“I told Cushing as Ruggles told Tyler”

Yesterday I quoted a long anecdote that John Adams wrote out in 1789 about a discussion between two Massachusetts politicians seventeen years earlier.

The specifics of Adams’s anecdotes aren’t always reliable when he was trying to make a point about politics or personalities or, in this case, both.

Adams dated that exchange to 1772. At that time one of the men he quoted, Timothy Ruggles, no longer had a seat in the Massachusetts General Court. He lived in Hardwick, in western Worcester County. The Boston merchant John Rowe recorded several encounters with Ruggles in the late 1760s but none in the early 1770s, suggesting he didn’t routinely visit the coast. So how likely was Ruggles to be socializing with Royall Tyler and other Boston Whigs in 1772?

As it turns out, however, Adams also left us solid evidence that he had heard (or heard about) that exchange between Ruggles and Tyler by the end of 1772.

On 1 Jan 1773, Adams recorded this event in his diary:

This Evening my Friend Mr. [Samuel] Pemberton invited me and I went with him, to spend the Evening with Jere. Wheelwright. Mr. Wheelwright is a Gentleman of a liberal Education about 50 Years of Age, and constantly confined to his Chamber by Lameness. A Fortune of about two hundred a Year enables him to entertain his few Friends very handsomely, and he has them regularly at his Chamber every Tuesday and Fryday Evening.

Wheelwright (1717-1784) was a wealthy heir who graduated from Harvard College in 1736. On receiving his master’s degree three years later, he delivered a speech against slavery, its effect diluted by being in Latin. After that he enjoyed a long life of wealthy obscurity, keeping out of religious and political controversies. Among Wheelwright’s properties were “the Hills at New-Boston,” which we now call the crest of the Beacon Hill neighborhood, and settlements in New Hampshire and Maine.

In Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, Clifford K. Shipton wrote:

About 1770 one of Wheelwright’s legs was so badly broken by the upsetting of his riding chair that he was confined to his chamber for the rest of his life. Having an income of about £200 a year, he moved into comfortable quarters in Newton from which, during his remaining years, he surveyed the world with intelligent curiosity.

Wheelwright kept notes on current events in his almanac diaries for more than forty-five years. Only one folder’s worth of that work survives at the Massachusetts Historical Society. He never married or had children.

Back to Adams’s diary entry, which describes a New Year’s visit to Wheelwright’s house. (Shipton identified “Mr. Swift” as John Swift, Harvard 1733; Adams doesn’t mention that man in his papers while Samuel Swift was a good friend and a link between him and Wheelwright, so I put Samuel Swift in this party.) Adams wrote:

The Speaker [Thomas Cushing], Dr. [Joseph] Warren and Mr. [Samuel] Swift were there— And We Six had a very pleasant Evening. Our Conversation turned upon the Distress of Rhode Island [during the Gaspee investigation], upon the Judges Dependency [salary grants from the tea tax], the late numerous Town Meetings, upon [William] Brattles Publication in [Richard] Drapers Paper [the Boston News-Letter] of Yesterday, and upon each others Characters. We were very free, especially upon one another.

I told Cushing as Ruggles told Tyler, that I never knew a Pendulum swing so clear.

Warren told me, that Pemberton said I was the proudest and cunningest Fellow, he ever knew.

We all rallied Pemberton, upon the late Appointment of Tommy Hutchinson [the governor’s son] to be a Judge of the common Bench, and pretended to insist upon it that he was disappointed, and had lost all his late Trimming, and Lukewarmness and Toryism.

Warren thought I was rather a cautious Man, but that he could not say I ever trimmed. When I spoke at all I always spoke my Sentiments. This was a little soothing to my proud Heart, no doubt.

Thus, by the time of this gathering Adams definitely knew that Ruggles got off a good line about Tyler and was happy to borrow it to tease Cushing. Perhaps the original conversation happened earlier than 1772, and perhaps it didn’t really start with Dr. Thomas Young, but it happened.

Now I can’t imagine anything more antsy for John Adams than waiting for his colleagues to tease him and having to chuckle about it.

Looking Back on the Owen Richards Attack

Last December, starting here, I wrote about the tar-and-feathers attack on a Customs employee named Owen Richards in May 1770.

The fallout from that event lasted for years, so I’m going to resume the story.

But first, for review, here’s the merchant John Rowe’s summary of the attack in his diary for 18 May:

Just as I was going to bed there was a very great Hallooing in the street & a mob of upwards a thousand people—it seems they had got an informer & put him in a Cart, covered with Tar & Feathers & so exhibited him thro’ the Streets.

For a more detailed description, we can turn to Esther Forbes’s Paul Revere and the World He Lived In, quoting the merchant Samuel Salisbury (shown above, decades later):

I perceived candles in a number of windows,

what, thinks I, is there an illumination tonight?

Getting home I was informed that an Informer had been carted through the streets, Tarred and feathered.

After I had been to the Barber’s my Curiosity led me to the point at New Boston [the western tip of the peninsula] where I found the Informer in a Cart before Capt [John] Homer’s door surrounded with a great number of People

he had his shirt taken off & his bare skin tarred & Feathered. Sometimes they would make him say one thing sometimes another. Sometimes he must hold the Lanthorn this way, sometimes that, then he must hold up a glass Bottle & Swear he would never do so agin & let the bottle fall down & break & then Huzzah—

from thence they carried him into King Street Let him get out of the Cart made a lane down the street where 3 or 4 carried him off from the multitude in safety, being about nine o’clock.

The mob that attacked George Gailer, another man accused of helping the Customs service, in October 1769 also made him “carry the lantren in his hand & calling to all the inhabitince to put Candles in their Windoes.”

I can’t find a precedent for making Richards swear an oath and drop a bottle, though. It looks like a folk ritual of some sort, with the extra appeal of breaking stuff.

As Salisbury reported, the crowd eventually let Richards’s friends pull him away and get him home safely.

TOMORROW: Going to court.

“Upon his Interment a large Mob attended”

As I described yesterday, the funeral of Lt. Gov. Andrew Oliver on 8 Mar 1774 did not go smoothly.

Some of Oliver’s close friends and relatives, including his brother, Chief Justice Peter Oliver (shown here), and their in-law, Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, chose to stay away because they expected angry crowds.

Then a protocol mix-up caused the British army and navy officers to cut into the procession ahead of the Massachusetts legislators. Many of those politicians were already at odds with the Oliver–Hutchinson clan and grabbed the excuse to stay away completely.

Nonetheless, lots of people showed up—not to walk in the mournful procession but to watch it. “Such a Concourse or rather Multitude of Spectators I never saw at any Funeral here before,” the merchant John Rowe wrote.

The Cadets, the upper-class militia company that served as the governors’ honor guard, turned out for duty in the procession under their commander, John Hancock. That displeased some people, reportedly.

This is a story I see repeated in a lot of biographies without direct quotations or sourcing. The earliest version I’ve found appears in John Sanderson’s multi-volume Biography of the Signers to the Declaration of Independence, published in the 1820s and thus possibly based on people around in 1774:

The last instance, during the British administration, of the parade of this guard [the Cadets] was at the funeral of the lieutenant governor Oliver, under the chief government of general Gage [sic]; on which occasion Mr. Samuel Adams, hearing that Hancock designed, with the company, to perform the usual military honours to the deceased, who had been one of the most obnoxious tories of the whole continent, hastened to dissuade him from his purpose. But Hancock, in observing to his friend that the honours were designed for the office, and not the man, persisted in his resolution.

Hancock and the Cadets marched with Oliver’s body to his grave at the Granary Burying Ground. Then the well-dressed militiamen fired three volleys over the grave.

The large crowd responded by shouting three cheers for the lieutenant governor’s death. Rowe reported: “There was after Colo. Hancock’s Company had fired & the Funerall over, as the Relations were Returning, Some Rude Behaviour.”

Hutchinson wrote:

Marks of disrespect were also shewn by the populace to the remains of a man, whose memory, if he had died before this violent spirit was raised, would have been revered by all orders and degrees of men in the province.

Andrew Oliver had been politically unpopular for several years, having been hanged in effigy in 1765 as the Massachusetts stamp agent.

Peter Oliver later wrote:

The Vengeance of the Faction was carried to, & beyond the grave—Upon his Interment a large Mob attended, & huzzaed at the intombing the Body; & at Night there was an Exhibition at a publick Window, of a Coffin & several Insignia of Infamy—& at this Exhibition some Members of the general Assembly attended—could Infernals do worse?

As I noted above, the chief justice stayed away from the funeral, and his memory was probably distorted by secondhand reports and the passage of time. The “Exhibition at a publick Window” that Peter Oliver mentioned was part of that year’s illumination in memory of the Boston Massacre. Ordinarily it would have gone up on the 5th of March, but that was right before the Sabbath, so the display was delayed until Money, 7 March, the evening before the funeral.

The descriptions of the 1774 illumination say nothing about pictures criticizing Andrew Oliver. Instead, one window targeted Thomas Hutchinson and Peter Oliver himself.

Some final details from John Rowe: “Then followed the Coaches & chariots amounting to Twenty, then the Chaises amounting to Ten.” And, “Minute Guns were fired from the So. Battery.”

A Funeral Procession for Andrew Oliver

I started this month reviewing the events of early March 1774: the return of the Massachusetts Spy, the death of Lt. Gov. Andrew Oliver (shown here), John Hancock’s Massacre oration, and the second Boston Tea Party.

That wasn’t all. Lt. Gov. Oliver had to be interred. And that funeral was scheduled for the day after the tea destruction.

In his diary, merchant John Rowe wrote one line about the tea, showing how such news had become ho-hum. But he left a long description the funeral:

This afternoon his Honour the Lieut. Governour Andrew Oliver Esq was Buried as Follows.

Colo. Hancock with his Company of Cadets & Colo. [John] Erving with the officers of his [militia] Regimt. preceded the Corps—Colo. Hancock’s Compy. under Arms.

The Bearers were Judge [Samuel] Danforth, Judge [Shrimpton] Hutchinson, Treasurer [Harrison] Gray James Russell Esq, Mr. Secretary [Thomas] Flucker, Foster Hutchinson Esq.

Then Followed the Family,…

That family contingent was smaller than normal.

The late lieutenant governor’s brother Peter Oliver was chief justice, and in February the legislature had impeached him for accepting a Crown salary—raising his public profile, and not in a good way. On the day of the funeral, Chief Justice Oliver wrote, he thought

his Risque of his Life was too great, for him to pay his final Visit to the Death Bed of an only Brother; & his Friends advised him not [to] pay his fraternal Respect to his Brother’s Obsequies—the Advice was just; for it afterwards appeared, that had he so done, it was not probable that he ever would have returned to his own home. Never did Cannibals thirst stronger for human Blood than the Adherents to this Faction…

Gov. Thomas Hutchinson also stayed away to avoid rousing the crowd. The governor’s son Thomas, Jr., had married one of Andrew Oliver’s daughters. But his friends told him that they did “not think it safe for me to attend the funeral.”

The rites didn’t go smoothly. In his history of the province, Hutchinson wrote about his late friend and colleague:

Even his funeral afforded opportunity for the spirit of party to shew itself. The members of the house of representatives, who were invited, being in one house, and the admiral, general [sic], and other officers of the navy and army, in another, the latter first came out, and followed the relatives of the deceased, which was so resented by some of the representatives, as to cause them to refuse to join in the procession, and to retire in a body.

Rowe’s version of that was:

next in order should have the Council & house of Assembly but thro some Blunder the Admirall [John Montagu] & his Core followed the Family & Relations, next them Colo. [Alexander] Lesly of the 64 Regiment & his Core, then the Gentlemen of this & the Neighboring Towns which were very few. . . .

Thro some misunderstanding or Blunder the Gentlemen of the Councill did not attend this Funerall & very few of the House of Representatives.

And that was just the start of the trouble.

TOMORROW: Three volleys and three cheers.

A “very Cheerfull” Christmas at the Rowes’

The merchant John Rowe was one of Boston’s leading Anglicans, so he celebrated Christmas while his Congregationalist neighbors generally ignored the holiday.

Here’s how Rowe described 25 Dec 1770 in his published diary, 250 years ago today:

Christmas Day — I dined at home with Capt. John Linzee Mr. John Lane, Dr. Miller Joseph Golthwait Mr. Inman, Mrs. Rowe, Miss Lucy Flucker & Sucky Inman — The same Company staid & spent the afternoon & evening & wee were very Cheerfull.

That’s a lot of different surnames, but I can map close relations among many of those people. “Mrs. Rowe” was the diarist’s wife, of course, the former Hannah Speakman.

Before Hannah’s sister Susannah died in 1761, she had married Ralph Inman (1713-1788, shown above courtesy of the Harvard Art Museums). The Inmans’ daughter “Sucky” or Susannah (1754-1792) lived in Boston with her aunt and uncle Rowe, and her father had come in from Cambridge for this holiday.

John Linzee (1743-1798) was a captain in the Royal Navy who would spend increasing time at the Rowes’ house in 1772. Finally that summer he married Susannah Inman, then eighteen years old. Later he participated in the Battle of Bunker Hill and some other naval actions during the siege of Boston.

Lucy Flucker (1756-1824) was probably at this party as a teen-aged friend of Sucky Inman. She spotted Henry Knox in a militia parade in 1773 and married him the next year. She thus got to see the war from the other side.

Joseph Goldthwait (1730-1779) was a former major in the provincial army who became commissary to the royal troops in 1768 and filled other posts in military administration afterward. He died of illness in New York during the war.

John Lane was a London merchant and “Old Friend” of Rowe’s. Depending on what “Old Friend” meant, they may have met as young men when Rowe was still in England or recently when “John Lane, jun.” visited Boston and New York in 1764-65. Lane came back to Boston in August 1769 “in the Nassau very unexpected,” Rowe wrote, and he stayed until July 1771, regularly appearing in Rowe’s diary. In March 1771, for example, Rowe came home to find Lane and another man singing and playing his niece’s spinet.

Lane’s family firm, called Lane, Son & Fraser in this period, did a lot of business with Rowe and other New England merchants. They even owned ships together, including the Eleanor, one of the vessels at risk in the Boston Tea Party. After Capt. Linzee married Sucky Inman, Rowe wrote: “I gave Capt. Linzee a Letter with Orders to draw on me every New Years Day Twenty Pounds Sterling, taking the money of Messrs. Lane Son & Fraser for my acct.”

In 1786 John Lane came back to Boston with his son, apparently planning to settle permanently. In 1790 Lane, “now resident at Boston,” filed a lawsuit to seize a vessel that Lane, Son & Fraser had invested in. But the next mention of the firm in the Boston newspapers, in the 14 June 1793 Argus, said the firm had gone bankrupt in London.

Dan Byrnes has striven to collect and parse information about Lane, Son & Fraser because of an Australian connection, as this webpage shows, but it doesn’t make anything clearer for me. It’s likely there were two or three generations of men named John Lane (Jr.) who have to be sorted out.

That leaves only Dr. Miller to be accounted for. That name doesn’t appear among the local physicians of this period. It’s possible he was a surgeon attached to the Royal Navy or even the 14th Regiment of Foot, stationed at the Castle.

The Departures of the Rev. Mr. Mosley

On Easter in 1772, as I described yesterday, Trinity Church of Pomfret, Connecticut, formally set up its governing structure.

The minister was the Rev. Richard Mosley, a Cambridge University graduate and former Royal Navy chaplain. The man who had founded the Anglican outpost, Godfrey Malbone, became one of the wardens.

A couple of weeks later, the Rev. David Fogg arrived from North Carolina. Malbone had invited him to be the church’s minister months before, but nothing had been heard from him since.

One day after that, a letter arrived from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (S.P.G.) in London, approving of Mosley and granting him £30 per year in salary.

There was only one way to resolve this awkward situation. And that was how everything about Trinity Church was decided—whatever Godfrey Malbone wanted. He had had the idea for a church when few others in the area were Anglican. He had paid for its construction. He had solicited funds from rich acquaintances in Newport and Boston, and he had petitioned the S.P.G. and an old Oxford University friend, the bishop of Durham, for more support.

Malbone was also hosting the minister(s) at his house, and expected to do so for an undetermined time into the future. In a letter to Fogg’s mentor, the Rev. Henry Caner of King’s Chapel, he wrote:

We have no Glebe. I myself live in a Hutt, in which, however, God be praised! We have hitherto found very comfortable Provision, of which my Parson shall be heartily wellcome to His equal Share and shall be considered as one of my Family, as long as We each of us shall prove good-natured, I, on my Part, continue to live in Pomfret, and He, on His Part, continues to live single, for He cannot find Room wherein to cram a Wife, and if He could, as I have no Brats I am determined to have no Plague from those of other People.

All of which suggests that becoming Malbone’s parson might not have been a great prize.

That could explain why Mosley decided by 6 May to bow out. He wrote to the S.P.G. ten days later:

I had resigned up to Mr. Fogg, this Mr. Malbone’s appointing him, though every one man of the Parish would gladly have had me continued. I have done myself the honour of addressing the Bishop of London, for his further recommendation to Litchfield and Cornwall, vacant by the death of Mr. [Solomon] Palmer. I propose going next week there.

The London missionary society approved that move to a larger parish in Connecticut. However, by then Mosley had run into more trouble. The parishioners had been happy hearing services read by a local young man named Benjamin Farnham, who was planning to go to England to receive holy orders. When Mosley showed up, “many left the church.”

That dispute culminated in the S.P.G. dropping its salary subsidy for the Litchfield parish until their leaders wrote a humble apology endorsed by Anglican clergymen from larger churches in the region.

The Rev. Mr. Mosley had moved on again, settling before the end of the year at Johnstown, New York, a frontier settlement founded by Sir William Johnson in 1758. As minister of St. John’s church, next to Johnson Hall (shown above), Mosley reported fending off more New England Congregationalists and baptizing forty black people into the Church of England in May and October 1773.

In between those dates, in August, the minister made a return trip to Litchfield. While there, a former parishioner begged Mosley to marry his daughter and her fiancé, saying the next nearest Anglican minister was sixteen miles away. Mosley declined until the father of the bride brought a certificate from the town clerk, showing that the banns had been duly published.

That turned out not to be good enough. The local government, following Connecticut law, recognized a minister’s authority only within the town where his church was located. Mosley was hauled into court. According to him, “When the jury went out, the Judges were of the opinion, that they could not bring it against me; but, notwithstanding, (to see how much spite and malice reign there) they did.” He told the S.P.G. that he’d been fined £15 plus court costs, not to mention “the expense of my own travelling.”

The Rev. Samuel Peters wrote about the case with his customary exaggeration:

The Court mildly fined Mr. Mozley 20l. because he could not show any other license to officiate as a clergyman than what he had received from the Bishop of London, whose authority the Court determined did not extend to Connecticut, which was a chartered government. One of the Judges said: “It is high time to put a stop to the usurpations of the Bishop of London, and to let him know that, though his license be lawful, and may empower one of his curates to marry in England, yet it is not so in America; and if fines would not curb them in this point, imprisonment should.”

By May 1774, Mosley had grown ill in some way. (John Rowe recorded in March 1770 that the man suffered from an “Apoplectick fit.”) The minister decided the New York climate was unhealthy and returned to Britain, telling the S.P.G., “The only thing I regrett…is to go from so worthy and good a man as Sir William Johnson.” (Johnson died two months later.)

Thus ended the Rev. Richard Mosley’s American adventures.

Peeking in on Pope Night in 1770

Earlier this fall, Boston 1775 reader David Churchill Barrow asked me what Pope Night was like in Boston in 1770, 250 years ago today.

After all, that loud, political, and occasionally violent 5th of November holiday fell in between the first two trials for the Boston Massacre. The Whigs were offering people plenty of reasons to be angry at Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson and the Customs Commissioners. There were no soldiers stationed in town to stamp out disorder (not that they’d stopped riots the previous fall).

Hutchinson himself acknowledged the likelihood of unrest when he wrote to his boss in the Colonial Office, the Earl of Hillsborough, on 26 October. Commenting on how Massachusetts had mostly calmed down, he said:

Even in Boston there is a more favorable appearance & I shall advise the Commissioners of the Customs to leave the Castle after the 5th of November when we must expect some degree of Riot and to hold their Board in Town or if they prefer it near the Town.

So what actually happened on Pope Night in 1770? Which hated figures were hanged in effigy? Who was the target of nasty slogans on the giant lanterns?

To judge by surviving sources, the 1770 holiday was mostly staid, and no one bothered to record details about the youths’ processions. Richard Draper’s 8 November Boston News-Letter reported:

Monday last being the Anniversary of the happy Deliverance of the English Nation from the Popish Plot,—Divine Service was performed at King’s Chappel, and a Semon on the Occasion was preached by the Rev’d Dr. [Henry] Caner.

At twelve o’clock the Guns were fired at the Batteries in this Town:—At one o’ clock those at Castle William were fired, and on board his Majesty’s Ships, Frigates, &c. in this Harbour.

Just as the Guns were firing at one o’clock a Ship newly built, belonging to John Hancock, Esq; was launched at Mr. [Moses] Tyler’s Yard at the North-End.

A Number of Pageants customary on the 5th of November, was carried through the principal Streets, by some of the young People of the Town, and in the Evening Bonfires were made of the Pageantry.

The Boston Gazette and Boston Evening-Post reprinted those remarks. The Massachusetts Spy said nothing.

Merchant John Rowe usually mentioned Pope Night in his diary, but not in 1770. Young printer John Boyle noted the death of Gov. Sir Francis Bernard’s son but not the holiday. Other diarists likewise wrote nothing of the celebrations that year.

All that suggests that Pope Night 1770 was peaceful. How did a date that had been raucous only a few years earlier appear so tame in a year with so many enemies to resent?

The explanation, I think, is precisely because those Massacre trials were still going on. They put the town on its best behavior. Politicians probably spread the word that inhabitants had to show the rest of the British Empire how they were patriotic and peaceful, not riotous zealots. Mobs could not be seen as undercutting the local court system, prejudicing jurymen, or threatening officials with violence.

Therefore, the processions were probably tame. There was no fight between the North End and South End gangs before the bonfires. The newspapers emphasized Boston’s patriotism and commerce, treating the customary “Pageants” as an afterthought.

For more about the roots of Pope Night and its role in Boston’s Revolution, especially in more interesting years, check out my online talk to Boston by Foot tonight.

Rev. Richard Mosley and the Boylston-Molineux Marriage

A couple of days ago, I mentioned the Rev. Richard Mosley, chaplain of H.M.S. Salisbury. He wrote about Capt. Thomas Preston’s trial for murder.

Mosley’s presence may help in the quest to answer one of the vexing genealogical mysteries of pre-Revolutionary Boston.

According to family historians, Mosley was the minister who married Ward Nicholas Boylston to Ann Molineux. The ceremony reportedly took place on the Salisbury while it was in Portsmouth harbor, with a special license from New Hampshire governor John Wentworth.

Since Boylston was the son of Benjamin Hallowell, Jr., a Customs Commissioner, and Molineux was the daughter of William Molineux, one of Boston’s most radical anti-Crown activists, their marriage raises lots of questions. Mosley’s presence doesn’t help to answer the question of why. But it may help to answer the question of when, or at least narrow down the window.

H.M.S. Salisbury arrived in Boston harbor on the morning of 10 Oct 1770, as reported in the newspapers and the diary of John Rowe. It sailed for Britain at the end of August 1771. We have glimpses of the commodore in command of the ship, James Gambier, and chaplain Mosley in Boston in the intervening months:

• 10 Dec 1770: While in Boston harbor, Cmdre. Gambier signed a proclamation about deserters printed in the Boston News-Letter and other papers.
• 28 Jan 1771: Gambier and his wife had a baby daughter baptized at King’s Chapel with Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, Lady Agnes Frankland, and Ann Burch, wife of a Customs Commissioner, as sponsors.
• 8 February: Gambier signed another proclamation, also in Boston harbor.
• 9 March: Rowe wrote in his diary, “The Chaplain Mr. Mossely of the Salisbury was taken in an Apoplectick fit yesterday which hindered him coming to our house.”
• 14 March: Gambier presided over the firing of cannon to salute new royal appointments.
• 2 April: Rowe saw both Gambier and Mosley at a dinner for a charitable society.
• 29 May: Gambier attended the opening of the legislative session at Harvard College.
• 4 June: Gambier hosted a ball that Rowe attended.
• 21 June: Gambier dined at Ralph Inman’s house in Cambridge.
• 6 August: Gambier entertained Boston’s elite on the Salisbury.

I haven’t yet found mentions of the Salisbury visiting New Hampshire. It could have zipped up and back in some of the gaps in that timeline, with the biggest good-weather gaps coming in April-May and July 1771.

Notably, the first child of the Boylstons’ marriage, young Nicholas, arrived before the end of 1771. So maybe we learn a little about the why as well.

COMING UP: Mr. Mosley’s North American career.

The Landlord of Liberty Tree

This is how the merchant John Rowe described Boston’s first public protest against the Stamp Act in his diary:

A Great Number of people assembled at Deacon Elliots Corner this morning to see the Stamp Officer hung in Effigy with a Libel on the Breast, on Deacon Elliot’s tree…

The great elm that held the effigy and provided shade for that protest hadn’t yet been dubbed Liberty Tree. In the coming months, the Sons of Liberty would come up with that name, hammer a plaque into the side of the tree, and make it a political gathering-point. As of mid-August 1765, however, that elm was still “Deacon Elliot’s tree.” And who was he?

As far back as May 1733, when the Boston town meeting debated setting up official marketplaces, one of the proposed sites was “near the great Tree, at the South-End, near Mr. Eliot’s House.” When the 31 May Boston News-Letter reported on that hotly contested vote (364 yeas to 339 nays), it referred to “the great Trees at the South End.” That phrase suggests that there were multiple large trees near Eliot’s house, but one particularly big one. It had probably been growing there for over a century, since before Englishmen came to the Shawmut peninsula.

As for clues about “Deacon Elliot,” this advertisement appeared in the 17 June 1734 New-England Weekly Journal:

TO BE LETT,
A Good convenient House, adjoyning the South Market place, with a large Garden in good Order; Inquire of Mr. John Eliot Stationer, living near the great Trees.

When proposals for publishing an American Magazine went around in 1743, “Mr. John Eliot, at the great Trees at the South-End,” was one of the men collecting subscriptions (along with “Mr. Benja. Franklin, Post Master in Philadelphia”).

John Eliot was born in 1692, a descendant of some of Boston’s earliest British settlers. He was a great-nephew of the famous Rev. John Eliot, “Apostle to the Indians.” The young man appears to have followed his uncle Benjamin Eliot (1665-1741) into the business of bookbinding and stationery sales. He also commissioned small books from printers, almost all sermons and other religious literature. As early as 1716 Eliot was issuing these publications “at his shop at the south-end.”

It appears Eliot inherited that land in the South End, as well as property out in Brookline. In 1708, when the Boston selectmen laid out the southernmost stretch of the main road through town, they defined Orange Street as from the old Neck fortifications to the Eliot house. With, presumably, the great elms nearby.

As he neared the age of thirty, Eliot married Sarah Holyoke. Her brother, the Rev. Edward Holyoke, was a Marblehead minister who became president of Harvard College. The Eliots had eight children between 1721 and 1735.

In the early decades of the eighteenth century, the south end of Boston was still sparsely populated. Then the Hollis Street Meetinghouse was built for the Rev. Mather Byles in 1732. The town opened its south market, and soon the area had more houses and streets. We can see that growth in how Eliot’s title pages described his business:

• “at his shop, the south end of the town,” 1724
• “in Orange Street at the south end of the town,” 1734
• “near the South Market,” 1741

Even after the consolidation of Boston’s marketplaces at Faneuil Hall in 1743, the neighborhood grew.

Deacon Eliot’s big trees remained a handy landmark for people entering or navigating town. Newspaper advertisements tell us Josiah Quincy, Sr., lived “opposite to the great Trees, at the South End,” until he struck it rich in privateering and moved to a country estate in Braintree. Other sites in the neighborhood included the house of auctioneer and deacon Benjamin Church, Sr.; the leather workshop of Adam Colson; and a building once called “the Half-Moon, or Land-Bank House.”

Isaiah Thomas later wrote of Eliot:

He published a few books, and was, many years, a bookseller and binder, but his concerns were not extensive. However, he acquired some property; and being a respectable man, was made deacon of the church in Hollis street.

Thomas simply missed the period when Eliot was most active in publishing. After his uncle’s death in 1741, the deacon appears to have cut back on new ventures and lived off his real estate and shop.

Sarah Eliot died in 1755 at the age of sixty. Deacon John Eliot was then sixty-three years old. He married again to a woman named Mary, then in her forties, but she died in 1761. The deacon’s daughters Sarah and Silence remained unmarried, so one or both might have kept house for him after that.

In August 1765, as described yesterday, the Loyall Nine used the boughs of Deacon Eliot’s tree to hang Andrew Oliver in effigy. The figures of several other royal appointees and political enemies followed in the subsequent years. The Sons of Liberty put up a flagpole beside the tree and raised a banner—the Union Jack on a red field—to call public gatherings. Christopher Seider’s funeral train stopped at the tree. So did the processions of men being tarred and feathered.

The way people referred to the tree as belonging to Deacon Eliot suggests it stood on his property with the branches extending over the street. It’s not clear how near Eliot’s house was to the tree, or whether he had a fence around his land. (The picture above was created decades after the tree was cut down in 1775, and there’s no way to know how accurate it was.) How did Eliot feel about the large political gatherings right outside his house? About his property being identified with rebellion?

Though Eliot doesn’t show up on the records as an active Whig, he does seem to have supported that cause and accepted the new identity for the elm outside his house. The 10 Apr 1769 Boston Gazette included an advertisement saying that land and “a large Building thereon, commonly known by the Name of the South Market,” was to be sold by court order. Prospective buyers were invited to “inquire of John Eliot at Liberty-Tree.”

On 14 August that year, the elderly deacon was among the many local dignitaries who dined with Boston’s Sons of Liberty at Lemuel Robinson’s tavern in Dorchester. In 1770, when William Billings advertised his New-England Psalm-Singer, one of the of the four places where people could buy it was “Deacon Elliot’s under Liberty-Tree.”

By that time, Deacon Eliot was in his late seventies. He didn’t live to see all that his elm tree inspired. On 22 Nov 1771, the Boston News-Letter ran this death notice:

Last Thursday died here, Mr. John Eliot, Deacon of the Church under the Pastoral Care of the the Rev’d Dr. Byles—He justly sustain’d the Character of an Honest Man, and a good Christian—His Remains were decently interr’d on Saturday last.

Three days later an ad in the Boston Gazette called on people with debts to settle with Eliot’s estate to meet with the administrators, Joseph Eliot and Thomas Crafts, Jr. The former was probably his son (1727-1782), who moved to Natick, as did his unmarried sisters. The latter was a member of the Loyall Nine who watched over Liberty Tree from his nearby workshop.

The gravestone for Deacon John Eliot and his two wives still stands in the Granary Burying Ground.

Non-Importation to the End

In the summer of 1770 the Boston Whigs were dealing with the challenge of mixed results. As young printer John Boyle recorded in his chronicle of events on 10 June 1770:

An Act of Parliament is received for repealing part of an Act for granting Duties upon Glass, Paper, Painters Colours, &c

The Duty on Tea is to be continued.

Was this partial repeal of the Townshend Act enough of a victory to call off the non-importation boycott? The Whigs decided it wasn’t. One aspect of Whiggish thinking is a fear that any compromise with an oppressive government could start a society on a slide into political slavery. So they couldn’t accept taxation without representation on a commodity like tea, even though enjoying it depended on the global reach of the British Empire.

But New York merchants could accept that compromise. As I discussed yesterday, despite heavy criticism from that city’s radicals and from nearby towns, the leaders of non-importation in New York voted to end their pact on 9 July. That not only made the North American boycott less effective, but it also meant New Yorkers would be the first to profit from pent-up demand for British goods.

Bostonians still had hope of a further repeal by Parliament, but on 22 July more news came. Merchant John Rowe (shown above) wrote in his diary:

Capt. Smith of the Nassau arrived from London & gives an accot. of the Prorogation of the Parliament the 20th of May without Repealing the Duty on Tea—the people I hope will have Virtue enough never to make use of it as Long as the Duty is demanded.

The Boston Whigs called a public meeting on the afternoon of 24 July. This wasn’t an official town meeting, nor a meeting of the merchants like Rowe, but a gathering of “the Body of the Trade”—anyone doing business in Boston.

But first, Rowe reported, the Whigs started with a public demonstration:

just before some of them Proceeded through the streets with Dr [Thomas] Young at their head, with Three Flags Flying, Drums Beating & a french Horn—Thos. Baker carried one of them, for which he is much Blamed by me—The meeting today will I believe prove very Prejudicial to the Merchants & Trade of the Town of Boston.

As usual, Rowe was trimming back and forth politically. That month he had a private meeting with Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, who offered Rowe a commission. Two days later Rowe met with Samuel Adams, William Molineux, Dr. Joseph Warren, and Dr. Young, the most radical Whig leaders, who were recruiting for another committee. Rowe kept away from both offers, still not choosing a side.

The Whigs’ own description of their event appeared first in the 26 July Boston News-Letter:

THERE was as full a Meeting of the Trade Tuesday last, at Faneuil-Hall, as ever was known, to take into Consideration the Reports relative to the Defection of New-York, and what Measures were necessary to be pursued for re-shipping the Goods which had been stored as being imported contrary to the Merchants Agreement.——

At this Meeting a Letter was read from four Persons in New York,…informing that a Majority of the Inhabitants of New-York were for an Importation of Goods, and that many Orders had been actually forwarded; but as this Intelligence was not sufficiently authenticated, as the said four Persons had not even declared themselves to be authorized to be this Information either by the standing Committee or any other Body, said Letter was regrad as designed to impose upon this and the other American Colonies, and to induce them to break through the most salutary Plan of Non Importation, upon which the Security of our invaluable Rights and Privileges so much depend.——

It was therefore Voted unanimously, that the said Letter in just Indignation, Abhorrence and Detestation, be forthwith torn into Pieces and thrown to the Winds as unworthy of the least Notice: Which Sentence was accordingly executed.

In essence, the Boston Whigs shouted, “Fake news!” No one should believe that report from New York, they suggested. To be sure, they also voted to send a message to New York’s committee exhorting them to make people countermand any orders sent to Britain, so the Whigs must have believed at least some of this news.

The Body then agreed to stick to the non-importation agreement “against all Opposition and every Discouragement whatever.” Organizers claimed that local merchants who had agreed to store their goods until the boycott ended “have already given Orders for their being immediately trucked to the Vessel provided for that Purpose,” so they were in for the long haul.

The report for the News-Letter concluded by declaring, “There never was greater Unanimity or more Spirit discovered for the general Interest of America than at this Meeting.”

TOMORROW: Protesting too much.

The Speakman Brothers at War

When we left the Barnes and Speakman families in Marlborough in the fall of 1770, they appear to have arrived at some sort of truce.

Henry Barnes continued to run a potash manufactory and general store. Older brother William Speakman probably managed the farming land while younger brother Gilbert Warner Speakman set up a tannery.

Four years later, in the summer of 1774, Parliament’s Coercive Acts radicalized the Massachusetts countryside far more than it had been before. Marlborough held a town meeting to endorse the Solemn League and Covenant, the strictest boycott yet on British goods and people selling them in America.

On 8 July, John Rowe, uncle and mentor of the Speakman brothers and then trimming toward the Crown, wrote in his diary:

I heard of the bad behaviour of the people at Marlborough; its said the Speakmans were concerned; if it proves so, they have not only behaved ill, but contrary to my sentiments, and forfeited my regard in future for them.

Then came the “Powder Alarm” of 2 September, when thousands of Middlesex County militiamen poured into Cambridge, spurred by Gen. Thomas Gage’s seizing of gunpowder from a provincial storehouse and false rumors of British military atrocities. The Marlborough militia companies were prominent in that action according to Boston merchant John Andrews:

Though they had an account at Marlborough of the powder’s being remov’d, last Thursday night, yet they were down to Cambridge (which is thirty miles) by eight o’clock Fryday morning, with a troop of horse and another of foot, both under the command of Gib. Speakman, a young fellow who serv’d his time with John Rowe.

When the real war came in April 1775, William Speakman marched with the Marlborough militia infantry. (That is, in fact, the last record I’ve found of him.)

Gilbert Warner Speakman became a captain in Col. John Glover’s regiment, drawn mostly from Marblehead, at the start of 1776. On 17 March, the British military evacuated Boston, taking many Loyalist families with them, including Henry and Christian Barnes.

The Speakmans’ uncles, John Rowe and Ralph Inman (shown above, courtesy of the Boston Athenaeum), stayed behind to tough out the change in political power. Just one week after the evacuation, with the British fleet still massed off shore, Rowe wrote in his diary:

I dined at Mr. Inman’s with him, Mrs. Inman, Genl. [Nathanael] Green, Mrs. [Catherine] Green, Tuthill Hubbard, Mrs. Forbes, Mr. Lowell [?], Mrs. Rowe, and Capt. Gilbert Speakman.

Rowe had regained his regard for his nephew, now that that nephew was on the winning side.

In May 1776, Capt. Gib Speakman advertised for deserters from his regiment. Those newspaper notices provide valuable descriptions of how Marblehead soldiers were dressing.

The next year, Capt. Speakman transitioned to being commissary of military stores at Springfield and then commissary of ordnance for the ill-fated Penobscot expedition of 1779. He offered damning testimony in the court-martial of Paul Revere. Revere was acquitted while Speakman was still petitioning the Massachusetts legislature for reimbursement for that mission in 1798.

The Speakmans expected to marry within the same class and religion, as their aunts had done by marrying Rowe and Inman. That became more difficult after the evacuation of so many genteel Anglican families as Loyalists. Gib Speakman and his sisters Hannah and Sarah all ended up marrying siblings in the Minot family of King’s Chapel, including historian George Richards Minot.

Family Business and Politics in Marlborough

Personal finance and politics intersected for the Speakman family and their neighbors in the summer of 1770.

As I started to discuss back here, Thomas Speakman acquired property in Marlborough before being killed on the Lake Champlain battlefront in 1757.

His widow Mary was living in that town in the late 1760s, and their son William (Billy) apparently moved out there after a health scare in late 1768.

By that time both mother and son had become attached to Whig politics, even though they were upper-class Anglicans, a group more likely to side with the Crown. That irked Mary Speakman’s Loyalist friend and neighbor Christian Barnes, who nonetheless concluded that the widow was not acting ”from any Self interested Motives.”

In those years the family’s second son, Gilbert Warner Speakman, was in Boston working for his uncle, merchant John Rowe. But that young man, called Gibby or Gib by his family, came of age in 1768 and needed to establish himself independently in some way.

In the same long letter from the summer of 1770 that I quoted about political disturbances in Marlborough, Christian Barnes wrote in late June:

Mrs. Speakman went to Boston last week and Mr. Rowe ask’d her what she intended to to [sic] do with Gibby for he had no longer any ocation for him and could not afford to pay him wages

She told him her last resort was New Boston [New Hampshire, where the family had invested in land] and if she could be put into business there she should like to take her whole family with her,

he made no reply to this and she return’d from Boston in very low Spirits but last Night she received a letter from Gibby informing her that his uncles Row & [Ralph] Inman had agree’d he should go to New Boston with goods and there make Pearl & Pott Ash

Christian Barnes’s husband Henry happened to own a potash manufactory in Marlborough. To be sure, that building had recently had its windows smashed, and a rumor was going around town that Billy Speakman was sparking such vandalism to get Henry to finally adhere to non-importation. But that didn’t stop Gibby from asking his mother’s neighbor for advice:

he sent to Mr. Barnes for an estimate of the Cost of the Works and desires to know if this is a proper Season to cut down Timber to build a House

you see these are all things at a distance and may possibly blow off in Air However it has given Mrs. Speakman new Spirits

That month, two effigies of her husband, a threatening letter, and news of attacks on other Loyalists made Christian Barnes increasingly anxious. And then came a small-town betrayal.

Christian Barnes’s 13 July letter reported that Mary Speakman was preparing for her son to go into business in competition with Henry Barnes. The people of Marlborough would no longer have to buy general goods from an importer or travel to another town. Political, commercial, and personal factors were intertwining as Christian Barnes wrote of the rift between the families:

even Mrs. Speakman has deserted me, and takeing the advantage of our distress’d situation has made aplication to Mr. Row and he has consented to send up Gibby and open a Store at her House and he is now actuly here makeing preparation for the reception of his goods[.] he has brought his Mistress with him and they have past a Week in the greatest Mirth and festivity.

The only excuse they have to make for this ungreatfull proceeding is that as Mr. Barnes has advertized his Estate for Sail but whatever Motive Mr. Barnes might have for advertizeing his Place Mrs. Speakman has told me more than twenty times that she was convinced he has no intention of leaving Marlborough, so you see what the New Boston Scheem is come to but it must end in that finily, or something worse for I am well assured that a Store of Good put into their hands and by Mr. Row must prove their distruction, and at the same time will be injuring us to such a degree as I think ought not to be forgiven.

By this point Christian Barnes had dropped all her skepticism about the Speakman brothers encouraging the attacks on her husband. “I know they have both been very active in all the riots in Boston and they may Posibly find some dareing Sons of Violence who may be willing to assist them in any interprize they shall propose.”

To get away from the local unrest, Barnes went to stay with friends. On 17 September she described developments she found on coming back home:

when I returned from Cambridge (after an absense of five Weeks) I found the Peoples Minds were more composed[.] a Party had apear’d in our favor and some of them had Publicly declared they would act in opposition to any one that should molest us

they remain’d quiet till the time approach’d for takeing out our licence [to sell liquor.] Mr. Barnes then waited on the Select Men for their approbation but was refused

Mrs. Speakman (who is still determin’d to circumvent us in our trade if possible) had no doubt but she should obtain it but she did not gain her Point and Mr. Barnes put in a Petition to the Court which was then siting at Concord and they very readily granted him a license tho there was great opposition made by some People in the Town who were at the expence of feeing a Lawyer upon the ocation

they now begin to make it a party affair among themselves and the Tory Party (as they are call’d) talk of erecting fire Works by way of triumph upon our gaining the licence

Soon, however, the non-importation controversy settled down. Gib Speakman opened a tannery instead of directly competing with Henry Barnes.

Of course, the larger political issues remained unresolved.

TOMORROW: When war came.

[The picture above is an eighteenth-century engraving of a potash kiln, courtesy of the Wellcome Collection.]

“Become a violent advocate in the Cause of Liberty”

As recounted yesterday, Capt. Thomas Speakman was killed in the French and Indian War in January 1757.

Though I haven’t seen his probate records, Speakman appears to have left a considerable estate to his wife Mary and their children, including properties in Marlborough and Boston. But perhaps not as much as they needed to maintain their lifestyle. Then a house on Milk Street belonging to Thomas Speakman’s estate was among the buildings destroyed in the Great Fire of 1760.

Thomas and Mary Speakman’s oldest child, William, was then twenty years old, looking ahead to his career. The other surviving siblings included:

• Gilbert Warner, born 7 Nov 1747
• Hannah, born 1 Nov 1749
• Sarah, born 27 Oct 1751
• Mary, born 26 Sept 1754

One important asset for young William Speakman were the men who had married his late father’s sisters—the merchants John Rowe and Ralph Inman. Rowe in particular became a mentor for William and his younger brother. It’s possible William spent time in Rowe’s counting-house, learning business skills; Gilbert certainly did.

By 1765, at the age of twenty-five, William Speakman was partners with a slightly older man named Thomas Chase at a rum distillery in the South End of Boston. Speakman may have inherited that building from one of his grandfathers while Chase handled day-to-day management, but it’s hard to tell. Chase and Speakman also appear together on the records of King’s Chapel, sponsoring babies in their circle at baptism.

Then came the Stamp Act. Thomas Chase was one of a small group of young businessmen who organized public protests against that law, calling themselves the Loyall Nine and later the Sons of Liberty. On 15 Jan 1766 John Adams described dining with the group in “their own Apartment in Hanover Square, near the Tree of Liberty. It is a Compting Room in Chase & Speakmans Distillery. A very small Room it is.”

Speakman never appeared on the list of Whig activists, but he was activist-adjacent. I’ve found only one instance of him participating in politics. On 18 Mar 1768, the anniversary of the repeal of the Stamp Act, his uncle Rowe reported that Speakman, Thomas Crafts, and John Avery took down “two effigies on Liberty Tree this morning marked C[harles]. P[axton]. and J[ohn]. W[illiams].” That action looks like supporting those Customs officials, but in fact Crafts and Avery were members of the Loyall Nine. They wanted to control such protests, and they were among the few men in town with the clout to take down someone else’s effigies when they thought the timing was bad.

A few months later, on 29 August, Rowe wrote in his diary: “Poor Wm. Speakman was taken in a fit & had doubtful Struggles for Life.” Speakman survived this health scare, but it probably prompted him to leave Boston and move out to Marlborough, where his mother was living. William and his brother Gilbert Warner Speakman (listed erroneously as “G. William Speakman”) appear on the 1770 list of polls reprinted in Charles Hudson’s history of the town.

Mary Speakman was an upper-class Anglican, a relative of imperial merchants, and thus a natural supporter of the royal government. But in that same month, on 7 August 1768, her Marlborough neighbor Christian Barnes reported to her friend Elizabeth Smith:

Mrs. Speakman was become a violent advocate in the Cause of Liberty which (if I was not upon my gard) would ocation some warm disputes but I saw so much of party rage in my last excurtion that I determin’d to surpress my sentiments rather than enter into any debate upon that subject.

The following year, on 20 Nov 1769, Barnes confirmed: “my Friend Mrs. Speakman still continues a Staunch Whig tho to do her Justice not from any Self interested Motives at least that I can see.”

It was in that context that Barnes wrote in June 1770 after locals vandalized her husband’s property (including a coach apparently bought from Smith):

it is said that a Young Gentleman (who had formily Headed the Mob in Boston and now resides with us) is the perpetrator of all this Mischeife but I will not beleive it till I have further profe

On 13 July, after the threats had escalated, Barnes was ready to name names:

I mention’d in my former Letter that some people affirm’d that Billy Speakman was the Person that cut your Coach to Peices I did not beleive it nor do I now but this I am certain of that those who have taken such a cruel Mession [?] to undermine us in our Business would stick at nothing to perpetuate their Scheem and who knows what these two Young fellows may be capible off and how far they may work up the People (already distracted with party rage) to Molest and injure us.

The “two Young fellows” appear to be William and his younger brother.

Meanwhile, the gulf between Mrs. Barnes and Mrs. Speakman had widened to include not just politics but business.

COMING UP: What to do with Gibby?

After James Otis “behaved very madly’

On 8 May 1770, 250 years ago today, Bostonians gathered for one of their annual town meetings.

Every March, the white men of the town elected its selectmen and other officials for the coming year. Every May, a smaller section of those white men, those who owned more property, elected the town’s four representatives to the Massachusetts General Court.

For the last few years the town had reelected the same four men:

• James Otis, Jr.
• Thomas Cushing, who had become speaker of the house.
• Samuel Adams, the house clerk.
• John Hancock.

But Otis was no longer in his right mind. He’d gotten into a coffee-house brawl with a royal official in September, suffering a bad head injury. For a while he appeared to recover, but in March, in the wake of the Boston Massacre, he had broken windows in the Town House.

Then on 22 April, the day after Ebenezer Richardson was convicted of murder for shooting at a crowd from his window, the merchant John Rowe wrote this in his diary:

This afternoon Mr. Otis behaved very madly, firing guns out of his window, that caused a large number of people to assemble about him.

Personally I’d stay far away from Otis’s house in that situation, but people might have felt safe once he’d emptied his guns. In any event, the man’s family subdued him and bundled him away to a doctor’s estate in the country.

One item of official business at the May town meeting, therefore, was:

The Honble. James Otis Esq. having by the advice of his Physicians, retired into the Country for the recovery of his Health.

Voted, that the Thanks of the Town be given to the Honble. James Otis Esq; for the great and important Services which as a Representative in the General Assembly through a Course of Years He has rendered to this Town and Province; particularly for his undaunted Exertions in the Common Cause of the Colonies from the beginning of the present glorious Struggle for the Rights of the British Constitution. At the same Time the Town cannot but express their Ardent Wishes for the recovery of His Health, and the continuance of those publick Services that must long be remembered with Gratitude, and distinguish his Name among the Patriots of America Voted, that the Gentlemen the Selectmen be a Committee to transmit to the Honble. James Otis Esq. an attested Copy of the aforegoing Vote

Otis’s departure meant that there was now an opening for the town’s fourth representative.

By a happy coincidence, there was also a prominent Whig politician in Boston who’d been shut out of his usual legislative seat the previous year. James Bowdoin (shown above as a young man) had served in the Massachusetts house back in the 1750s before rising to a seat in the Council. In that body he had led the opposition to Gov. Francis Bernard. In May 1769, the legislature chose Bowdoin for the Council again, but this time the governor “negatived” or vetoed him. Bowdoin therefore had had no official political role for a year.

Bowdoin had used that free time to publicize the letters of Gov. Bernard that leaked from London. After the Massacre, Bowdoin was the principal author of the town’s report on the shooting. So voters knew what he had done for Boston.

The official tally in the records was that out of 513 total votes the top candidates were:

The Honble. James Bowdoin Esq. - - - - - 439
Honble. Thomas Cushing Esq. - - - - - 510
Mr. Samuel Adams - - - - - - - - 510
Honble. John Hancock Esq. - - - - - 511

It’s possible that Bowdoin’s lower number meant there was another candidate or two but clerk William Cooper kept that man’s name out of the record.

(I don’t know if there’s any significance to the way those tallies appear in the minutes, from the lowest to the highest vote-winner. John Rowe attended the meeting and recorded the same numbers in his diary, but he listed Hancock second. In the next couple of years, there was no similar pattern in the order of votes recorded.)

TOMORROW: More town business.

A New President for Harvard College

To be sure, there were other things going on in Massachusetts in March 1770 besides responses to the Boston Massacre. On 21 March, Harvard College installed a new president, the Rev. Samuel Locke.

Locke had been born in Woburn on 23 Nov 1731, the oldest child of a substantial farmer and his wife. Later his family moved to Lancaster, where he studied for college with the local minister.

At Harvard, Locke was in the class of 1755. His classmate and friend John Adams thought he was one of the “better Schollars than myself,” and enjoyed hearing him discuss metaphysics. After college, Locke did the equivalent of graduate school while seeking a job as a minister.

Sherborn had a vacancy because the Rev. Samuel Porter had died, and in November 1759 Locke was ordained as that town’s new pastor. Less than two months later, he married the previous minister’s daughter Mary. They had three children between 1761 and 1765: Samuel, Mary, and John.

Ten years later, Harvard College also faced the choice of a successor: Edward Holyoke, president of the college for thirty-two years, died in June 1769. Holyoke was highly respected, and he had built up the college’s reputation and campus, but his approach to education was conservative.

On 18 Dec 1769, after more than six months of discussion and some turn-downs, the Harvard corporation decided to offer the presidency to the Rev. Mr. Locke. Just thirty-eight years old, he would be the youngest person ever in that position.

The Rev. Andrew Eliot of Boston wrote on 25 December:

The corporation have at length chose a President. His name is LOCKE—a truly venerable name! This gentleman is minister of a small parish, about twenty miles from Cambridge. He has fine talents, is a close thinker, had at College the character of a first rate scholar; he is possessed of an excellent spirit, has generous, catholic sentiments, is a friend to liberty, and is universally acceptable, at least so far as I have heard. He has not conversed so much with the world as I could wish, and perhaps has not a general acquaintance with books; but he loves study, and will have opportunity at College to improve, being not yet forty years old. We know not whether he will accept.

Locke’s youth was thus seen as a plus, since he could grow in the job and serve for decades as Holyoke had. Even coming from a small country town turned out to be an advantage: though Eliot felt certain that Locke was “a friend to liberty,” the Sherborn minister had played no visible part in the religious and political controversies that split Massachusetts society.

People also perceived Locke as being strong in some of the modern subjects that the late president had neglected. The Rev. Ezra Stiles later judged:

Dr. Locke was scarcely equal to Mr. Holyoke in classical Knowledge but much superior to him in the Sciences, and in Penetration Judgment & Strength of mind. He was excellent & amiable in Government, tho’ he did not equal the Dignity of his Predecessor. And yet he was a greater Literary Character.

Locke’s old friend Adams always felt he had achieved “a Station for which no Man was better qualified.”

Members of the corporation rode out to Sherborn in late December and offered Locke the job. He took six weeks to accept. One obstacle might have been moving his family into Cambridge. Another was the Sherborn congregation’s reluctance to let him go; Harvard ultimately paid that body £37.1s.

On 21 March, the merchant John Rowe recorded in his diary: “This Day Mr. Lock was installed President of Cambridge.” The ceremony was even more grand than usual because the Massachusetts General Court was then sitting in Cambridge. Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, Boston representative John Hancock, and many other office-holders attended.

Locke delivered an inaugural address in Latin in his robes. A man who knew him later in life recalled him as “a stout, dignified looking man, a little below the common stature.” Hutchinson gave a brief reply, also Latin, and then a student orated for longer. There were prayers and hymns and a dinner for all the professors and other dignitaries. The institution looked forward to a grand future.

That night, students set fire to the outhouse.

“Otis got into a mad freak to-night”

With everything else going on in Boston in the wake of the Boston Massacre, I don’t want to lose track of James Otis’s mental state.

In early September 1769, Otis was speaking extravagantly, monopolizing conversation, and annoying even his fan John Adams. Then he got into a coffee-house fight with royal appointee John Robinson, suffering a severe blow on the head. The following month, Adams wrote rather favorably of the result.

But early in the new year, Otis went into another manic period. Adams wrote in his diary on 16 Jan 1770:

Last Evening at Dr. Peckers with the Clubb.—Otis is in Confusion yet. He looses himself. He rambles and wanders like a Ship without an Helm. Attempted to tell a Story which took up almost all the Evening. The Story may at any Time be told in 3 minutes with all the Graces it is capable of, but he took an Hour.

I fear he is not in his perfect Mind. The Nervous, Concise, and pithy were his Character, till lately. Now the verbose, roundabout and rambling, and long winded. He once said He hoped he should never see T[homas].H[utchinson]. in Heaven. Dan. Waldo took offence at it, and made a serious Affair of it, said Otis very often bordered upon Prophaneness, if he was not strictly profane. Otis said, if he did see H. there he hoped it would be behind the Door.—In my fathers House are many Mansions, some more and some less honourable.

In one Word, Otis will spoil the Clubb. He talkes so much and takes up so much of our Time, and fills it with Trash, Obsceneness, Profaneness, Nonsense and Distraction, that We have no [time] left for rational Amusements or Enquiries.

He mentioned his Wife—said she was a good Wife, too good for him—but she was a tory, an high Tory. She gave him such Curtain Lectures, &c.

In short, I never saw such an Object of Admiration, Reverence, Contempt and Compassion all at once as this. I fear, I tremble, I mourn for the Man, and for his Country. Many others mourne over him with Tears in their Eyes.

The turmoil in Boston after the Massacre appears to have riled Otis more. On 16 March, the merchant John Rowe wrote in his diary: “Mr. Otis got into a mad freak to-night, and broke a great many windows in the Town House.”

At the time, Otis was still officially one of Boston’s representatives to the House of Representatives that met in that building. Obviously, he was in no condition to remain in that seat.