William Jackson in and out of the Boston Jail

One month after he’d decided to sail out of Boston with his goods, the brazier William Jackson was locked up in the town jail, suspected of stealing from his fellow merchants.

Cdre. John Manley had captured him on the Elizabeth. Crowds in Newburyport, Salem, and Boston had jeered him. The Massachusetts Council had ordered him into prison.

Bostonians already had some reasons to dislike Jackson. The great fire of 1760 started in his shop. He defied the non-importation movement in 1770, and on top of that he hosted Capt. Thomas Preston before the Massacre.

Then in 1774 Jackson signed the complimentary Addresses to Govs. Thomas Hutchinson and Thomas Gage. He stayed in town when war broke out. He joined the Associators, the Loyalist militia formed in Boston during the siege, though he tried to explain that away:

General [William] How…isued a Proclamation for the Inhabitants to Associate themselves and bear Arm’s in defence of the Town, being what I did not thing [think] was my duty I did not sing [sign],

sometime After he Isued another recommending to the Inhabitants to Associate themselves for preserving the peace and good Order of the Town by preventing any Riotous doings by the Soldier’s or other’s which I thought Incumbent with every good Citizen to comply

The Patriot government naturally looked askance at any “associators” who fell into its hands.

At the same time, William Jackson had some local support. Unlike Crean Brush and the other merchants locked up alongside him, Jackson had grown up in Boston. His mother Mary and older brother James still lived there. His shop sign, the Brazen Head, was a long-time landmark for locals and visitors.

The jailers had been ordered not to let Jackson have pen and paper, but he could ask his family for help. He stated, “after my Committment my brother wrote Mr [Joshua] Wentworth for my Baggage.”

More surprisingly, other members of Boston’s business community spoke up for him. I already quoted Isaac Smith, Sr.’s comment that he hadn’t really done anything bad. A few years back, Chris Hurley told me that Jackson garnered letters of support from selectmen John Scollay and Samuel Austin, printer John Gill, and other Patriots. (Among those names is John Peters, who could be the future husband of Phillis Wheatley.)

Later William Jackson would tell the Loyalists Commission that he was let out of jail after 126 days, or in August 1776. Some of his fellow prisoners would be locked up for much longer.

TOMORROW: Back to Cape Ann.

“Eads escaped out of town last night”

I got interested this week in how printers exited Boston around the start of the war because of a question from a Boston 1775 reader about Benjamin Edes.

The standard understanding of Edes’s departure goes back to the 1901 biography of his son, Peter Edes, Pioneer Printer in Maine. Samuel Lane Boardman wrote:

In the spring of 1775, the town of Boston being in possession of the British troops, Mr. Edes contrived to evade the vigilance of their guards and went to Watertown with an old press and one or two imperfect fonts of type. The escape was made by night in a boat up the Charles river.

We know Edes reestablished the Boston Gazette in Watertown on 5 June 1775, and the shortest distance between Boston and Watertown is indeed up the Charles River.

But Edes’s journey was more complicated than that. Let’s start with a letter from Peter Edes that Boardman reprinted later in his biography, the same letter that I quoted a couple of days ago in regard to the Tea Party.

Writing to a grandson in 1836, Peter Edes said his father:

made his escape by disguising himself as a fisherman, and getting on board a fishing boat; and when they were a few miles from town he was landed on one of the islands, from which he made his escape to the main land.

To escape from Boston on a fishing vessel and to land on an island meant heading out into the harbor or beyond, not up the Charles River.

That detail matches a couple of contemporary reports from south of Boston, both sent to John Adams.

First, on 7 May Abigail Adams told her husband:

Poor Eads escaped out of town last night with one Ayers in a small boat, and was fired upon, but got safe and came up to Braintree to day. His name it seems was upon the black list.

On the same day James Warren wrote to his friend:

By the way I have Just heard that Edes has stole out. I wish his partner was with him. I called on Mrs. Adams as I came along. Found her and Family well.

Thus, Benjamin Edes left Boston in disguise on the night of 6 May. He may have brought out printing equipment, though these early sources don’t say that. I’d love to identify “Ayers,” but I’m not even certain of that spelling.

Edes must have landed somewhere off the south shore, given how Patriots in Braintree heard about his arrival within a day. Did Warren tell Adams, or did Adams tell Warren?

Then Edes made his way back toward the siege lines, settling in Watertown to be close to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, its news, and its printing jobs.

Edes’s partner, John Gill, didn’t get out of Boston. Instead, in the wake of the Battle of Bunker Hill he and the teen-aged Peter Edes were arrested and held in the Boston jail for several weeks.

COMING UP: Under one roof.

Naming Captain Brown of the 52nd

On 22 Feb 1775, Gen. Thomas Gage dispatched two army officers (and the servant of one of them) to scout out the roads to Worcester and learn what they could about artillery that Patriots were collecting in that town.

The report those officers eventually filed was left behind in the British evacuation of Boston, printed in 1779 by John Gill, and reprinted in 1816 by the Massachusetts Historical Society. The original document is long gone, but the reprints provide the names of the two officers—sort of.

One of those names was printed as D’Bernicre, which was wrong but close enough to lead researchers to Ens. Henry DeBerniere of the 10th Regiment of Foot. His name was spelled in additional ways in period documents (D’Berniere, De Berniere, de Birniere), but because it was such a rare name he’s easy to identify. In fact, I traced his whole career before and after the war.

The other officer’s last name was Brown.

Naturally, that common surname poses more of a challenge. However, the report tells us that this was “Capt. Brown 52d regiment.” The British Army Lists for 1773 and 1778 and Worthington C. Ford’s British Officers Serving in the American Revolution, 1774-1783, which was assembled using more of those lists, yields only one candidate in that regiment: Capt. William Browne. (If I could, I’d go back and use the “Browne” spelling for his label on this blog since that seems to be the prevalent one, though not in the report to Gage.)

Several scholars identified DeBerniere’s companion as William Browne in the 1900s, including Elizabeth Ellery Dana, the editor of John Barker’s diary; John Bakeless; and Bernhard Knollenberg.

However, in Paul Revere’s Ride (1994), David Hackett Fischer wrote of “two enterprising young officers, Captain John Brown and Ensign Henry De Berniere of the 10th Foot.” That book offers no explanation for the name John, which appears in the report as the first name of Capt. Brown’s servant. 

Since then, several more authorities apparently relying on Fischer have used the name “John Brown.” That group includes the very helpful Massachusetts Historical Society webpage offering scans and a transcription of the report as first printed by Gill. But there was no such captain in the 52nd Regiment or other regiments in Boston.

TOMORROW: William Browne’s war.

Gen. Gates’s Articles of Convention

As I said yesterday, on 23 Oct 1777 John Gill’s Continental Journal printed the “ARTICLES of CONVENTION between Lieutenant-General [Horatio] GATES and Major-General [John] BURGOYNE.”

Gates must have hurried that document to Boston, not simply because the Battle of Satatoga was big news but also because the state of Massachusetts had to prepare for the arrival of thousands of prisoners of war.

The full text of the surrender terms is here. I’ll quote the most important passages, those involving substance rather than details of implementation, as they appeared in the Continental Journal.

ARTICLE I. The troops under Lieutenant-General Burgoyne, are to march out of their camp with the honors of war and the artillery of the intrenchments, to the verge of the river where the old fort stood, where the arms and artillery are to be left; the arms to be piled by word of command from their own officers.

Art. II. A free passage to be granted to the army under Lieutenant-General Burgoyne to Great Britain, on condition of not serving again in North America during the present contest, and the port of Boston is assigned for the entry of transports to receive the troops, whenever General [William] Howe shall so order. . . .

Art. IV. The army under Lieutenant-General Burgoyne, to march to Massachusetts-Bay by the easiest, most expeditious and convenient route; and to be quartered in, near, or as convenient as possible to Boston, that the march of the troops may not be delayed when transports arrive to receive them.

Art. V. The troops to be supplyed on their march, and during their being in quarters, with provisions by General Gates’s orders, at the same rate of rations as the troops of his own army, and if possible, the officers horses and cattle are to be supplyed with forage at the usual rates.

Art. VI. All officers to retain their carriages, batt-horses and other cattle, and no baggage to be molested or searched, Lieutenant General Burgoyne giving his honor that there are no public stores secreted therein.—Major-General Gates will of course take the necessary measures for the due performance of this article; should any carriages be wanted during the march for the transportation of officer’s baggage, they are if possible to be supplyed by the country at the usual rates. . . .

Art. IX. All Canadians and persons belonging to the Canadian establishment, consisting of sailors, batteaumen, artificers, drivers, independent companies and many other followers of the army, who come under no particular description, are to be permitted to return there . . .

Gates was a veteran of the British army. He and Burgoyne had enlisted as young officers at the same time, and he had served under Burgoyne earlier in their careers.

The American general knew what supplies and housing a large army, including families, would need. He was also sensitive to the honor of British officers; one of the thirteen articles guaranteed those gentlemen the privilege of walking around greater Boston wearing their arms. 

About 5,900 Crown troops surrendered at Saratoga. On 8 November they started to arrive in Cambridge, which in 1776 had an official population of 1,586.

“Receiving confirmation various ways of the surrender”

The army around Philadelphia wasn’t alone in waiting anxiously for news from northern New York in October 1777. The publisher of the Massachusetts Spy was gleaning every bit of information that came through Worcester for his readers.

That publisher wasn’t Isaiah Thomas, who had co-founded the Spy in Boston in 1770 and moved it out to Worcester just before the outbreak of war.

In the middle of 1776 Thomas stepped away from day-to-day operations in order to tend to family business—namely, divorcing his wife, finding care for their children, and helping his mother at her home in Cambridge.

Thomas leased the Massachusetts Spy to other printers as a (barely) going concern. Starting in mid-1777 the publisher was Anthony Haswell, a former Thomas apprentice who turned twenty-one that year.

On 23 October Haswell’s Massachusetts Spy printed extracts from a Continental officer’s letter dated eleven days before, reporting that Gen. John Burgoyne’s army had attacked and been pushed back:

Friday [10 October] the whole army marched with three days provision, and we found the road strewed with baggage of all kinds; horses killed in the waggons, and all their sick and wounded, with Burgoyne’s chief surgeon…

Then came another letter from the same officer, dated 14 October:

We have now entirely surrounded the enemy, and it is common to have forty or fifty deserters and prisoners come in per day. The Canadians we are informed have mutinied, and decline having anything further to do in the matter, and that the General had promised they should go home in a few days.

Then a letter from Saratoga dated 14 October:

Last night General [Horatio] Gates received a card from General Burgoyne, requesting to know when it would be agreeable to him to have a field officer of his army wait on him with proposals of great consequence to both armies. . . . General Gates sent the articles on which he would agree . . .

P.S. I believe that General Gates rather than not get Burgoyne and his army, will soften his terms a little.

In the next paragraph the publisher lamented receiving “many different” reports raising doubt about what had really happened next. But then a seemingly reliable witness arrived:

A Gentleman who passed through town yesterday informed, that General Burgoyne was arrived at Albany, on his way to Boston, where it is said he is to take ship for England, according to the capitulation said to be entered into between him and Gen. Gates.

In consequence of receiving confirmation various ways of the surrender of Gen. Burgoyne, a number of the sons of liberty in this town, met on the common and expressed their joy by thirteen discharges of cannon, and drinking several toasts. The whole was conducted with a decency suitable to the occasion, and truly characteristic of the supporters of the glorious cause in which we are engaged.

On the same day that Haswell was printing these bare tidbits, in Boston John Gill was printing the entire Articles of Convention, or terms of surrender, for readers of his Continental Journal. That document must have been couriered to Boston by a route that bypassed Worcester.

The Lost DeBerniere Manuscripts

On 30 June 1775, Ens. Henry DeBerniere was promoted to the rank of lieutenant in the 10th Regiment of Foot.

Nine months later, on 17 March 1776, he evacuated Boston with the rest of the British military.

That departure was rushed enough that Lt. DeBerniere left behind some of his papers, which locals eventually found. Exactly which locals remains a mystery.

In 1779 the printer John Gill issued a collection of those documents, described on the title page as “Left in town by a British Officer previous to the evacuation of it by the enemy, and now printed for the information and amusement of the curious.”

That title page (shown here) rendered the ensign’s name as “D’Bernicre.” Which is only one of the many ways it was spelled at the time.

The documents in that booklet were:

• Gen. Thomas Gage’s orders to DeBerniere and Capt. William Brown to scout the countryside—thus giving the publication the title General Gage’s Instructions.
• DeBerniere’s detailed and dramatic narrative of how he and Brown visited Worcester, Framingham, Marlborough, and Weston, barely making it back home in a snowstorm.
• A much shorter report on the officers’ similar trek to Concord.
• DeBerniere’s account of the expedition to Concord and the return to Boston under fire on 19 April.
• A list of the casualties from that action, naming each killed or wounded officer but giving simple body counts for the enlisted men.

The Massachusetts Historical Society has shared scanned and transcribed pages here.

The year before Gill published, the Massachusetts General Court had passed laws banishing Loyalists and empowering the state to confiscate their property. Citizens who read DeBerniere’s narratives could easily recognize the Loyalists who offered them assistance. Most had left the country, but Isaac Jones of Weston was still at the Golden Ball Tavern. By then, though, he had apparently worked his way back into his neighbors’ graces.

The Massachusetts Historical Society reprinted the text of John Gill’s booklet in a volume of its Collections series in 1815, which is how it shared material before the internet.

That reprint was probably the source for another version of the story told in the voice of Brown and DeBerniere’s servant and published as The Journal Kept by Mr. John Howe While He Was Employed as a British Spy; Also, While He Was Engaged in the Smuggling Business by Luther Roby in 1827.

There was a young printer named John Howe working in Boston in 1775. A Sandemanian and partner of Margaret Draper in the last months of the Boston News-Letter, he evacuated Boston at the same time as Lt. DeBerniere. Eventually he settled in Nova Scotia, and his son became an important figure in early Canadian politics. So he wasn’t the “John Howe” narrating that “Journal.”

In fact, the “Journal” was just a hyped-up version of DeBerniere’s original report, using all the dramatic bits and adding to them, eventually reaching the point of implausibility. Nonetheless, extracts can seem credible, and many authors have been fooled into thinking that 1827 publication is an authentic historical source.

TOMORROW: Another DeBerniere manuscript, and another mystery.