“A Sett of Controversial Discourses agreed upon by the Society”

In October 1722, almost a year after being inoculated against smallpox, Ebenezer Turell found a new use for his notebook.

He wrote out what he called “An account of a Society in Har: Colledge.” This was a more serious endeavor than the Telltale essay exchange the previous year.

Ten young men from the Harvard College class of 1721 plus four from nearby classes pledged to meet regularly for intellectual pursuits. One might share “a Discourse of about Twenty minuits,” or the group could engage in philosophical disputations, readings, and epistles.

They also promised “That if we see or hear of any Extraordinary Book, we will give ye best account we can of it to ye Society.”

As an example of what this society (formally) talked about, Turell’s two lectures were:

1 Upon Light, a Phisico-Theological Discourse
2 Upon Providence.

The group was still meeting in October 1723 when Turell took the lead in a new format, combining the discourse and the disputation into a single discussion:

E T read a Lecture to show that it is a point of Prudence To prove & Try all Doctrines in Religion, wch was to serve as an Introduction to a Sett of Controversial Discourses agreed upon by the Society to be successivly carried, one every week.

The last record is from January 1724 when the group agreed on topics for upcoming lectures and discussions. There’s no record of those meetings, however. It’s possible Turell switched to another notebook since he was coming close to the pages he’d already filled with the Telltale material, and that second document didn’t survive. It’s also possible this extracurricular activity just petered out in the winter of 1724 as members moved on.

In 1909 William C. Lane pointed out to the Colonial Society that nearly all the young men in that society went on to be ministers. Those included the Rev. Dr. Charles Chauncy and the Rev. Ebenezer Pemberton of Boston and the Rev. John Lowell (shown above) of Newburyport, ancestor of the celebrated Lowell family.

Ebenezer Turell himself started to train for the pulpit under the Rev. Benjamin Colman of the Brattle Street Meeting in Boston. He became the minister in Medford in 1724, and Colman’s son-in-law two years later. Jane (Colman) Turell shared Ebenezer’s love of writing, though she had a religiously anxious life until she died in 1735.

Turell remarried twice, each time to women in the upper class. As a minister he was a firm Old Light and later a supporter of the Whigs. The Medford congregation granted him a pension in 1773, the year before he preached his last sermon, and he died in 1778. In all, the current church says, Turell oversaw the construction of two church buildings, admitted 323 communicants, baptized 1,037 people, and married 220 couples.

“Argumentive dialogue concerning inoculation”

The Telltale essays by Harvard College students in Ebenezer Turell’s notebook come to a stop on 1 Nov 1721.

In the preceding month, 411 people in Boston had died of smallpox. The epidemic had been spreading and killing since April.

People at Harvard were contracting the disease, including the maid of undergraduate Samuel Mather (1706–1785).

Samuel’s father, the Rev. Cotton Mather, had heard about inoculation against smallpox from his enslaved servant Onesimus and then from reading accounts of the procedure in Turkey. He urged Dr. Zabdiel Boylston to try this approach infecting people with a mild case of the disease in hopes of immunizing them for life.

In June 1721, Boylston inoculated his young son, an enslaved man, and that man’s son. When they didn’t die, he and Mather went public. Boston’s selectmen told him to stop. Boylston didn’t, inoculating young Samuel Mather among others.

Dr. William Douglass opposed inoculation with his pen and his authority as a Scottish-educated physician. The Rev. Benjamin Colman (shown above) supported Boylston and Mather with his Narrative of the Method and Success of Inoculating the Small-pox in New England. Other doctors and ministers divided on the question.

In that atmosphere, around the start of November Ebenezer Turell opened his Telltale notebook from the other end and wrote out a fourteen-page “Argumentive dialogue concerning inoculation between Dr. Hurry and Mr. Waitfort.” Dr. Hurry was, of course, eager for the new procedure, and Mr. Waitfort was still hanging back.

The dialogue consisted of exchanges like this one:

W[aitfort:…] He that bring sickness upon himself Voluntarily Breaks one of the divine Commandment (the 6th)…

H[urry:] I never heard yt the Bringing Sickness upon our selves was a Breach of ye Divine Law Absolutly for by vomitting Purging letting of Blood &c We make our selves sick and that voluntarily too

In the end Dr. Hurry prevailed. The essay concluded with this verse:

Theres none but Cowards fear ye Launce,
Heroes receive ye Wound
With rapturous joy they Skip & Dance,
While others hugg ye Ground.

According to Dr. Boylston’s published account, on 23 November he “inoculated Mr. Ebenezer Pemberton, and Mr. John Lowel, each about 18.” Both those young men were in Turell’s college class and in his circle. (Indeed, I suspect this John Lowell was the student he started the Telltale with.)

The next day, he administered the procedure to a Harvard professor, a tutor, and seven students, including “Mr. Ebenezer Turil.”

Turell went back into his notebook and added that his “Argumentive dialogue” was “Compos’d about three weeks before I was inoculated.”

TOMORROW: Ebenezer Turell’s Society.

Theophilus Evedropper and the Chair Lifters

As I wrote yesterday, on 9 Sept 1721 a Harvard College student—quite possibly Ebenezer Turell—using the signature “Telltale” wrote a short essay inviting a friend to write back about “The shamfull impertinences & monstrous inconsistencies yt daily perplex us.”

Instead, someone else found that note and wrote back. Turell didn’t record the reply.

“Telltale” then wrote directly to his target reader, “J. L.”—perhaps John Lowell, like Turell in the Harvard class of 1721. (The president of the college then was John Leverett, but he seems a less likely addressee.) That second letter said: “If you have any inclination for an epistolary correspondence with me you may deposit your Letters in that Famous tree call’d the Pliable Crotch on Monday Ev’ning.”

J. L. did write back, and other authors joined in the exchange, sharing essays over such pen names as Blablonge and Courage. Telltale himself also used the name Theophilus Evedropper. He collected the essays in a notebook under date headings with classical or literary mottos underneath, imitating British magazines like the Spectator.

Evidently someone else at Harvard was circulating similar essays under the title “The Censure or Muster Roll.” The 30 September offering from Telltale was devoted to criticizing this rival, as in: “The Subject he would treat of is Learning wch I entirly forgott before I had finish’d the first Page.”

Other essays appear to lampoon fellow students, and it’s not clear whether those were friendly joshing within the group or snaps at rivals. By October, the articles veer toward setting up a group called the Spy Club (and sniping at something called the Mock Club).

The Harvard Archives has called the Telltale material “the first student publication” at the college. However, there’s no suggestion the material was ever printed, and I’m not convinced it counts as a publication without more copies. It definitely appear to be an extracurricular activity, however.

John Lowell and Ebenezer Turell were in the college class of 1721, which meant they had graduated by September when these essays started to circulate. They were probably still in Cambridge, reading for their master’s degrees. It’s possible that the greater freedom accorded graduates empowered them to write and share these essays.

On the other hand, the Telltale articles do offer some glimpses of life that seems undergraduate (and remember that at this time most college students were what we think of as high-school age):

There [are] a number of Persons in Colledge who delight in nothing so much as in doing Mischief. This is what they call clean, showing their Parts &c. The great Number of these Persons adds to the Vexation. They are of very different inclinations & each of ym has his particular Art wherin he excells.

I was t’other Day in Company with some of them who go by the Name of Chair Lifters. These Cowards attack you while you are sitting in a Chair (a most defenceless Posture) flinging you to the Ground with Great Violence. For wch Sometimes you[r] Head, arms and Posteriors curse them a fort night after. . . .

There a[re] Divers other Troblesome Fellows of other Species…as rappers, clappers, Trippers, nippers, Thigh Duffers, Stroakers, Pokers, &c all of them when I have opportunity shall be satyrically animadverted upon.

All in all, the Telltale appears to have been motivated by a wish to chide others into proper behavior rather than the satirize the powerful. In that respect, among Boston-area writing it was more like the establishment Boston News-Letter and Boston Gazette than the cheeky New-England Courant.

TOMORROW: Serious matters.

“Paid my Respects to Generall Washington”

By Saturday, 24 March, the merchant John Rowe was so used to dining at home that in his diary he started off describing dinner there before remembering he’d dined with a friend and relative, shown here courtesy of the Boston Athenaeum:

I din’d at home with at Mr. [Ralph] Inman’s with him Mrs. [Elizabeth] Inman Genl. [Nathanael] Green Mrs. [Catherine] Green Tuthill Hubbard Mrs. [Dorothy] Forbes, Mr. [John?] Lowell Mrs. Rowe Capt. Gilbt. Speakman & Doctr. [blank] & Spent the Evening at home with Mrs. Rowe Capt. Speakman & Jack Rowe

Some Fire below Nantasket Road—I take it to be a Transport set on Fire to destroy her

Tuthill Hubbard was another Boston merchant, not very active politically. He would become the town’s postmaster.

If another of Inman’s guests was John Lowell (the surname isn’t clear in the manuscript), Rowe might have spoken to him about recovering the value of the goods the British military confiscated on their departure. Later in the year, Lowell would represent Rowe and other merchants in that effort.

The next day was a Sunday:

afternoon I went to Church Mr. [Samuel] Parker Read prayers & preached from the 22d. Chapter of St. Mathew . . . This was a very Good Sermon & considering the distressing Time A Good many People At Church. . . .

A Transport was burnt Last night in the Lighthouse Channell

The British evacuation fleet was still hovering in the outer harbor as 25 March dawned, and Rowe tracked its movement on Monday:

The Fleet still in Nantasket Road—

A Great many of the Ships in Nantasket Sailed this Afternoon

278 Dollars continintall

There’s no indication what that last line referred to, but Rowe was getting used to a new currency.

On Tuesday, 26 March, John Rowe completed the task of cozying up to the new power structure to protect his commercial interests:

Snowd a Little to Night— . . .

I waited on Genl. Greene this morning with Mr. Baker abo. Some Iron on my Wharff.

I din’d at home with Capt. Timothy Folger The Revd. Mr. [Samuel] Parker Mr. [Jonathan] Warner Mr. Richd. Greene Mrs. Rowe & Jack Rowe—

after dinner I went with Mr. Parker & paid my Respects to Generall [George] Washington who Receivd us Very Politely.

I’ll leave Rowe there for the nonce, having successfully trimmed his sails in March 1776.

Hancock’s Trunk in Worcester, 16-22 Apr.

To celebrate Patriots’ Day, the Worcester History Museum is displaying John Hancock’s trunk for one week starting on Monday, 16 April. The museum will be open that day from 10:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M.

This was reportedly the trunk where Hancock was storing his business and political papers—including sensitive documents from his work with the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and its Committee of Safety—while he was in Lexington in April 1775. Though Hancock himself slept at the parsonage, along with his fiancée Dolly Quincy, his aunt Lydia Hancock, and Samuel Adams, the trunk was with his clerk, John Lowell, at Buckman’s Tavern.

Hancock and Lowell left town several hours into the early morning of 19 Apr 1775 along with Adams and Paul Revere, who had come out from Boston to warn that British troops were on the march. After settling Adams and Hancock at what they thought was a safe distance, Lowell and Revere went back to Lexington to scout the situation.

At that point Lowell thought about that trunk. He decided it might be good to keep its contents away from the approaching soldiers. He and Revere went to the tavern, climbed upstairs, brought the trunk down, and were carrying it across the town common during the first shots of the war.

The photograph above comes from the Worcester Telegram’s coverage of the museum’s similar display last year, which explains:

The Hancock trunk was donated years later to the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester by a descendant, Dorothy Hancock Gardner White (1799-1890). She wrote that in her childhood the box contained “letters of correspondence of the prominent men of the revolution” and also letters from Hancock to his future bride, Dolly Quincy, her great-aunt. Mrs. White gave many of the letters away.

The trunk was empty when it came to the Antiquarian Society, and when it was transferred in 1895 to the collection of the Worcester Society of Antiquity, what is today the Worcester Historical Museum.

“The trunk only comes out once a year,” said Vanessa Bumpus, the museum’s exhibit coordinator.

Most of the time the fragile artifact is kept downstairs in climate-controlled storage, she said. But for school vacation week coinciding with Patriots’ Day in April, museum staffers don special gloves, place the trunk on a dolly, and gingerly transfer it to a museum exhibit case.

Ironically, if this trunk had stayed in Buckman’s Tavern that morning, it would have been perfectly safe. No British soldiers entered the building. That column passed through Lexington just because it was on the road to Concord.

John Lowell: the man with the trunk

On 19 Apr 1775, John Lowell was in Lexington with John Hancock. Near dawn he and Paul Revere hastily carried Hancock’s truck containing sensitive Massachusetts Provincial Congress papers out of Buckman’s tavern so the approaching British troops wouldn’t find it. (Those troops weren’t looking for it, but Lowell and Revere didn’t know that.)

Revere left little information about Lowell. In his 1775 deposition about the day he referred only to “another man” fetching the trunk with him. When Revere wrote a more detailed account for the Rev. Dr. Jeremy Belknap in 1798, he referred to “a Mr. Lowell, who was a clerk to Mr. Hancock.”

In Paul Revere’s Ride, David H. Fischer described Lowell as “a young Boston acquaintance” of the silversmith, and later referred to him as “young Lowell.” I imagined a young man, perhaps even legally still a minor in his first counting-house job, tasked with wrestling Col. Hancock’s trunk to safety. Unfortunately, once I looked into Lowell’s identity, I had to discard that theory.

John Lowell (1740-1793) was in his mid-thirties in 1775, only a few years younger than Revere and Hancock. He was apparently born in Charlestown, but moved across the river to enter business in Boston. Lowell married a daughter of selectman John Scollay in 1768, and his sister married John Hancock’s little brother Ebenezer. (Scollay’s daughter Mercy was engaged to Dr. Joseph Warren in 1775, showing how tightly connected this crowd could be.)

What’s more, this John Lowell was politically active and connected. He dined with the Sons of Liberty in 1769, and helped to promote a boycott of tea in 1770. Three years later, he was still working against the tea tax in the North End Caucus and probably as a volunteer patrolling Griffin’s wharf to make sure the tea ships weren’t unloaded. (Check out the handwritten list of names; I think “John Lowl” or “Lowel” means this Lowell.)

Lowell continued to be in the middle of events after the war began. On 5 June he wrote from Charlestown to Lydia Hancock, John’s aunt, about how it would be hard to get anything more out of their mansion on Beacon Hill. Twelve days later, Charlestown itself was in flames. In early 1776, documents show, Lowell was “Deputy Secretary, pro tem.,” for the Massachusetts Council.

Lowell and Revere must have known each other well. Not only were they part of the same political groups, but they were both active in the St. Andrew’s Lodge of Freemasons. In 1775 Revere presumably didn’t mention Lowell’s name to protect him, but I can’t figure out why he wrote so vaguely of the man in 1798.

Before he died, John Lowell became the first teller and later the cashier of the Massachusetts Bank. Those were prestigious posts in the nascent American financial sector.

In the meantime, Lowell’s first cousin from Newburyport, also named John Lowell (1743-1802), had become a very prominent and wealthy lawyer and then judge. That man’s descendants founded the cotton mills in the town eventually named after them. Judge John Lowell was a lukewarm Loyalist when the Revolution began, but managed his career so successfully that his memory has almost completely eclipsed that of his cousin.

Yet John Lowell of Charlestown was actually on Lexington common as the shooting began, working to protect the Provincial Congress’s secrets. At least that moment of his life is reenacted each year, as shown above in the thumbnail image above, from a photo by Ho Yin Au.

Gossip from Daniel Leonard, part 1

Prof. Ben Carp at Tufts pointed me to this gossipy scene from John Adams’s diary on 20 Jan 1766. Adams recorded a talk with a man he called “Leonard,” probably Daniel Leonard (1740-1829) of Taunton:

Leonard gave me an Account of a Clubb that he belongs to, in Boston. It consists of John Lowell, Elisha Hutchinson, Frank Dana, Josiah Quincy, and two other young Fellows, Strangers to me.

Most of these young men were studying the law on their way of becoming attorneys. Adams was five to ten years older than all of them, but was about to move from Braintree to Boston and try to grow his practice in a bigger town. So he was eager to learn about the legal scene in the capital.

These are the club members Adams named:

• John Lowell (1743-1802) had come from Newbury to Boston to study under the attorney Oxenbridge Thacher—who died suddenly in 1765. Lowell would go back to Newbury and practice there until the war had started, then return to Boston and become one of the town’s richest attorneys and founder of the town’s famously upper-crust Lowell family. (The portrait of him above comes courtesy of Wikipedia.)
  
• Elisha Hutchinson (1745-1824) was Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson’s younger son. He never practiced law, but with his older brother Tommy would become one of the East India Company’s designated tea consignees in 1773.
  
• Francis Dana (1743-1811), son of one of Boston’s leading justices of the peace. As the U.S. of A.’s first minister to Russia, he would take young John Quincy Adams to St. Petersburg as secretary and French translator.
  
• Josiah Quincy, Jr. (1744-1775), son of a leading Braintree property-owner, would become Adams’s colleague in the Boston Massacre trial and in Revolutionary politics. He would die of tuberculosis on the eve of the Revolutionary War.

Leonard and his friends were debating the issues of the day—which in early 1766 meant the Stamp Act. Adams described the talk:

Leonard had prepared a Collection of the Arguments, for and against the Right of Parliament to tax the Colonies, for said Clubb. His first Inquiry was whether the subject could be taxed without his Consent in Person or by his Representative? 2d. Whether We Americans are represented in Parliament or not?

Leonard says that Lowell is a Courtier, that he ripps about all who stand foremost in their opposition to the Stamp Act, at your [James] Otis’s and [Samuel] Adams’s &c. and says that no Man can scribble about Politicks without bedaubing his fingers, and every one who does is a dirty fellow. He expresses great Resentment against that Line in Edes & Gill[’s Boston Gazette], ”Retreat or you are ruined,” and says they ought to be committed for that single stroke.—

Thus it seems that the Air of Newbury, and the Vicinage of Farnham, Chipman &c. have obliterated all the Precepts, Admonitions, Instructions and Example of his Master Thatcher, and have made him in Thatchers Phrase a shoe licker and an A—se Kisser of Elisha Hutchinson. Lowel is however very warm, sudden, quick, and impetuous and all such People are unsteady. Too much Fire. Experientia docet [experience teaches].

When Charles Francis Adams published his grandfather’s diaries in the 1860s, he left out the phrase “and have made him in Thatchers Phrase a shoe licker and an A—se Kisser of Elisha Hutchinson.” Pity.

Adams’s remark about “the Vicinage of Farnham, Chipman &c.” refers to leaders of the Essex County bar, where young Lowell would practice: Daniel Farnham (1719-1776) and John Chipman (1722-1768, died from a seizure he suffered while arguing a case in Maine). For some reason, Adams was always suspicious of attorneys from that part of Massachusetts. Years later he would elevate such a group into the “Essex Junto,” a label that took the men themselves by surprise.

Back in 1766, I suspect that Adams was a little jealous of those young men’s connections in Boston. They came from rich, established families. Despite his seniority, they threatened to become his professional rivals. Plus, despite his protests against wishing popularity, Adams disliked being left out of anything.

As the political turmoil heated up in the following decade, two of the young men in that club became firm Loyalists: Leonard and Hutchinson. In fact, Leonard would debate Adams in the newspapers in 1774-75—the widely reprinted Novanglus-Massachusettensis exchange. Two of the young men became Patriots: Dana and Quincy. The fifth, Lowell, first proclaimed his loyalty to the Crown and then repudiated it. Curiously, his career worked out best of all.

TOMORROW: Leonard’s stories about another club Adams probably wished he were in.

The North End Caucus Mobilizes Against the Tea

So yesterday the North End Caucus—a group of more than sixty politically minded Bostonians—started meeting in 1772 to choose candidates for town offices. This appears to have been an outgrowth of an earlier, smaller, wealthier “Caucas Club.” That first year, the only times the North End Caucus met were just before town meetings in March and May, when Bostonians elected their officials and representatives to the General Court. The same pattern applied in early 1773. But then in late October a dire threat to British liberties loomed on the eastern horizon: tea.

On 23 Oct 1773 the North End Caucus assembled, elected shipwright Gibbons Sharp their moderator, and then:

Voted—That this body will oppose the vending any Tea, sent by the East India Company to any part of the Continent, with our lives and fortunes.

Voted—That there be a committee chosen to correspond with any Committee chosen in any part of the town, on this occation; and call this body together at any time they think necessary.—Paul Revere, Abiel Ruddock and John Lowell the Committee.

Revere was a well connected silversmith with some talent in engraving and dentistry. Ruddock was secretary of the caucus and heir to a late shipyard owner, John Ruddock. Lowell was a young lawyer (unless that was a different John Lowell). They thus represented the cross-section of their group: a well-established craftsman, a major employer, and a professional gentleman. [ADDENDUM, Dec 2008: I now believe this John Lowell was a thirty-three-year-old merchant from a Charlestown family, not a young lawyer. He had been part of a Boston town committee to promote a tea boycott in 1770.]

The North End Caucus met again on 2 November, for the first time gathering at the Green Dragon Tavern (shown above). This building had become the property of the St. Andrew’s Lodge of Freemasons a few years before, but it continued to function as a tavern. The group chose merchant Nathaniel Holmes as their moderator and then began issuing demands:

Voted—That a committee be chosen to wait upon the Committee of Correspondence of this town, and desire their attendance here. Committee, B[enjamin]. Kent, E[dward]. Proctor, and G[abriel]. Johonnot.

Voted—That a committee be chosen to wait on John Hancock, Esq. and desire him to meet with us. Committee, John Winthrop, Capt. [John] Matchet, and G. Johonnot.

Voted—That this body are determined that the Tea shipped or to be shipped by the East India Company shall not be landed.

Voted—That a committee be chosen to draw a resolution to be read to the Tea Consignees to-morrow 12 O’Clock, noon, at Liberty Tree: and that Dr. Thos. Young and [Dr. Benjamin] Church, and [Dr. Joseph] Warren, be a committee for that purpose, and make a report as soon as may be.

To deliver its messages to town officials and rich merchants, the caucus called only on its more genteel members: other merchants and professionals.

The next day the group gathered again at noon and voted to accept the recommendation of its committee of three doctors:

And the Committee reported as follows. viz. that Thos. and Elisha Hutchinson [the governor’s sons], R[ichard]. Clark & Sons, and Benjamin Faneuil [the tea consignees appointed in London], by neglecting to give satisfaction as their fellow-citizens justly expected from them in this hour, relative to their acceptance of an office destructive to this Community, have intolerably insulted this body, and in case they do not appear, forthwith, and satisfy their reasonable expectation, this body will look upon themselves warrented to esteem them enemies to their Country; and will not fail to make them feel the weight of their just resentment.

The caucus had lined up support from other activists, the town’s standing Committee of Correspondence, and the most popular young merchant around. It had given the tea consignees a chance to resign. Now the North End Caucus took their crusade “out of doors.” Instead of meeting privately, they summoned the people of Boston to a public meeting:

Voted—That Capt. Proctor, John Lowell, G. Johonnot, James Swan, John Winthrop and T[homas]. Chase be a committee to get a flag for Liberty Tree.

Voted that Thos. Hichborn and John Boit be a committee for posting up said notification.

Boston’s Whigs had made a habit of flying a flag at Liberty Tree to gather crowds in the late 1760s, but apparently that practice had fallen into abeyance since the North End Caucus needed to roust up another flag. Thomas Chase owned the distillery under Liberty Tree, and the rest of the men on his committee were merchants and professionals. In contrast, Thomas Hichborn was a boatbuilder and John Boit a shopkeeper—probably seen as more fitting for the actual work of putting up notices for this public meeting.

The North End Caucus thus started mobilizing against tea imports in October and was calling meetings in early November—weeks in advance of the arrival of the first tea. It appears that the caucus was pushing other local groups and institutions along. In addition, the first group to patrol the wharf where a tea ship docked was led by the caucus’s Capt. Proctor, and the first four volunteers and eight of the first eleven on his list were also members of the North End Caucus.

Boston Mobilizes Against the Tea

On Sunday, 28 November 1773, the ship Dartmouth arrived in Boston harbor with 114 chests of tea. Boston’s political leaders sprang into action. The selectmen even met that Sabbath-day, as did the Committee of Correspondence. Someone printed notices summoning citizens to a general meeting, headlined:

Friends! Brethren! Countrymen! The Hour of Destruction or Manly Opposition to the Machinations of Tyranny stares you in the Face.

Men (there’s no evidence for women participating) gathered first at Faneuil Hall, built to house Boston’s town meetings, and then adjourned to the Old South Meeting-House, which had more space and was therefore used for the town's largest events. Town clerk William Cooper kept notes on the proceedings, which were conducted with a moderator and votes like a town meeting. He apparently used these notes to create reports to the town's newspapers. In sum, Bostonians registered their opposition to the landing of the tea in as open and orderly way as they could.

However, these gatherings were not official town meetings. They were an ongoing “assembly of the inhabitants of this and the neighboring towns.” There were two reasons for this distinction, I think. First, the mandate of a town meeting didn't extend to preventing a legal, healthy product from being unloaded by its owners. Second, the Whigs thus communicated that neighboring towns shared their opposition to the tea. During a second series of meetings in mid-December, attendees even sought gentlemen from outside Boston to preside.

The town meeting wasn't the only institution of colonial government that the Whigs adopted. At the afternoon session on the 29th, Cooper noted the following:

A motion was made that there be a watch kept for the security of Captain [James] Hall’s vessel and cargo; and the question being put, passed in the affirmative. Watch to consist of 25 men. Captain [Edward] Procter, Captain of Watch, Paul Reviere, Henry Bass, Moses Grant, Foster Condy, Joseph Lovering, Mr. John Lovel, Dr. [Elisha] Story, John Winthrop, Thomas Chase, John Greenleaf, Benjamin Edes, Benjamin Alley, Joseph Peirce, Junior, Joshua Pico, Captain Riordon, J. Henderson, John Crowe, Josiah Wheeler, Shubael H. [probably Hewes], John McFadden Henry, Joseph Edwards.

The size of this "watch" and the title "Captain" for its commander hints that it was modeled on a military company, not on a group of night watchmen. (Boston's watchmen patrolled in groups of four, and their leaders were called "Constables of the Watch.") The meeting was basically commissioning a special militia company to patrol the wharf where the Dartmouth was moored. The phrase "for the security of Captain Hall’s vessel and cargo" meant not only that no one would harm those things, but also that no one would unload the cargo from the vessel, triggering the tea tax.

And who were the first in line for this duty? As we might expect, a lot of them were politically active. Procter, Revere, Bass, Grant, Condy, Story, Winthrop, Chase, Greenleaf, and Edes are listed as attending meetings of the North End Caucus in 1771 (the only surviving notes from such a gathering). Bass, Chase, and Edes were members of the "Loyall Nine" who organized the Stamp Act protests of 1765. Grant and Condy had been kicked out of the Company of Cadets together in May for behaving disrespectfully toward the Customs Commissioners.

There are a couple of unexpected names on this list. “Mr. John Lovel” was a Loyalist who probably suffered from manic-depressive mood swings; Brenton Simons’s Witches, Rakes, and Rogues discusses his tempestuous marriage. (If Cooper actually wrote, “John Lowell,” however, that would be another North End Caucus attendee.) [ADDENDUM, Dec 2008: The handwritten document is now online, courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society. That name could easily have been meant as “John Lowel.”] Shubael Hewes, a brother of George R. T. Hewes, was also a Loyalist when the war broke out, but perhaps not at this date.

The meeting records for Tuesday offers another set of names to patrol that evening, and procedures for recruiting new watchmen and spreading the alarm "when necessary":

Mr. Ezekiel Cheever as Captain, Mr. Thomas Uran, Joseph Eyres, William Dickman, William Sutton, Samuel Peck, Ebenezer Ayres, Thomas Bolley, W. Elberson, John Rice, Benjamin Stevens, Joseph Fourde, James Brewer, Obedh. Curtis, Rufus Bent, George Ray, William Clap, Benjamin Ingerson [Ingersoll?], Nicholas Peirce, Adam Colson, Thomas Tileston, Daniel Hewes, Richard Hunnewell, Adam Colson, Nicholas Peirce.

Voted, That the gentlemen who watch this night be desired to make out a list of the watch for next night, and so each watch another till for the time of watching is over.

Voted, That in case the watch are molested the town be alarmed by the tolling of the bells, if in the night, if in the day by ringing of bells.

Voted, That six persons be appointed who are used to horses, to be in readiness to give an alarm in the country when necessary: W. Rogers, Jere. Belknap, Stephen Hall, Nathanl. Cobbit, Thomas Gooding, of Charlestown, Benjamin Wood, of Charlestown.

Later Cooper noted these plans for future arrivals:

Voted, That the Committee of Correspondence for this town be desired to take care that every other vessel with tea that arrives, have a proper watch appointed for such vessels.

Also, Voted, That those persons who are desirous of making a part of these nightly watches be desired to give in their names at Edes & Gill’s Printing Office.

That printing office was where the Whigs usually met.

For the next three weeks, therefore, citizen companies patrolled Griffin's Wharf every night. According to a tradition recorded in the Ebenezer Stevens family, on the evening of 16 December the watch had been recruited from the town's artillery company, made up mostly of eager young mechanics. Rather than preserve Capt. Hall's cargo, they gladly joined in what would become known as the Boston Tea Party.

Cooper's notes appear in the 20th volume of the Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings.