A Job Recommendation from Dr. Warren

Last month the Times Observer newspaper of Warren, Pennsylvania, reported on an exhibit at the local historical society that included a letter from Dr. Joseph Warren, the city’s namesake.

According to the society’s managing director, a man named John Blair donated the letter in 1976, not saying how he had obtained it. “It’s been housed in a safe at the Historical Society that hasn’t been inventoried so the letter had been forgotten to some degree.”

A transcription of this letter was included in Richard Frothingham’s 1865 biography of Warren, so the text has been available to scholars. That book says it was addressed to the Massachusetts committee of safety, which met in Cambridge while the Provincial Congress was in Watertown.  

The society’s transcription of the letter is:

Watertown May 12, 1775.

Gentlemen

Mr. Pigeon is now sick, his business must be attended to, he requests that Mr. Charles Miller the Bearer hereof may be appointed his assistant and immediately directed to go upon Business – pray desire the young Gentleman you were pleased to appoint to be my clerk, to attend here as I have much writing to do and want a number of papers copied for the use of Congress.

I am Gentn. you most obed svt
Jos. Warren

“Mr. Pigeon” was John Pigeon of Newton, the congress’s commissary. Within a few weeks he was replaced, unable to keep up with the demands of the job. Once the Continental Congress assumed responsibility for the army around Boston, it appointed Joseph Trumbull the commissary general.

Charles Miller (1742–1817) was deputy commissary general under both Pigeon and Trumbull, working out of Cambridge. At the end of the siege he returned to Boston, where he had been a merchant, and continued to gather food and supplies for the army. He later became senior warden at King’s Chapel before retiring to his native Braintree/Quincy.

In 1779 Miller’s wife Elizabeth was hosting Dr. Warren’s eldest daughter, Betsey. According to Samuel Forman’s biography of the doctor, citing letters of Mercy Scollay, the Millers also took in the mysterious Sally Edwards.

TOMORROW: The next generation.

Ballot-Stuffing at the Boston Town Meeting

Last month Jake Sconyers devoted an episode of his HUB History podcast to the long history of King’s Chapel, from Gov. Edmund Andros’s seizure of some of the land Boston had set aside for its first burying-ground to a recent fire in a Nova Scotia church built from the timber left over when the current stone chapel rose around it.

This podcast is primarily a story about real estate and architecture, not theology. There could be another whole narrative on how King’s Chapel was philosophically “rebuilt” as one of the town’s first Unitarian congregations soon after the Revolution while still maintaining its upper-class status.

In 1748 the King’s Chapel leadership wanted to build a larger church and proposed a deal: If Boston would grant it more land on School Street, the congregation would pay for a new South Latin School.

This required a vote at town meeting. One name popped out for me in the story of how that vote proceeded. Here’s a quotation from the official town records, as transcribed for the Colonial Society of Massachusetts:

…thereupon the Inhabitants were directed to bring in their Votes in writing, & such of ’em as were accepting of said Draft of a Vote as prepared by the Committee & passing the same as the Vote of the Town in answer to said Petition were desired to write Yea and such as were not for accepting it to write Nay.

And the Inhabitants proceeded to bring in their Votes, and when the Selectmen were receiving ’em at the Door of the Hall they observed one of the Inhabitants Vizt John Pigeon to put in about a dozen with the Word Yea wrote on all of ’em and being charged with so doing he acknowledg’d it & was thereupon ordered by the Moderator to pay a fine of Five Pounds for putting in more than one Vote according to Law, and the Moderator thereupon declared to the Inhabitants that they must withdraw and bring in their Votes again in Manner as before

John Pigeon (1725–1800) was at that point a young man, still in his early twenties, starting out in business. He was an Anglican, so it’s not surprising that he supported the church expansion.

It’s more surprising that after officials detected Pigeon casting multiple votes in 1748, his standing in town remained high. He married a woman from a wealthy Huguenot family in 1752. Two years later, he began to advertise his mercantile business regularly. He became a warden of Christ Church, the Anglican church in the North End. Later he opened an insurance office.

In the 1760s Pigeon was wealthy enough to retire to a country estate in Newton. He became active in the Patriot movement, serving on the Provincial Congress’s committee of safety in early 1775. He was even the Massachusetts army’s first commissary general, though he left that post prematurely.

I can only think that the authorities accepted that Pigeon sincerely thought he could cast votes for other people not at the meeting. Written votes on questions like this land sale were rare, so the protocols might not have been clear.

“We had not one half lb: of powder left that night”

Returning to Dr. Benjamin Church’s intelligence report dated 24 Sept 1775, he had a couple more things to say about the Continental Army’s gunpowder shortage.

Having addressed that topic at length at the start, Church returned to it with this remark:

If you will believe me Mr. Pidgeon the Commessary General then, now declairs that we had not one half lb: of powder left that night the bunker hill was taken and had you pursued, the Camp must have been broken up—this they Confess.

John Pigeon was a Boston merchant and insurance broker who had moved out to Newton several years before the war. (I wish I knew where he and his family, as Anglicans, went to church. There weren’t a lot of options in rural Massachusetts. Did he ride to Cambridge or into Boston?)

As a country gentleman, Pigeon pushed his new town toward supporting the Whig cause. He bought the local militia company two cannon. He served in the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, becoming clerk of the committee of safety in November 1774, commissary of stores in February 1775, and commissary of the provincial army as it officially formed on 19 May.

During the Battle of Bunker Hill, Pigeon was, as Church wrote, “the Commessary General then.” He submitted a resignation shortly afterward, only for the provincial congress to reject it on 20 June. Gen. Artemas Ward sent Pigeon a letter listing the army’s needs ten days later. Pigeon responded by requesting a larger staff. James Warren decided he was becoming “petulant.”

A few weeks later the Continental Congress took responsibility for the New England army and appointed Joseph Trumbull, son of Connecticut’s governor, as commissary general. Pigeon soon went home, which caused problems toward the end of the year when the army needed his account books.

Church’s 24 September letter suggests that he had been in touch with Pigeon recently, and that Pigeon felt the New England army’s supply chain hadn’t been working back in June.

Another remark on gunpowder from later in the letter:

I heard General [John] Sullivan say at a Court of inquiry where I was that had they only powder Sufficient they would keep up a Continual fire on the town, and force you and your ships to go off, but says he what can we do without it, and that it was a happy thing that General [Thomas] Gage was not made acquainted with our matters.

By writing that, Church was of course making Gen. Gage acquainted with the gunpowder situation. The British commanders knew that they were in no danger of “Continual fire.”

TOMORROW: Internal disputes.

The Guns that Didn’t Bark

One of my big unanswered questions about the Battle of Lexington and Concord on 19 Apr 1775 is why the provincial forces didn’t deploy any of the cannon they had just spent months collecting and preparing for a fight.

The guns that James Barrett had been overseeing in Concord were probably unavailable after being rushed into hiding-places in other towns. But what about the rest?

We can assume that the men of Lexington and Cambridge, towns along the British route, didn’t want to see an all-out battle along one of their main roads, with houses and possibly civilians nearby. Better to hurry the redcoats along than to make them desperate and angry with artillery.

But what about Watertown, which had actually deployed two cannon on 30 March, according to a British army captain? Jonathan Brown was “captain of the train”—Watertown’s own militia artillery company. The town wasn’t on the regulars’ route but was close enough to reach the road from Concord with mounted cannon. But there’s no mention of the Watertown guns coming out.

What about Newton, where a shot from one of the two cannon John Pigeon had given to the town summoned the militia company on 19 April? Those men reportedly gathered beside the cannon and then marched off to confront the king’s troops, leaving their most powerful weapons behind.

Other towns had also formed artillery companies, but those men marched out with muskets. Lt. Edward Thoroton Gould reported hearing cannon used as alarm guns during the march west, but neither he nor any other British officer saw them.  

Indeed, out of the scores of Massachusetts militia units that mustered independently on 19 April, sometimes zealously and sometimes after long conversations among local leaders, I haven’t found any that brought out their cannon as well. I haven’t read even a mention of that as a possibility under discussion.

Uncounted numbers of veterans of the 19th of April left descriptions of that day, some immediately and some decades later. In 1775 there may have been pressure not to mention the province’s artillery because that would acknowledge the countryside had prepared for war. Eventually, however, men did speak of topics that had been politically awkward before. Yet no one talked about cannon.

One possible explanation is that those artillery pieces weren’t as ready for combat as people had been saying. Back in February, representatives from four towns described the four iron cannon as “Nearly Compleated,” but 99% done isn’t done, especially if you’re going into combat. Provincial records show people were still scrambling to finish equipping some pieces in late April and May.

In particular, militia officers may have felt they didn’t have enough gunpowder for an artillery engagement, and the supply they did have was better divvied out to infantrymen. Or they might not have had the horses necessary to drag iron cannon across country and into battle—which farmer was willing to risk his livestock? For that matter, did the provincials dare to risk the guns themselves when there was probably bigger fighting ahead?

I suspect another factor is that on 19 April the men of Massachusetts weren’t yet ready to make an all-out attack on the king’s soldiers. Did they really want to wipe out hundreds of their fellow subjects? Instead of halting and capturing the expedition, wasn’t it better to keep it moving back toward Boston? Like a dog chasing a car, the Massachusetts militiamen wouldn’t have known what to do with that column if they’d caught it.

John Adams’s First Visit to Princeton

On 27 Aug 1775, John Adams visited the College of New Jersey in Princeton. He arrived in town about noon, checking into Jacob Hyer’s tavern at the “Sign of Hudibrass,” near the college’s Nassau Hall (shown here).

In his diary Adams recorded his impressions:

The Colledge is a stone building about as large as that at New York [i.e., what is now Columbia]. It stands upon rising Ground and so commands a Prospect of the Country.

After Dinner Mr. [John] Pidgeon a student of Nassau Hall, Son of Mr. [John] Pidgeon of Watertown [actually Newton] from whom we brought a Letter, took a Walk with us and shewed us the Seat of Mr. [Richard] Stockton a Lawyer in this Place and one of the Council, and one of the Trustees of the Colledge. As we returned we met Mr. Euston [William Houston], the Professor of Mathematicks and natural Philosophy, who kindly invited Us to his Chamber. We went.

The Colledge is conveniently constructed. Instead of Entries across the Building, the Entries are from End to End, and the Chambers are on each side of the Entries. There are such Entries one above another in every Story. Each Chamber has 3 Windows, two studies, with one Window in each, and one Window between the studies to enlighten the Chamber.

Mr. Euston then shewed us the Library. It is not large, but has some good Books. He then led us into the Apparatus. Here we saw a most beautifull Machine, an Orrery, or Planetarium, constructed by Mr. [David] Writtenhouse of Philadelphia. It exhibits allmost every Motion in the astronomical World. The Motions of the Sun and all the Planetts with all their Satellites. The Eclipses of the Sun and Moon &c. He shewed us another orrery, which exhibits the true Inclination of the orbit of each of the Planetts to the Plane of the Ecliptic.

He then shewed Us the electrical Apparatus, which is the most compleat and elegant that I have seen. He charged the Bottle and attempted an Experiment, but the State of the Air was not favourable.

For more about Rittenhouse’s orreries, see here.

TOMORROW: Adams’s college tour continues.

John Pigeon’s Petulance and Property

I was tracing the political career of John Pigeon, a Boston merchant who retired to Newton a few years before the Revolution. In the early months of 1775 he went from clerk of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s committee of safety to commissary of stores to commissary general of the Massachusetts army.

And within two months Pigeon decided that job was too much for him. On 20 June he petitioned to be allowed to resign. The congress instead adopted this recommendation from a committee:

Resolved, That Mr. John Pigeon, commissary general, requesting a dismission from his said office, being under a mistake, have liberty to withdraw his petition; that the conduct of said commissary general in his office, has been such as to merit the approbation of this Congress, and of the public in general; and that said John Pigeon be desired to attend his business as commissary general in the service of this province.

The legislature agreed to assist Pigeon by appointing a deputy commissary for every regiment, adding considerably to its payroll. On 25 June Pigeon told the committee of safety that he also needed a “supervisor” near each of the main camps of the American army, in Cambridge and Roxbury. Men

whose duty it shall severally be, constantly to attend said camps and examine into the supplies of each Regiment, to see that such supplies are properly delivered out in time, quantity, and quality, and timeously to advise the Commissary-General when and what articles of supplies are wanted at the respective camps, and also to take care that the empty casks are saved and returned to the Commissary-General’s office for further service.

Gotta collect those empties.

Three days later, at Pigeon’s request, the congress appointed a committee to examine his account books. This was a common way to respond to accusations of malfeasance or other criticism.

And Pigeon was getting criticism. After the Battle of Bunker Hill the army had spread out, putting more men on Prospect and Winter Hills to prevent any redcoats from charging off the Charlestown peninsula. That made it harder to supply every regiment. On 30 June Gen. Artemas Ward wrote to Pigeon:

There, are now on Prospect Hill nearly four thousand men, who at present are obliged to come to the store in [Harvard] college, for all the provisions they stand in need of. If they can be supplied with provisions at the hill, it will tend much to the safety of the lines there, for a great number of the men are now obliged daily to leave the lines that they may convey provisions to others upon the hill; and the milk especially, when it is conveyed from the store in college to the hill, is unfit for any person in camp to eat; therefore, if possible, it must be altered.

The next day, the commissary general gave the congress a list of twenty-six men he wanted appointed deputies.

But by then, apparently, Pigeon had damaged his reputation with his colleagues. On 9 August James Warren, president of the congress, told John Adams, “his temper is so petulant, that he has been desirous of quitting for some time, and, indeed, I have wished it.”

The Continental Congress’s takeover of the New England army offered a way to resolve this situation. On 19 July the Congress in Philadelphia appointed Joseph Trumbull, politically well connected and already in camp as commissary for the Connecticut troops, to be commissary general of the whole army. On 12 August the Massachusetts General Court responded by passing this resolve:

all Contracts made by our Committee of Supplies, for Victualling said Massachusetts Army, are terminated; and the Commissary General of said Continental Army, is to be considered at Liberty to purchase Supplies for Victualling said Army, of such Persons, and in such Way and Manner as he shall see fit.

Pigeon might have stayed on as Trumbull’s deputy or the Massachusetts government’s liaison to his office. Members of his staff continued to work for the army. But his accounts for the Cambridge and Roxbury stores and his ledger stop abruptly in early August, even before the legislature’s vote. (Thanks to Stephanie Dyson at the Massachusetts Archives for sending those links.)

By November 1775 the Massachusetts government was treating Richard Devens, a reliable member of the committee of safety from Charlestown, as its head commissary. No one’s found a date for his official commission; Devens seems to have slid into the office after working on other assignments, but by the end of the year he had the title.

And on 9 December, the legislature had to resolve:

Whereas, John Pigeon, the late Commissary of the Forces raised by this Colony, keeps his books at some distance from the Army, by reason whereof the Officers of the Army are prevented from settling their Rolls as ordered by this Court:

Therefore, Resolved, That the said Pigeon be, and he hereby is directed to furnish the Officers of said forces with such Accounts as said Pigeon is possessed of, necessary to the making up their Rolls at Cambridge, and that he be desired to attend there, to settle said Accounts, as long as his presence there may be necessary.

That order might be why the state archives now contains some of Pigeon’s accounts. Then again, a couple of later resolutions suggest that the legislature had to guess about what to pay men for work in the commissary department, so Pigeon may not have turned over all his records.

John and Jane Pigeon’s only daughter, Patience, died in Newton in 1777 at age twenty-four. Their sons John, Jr., and Henry both married in 1790 and started having children. Then Henry died in 1799; John, Sr., in 1800; and John, Jr., in 1801. Widow Jane Pigeon passed away in 1808.

Pigeon’s estates in Newton became the town’s poor farm for a while. But one grandson born in 1799, the Rev. Charles Dumaresq Pigeon, remembered that property fondly. He bought land in the “Riverside” area in 1846, convinced a railroad to build a stop there, and recruited other clergymen to retire nearby. The result was the genteel suburb that the Rev. Mr. Pigeon dubbed Auburndale.

John Pigeon Becomes Massachusetts Commissary

As I wrote yesterday, in 1768 the Boston merchant and insurance broker John Pigeon retired to a farm estate in Newton. But in 1773, as he neared his fiftieth birthday, he became politically active in his new town. The next fall he was elected to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and became clerk of its committee of safety.

Starting in November 1774, that committee and the parallel committee on supplies secretly began to collect artillery for a provincial army outside royal control. Some seaside towns and the Boston militia train had already secured their ordnance. To gain control of that process, the committees had to contact the people holding those weapons, find others willing to loan guns they owned, and prepare them all for battle.

Pigeon worked not just at the provincial level but locally. On 2 Jan 1775 he presented his neighbors in Newton with two cannon (size and source unknown). Local historian Francis Jackson summarized the town meeting’s response this way:

Nathan Fuller, Amariah Fuller and Edward Fuller were chosen to obtain subscriptions to mount the two field pieces.

Voted, to raise men to exercise the field-pieces, and Captain Amariah Fuller, Captain Jeremiah Wiswall, and Major Benjamin Hammond, were chosen a committee for that purpose, and instructed them to raise a company of Minute Men, consisting of thirty-two men, besides the officers; and that said Minute Men meet once a week, during the Winter season, half a day, for exercise; and all that attend, shall be paid eight pence each.

With those actions, Newton was going to war.

On 22 February, the committee of safety made Pigeon its commissary of stores as well as its clerk. Of course, members put as little in writing as possible. For instance, on 17 April Pigeon wrote to the Worcester militia captain Timothy Bigelow:

Sir:—

The committee desired me to write you, to desire the favor of your company, next Wednesday, the 19th instant, at Mr. [Ethan] Wetherby’s, at the Black Horse, in Menotomy, on business of great importance.

Sir, your most humble servant,
J. PIGEON, Clerk.

P. S. The committee meet at ten o’clock.

Needless to say, that meeting didn’t take place. Pigeon was soon sending out more committee orders to move gunpowder, cannon, oatmeal, rice, and raisins around eastern Massachusetts.

The emergency of 19 April brought out the militia. (One chronicler wrote that Newton’s alarm signal was a shot from Pigeon’s cannon.) Over the next few weeks some of those men returned home while others stayed, unsure of their command structure or pay. Gen. Artemas Ward urged the congress to enlist soldiers for the rest of the year. Such an army also needed an administrative structure and a supply chain.

On 19 May the congress created the post of commissary general:

Resolved, That Mr. John Pigeon be, and he hereby is appointed and empowered, as a commissary for the army of this colony, to draw from the magazines, which are or may be provided for that purpose, such provisions and other stores as, from time to time, he shall find necessary for the army; and he is further empowered, to recommend to the Congress such persons as shall be necessary, and as he shall think qualified, to serve as deputy commissioners: and said deputy commissioners, when confirmed by the congress for the time being, shall have full power to act in said office, and are to be accountable to the commissary for their doings; also, said commissary is empowered to contract with, and employ, such other persons to assist him in executing his office, as shall be, by him, found necessary; and his contracts, for necessaries to supply the army, during the late confused state of the colony, shall be allowed; and the committee of supplies are hereby directed to examine, and if they find them reasonable, considering the exigencies of the times, to draw on the treasury for payment of the same.

Pigeon had already appointed four deputies at Roxbury, Medford, Watertown, and Waltham back on 7 May. The army had two big storehouses at Cambridge and Roxbury for the army’s two wings. In addition, Joseph Trumbull had arrived from Connecticut as that colony’s commissary. With New Englanders largely united behind the war and the region’s farmlands and roads safe from any British attack, food was not hard to find.

Pigeon also remained involved with the army’s armaments. On 24 June, the committee of safety assigned artificers to work “in Newton, in buildings of Mr. John Pigeon,” on cannon and other military stores. But by then, it appears, the job of commissary was proving too much for him.

COMING UP: Mr. Pigeon’s petulance.

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.