Hands of the Sheriff, and as soon as it has gone thro’ the Law, & the Effects turn’d into money, the neat proceeds shall be remitted you, and you will determine the settlement between you and Messrs. Wright & Gill. Tho’ I fear even the Whole of his Effects will fall vastly short of the Debts, but I have got all & could have no more.

You will please, as I am now greatly hurried, to present my respects to Mess Wright & Gill & acquaint them. I will render them every service in my power & will write them by next opportunity. Cannot You get further Security of Mr. Mein in London. You may rely I will do all in my power for your Interest in this or any other matter.

Around the same time, across the Atlantic, Longman had Mein arrested.

COMING UP: Wending through the courts.

“A TRAGEDY (Not acted here these seventy-eight years)”

On 1 Feb 1770, a curious notice appeared in the Boston Chronicle, the twice-weekly newspaper published by Scottish immigrants John Mein and John Fleeming.

It read:

Intended speedily to be acted
By a Company of young Tragedians,
A TRAGEDY
(Not acted here these seventy-eight years,)
called the
W I T C H E S,
With many Alterations and Improvements.

The scenery, decorations, &c. for the exhibition to be entirely new, and supplied by Messieurs J——n, L——, B——d and Company.

N.B. Notice will be given for the Rehersal, by ringing of the Town bells, when the Actors are desired to meet at FUNNY-HALL.—But as the young Gentlemen have lately been interrupted at some of their Rehearsals by the intrusion of Improper persons, it is desired that NONE but such as are to be REAL Actors will attend, and that NO ONE will presume to go behind the scenes without a TICKET from the Managers.

The names of the Managers, to whom Gentlemen may apply, with the Dramatis Personae, will be in a future Advertisement.

This announcement was fake news, which is one reason I’m discussing it on 1 April. But the item also carried a serious political message that genteel Boston readers of the day would have recognized immediately.

The item used phrasing for theatrical entertainments that often appeared in newspapers from outside New England. Since theater was illegal in Massachusetts, right away this ad had an edge.

The title of the putative play, “the WITCHES,” and the reference to “seventy-eight years” ago were a clear allusion to the witch trials of 1792, an embarrassing episode in Massachusetts history.

The gentlemen said to be furnishing the sets, “Messieurs J——n, L——, B——d and Company,” were William Jackson, Theophilus Lillie, John Bernard, and the other shopkeepers defying the non-importation committee that winter.

“Funny Hall” was clearly a disdainful reference to Faneuil Hall, seat of the town government. The “Town bells” referred to the customary way of gathering a crowd—either to fight a fire or, as this item hints, to start a riot.

In sum, this item in the form of a theatrical advertisement was satirizing the town’s non-importation committee and its attempts to put pressure on the merchants who were refusing to cooperate. The last line, promising to name the managers of this enterprise, echoed how the Boston Chronicle published a lot of embarrassing and insulting material about the Whigs in 1769.

When I first read this item, I interpreted the “company of young Tragedians” as a reference to the schoolboy picketers outside importers’ shops. But it actually appeared a week before the first picket line was reported at Jackson’s Sign of the Brazen Head.

It seems unlikely that Mein and Fleeming were privy to the Whigs’ plans for those picket lines. And I read the evidence to say the schoolboys’ participation developed over time and was largely self-directed. That means the “young Tragedians” referred to the crowd meeting at Faneuil Hall in January—which would have gotten the Whigs even angrier.

“The first thought was to hang him up at once”

When Ebenezer Richardson fired his musket out of window of his house on 22 Feb 1770, as recounted yesterday, that gun was loaded with “Swan shot.” Those were lead pellets ”about the bigness of large peas”—larger than “Goose shot” and “duck shot” and similar to a typical pistol bullet of the time.

Several slugs of swan shot were enough to knock down one of the young boys mobbing his house. The Boston Evening-Post reported, “The child fell, but was taken up and carried into a neighboring house, where all the surgeons, within call, were assembled.” Another boy, nineteen years old, was wounded in the hand and thigh.

The men gathered on that North End street had largely been standing back, watching the boys attack Richardson’s house. Now they took action. Again from the Evening-Post:

The people, on hearing the report of the gun, seeing one wounded and another as they thought killed, got into the new brick meeting house and rang the bell; on which they soon had company enough to beset the house front and rear…

According to an anonymous letter sympathetic to Richardson, the “vast Concourse of people…broke down the side of his house & when they had made a breach wide enough several entered.”

Two witnesses testified that when the crowd yelled at Richardson that he had killed a boy, he answered, “I don’t care what I’ve done.” Edward Procter said, “He had a Cutlass drawn, and resisted. He said he would resign himself to proper Officer.” But there was no magistrate on the scene, and no police officer in Boston. People expected to band together to capture criminals, just as they all fought fires or trained for war. They pressed in.

Some men “wrenched a gun” from George Wilmot, the Customs service sailor who had come to help Richardson. They found it “heavily charged with powder, and crammed with 149 goose and buck shot.” Wilmot protested that “he could not have fired for the Screw pin was gone.”

Soon the crowd dragged Richardson out to the street. According to acting governor Thomas Hutchinson, “The first thought was to hang him up at once and a halter was brought and a sign post picked upon,” even though both of the wounded boys were still alive.

But by then William Molineux had arrived on the scene. He was normally the most aggressive of the Whig leaders, but at this moment he saved Richardson from lynching. Even Hutchinson acknowledged, “one who is supposed to have stirred up the tumultuous proceedings took great pains and prevented it.”

Molineux convinced the crowd to carry the two men to John Ruddock, justice of the peace and boss of the North End. The Evening-Post stated that Ruddock

was pleased to send them to Faneuil Hall, under a sufficient guard, where three other magistrates, Richard Dana, Edmund Quincy and Samuel Pemberton, Esquires with Mr. Ruddock, took their examination before at least a thousand people and and committed them.

All those magistrates were solid Whigs, of course.

The Boston News-Letter and Boston Chronicle both published issues that Thursday. Their printers—Richard Draper and John Fleeming, respectively—scrambled to add the latest news to the bottom of the local round-ups. The 22 February News-Letter stated:

This Instant we hear that one Richardson having attempted to destroy some Effigies in the North End, the Lads beat him off into his House, and broke his Windows, upon which he fired among them, mortally wounded one Boy, & slightly wounded two or three others. Richardson is now under Examination.

The Boston Chronicle leaned more to the Crown:

This forenoon, a boy of about 14 years of age, was mortally wounded, and two others slightly wounded by a shot from a musket, fired out of a house at the north end.—Two persons, who were in the house from whence the gun was fired, are now under examination at Faneuil Hall.

The Chronicle was printed at 2:00 P.M., meaning the magistrates’ proceeding extended well into the afternoon. Already people expected one of the boys to die.

Eventually those justices determined there was enough evidence to charge Richardson and Wilmot with a crime—whether assault or murder depended on whether that badly wounded boy lived or died. The next step was to convey the prisoners from Faneuil Hall to the jail on Court Street.

According to an anonymous Crown report, “when the Sheriff [Stephen Greenleaf] was carrying them to Goal, several attempts were made to gett a Rope round Richardsons neck.” The Evening-Post report obliquely admitted the same: “The numberless affronts and abuses both these persons had heaped on the inhabitants, exasperated them to such a pitch that, had not gentlemen of influence interposed, they would never have reached the prison.”

At the end of the afternoon, Ebenezer Richardson and George Wilmot were finally in the Boston jail. People turned their attention back to the house where doctors had come to treat the young boy.

TOMORROW: “The king of terrors.”

“A young Lad (belonging to the Office) fir’d a Gun”

The report of someone inside John Mein and John Fleeming’s print shop firing a gun at Boston’s first tar-and-feathers procession on 28 Oct 1769 raises a number of questions.

First is the matter of how many guns were involved. Edes and Gill’s Boston Gazette reported “a Gun was fired from thence and two others snap’d at them [i.e., someone fired blank shots] just as they got by.” However, the pro-governor Boston News-Letter stated simply that “a Gun was fired from one of the Windows.” So was there one shot or three?

A Crown informant named George Mason reported this version of events:

As soon as the Mob had got as far as Mr. Meins Printing Office and dwelling House (which is near Liberty Tree) they made a Halt, and as I’m very credibly informed endeavour’d to force the Door (I’m certain of this they broke the Windows) upon which a young Lad (belonging to the Office) fir’d a Gun loaded with nothing but Powder with a view to intimidate them from any further violence, this had not the desired effect, for immediately after they recover’d from their fright, they burst the Door open in earnest, and likewise forc’d the Locks and Doors of the inner appartments in search of Mein. Some mischief was done to his Books &c and two Guns were taken away by Persons in the Neighborhood who are well known to Mr. Meins Servants

The Boston Gazette stated: “they bro’t off three Guns, two of them well charg’d, as Evidence.” So it looks like both sides agree that at least one shot was fired, the crowd confiscated at least two guns, and no one was injured.

The next question is who fired that shot. Mason identified the shooter as “a young Lad (belonging to the Office)”—i.e., a printer’s apprentice or devil. The newspapers said the crowd found no one inside the house, so Mason apparently had inside information.

Isaiah Thomas wrote later that Nathaniel Mills was an apprentice to John Fleeming. He was a week shy of twenty years old during this riot, however, and therefore probably not still considered a “young Lad.”

Another possibility, though I’ve found no direct evidence, was John Howe (1754-1835). He had just turned fifteen in October 1769, still too young for militia service. I can’t show that he worked for Fleeming, but he did become a Sandemanian, and Fleeming was the only Boston printer of that faith. If I were writing a historical novel, I’d put young Howe into that building.

The Boston Gazette report is clear that the shot from the print shop caused people in the procession to break in. Mason’s account says the opposite: when members of the crowd “endeavour’d to force the Door,” a frightened boy inside fired the gun. Both sides had every reason to present themselves as the party under threat, indeed many incentives to think of themselves as the party under threat, so I don’t see any way to work that out.

It’s notable that the Boston Gazette made no mention at all of the merchants’ confrontation with John Mein earlier in the day. That makes that paper’s claim that someone fired a gun “for what Reason we know not, as no injury seemed designed them,” more than a little disingenuous. When the whole town was buzzing that your boss, already unpopular, had fired a pistol recklessly in public and was being hunted by the authorities, you could reasonably worry about being injured.

The Boston Post-Boy also declined to report in detail on the confrontation with Mein in its 30 October issue, saying, “as we are informed a Warrant has been issued upon the Occasion, we do not think it proper at present to give a particular relation of the Circumstances of that Affair.” That looks like a cop-out, but at least those printers gave a legal reason.

One last observation about the gunshot from the printing office: this was the third instance of gunfire in Boston in one week of October 1769. There would be more, most memorably in late February and early March of 1770. In all those cases, the shots were fired by employees or supporters of the Crown. Not until late 1774, as the Massachusetts Government Act provoked violence against mandamus Councilors, did any Whig or Patriot fire at a supporter of the royal government. (It’s not clear what James Otis, Jr., was shooting at when he fired out his windows in April 1770.)

That pattern reflects how the Crown supporters were heavily outnumbered. The soldiers marching home from the Neck on 24 October were under assault from a crowd, albeit one trying to enforce a writ. Four days later, John Mein was surrounded by a crowd. The young lad inside Mein’s office apparently felt threatened by a crowd. Months later, Ebenezer Richardson saw his house being attacked, and Pvt. Edward Montgomery had just been knocked down by something thrown from a mob when he shouted to his fellow soldiers to shoot on 5 Mar 1770.

Firing a single-shot musket without a bayonet was a desperate move. It raised the level of violence and the anger of the other side while leaving the shooter essentially defenseless for the next minute at least. Those gunshots show how desperate some Bostonians were feeling.

COMING UP: George Gailer’s experience.

“If he appeared abroad he should be made a Sacrifice”

As described yesterday, late in the afternoon of 28 Oct 1769, a group of Boston merchants approached the Boston Chronicle printer John Mein on King Street in Boston.

Mein was an increasingly vocal supporter of the royal government, in turn supported by contracts with the Customs service. The merchants were part of the non-importation movement boycotting British goods—except, as Mein’s newspaper revealed, when men who had signed onto that boycott imported goods anyway. One merchant, Samuel Dashwood, had particular reason to be upset with Mein, who had dubbed him “the Grunting Captain.”

The conversation became a confrontation and quickly turned violent. Mein pulled out a pistol and backed toward the army’s main guard, where he could find redcoat protection. (It was in the building to the left of the Old State House in the Massachusetts Historical Society’s painting above.) As the printer reached the doorstep of that building, a tailor and militia officer named Thomas Marshall swung an iron shovel at his back. That’s when someone fired a shot.

According to Mein, the shot came from a pistol held by his printing partner:

Mr. [John] Fleeming, who was at a little distance, on seeing him [Marshall] coming up, run to us also, but before he came near Marshal had made the blow and was running off; however, Fleeming struck at him with a stick he had in his left hand, which just touched Marshals Back, Fleeming having missed his Blow reeled forwards, and in endeavouring to recover himself, grasping his hand close, a Pistol he had in his right hand accidently went off, but the ball went into ground & did no harm:

However, most people watching from King Street believed the shot came from Mein’s own gun. Even shopkeeper Elizabeth Cumings, who was on the printer’s side politically, wrote that he “fired a pistel he had in his hand, loded only with powder.”

Furthermore, the shot did cause a little damage. Merchant John Rowe wrote that Mein “wounded a Grenadier of the 29th Regiment in the Arm.” A report in the Boston News-Letter said the shot “tore the Sleeve of a Soldier’s Coat; but whether with a Bullet or only a Wad we cannot say.”

For that offense, some of the Boston Whigs rushed to sympathetic magistrate Richard Dana and secured a warrant to arrest Mein “for having put innocent People in Bodily Fear.”

The printer insisted the whole thing had been a set-up, the mob preconcerted:

their plan was to get me into the Custody of the Officer, & it being then dark, to knock on the head; & then their usual sayings might have been repeated again, that it was done by Boys & Negroes, or by Nobody.

Crown informant George Mason also reported hearing talk that once “Mr. Mein…was in Custody of the Civil Officers,…it was intended the Mob should rescue him from their hands, and deal with him as they themselves should think proper.” That was surely wild speculation, but the gunshot gave the Whigs all the legal reason they needed to pursue the man.

Once Justice Dana issued the warrant, Deputy Sheriff Benjamin Cudworth and a constable went into the main guard. Along with them went merchant William Molineux and officeholder Samuel Adams, both top Whig organizers. They spent “above an hour searching” before giving up.

Mein was hiding “above the room in the Garret,” he wrote. “I made my escape in a Soldiers Dress to Col. [William] Dalrymple’s.” From there he slipped “on board of his Majestys Schooner [Hope, commanded by] Lt. [George] Dawson,” later to “the Rose Man of War” under Capt. Benjamin Caldwell. Meanwhile, he wrote, the mob “went to the South End, attacked the House & Printing Office, broke open the great Gate, & our other Doors, and our Ware room:”

Mein had to lie low. Elizabeth Cumings declared, “the people are so exasperated they would sertenly kill him if he appered.” That year’s Pope Night processions on 6 November (because the fifth was a Sunday) featured Mein as the villain hanged in effigy. According to acting governor Thomas Hutchinson, Mein told him

he intended to pursue in the law the persons who had assaulted him; but he was unable to do it, having been threatened that if he appeared abroad he should be made a Sacrifice: And he therefore applied to me for protection and to call in the military power for that purpose.

Hutchinson declined to use military force that way and dissuaded Mein from suing. In a short time witnesses spoke up about the printer defending himself. According to province secretary Andrew Oliver, “Mr. Danas Son it is said was a Witness of the Transaction.” The warrant against Mein was withdrawn.

Nonetheless, the printer didn’t feel safe in Boston. Mein gave Fleeming a power of attorney to continue running the Boston Chronicle and the London Book-Store. He collected letters from Hutchinson to the Secretary of State, Lord Hillsborough; from magistrate James Murray to his sister, Elizabeth (Murray Campbell) Smith; and from secretary Oliver to Gov. Francis Bernard. He sailed out of Boston harbor on H.M.S. Hope on 17 November.

Though Mein still had property and legal entanglements in Boston, and he continued to write about Boston politics, he never returned to the town. The merchants had driven away their sharpest critic.

TOMORROW: More violence that same night.

A Sestercentennial Stand-Off on King Street

By publishing Customs house documents that embarrassed the Whig merchants of Boston, John Mein knew that he made himself unpopular.

In fact, a confidential informant, the painter George Mason, told Customs Collector Joseph Harrison on 20 Oct 1769 that Mein was “oblig’d to go Arm’d, and ’tis but a few Nights since that two Persons who resembled him pretty much were attack’d in a narrow Alley with Clubs, and would in all probability have lost their Lives if the Mistakes had not been timely discover’d.”

Mein’s insulting “Characters” of top Whigs, published in his Boston Chronicle newspaper on 26 October and republished in a pamphlet two days later, pushed some of those enemies over the edge. Toward the end of the day on Saturday, 28 October, Mein and his printing partner John Fleeming, were walking along King Street.

Merchant captain Samuel Dashwood (1729?-1792) confronted Mein, angry at being called “the Grunting Captain.” With him were other Whig merchants, such as William Molineux (1713?-1774), Edward Davis (1718-1784), and Duncan Ingraham (1726-1811). Two of those men were in their forties, the other two in their fifties, but they were about to behave like the twenty- and thirtysomething gentlemen who had thrust themselves into the Otis-Robinson fight the month before.

According to Mein, writing on 5 November:

Davis first made a push at me with his Cane which struck me on the left side of the belly, and has left a Bloody Contussion, which now, 8 days after, still remains with great hardness all round; on being struck I immediately took a Pistol out of my Pocket, cocked, and presented it; instantly a large Circle was formed

As one would expect.

Mein, pointing his pistol, backed toward the main guard near the Town House (now the Old State House). “I often told them I would shoot the first Man who touched me,” he declared. Fleeming followed. The crowd, still at a distance, grew larger. Shopkeeper and importer Elizabeth Cumings, visiting a friend on King Street, heard “a violent skreeming Kill him, kill him” outside. Mein said people were throwing things. He spotted selectman Jonathan Mason within the crowd.

The main guard was the building where the army organized its sentries and patrols, where soldiers on duty that night were gathered. As the printer approached, an officer recognized him and “desired the Centries to keep their Posts clear” of people. Those soldiers probably stepped forward and presented their bayonets. Mein began “cooly stepping up the Guardroom steps.”

Thomas Marshall (1719-1800, shown above) didn’t want to see Mein get away. He was a tailor with a shop on King Street, but he was better known in Boston as the colonel in charge of the town’s militia regiment. Mein listed Marshall among the men who had first confronted him, but it seems just as likely that he came out of his store after he heard the commotion.

The colonel grabbed “a large Iron Shovel” from the hardware shop of Daniel and Joseph Waldo, the sign of the Elephant. He slipped around the sentries and came at Mein from the rear, swinging the shovel. Mein stated, “the Blow cut thro’ my Coat & Waistcoat, and made a Wound of about two Inches long in my left Shoulder.”

And then a gun went off.

TOMORROW: Manhunt.

“Pre-Revolutionary Newspaper Wars” in Jamaica Plain, 4 Dec.

On Tuesday, 4 December, I’ll speak at the Loring-Greenough House in Jamaica Plain on the topic of “Boston’s Pre-Revolutionary Newspaper Wars (and What They May Tell Us About Today’s News Media).”

This is part of the site’s “Tuesday in the Parlor” lecture series. Here’s the description we came up with:

In the period leading up to the Revolution, colonial journalists produced a lively array of print publications aimed at keeping the populace informed about—or inflamed by—the political news of the day.

On the left were The Boston Gazette and The Massachusetts Spy while The Boston News-Letter, The Boston Chronicle, and Boston Weekly Post-Boy espoused viewpoints from the right. The Boston Evening-Post tried to maintain a centrist voice. The newspaper business could be a nasty and dangerous one, prompting rivalries between printers and occasional violence.

Join us for J. L. Bell’s enlightening talk about the how America’s early news medium operated in the volatile pre-Revolutionary environment and the significance of this history for today’s information media.

We’re scheduled to start promptly at 7:00 P.M. After the talk, there will be a book signing and light refreshments.

Tickets for this event are $5 for members of the Loring-Greenhough House and $10 for the public, plus a small processing fee to Eventbrite. Folks who join now will of course enjoy discounted tickets for events all the coming year.

“The Liberty Song” with a “Set of Notes”

Last month I wrote a few postings about “The Liberty Song” appearing in 1768 and quickly becoming popular among American Whigs.

I also wrote a series about how John Mein and John Fleeming’s Boston Chronicle, launched in late 1767, was quickly branded as a newspaper that supported the royal government. Reprinting an unflattering remark about Whig hero William Pitt and then physically attacking one of the printers of the radical Boston Gazette was bound to have that effect.

Today I’m going to cross those two narrative streams.

The first Boston newspaper to publish “The Liberty Song” was Edes and Gill’s Boston Gazette on 18 July. The Fleet brothers’ Boston Evening-Post, also Whiggish but not as strident, followed on 22 August. And the third set of Boston printers to issue the song were…Mein and Fleeming.

The issue of the Chronicle published on 5 September devoted a full two-thirds of a page to the eight-verse version of the song that had already appeared in the rival papers. The lines were nicely laid out with large type and lots of white space. The Massachusetts Historical Society features that page here.

In the upper right corner is an advertisement revealing why Mein and Fleeming gave so much space to that song. It says:

The preceding NEW and FAVOURITE
LIBERTY SONG,
Neatly engraved on COPPER-PLATE, the size of half a sheet of Paper,
Set to MUSIC for the VOICE,
And to which is also added,
A SET of NOTES adapted to the GERMAN FLUTE and VIOLIN,
is just published and to be SOLD at the
LONDON Book-store, King-street, Boston,
Price SIXPENCE Lawful single, and FOUR SHILLINGS Lawful, the dozen.

In sum, those printers were using their newspaper to promote their broadside.

Below that advertisement for the broadside was another for Bickerstaff’s Almanack, which Mein and Fleeming would publish at the end of the year. When that almanac appeared, it also included the lyrics and music of “The Liberty Song,” as shown at the top (image courtesy of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts).

Twelve months later, Mein and Fleeming issued their Bickerstaff’s Almanack for 1770. That included “The Massachusetts Song of Liberty,” Dr. Benjamin Church’s Whiggish parody of the Loyalist parody of the original. It looks like the printers removed the type around the musical staffs and replaced it with the new title and lyrics. The American Antiquarian Society shows how that looked. (Experts who’ve seen both versions up close could say whether the type was set or engraved, and thus how easy it was to replace.)

My bet is that Mein had brought with him from Britain some engraved lines of music for “Hearts of Oak,” already a popular British song. When he realized that Bostonians were singing “The Liberty Song” to the same tune, he seized the opportunity to be the first and only printer in America selling the words and music together.

Why did Mein and Fleeming publish lyrics which were increasingly at odds with their editorial stance and their patrons’ politics? Because those Whiggish lyrics undoubtedly sold better in Massachusetts. “The Liberty Song” had become so popular that even Loyalist printers couldn’t resist that demand.

“The most infamous and reproachful Invectives”

Talking about “The Liberty Song” and its parodies, all from the second half of 1768, gets us a little ahead of the Sestercentennial. Here’s what happened in Boston 250 years ago today.

Back on 21 Dec 1767, John Mein and John Fleeming had launched the Boston Chronicle, the town’s first new newspaper in years. Relatively recent arrivals from Scotland, those men promised to publish more material from Britain than competitors.

Their first issue also promised to be unbiased, but it included a snide remark about the Earl of Chatham, calling the former William Pitt “a miserable monument of wrecked ambition.” Pitt was a great hero to American Whigs, who weren’t aware of how his inaction was frustrating his colleagues in London. Almost a month later, the 18 January Boston Gazette carried a response signed “Americus”:

When I read the Proposals, for publishing the Boston Chronicle, I tho’t on the Plan with Satisfaction, hoping thereby much good would accrue to America in general, and to this province in particular; with Pleasure I also noted the judicious Advice given Messi’rs Mein and Fleeming by their Friends of Taste. . . .

But to the Surprize of many, how are they fallen off from their own Purposes, and the excellent Caution of their Benefactors—Instead of giving impartial Accounts concerning Affairs at Home, and the unhappy Disputes lately arisen between the greatest Men of the Nation; they have made Choice of, or printed under Guise of being taken from the London Papers, the most infamous and reproachful Invectives, that ever was invented against the worst of Traitors to their King and Country, and who are these that are thus censur’d? Why, men held in the highest esteem and veneration in the British Parliament. Patriots and Friends and Deliverers of America from Oppression. He who nobly vindicated her Cause, almost against the whole Senate, who cast behind him all Lucre of Gain, when it came in Competition with the Good of his Country, and sacrific’d his Family-Connections and Interest to the publick Welfare. He that through real Infirmities hardly stood, (not to cover his politic Schemes and Ambition as his Enemies would insinuate) but stood though tottering, and in the Cause of Liberty made that heroic Speech before the august House of Commons, in Opposition to the Stamp-Act, sufficient to eternize his Fame, and ought to be written in Letters of Gold to perpetuate his Memory.

Could the Sons of America be ingrateful, or countenance the greatest Falsities, rais’d only to prejudice their best Friends and Benefactors—God forbid! Let that Dishonor stain with the blackest Infamy the Jacobite Party—And though Invectives should be daily thrown out,  let us keep our Integrity to the Confusion of our Enemies; who, for a long Time have exerted their Power to shake the Props of our Constitution, and bring a free people into Bondage, thereby to satisfy their more than common Avarice, &c.

Those were fighting words! Well, one word in particular:

Jacobite

The Jacobites supported the Stuart claimants to the British throne rather than the Hanover line. The incursion of Bonnie Prince Charlie (shown above) in 1745 showed that the Stuarts’ strongest support was in Scotland. And Mein and Fleeming were from Scotland.

In sum, “Americus” was insinuating that the Boston Chronicle printers were disloyal to the British government because of their ethnicity.

TOMORROW: Mein couldn’t let that go.

The Boston Chronicle “unbiassed by prejudice or party”?

When in October 1767 John Mein and John Fleeming circulated the proposal to publish a new weekly newspaper in Boston, their plan started with a long list of things “their friends” wanted to see in it.

That list concluded by quoting those advance subscribers as saying:

We sincerely wish you success, and will use our utmost endeavours to insure it to you, but unbiassed by prejudice or party, we will boldly claim the FREEDOM of FRIENDSHIP, and leave you with the following advice, which, we hope, nay, which we are persuaded, you will follow.

We suppose that you intend to study your own interests, if you will do it effectually, be of no party; publish and propagate with the greatest industry whatever may promote the general good.—Be independent;—your interest is intimately connected with this noble virtue;—if you depart from this, you must sink from the esteem of the public, to the partial praise of a party, who, when their purpose is served or defeated, may, perhaps, desert you; and then, how can you expect that those, whom you have reviled, will support you.

The first issue of the Boston Chronicle, dated 21 December, contained no advertising. It was eight pages long—twice as long as a regular issue of its competitors. Those pages were filled with:

• A message to new readers, subscribers, and advertisers.
• The first “Letter from a Farmer in Philadelphia,” already credited to “John Dickenson.”
• A recent description of Constantinople by Lord Baltimore.
• A essay by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu on marriage. (This was the longest article.)
• Political news from London.
• A discussion of planting grape vineyards in North America.
• “A Traveller’s opinion of the English in general.”
• A report on Linnaeus’s investigation of “smut in Wheat,” and an English farmer’s response.
• A friendly exchange between the royal governor of Georgia and the legislature there.
• A report on a convention of Anglican clergy in North America.

You can read the entire issue here, courtesy of newspaper collector Todd Andrlik.

The London political news proved problematic. It was dated 19 September, as the Duke of Grafton was trying to hold together a coalition government after Charles Townshend’s unexpected death. Among many other things the article said:

We are told the Dukes of Newcastle, Bedford, Northumberland [that would be Earl Percy’s father] and Richmond, the Marquis of Rockingham, the Earls of Halifax, Sandwich, Gower and Shelburne, the Right Hon. Mr. [William] Dowdeswell, and Mr. [Henry Seymour] Conway, and Isaac Barre and Edmund Burke, Esqrs. are all included in the intended new ministry.

It is confidently reported that the E. of C[hatham]’s gout is only political, and that notwithstanding his late indisposition he will soon appear on the scene of action and struggle hard to guide the reins of government, but having lost the confidence of the people, whom he has deceived by his contradictions and changes, and never having been a favorite with the nobility, whom he always affected to dispise, he will while he exists be considered by every disinterested man as a miserable monument of wrecked ambition.

That last paragraph was about the elder William Pitt (shown above), who had set up that coalition government and then receded from it in a cloud of depression and gout. The report went on to praise the Marquess of Rockingham to the skies for how he had handled the North American opposition to the Stamp Act—so much so that it’s clear this item was written by someone from his faction. Bostonians thus got to see the maneuvering between two sets of London Whigs: those loyal to Pitt and those loyal to Rockingham.

Boston’s Whigs could have taken that article alongside the Dickinson essay as confirmation the Chronicle was sharing views from different sides. They could have reflected that they preferred Rockingham, despite his government’s Declaratory Act, over either the Tories had instituted the Stamp Act or the latest government’s Townshend duties. But all that Boston political leaders saw in the Boston Chronicle was the criticism of their hero, Pitt.

The Launch of the Boston Chronicle

This is the Sestercentennial, or 250th anniversary, of the first issue of the Boston Chronicle.

For a decade Boston had been a four-newspaper town. The oldest weekly was Richard Draper’s Boston News-Letter, founded in 1704 and almost always allied with the royal establishment. It appeared on Thursdays.

On Mondays three other papers came out: Edes and Gill’s radical Boston Gazette and the more middle-of-the-road Boston Evening-Post from the Fleet brothers and Boston Post-Boy from Green and Russell.

The Boston Chronicle joined the crowd on Mondays. It offered people a nicer reading experience with handsome typography and a little more white space on its pages. Starting in early 1769 the paper really shook things up by coming out on both Mondays and Thursdays.

The men behind the Chronicle were John Mein and John Fleeming. Unlike the printers of Boston’s other newspapers, they weren’t from old New England families. They had both moved into the colony from Scotland in 1764. Furthermore, they were both adherents of the Sandemanian or Glasite sect, which New England Congregationalists viewed with suspicion.

Mein was a bookseller while Fleeming was a printer. Together they published pamphlets, almanacs, and other items as well as the newspaper. Mein’s London Bookshop also functioned as a lending library; for “One Pound, Eight Shillings, lawful Money, per Year,” patrons could borrow any volume from his list of 1,200 titles. And by any volume, that meant one volume at a time.

Perhaps because of their closer ties to Britain, perhaps because of their church’s teaching to obey political authorities, perhaps because of political ideology, Mein and Fleeming’s Chronicle supported the Crown more strongly than any other Boston newspaper, even the News-Letter. The very first issue included an essay from London that harshly criticized William Pitt, a darling of American Whigs.

For a while the Boston Chronicle looked like a good business proposition. The Customs house and friends of the royal government supported the paper during the debates over non-importation and the Townshend duties. That support, in the form of printing contracts and advertisements, was probably what allowed the newspaper to start coming out twice a week.

In turn, Mein wrote and Fleeming printed slashing attacks on the Boston Whigs. Eventually Mein lost that fight (physically and fiscally) and had to retreat to Britain. Fleeming closed the newspaper on 25 June 1770 but stayed in town until the evacuation of 1776. Though the Boston Chronicle lasted only two and a half years, in that time it was a crucial voice in Massachusetts’s political debate.

(Front page of the 21 Mar 1768 Boston Chronicle above courtesy of Todd Andrlik’s Reporting the Revolutionary War website.)

Digging through Harvard’s Digital Papers

I rather like my segue yesterday from the Stamp Act confrontation unfolding 250 years ago to Harvard’s new Colonial North American Project.

As the university announced, its archivists are digitizing all the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century documents in several different collections. With 2,400 objects documents available for viewing, the project is still in an early stage.

For example, here’s a notebook of Prof. John Winthrop’s meteorological observations for the mid-1740s. The professor kept those up to his death in 1779, meaning we have detailed weather records from just outside Boston for all the important days of the pre-Revolutionary turmoil and the siege of Boston. But the later notebooks don’t appear to be digitized yet.

Winthrop’s astronomical studies probably explain why the papers of him and his wife Hannah, who were firm establishment Whigs, include almanacs from the Loyalist printers John Mein and John Fleeming. But maybe they were just intrigued by the scientific reports on the covers of those publications, about giants in South America and a furious wild beast in France.

There’s a lot of other visual material in the online collection, more easily reproduced that way than in print. Harvard students learned how to take surveys and sketch buildings as part of their mathematics courses, so more than one left a plan of Cambridge common,

William Tudor, Jr.’s mathematics notebook shows him using “Genl. Warren’s monument on Bunker Hill” to calculate heights in 1795, illustrated above. A couple of decades later, Tudor helped to organize the initial drive to create today’s Bunker Hill Monument on the same hilltop.

“Mean is the man, M—N is his Name”

This is the Fifth of November, which Bostonians of the mid-1700s celebrated as “Pope Night.” Young men and boys would parade with what they called pageantry and we’d call floats: wagons decorated with giant puppets representing the Pope, the Devil, and political enemies of the day.

In 1769, the 5th was a Sunday, so Pope Night was piously observed on 6 November. Here’s a description of the pageantry from the 13 November issue of the Boston Evening-Post:

Description of the POPE, 1769.

Toasts on the Front of the large Lanthorn.
  Love and Unity. — The American Whig. —
  Confusion to the Torries, and a total Banishment to Bribery and Corruption.

On the right side of the same. —An Acrostick.
J nsulting Wretch, well him expose,
O ’er the whole World his Deeds disclose,
H ell now gaups wide to take him in,
N ow he is ripe, Oh Lump of Sin.
M ean is the Man, M—N is his Name,
E nough he’s spread his hellish Fame,
I nfernal Furies hurl his Soul,
N ine Million Times from Pole to Pole.

Who was John Mein, whose name was spelled out in that acrostic? He was publisher of the Boston Chronicle, the most vociferous pro-Crown newspaper in Boston.

Mein was also an immigrant, a Scotsman, and an associate of the Rev. Robert Sandeman, who had established a new sect of Protestantism in New England. All those things caused most Bostonians to view him with suspicion. He responded by mocking the local Whigs’ heroes, needling their sore spots, and exposing their hypocrisies.

On 29 Oct 1769 that conflict had come to a head as Mein got into a fight on the street with several Boston merchants. He fled to a British army barracks for protection and then went into hiding. Mein’s partner, John Fleeming, continued to put out their Chronicle newspaper, but Mein would soon leave Boston forever. And, judging by the Pope Night poem, not many locals missed him.

There will be more about Mein—how he had attacked another printer physically, and how John Hancock managed to put him out of business—in my talk at the Boston Public Library tomorrow evening. Come by and hear lots of gossip from “Boston’s Pre-Revolutionary Newspaper Wars.”