John Pigeon Retires to the Country

John Pigeon (1725-1800) was a prominent Boston merchant specializing in dry goods, meaning cloth and clothing.

Pigeon married Jane Dumaresq, from a wealthy Huguenot family, in 1752. He was an Anglican, a warden of Christ Church in the North End.

In the 1750s Pigeon ran notices in the Boston News-Letter and Boston Evening-Post announcing what people could buy “At his Shop near Doctor [John] Clark’s” on Fish Street in the North End. These were long advertisements in small (italic) type listing a broad assortment of cloths with now-unfamiliar names, subtle variations on types of handkerchiefs, and garments of many sorts.

As was typical at the time, Pigeon didn’t confine himself to one line. He also offered “Cheshire cheese, starch, best London pipes,…Philadelphia flour, rice, English west-india rum, New-England cheese, indigo, sugars, cocoa, coffee, whale-bone and turpentine.”

In 1762 Pigeon shifted his business. The 25 October Evening-Post stated:

This is to give Public Notice, That the Underwriters at Mr. John Welsh’s Insurance Office, North-End of Boston, have removed a little further to the Northward, to a New Insurance Office, just opened by Mr. John Pigeon, where he lately kept Shop; and where constant Attendance will be given by said Pigeon, to any Gentleman that will favour him with their Business, and the Business transacted with the greatest Dispatch and Fidelity.

Going into the insurance business didn’t mean Pigeon got out of shopkeeping entirely, however. On 18 Feb 1765 he advertised that “At the Insurance-Office in Fish-Street” people could buy “A small Parcel of choice CYDER, Anchors, Deck and Sheathing Nails, and English GOODS at the cheapest Rate.” On 30 September he offered a schooner, “80 or 90 Tons, nine Months old”; a sloop; salt; fish; anchors; and shoes, as well as those “English GOODS.”

Pigeon showed other signs of prosperity, admirable and regrettable. He was elected one of Boston’s wardens, responsible for enforcing the Sabbath. He was also a slave owner. In 1753 his servants Manuel and Dinah got married. In 1763 Pigeon advertised for the return of another slave named Zangoe, “a middling sized Fellow, about 28 Years old, speaks broken English, but can talk pretty good French.”

Because Pigeon sold so many things, possibly on behalf of others, it’s not clear whether the “convenient Dwelling House with a Shop” that he offered on 29 Sept 1766 was his own. That property came with “a good large Yard and Garden, a Barn, Warehouse and Wharf, situate in Boston, near the Hay-Market,” plus three people, “Two Negro Men and one Negro Woman.”

By 1768, Pigeon had moved out to Newton. In May he asked readers of the Boston News-Letter and Boston Chronicle to alert him to any debts he still owed through “Mr. Nathaniel Barber, at the Insurance Office.” He was by then “but seldom in Boston.” Pigeon had retired to the life of a country gentleman.

Pigeon bought a house and land in Newton in 1769, then 60 acres and another house in 1770, and the house shown above in 1773. It’s possible he was moving around, but he also had two young sons—Henry and John, Jr.—to set up eventually. So maybe those other properties were meant for them.

Newton had no Anglican church for the family. The Pigeons took in John Marrett (1741-1813), a 1763 graduate of Harvard College, probably as a tutor for those boys. After trying for other pulpits, Marrett was installed in 1773 at the Woburn parish that became Burlington. He was a Congregationalist, and it seems significant that John Pigeon, Jr., went to the Presbyterian college at Princeton in May 1773 rather than Harvard, which was closer and more welcoming for Anglicans.

In January 1774, Newton’s town meeting named John Pigeon to its new committee of correspondence, headed by Edward Durant. That September, Pigeon chaired the committee to instruct the town’s representatives to the Massachusetts General Court, including Durant. He joined those men in the first Massachusetts Provincial Congress the following month.

At the congress, one of Pigeon’s committee assignments was assessing the financial losses caused by the Boston Port Bill. His familiarity with Boston business suited him for that. On 29 October, he was also elected to the congress’s crucial committee of safety. Four days later, at that committee’s first meeting, he was chosen clerk. That put John Pigeon right in the middle of Massachusetts’s preparations for war.

TOMORROW: Pigeon as commissary.

More Braces of Balls

Early this month I quoted a witness in the Boston Massacre inquiry using the phrase “loaded with a brace of balls” to mean that the soldiers in Boston had two balls in their muskets.

Here are three more appearances of the phrase “a brace of balls,” which also offer tastes of life in eighteenth-century America. From the New York Mercury, 15 Dec 1755:

We hear from Baskin-ridge, in New-Jersey, that on Thursday the 4th Instant [i.e., this month], as two Boys about 8 Years of Age each, one named Leonard, and the other Ricky, were playing in the Shop of Brice Ricky of that Place, Leonard took up a Gun that he found at Hand, and after blowing into it, told his Play Mate, it was not loaded; when he cock’d her, and drawing the Trigger, the former standing right before the Muzzle, the whole Charge which was a Brace of Balls, entered his Body under his right Breast, and went out thro’ his left Shoulder Blade, of which Wound he immediately expired.

From the Boston News-Letter, 17 Jan 1765:

Last Evening, just after 7 o’clock, as a man was going over Boston Neck, he was stopped by a fellow, who presenting a Pistol to his Breast bid him deliver, swearing he would send a brace of balls thro him instantly if he refused: but the man replying, he had but 3 Pistareens about him he ordered him to go about his Business; and then ran off—doubtless apprehending a Pursuit, as there was a Number of People hastening towards them. He was a little Fellow had on a surtout Coat, wore his hat flap’d before, and had a pair of Pistols.

And finally a letter from the Rev. John Marrett (1741-1813) of the Woburn parish that split off to become Burlington, Massachusetts, to his uncle, dated 28 July 1775, during the siege of Boston:

An [British] officer afterwards came to our advanced Centry on Charleston Side & inquired of our Centry how we treated deserters. who answered they were treated as they them selves were

Thats well says the Officer and turned about to go away.

Says our Centry where are you go’ng?

back says the Offi[ce]r.

Stop says Centry I have a brace of Balls in my Gun & if you Stir another Step you are a ded man. Come back Upon that the Offi[ce]r returned and they took care of him

Marrett added a postscript: “Since heard that this story is not true”. However, he obviously found the detail of a “brace of balls” in one musket to be credible.

(That letter was published in Henry Dunster and His Descendants, by Samuel Dunster. It had a lot of abbreviations, and I decided to change the thorn y into “th” and spell out those words. Otherwise, lines would read like this: “yy were treated as yy ym selves were yts well says ye Officer.”)