Jacob Bates and the Boston Selectmen

On 27 Aug 1773, 250 years ago today, Jacob Bates met with the Boston selectmen.

As I discussed back here, Bates had become celebrated on continental Europe for feats of horsemanship. There was even a German print devoted to him and his horses.

In late 1772 Bates arrived in Philadelphia. He placed notices in newspapers from 2 September to 2 November.

Then the performer moved on to New York from June through early August 1773.

Unlike some traveling performers who could roll into town, find a tavern to host them, and quickly start shows in a courtyard, Bates had to set up a large space to ride in, plus an enclosure around that space to prevent people who hadn’t paid from seeing. That’s what he wanted to talk to the selectmen about on that Friday.

In that discussion were John Scollay, Timothy Newell, Thomas Marshall, Samuel Austin, and John Pitts. (John Hancock and Oliver Wendell were absent.)

The town’s official records say:

Mr. Jacob Bates a famous Horsman, attended & craves leave of the Selectmen to erect a Fence in the Common which will inclose about 160 feet of Ground in order to show his feats in Horsmanship—

Boston was notoriously hostile to theater and suspicious of anything that smacked of it. Traveling performers did come through, such as the rope-flyer John Childs and the musician James Joan. However, they had to navigate local rules and not disrupt life for too long.

Did the selectmen find Bates’s request to fence off part of the fifty-acre Common for a show of horsemanship reasonable?

his request was not granted.

COMING UP: Getting back on his horse.

Boston’s Town Meeting on the Fourth Day of the War

As quoted yesterday, on 3 Apr 1775 the Boston town meeting voted to continue their work by adjournment on 17 April.

By that date, town clerk William Cooper had slipped out of town with the official records. Also unavailable were Samuel Adams, chosen moderator of that meeting, and selectman John Hancock.

I’ve found no record of a notice that Bostonians would not meet that day, nor indication that they tried. The following day, Gen. Thomas Gage set his plan for the Concord expedition in motion, and the day after that the province was at war.

The first indication of another town meeting appeared in Isaiah Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy, newly moved to Worcester, on 3 May. After a detailed account of the first day of fighting, that paper stated:

It is now thirteen days since Boston was entirely shut up. The Sunday after the battle there were but two or three religious assemblies that met in Boston. In the Forenoon there was a town meeting, at which a Committee, consisting of the Select-Man, were chosen to wait upon General Gage, in order to get permission for the inhabitants to remove out of town with their effects.

A more detailed and apparently more accurate account appeared in the Boston Gazette on 26 June. This report used the legal formula of Boston’s other town meetings, and it’s clear the selectmen were involved, so this appears to meet all the criteria to be an official meeting.

Boston, ff. At a Meeting of the Freeholders and other Inhabitants of the Town of Boston legally warned, on Saturday the Twenty second day of April, A. D. 1775.

The Hon. JAMES BOWDOIN, Esq [shown above]; was chosen Moderator.

The Moderator informed the town that the present meeting was in consequence of an interview between his excellency General Gage and the Selectmen, at his desire, and mentioned the substance of the conversation that pass’d; and also that the Selectmen with the advice and assistance of a number of gentlemen had prepared several votes, which they thought it might be proper for the town to pass—And which in conjunction with the assurances that had been given to his excellency by the selectmen, they apprehended from the interview aforesaid, would be satisfactory to his excellency——

Whereupon,
The Hon. James Bowdoin, Esq; Ezekiel Goldthwait, Esq; Mr. Henderson Inches, Mr. Edward Paine, Mr. Alexander Hill, together with the selectmen, viz. John Scollay, Esq; Mr. Timothy Newell, Mr. Samuel Austin, Thomas Marshall, Esq; & Mr. John Pitts, were appointed a committee to consider of this important matter, and were desired to report as soon as may be.

The said Committee made report, and after some debate, the two following votes passed unanimously, viz.

His excellency General Gage in an interview with the selectmen, having represented that there was a large body of men in arms assembled in the neighbourhood of this town, with hostile intentions against his majesty’s troops stationed here, and that in case the troops should be attacked by them, and the attack should be aided by the inhabitants of the town, it might issue in very unhappy consequences to the town.

For prevention whereof, his excellency assured the selectmen, that whatever might be the event of the attack, he would take effectual care, that the troops should do no damage, nor commit any act of violence in the town; but that the lives and properties of the inhabitants should be protected and secured, if the inhabitants behaved peaceably; and the selectmen in behalf of the town engaged for the peaceable behaviour of the inhabitants accordingly:

In confirmation of which engagement—Voted,
That as the town have behaved peaceably towards the troops hitherto, they hereby engage to continue to do so; and the peace officers, and all other town officers, are enjoined, and the magistrates, and all persons of influence in the town, are earnestly requested to exert their utmost endeavors to preserve the peace of the town:

The Town at the same time relying on the assurances of his excellency, that no insult, violence or damage shall be done to the persons or property of the inhabitants, either by the troops or the kings Ships, whatever may be the event of the attack his excellency seems to apprehend; but of which attack we have no knowledge or information whatever, as all communication between the town and country has been interrupted by his excellency’s order, ever since the collection of the body aforesaid.

Whereas the communication between this town and the country both by land and by water is at present stop’d by order of his excellency General Gage, and the inhabitants cannot be supplied with provisions, fuel and other necessaries of life; by which means the sick and all invalids must suffer greatly, and immediately; and the inhabitants in general be distress’d, especially such (which is by much the greatest part) as have not had the means of laying in a stock of provisions, but depend for daily supplies from the country for their daily support, and may be in danger of perishing, unless the communication be opened:

Therefore, Resolved,
That a committee be appointed to wait on his excellency General Gage, to represent to him the state of the town in this regard, and to remind his excellency of his declarations in answer to addresses made to him when the works on the neck were erecting, viz. “That he had no intention of stopping up the avenue to the Town, or of obstructing the inhabitants or any of the country people coming in or going out of the town as usual;” that “he had no intention to prevent the free egress and regress, of any person to and from the town, or of reducing it to the state of a garrison; that he could not possibly intercept the intercourse between the town and country;” that “it is his duty and interest to encourage it; and it is as much inconsistent with his duty and interest to form the strange scheme of reducing the inhabitants to a state of humiliation and vassalage, by stopping their supplies,”—

Also, to represent to him, that in consequence of these repeated assurances of his excellency, the fears and apprehensions of the inhabitants, had generally subsided, and many persons who had determined to remove with their effects, have remain’d in town, whilst others largely concern’d in navigation, had introduced many valuable goods, in full confidence of the promised security:

That the Town think his Excellency incapable of acting on principles inconsistent with honor, justice and humanity, and therefore that they desire his excellency will please to give orders for opening the communication, not only for bringing provisions into the town, but also, that the inhabitants, such of them as incline, may retire from the town with their effects without molestation.

The same Committee were appointed to wait upon the General with the foregoing votes.

Then the meeting was adjourned to Sabbath morning, ten o’clock.

The town was reminding Gen. Gage of all the promises he’d made in the preceding months of keeping life as normal as possible. Of course, now there was a besieging army outside (“a large body of men in arms assembled in the neighbourhood”). How would the general respond?

TOMORROW: Sunday meeting.

A Split in the Merchants’ Club in 1771

On Tuesday, 13 Aug 1771, John Adams went into Boston for a weekly meeting of one of his gentlemen’s clubs and discovered that most of the club wasn’t there.

He wrote in his diary:

Spent the Evening at [Hannah] Cordis’s, the British Coffee house.—In the front Room, towards the long Wharfe, where the Merchants Clubb has met this twenty Years. It seems there is a Schism in that Church—a Rent in that Garment—a Mutiny in that Regiment, and a large De­tachment has decamped, and marched over the Way, to [Joseph] Ingersols.

This Evening The Commissary and Speaker, and Speaker and Commissary, Mr. [Thomas] Cushing was present. The Clerk of the House Mr. [Samuel] Adams, Mr. [James] Otis, Mr. John Pitts, Dr. [Joseph] Warren, Mr. [William] Molineux, Mr. Josa. Quincy, and myself were present.

The men left at the British Coffee House were the most politically aggressive members of the Merchants’ Club. In fact, most of those men weren’t even merchants—they were lawyers (Otis, Quincy, John Adams himself), a doctor (Warren), and a full-time politician (Samuel Adams).

Of the remainder, Cushing was pretty busy with the two high provincial offices Adams tagged him with. (Did Adams’s repetition of “Commissary and Speaker, and Speaker and Commissary” hint at some disapproval of dual office-holding?) Molineux appears to have supported himself by managing Charles Ward Apthorp’s local property while setting up a cloth factory. That left only John Pitts concerned full-time with imperial trade. (He would become a selectman in 1773-1777.)

John Adams’s other diary entries for August 1771 show that Otis’s behavior was becoming erratic. He had acted “quite wild at the Bar Meeting” the previous week. Otis had been reelected to his old seat in the Massachusetts General Court in May, but by November the authorities were stepping in. So some members of the Merchants Club might have decamped to get away from Otis.

In general, there was not much support for radical, confrontational politics in late 1771 simply because there was less to confront. The tariff on tea was the only remaining Townshend duty. There were no troops stationed in the center of town. The issues of judicial salaries hadn’t surfaced.

My big question is whether John Hancock was at Ingersoll’s Bunch of Grapes tavern with the “large Detachment” of merchants or had skipped both meetings. In this period Gov. Thomas Hutchinson perceived enough daylight between Hancock and Adams to believe he could win the young merchant over to his side. That didn’t happen, but maybe evenings like this suggested it might.