“Nathaniel Barber, Esq; Captain of the North-Battery”

Nathaniel Barber (1728–1787) was an insurance broker with an office in the North End of Boston.

He became one of the more gung-ho Whigs in Boston, though he didn’t hold significant political offices or (to our knowledge) publish political essays.

Barber married Elizabeth Maxwell in 1750, and the couple started having children the next year with Nathaniel, Jr. Barber probably worked as an ordinary merchant before opening his insurance office by 1762.

On 24 Sept 1766, Barber was in the crowd watching the Customs officials try unsuccessfully to search the warehouse of Daniel Malcom for smuggled goods. Not coincidentally, Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson reported that “Malcolm is a principal underwriter” of Barber’s insurance firm.

In two depositions after that event, Barber insisted that he had no idea who told him “that Upon Mr Malcoms House being attacked the Old North Bell was to Ring” to assemble defenders, and denied having passed on that rumor to magistrate John Tudor.

Barber also claimed that “from the appearance and behavior of the People assembled who were worthy Gentlemen and good sort of People, there was not the least appearance of disorder, much less Opposition to any legal Authority.” (The Customs officials didn’t see things the same way.)

Here are three notable mentions of Barber in the newspapers, starting with the Boston Gazette for 8 Aug 1768:

We hear that the Week before last was finished, by Order and for the Use of the Gentlemen belonging to the Insurance Office kept by Mr. Nathaniel Barber, at the North-End, an elegant Silver BOWL, weighing forty-five Ounces, and holding forty-five Gills.

On one Side is engraved within a handsome Border—To the Memory of the glorious NINETY-TWO Members of the Honorable House of REPRESENTATIVES of the MASSACHUSETTS-BAY, who undaunted by the Insolent Menaces of Villains in Power, and out of strict Regard to Conscience, and the LIBERTIES of their Constituents, on the 30th of June 1768, VOTED NOT TO RESCIND.—Over which is the Cap of Liberty in an Oaken Crown.

On the other Side, in a Circle adorned with Flowers, &c. is No. 45, WILKES AND LIBERTY, under which is General Warrants torn to Pieces. On the Top of the Cap of Liberty, and out of each Side, is a Standard, on one is MAGNA CHARTA, the other BILL OF RIGHTS.—

On Monday Evening last, the Gentlemen belonging to the Office made a genteel Entertainment, and invited a Number of Gentlemen of Distinction in the Town, when 45 Loyal Toasts were drank, and the whole concluded with a new Song, the Chorus of which is, In Freedom we’re born, and in Freedom we’ll live, &c.

The silversmith who made that bowl was Paul Revere, and today it’s a treasure of the Museum of Fine Arts. The song was “The Liberty Song,” printed the month before.

In the 30 Apr 1770 Boston Gazette:

Yesterday se’nnight a Daughter of Mr. Nathaniel Barber, at the North End, was Baptized at the Reverend Dr. [Andrew] Eliot’s Meeting-House, by the Name of Catharine Macaulay. The same Gentleman about 18 Months ago had a Child christened by the Name of Oliver Cromwell, and about 18 Months before that, another by the Name of Wilkes.

Edes and Gill’s newspaper had reported the christening of each boy, with a note that little Wilkes “had No. 45, in Bows, pinn’d on its Breast” at the ceremony.

On 1 Oct 1772, the Boston News-Letter reported:

His Excellency the Governor has been pleased to Commission Nathaniel Barber, Esq; Captain of the North-Battery in this Town, with the Rank of Major.

You might ask why Gov. Hutchinson granted a prestigious rank to someone so obviously in the political opposition. In that period he was trying to use his patronage powers as commander-in-chief of the militia to peel men away from the Whigs.

COMING UP: Did that work?

“The Fury of the flames is beyond Conception”

I’ve been looking for personal accounts of fleeing or fighting the great Boston fire of 1760, which started in the shop at the Sign of the Brazen Head. Anonymous newspaper reports, however vivid, don’t give us the same experience as an individual’s story.

Naturally, diaries from eastern Massachusetts mention the event, but fewer 1760 diaries have been published than those kept a few years later. Edward Holyoke, president of Harvard College, wrote: “This Morn past two began ye great fire at Boston, beginning at ye Brazen head & burnd to Fort St.” Which shows how even people outside of town knew of the Brazen Head as a landmark and where the fire began.

The merchant John Rowe told a relative on 21 Apr 1760:

we have had a Terrible Fire hapen’d at Boston in which I was a Sufferer at Oliver’s Dock, the Newspapers will fully acquaint you the Situation of what was burnt, such a Melancholy & Dismal Burning was never yet seen in any part of this Continent

The wind blew very hard at North West and the Fury of the flames is beyond Conception

That’s as close to a personal statement as I’ve found, and it focuses on property and weather.

Up in the North End, Deacon John Tudor wrote at more length, but still at a distance, in his diary:

This morning a Terable Fire broke oute about 2 O’Clock in the Morning at the Brazen-head E Side of Corn Hill. Soon after the Fire got to a head the Wind Sprung up Fresh aboute N. W. which communicated the sparks to the S. E. part of the Town as far as Hunts Shipyard and about Fort-hill and in 5 or 6 howers Consumed 349 Buildings. It is impossable to express the Distress of the unhappy Sufferers by the grevos Judgment. The loss to the Sufferers in Houses, Stores, Merchandizes, Furneture &c. was £100,000. Sterling.

Tudor was an Overseer of the Poor, and he went on to discuss the disaster relief effort.

COMING UP: The religious side, and collecting aid.

(The picture above is one of Rowe’s firefighting buckets, dated 1760 and therefore most likely acquired after the great fire showed how important they were.)

“This afternoon General Gage arriv’d from New York”

The Boston Whigs’ dispatch for 15 Oct 1768 reported that the British army’s hunt for deserters had achieved results:

A deserter from the 14th Regiment was brought in the last evening by one of the decoy parties, sent into the country, also a labouring man from Roxbury, with a soldier’s regimentals on his back, he was confined for some time in a tent, without lawful warrant, and afterwards committed to prison by Mr. Justice [Foster] Hutchinson,—

Imagine the tyranny of the army confining a local farmworker for doing something as unsuspicious as wearing a soldier’s uniform!

But the big news 250 years ago today was that Gen. Thomas Gage had arrived from New York to see how the soldiers under his command were settling in. The Boston Whigs were actually glad to see him, or at least said they were:

This afternoon the troops were drawn up, on the Common, on the appearance of General Gage; at sunset there was 17 discharges from the field cannon; he passed the front of the battalion in his charriot, preceded by a number of aid de camps on horseback.—The arrival of this gentleman from N. York at this time, is a very agreeable circumstance, to the friends of their country; as his mild and judicious behaviour in that province, has been justly applauded; and he comes here determined to see and judge for himself.

Some New Yorkers would have disputed that judgment, though the biggest conflicts between soldiers and civilians there were still to come.

Deacon John Tudor wrote about the day:

This afternoon General Gage arriv’d from New York just before sunset when the Troops where drawn up in the common to receive him & his Retennu, 17 discharges from the field cannon was fir’d to honour him, who came in his Chariot & 4, his Aid de camps on Horseback, all together with the Regiments made a gallant Show; Many disputes arose between the Governor Council, Justices & Selectmen aboute Quartering & Biliting the Troops. 

Local elected officials were still pushing for the troops to be moved out to Castle William.

Merchant and selectman John Rowe had his own take:

General Gage arr’d from New York at Major [Robert] Byards at Roxbury. The regiments were under arms & made a Good Appearance. The General with his attendants came into Town abo. four P.M. The Artillery saluted with 17 Guns. They passed & marched along the Front of both Regiments & Capt. [John] Wilsons two Companies who were formed in the Center.

Robert Bayard, who appears to have hosted Gen. Gage the night before he came into Boston, was from a New York mercantile family. He had been a captain in the Royal American Regiment during the French & Indian War under Gen. James Wolfe. Bayard married Rebecca Apthorp, the youngest surviving daughter of Charles and Grizzell Apthorp, who had been Boston’s wealthiest couple. The Bayards had a daughter baptized in Boston in 1768, but Rebecca died four years later. Robert Bayard appears to have then returned to New York and married Elizabeth McEvers, who was both the widow of a partner in his family firm and another Apthorp daughter, thus his sister-in-law. The Bayards moved to Britain during the war, their New York properties confiscated. Elizabeth died in 1800, Robert in 1819, said to be the last British officer surviving from the Battle of Québec. But I digress.

Rowe’s diary entry for the next day says:

This morning I waited on Colo. [James] Robertson who came with Gen. Gage. He received me very Politely. I had a full hour’s discourse with him abo. the troops. I find him to be a Gentleman of Great Abilities & very cool & dispassionate. I took a walk & met Gen. Gage & Colo. [William] Dalrymple. Gen. Gage engaged me to wait on him tomorrow morning.

Robertson was deputy quartermaster general for the army in North America, the man in charge of ensuring the troops were housed and fed. Rowe was one of the Boston selectmen disputing about where those troops should live. But he was already renting space to army officers, pleased to meet with Robertson, and, as his diary reveals, eager to socialize with Gen. Gage.

“All the Troops Landed under cover of the Cannon”

On the morning on 1 Oct 1768, 250 years ago today, Sheriff Stephen Greenleaf and a deputy started “pressing carts, &c. for the use of the troops.” Boston Whigs indignantly reported that detail to sympathetic newspaper readers in other North American ports.

The Whigs surmised that Greenleaf was borrowing equipment to help the soldiers land from the Royal Navy ships in the harbor. Indeed, that move started in the early afternoon, as described by Deacon John Tudor:

At aboute 1 O’clock Satterday all the Troops Landed under cover of the Cannon of the Ships of War; The Troops drew up in King Street and marched off in a Short time into the Common with Muskets charged, Bayonets fixed (perhaps Expecting to have met with resestance as the Soldiers afterwards told the inhabitants) their Colours flying, Drums beating & museck playing, In short they made a gallant appearance, makeing with the Train of Artillery aboute 800 Men. 

Col. Dalrymple told the Boston selectmen that the troops under his command actually numbered about 1,200. He had heard warnings that the locals might resist their landing with force. As a careful commander, he not only had his men ready with their bayonets but asked the warships to train their artillery on the town. Fortunately, there was no violence.

The 29th Regiment of Foot marched to Boston Common and camped there. The Whigs complained that this was “in hopes of intimidating the magistrates to find them quarters, which they cannot force until the barracks are filled, without flying in the face of a plain act of Parliament.” The selectmen continued to insist that the barracks on Castle William fulfilled the letter of the law even if the London government had been explicit about stationing at least one regiment inside Boston.

The 14th Regiment “had not a sufficient number of Tents,” Col. William Dalrymple told the selectmen. According to the Whigs:

In the afternoon it is said an officer [Lt. David Cooper] from the Col. went to the Manufactory House, with an order from the Governor, and requested Mr. Brown and the other occupiers to remove within two hours, that the troops might take possession; instead of a compliance the doors were barr’d and bolted against them. 

Elisha Brown was a weaver who leased part of the big Manufactory building from the province. He and his family lived inside amongst their looms and spinning wheels. With support from local elected officials, the Browns were determined the stay.

Part of the 59th Regiment of Foot had also come from Halifax, and it found quarters “at Robt. Gordons Stores,” according to merchant John Rowe. That businessman probably leased his property to the army for hard cash. A contingent of the Royal Artillery arrived as well, but it was small enough that no one noted where they bunked.

Late in the afternoon Col. Dalrymple went to the selectmen and “entreated of them as a favor the use of Faneuil Hall for one Regiment to lodge in till Monday following, promissing upon his honor to quit said Hall at that time.” According to Tudor, “about SunSett the 14 Regemt Marched from the Common down to Faneuil Hall.”

But Faneuil Hall was the center of democracy in Boston. It was the site of town meetings and of the town clerk’s and selectmen’s offices. It was the storage place of “a large number of stands of the towns arms” for militia use. Would the selectmen give up that space? Politically, could they?

For about two hours the 14th Regiment stood in the center of town as the night grew cooler. Finally two factors swayed the selectmen:

• “The next day being the Sabbath, on which all confusion should be avoided”
• “the hardship of the Troops must be exposed to while remaining in the open air”

At nine o’clock the troops were allowed into Faneuil Hall to bed down. 

In their newspaper dispatches the Whigs made claimed a moral victory: “Thus the humanity of the city magistrates permitted them a temporary shelter, which no menaces could have procured.”

TOMORROW: Remembering that history this week.

“Boston Surrounded with aboute 14 Ships”

On 30 Sept 1768, Deacon John Tudor wrote in his diary that the Royal Navy’s transport ships were now approaching Boston’s wharves:

At 3 O’Clock P. M. the Lanceston of 40 Guns, the Mermaid of 28, Glasgow of 20, Keven [Beaver, wrote John Rowe] of 14, Senegal 14, Bonnetta 10, several armed schooners, which with the Romney of 50 Guns (which had been hear most of the Summer) & the other Ships of War before in the Harbour, Capt. [James] Smith in the Mermaid Comadore, all came up to town bringing with them the 14th Regiment Col. [William] Dalrymple & 29th Regt. Col. [Maurice] Care.

So that now we See Boston Surrounded with aboute 14 Ships, or Vessells of war. The greatest perade perhaps ever seen in the Harbour of Boston.

Boston’s selectmen had been expecting those troops as far back as 10 September. After that, they met on the 11th, 12th, 13th (twice), 14th (twice), and 15th (twice). Most of those meetings produced no official decisions, the exceptions being typical small tasks such as admitting a person to the poorhouse or setting the price of rye bread.

On the 18th, the selectmen went to the Council Chamber in the Town House and received official word that four regiments were on their way, two from Halifax and two later from Ireland. Those thousands of soldiers would need a place to stay, the Council relayed. Three days later, the selectmen returned to the Council and said the only place for the soldiers was in Castle William.

The selectmen met again on the afternoon of the 21st, the 23rd, 26th, 28th, 29th, and 30th (twice). Again, most of those meetings officially resulted in nothing. The record of the afternoon meeting on the 30th even says: “A number of His Majestys Justices were present, but nothing transacted, matter of minuting.”

(On 26 September a cloth dyer named Thomas Mewse alerted the selectmen that he had come to Boston from Norwich, England, with his son. Mewse would go into “the Weaving Business” with William Molineux, a partnership that broke down in mutual recriminations, lawsuits, and newspaper essays. I wrote a long chapter about how that dispute connects to Molineux’s sudden death in October 1774 for The Road to Concord, and then I cut it for length. But it was nice to see Mewse make his entrance.)

The reason for the selectmen’s frequent meetings, and the magistrates’ presence on the 30th, is that Gov. Francis Bernard was trying to make the Manufactory building near the Common available as barracks. He told Col. Dalrymple that the Manufactory “is a building belonging to the Province and at present not leased or appropriated to any Person or Purpose.”

In fact, there were a few families in that large building weaving cloth or stockings or making buttons on a small scale. Moving them out would require a legal eviction, hence the justices of the peace—but most of those appointees stood with the selectmen in opposing the troops’ presence in town.

As much as Gov. Bernard wanted to turn the Manufactory over to the army, he didn’t want to take all the responsibility for doing so. He had spent almost two weeks trying to get his Council to agree with the idea. Those elected officials refused, also siding with the Boston selectmen.

In his letter to Col. Dalrymple, the governor wrote, “you have requested of me the Use of the building called the manufactory house.” So far as I know, Dalrymple had never been in Boston, but the governor wanted the request to come from the army.

On 30 September, Gov. Bernard finally bit the bullet and acted on his own authority—but he turned all the hard work over to Dalrymple:

as it is my Duty to preserve the Peace of the Town by all means in my Power, for which it is necessary to prevent an intermixture of the Soldiers and the People, as it must certainly give frequent occasions for the breaking the Peace, I do hereby assign & appoint the Manufactory house being a building appropriated to no use, & belonging to the Province; & I do authorise you to take possession of the same as & for a Barrack for the quartering the King’s Troops.

Until that building was available, the governor said, he had no objection to the regiments camping on Boston Common. As for straw for that camp, he would speak with the Council—the same uncooperative Council that didn’t want the troops in Boston in the first place.

TOMORROW: The landing.

(The picture above, courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society, is one version of Christian Remick’s painting of the fleet in Boston harbor as seen from Long Wharf.)

“To sit till the troops come”

There’s practically no record of discussions at the Massachusetts Convention of 1768. The gathering issued formal documents in the first couple of days and at the end, but no internal proceedings survive.

The closest we come is a 27 Sept 1768 letter from the Rev. Andrew Eliot to an English supporter of Massachusetts, Thomas Hollis. Eliot wrote:

Their chairman (Mr. [Thomas] Cushing) assures me their determinations will be moderate, and their session short; and that they will not attempt any acts of government. But if the troops arrive before they break up, I will not be bound for their moderation. The people have, at present, great confidence in them.

A gentleman well acquainted with the secrets of the times, just now informed me, that there were three parties in the convention. One, who were fearful of the legality of their proceedings, and would gladly break up without doing any thing. Another party would willingly leave the people to themselves, and not lay any restraints upon them. A third desire to sit till the troops come, and to take the direction of affairs into their own hands. Which party will prevail is uncertain.

I just returned from a journey into the country. I find the people through this Province, are ripe for almost any thing. But how it is with other Provinces, I cannot say. They write well, but do nothing.

I fear we must stand the brunt of ministerial vengeance, unless there is some great change at home. What can we do! Tamely to give up our rights, and to suffer ourselves to be taxed at the will of persons at such a distance, and to be under military government, is to consent to be slaves, and to bring upon us the curses of all posterity; and yet how unable to cope with Great Britain! How dreadful the thought of a contest with the parent country, in whose calamities we have always borne a part, and in whose peace we have enjoyed peace.

Whatever distresses come, we shall not suffer alone; whatever evils come on the Colonies, Great Britain will sensibly feel; and our increase is so great, that time will be, when we shall be free. How impolitic to precipitate a disunion!

The possibility of a severe breach between Massachusetts and Britain was high enough that London stock market suffered a decline. However, like Eliot, the leaders of the Convention thought such a “disunion” would be a calamity, and they worked to make sure that didn’t happen, issuing firm verbal protests to keep the situation from turning violent.

On 28 September, troop transports started to arrive in Boston’s outer harbor. The merchant John Rowe wrote in his diary:

This forenoon came to anchor in Nantasket Roads six sail of Men of War supposed to have the 14th Regmt. & 29th Regmt. on board.

The next day, or 250 years ago today, Deacon John Tudor wrote that the ships were closer:

The Fleet came to Anchor near Castle Willm.

The next issue of the Boston Gazette, dated 3 October, included this one-sentence item of local news:

Thursday last [i.e., 29 September] the Convention, having finish’d their Business, dispersed.

The Massachusetts Convention thus came to a close. You can read its final formal complaint here.

Watching the Mob with Deacon Tudor

One of the most telling accounts of the mobbing of Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson’s house on 26 Aug 1765 came from John Tudor (1709-1795), a merchant, marine insurance dealer, and deacon who lived nearby in the North End.

After that event, Tudor went back in his journal to fill in what he’d heard about recent house-mobbings, then got to what he saw himself:

This brought it to the dusk of the evening, tho’ it was a moonlight Night near the full Moon. Then the Monsters being enflam’d with Rum & Wine which they got in sd [Benjamin] Hallowells Celler proceeded with Shouts to the Dwelling House of the Honl. Thos. Hutchinson Esqr. Lieut. Governor & The Mob enter’d in a Voyalant manner, broke the Wainscot, partitions, Glasses &c.; broke & distroy’d every Window, Broke, tore or carred off all the Famaly’s Apparel Jewels, Books &c. and Carred off about 900£ Sterling in Cash, they worked hard from 8 O’Clock on the House, Fences &c. till about 12 or one O’Clock; when they got on the top of the House and cut down a large Cupola, or Lanthron which took up their Time till near Daylight, leaving the House a mear Shell.

So great a piece of Cruilty (I believe) on so good, so inocent a Gentleman was never committed since the Creation. The next Day the Governor & Councle Issued out a proclamation of 300£ Lawful m’y to anyone who shold discover the Leador, or Leadors of the Mob and 100£ reward for the discovery of any Actors in the affare. T’was supposed that several Contrey Fellows & saylors was concerned in this Mob, as there was but few of them known. There was a number of Boys from 14 to sixteen Years of age, som mere Children which did a great deal of damage in breaking the Windows & distroying the Furniture Apparel &c.

But what is surprising there was some hundreds of people looking on as spectators, I was one, that had they known each others minds they mite have prevented the Mischief don at the Livt. Governor’s; But there was such a Universal obhorance of the Stamp Act which past in England & was soon to be put in execution in America and which was the cause of the Mob’s riseing and commiting such cruilty on the Governor; thinking he had som hand in the Stamp Act, but it was soon known that he was not only inocent, but had protested against it. . . .

The next Day there was a full town Meeting, when they Voted Vnanimously their utter detestation of the violent proceedings of the Mob &c. and had the minds of the people and the Inocence of Governor Hutchinson been known before, as it was at this meeting, the mischief at his house mite easily have been prevented, as the next day their was a Universal Lamentation for the Distruction don.

Tudor appears to have been caught up in the excitement of the night of 26 August, then woke up the next day with regrets and worries about what might happen next. And that’s how a lot of Boston felt. Town leaders stepped in to tamp down violence for the rest of the year even as they continued to encourage resistance to the stamp tax. The destruction of Lt. Gov. Hutchinson’s house remained the high tide of sustained anti-Crown violence inside Boston until the actual war.

A Death at Deacon Tudor’s

Here’s a notable entry from the diary of John Tudor (1709-1795), a merchant and deacon of Boston’s Second (Old North) Meeting-House in the North End:

1772 March 16th

This Morning died my old faithfull Servant, a Negro Man, that Lived with me about 34 Years. But the last 10 Years of his life he was Useless, more espesaly the last 7 Years. We supposed him to be between 90 & 100 Years Old. He Kept’d his bed, but one Day & Died very easey.

It ’tis remarkable throw the goodness of God, tho’ we have had a larg Famaly of Children & servants for near 40 Years til of late, and never had till this Morning, but one person that Died under my Roof: my Sons & other Relations Died abroad. Bessed be God for a helthy Famely & all other Merceys.

£3 coffin.

“Servant” was colonial Boston’s euphemism for a slave. The deacon was clearly affected by his old slave’s death, but not enough to record the man’s name.

Did Anyone Feel That? Like a Rumbling? Anyone?

Most of the articles under the pins of the Bostonian Society’s “Mapping Revolutionary Boston” website/app were drafted by students at Wellesley, Suffolk, and Harvard. There were layers of vetting and editing, but those students deserve their credit for starting the process.

One of those pins touches on the Earthquake of 1755. The original article focused on Prof. John Winthrop of Harvard, and his suggestion that the tremor was the product of underground gases and not, as some of his prominent forebears would have said, the anger of God.

The subject doesn’t link to Boston’s political Revolution—the quake came ten years before the Stamp Act, twenty years before the war. But it ties into the Enlightenment’s scientific revolution, the ongoing shift away from theocracy in New England, and daily life in colonial Boston.

Unfortunately, with that focus the article didn’t provide a place to put the pin. Prof. Winthrop lived and worked in Cambridge (I like to think of his house as under the Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream in the Garage). The map under “Mapping Revolutionary Boston” shows only the Boston peninsula in 1769.

So one of my tasks was to find a way to connect that article to a place in Boston. Surely someone in town mentioned the earthquake. After all, it was…an earthquake! Unfortunately, there’s much less published about 1755 than about 1765 or 1775. Eventually I remembered that John Tudor kept a diary for many years before the war, and his descendants published it in 1896.

Sure enough, Deacon Tudor wrote a few lines about the earthquake. He even pinpointed where in Boston the worst damage occurred! So that’s why the article starts with him, and then zips across the Charles River to discuss Winthrop’s commentary.

Stand-off at Captain Malcom’s

And speaking of Paul Revere, as I did yesterday, here’s his sworn testimony about what he saw outside Capt. Daniel Malcom’s house in Boston’s North End on 24 Sept 1766, in the form of a deposition copied and sent to London:

I Paul Rivere of lawfull age testifieth and Sayeth that as I the Subscriber on Wednesday 24th Septr last between 3 and 4 oClock post meridium was going to the north part of the Town I saw a number of men I believe above fifty standing near the Revd Mr. Mathews [sic—Samuel Mather’s] meeting house and in the lane leading to the North Grammar School

I went up to some of them and asked why they were standing there

they told me they understood the Custom House Officers were agoing to break open Capt. Malcom’s house to search for some casks of Wine that had been run,

I stopt some time I believe about an hour and asked where the Officers where [i.e., were]

they told me they were gone to get assistance from some Justices of the Peace, soon after Capt. Benjn Hallowell [Comptroller of the Customs in Boston] came (I thought he looked very angry)

a number of Gentlemen gathered round him, soon after Mr. [justice of the peace John] Tudor came and then Mr. Sheriff [Stephen] Greanleaf, I saw a number of People gather round him but I did not hear any of their discourse only Mr. Greanleaf asked them if they would assist him in the discharge of his Office

I think I heard Mr. Benjn. Goodin say he would assist him out of doors but would not go into Capt. Malcom’s house.

While I was there I did not see any officer go near Capt. Malcom’s house if they had they might have spoken to Capt. Malcom for as I passed by Capt. Malcom’s house going down the land to Mr. [justice of the peace Joseph?] Gardner I saw Capt. Malcom look through the Window

I am certain the people that were gathered there had not any intent to hinder the officers in the discharge of their duty but would have protected them all that lay in their power

I did not hear that the old North bell was to ring nor that Capt. Malcom had encouraged any person to come to his Assistance, and while I tarred there the people behaved with decency and good order.

Paul Rivere

So there were at least fifty men standing around watching the Customs officers closely, Revere recalled. But that was in no way an attempt to interfere with or intimidate those officers, or any local officials they summoned to help them under writs of assistance.

And as for rumors that the crowd would ring the Old North Meeting-house bell to summon an even bigger crowd, Revere and his fellow deponents insisted those were just rumors, or something only schoolboys were saying, or words that had been misunderstood, or...

Eventually, Justice Tudor told the Customs officers that evening was coming on, when their writ would expire, so they might as well go home. The boys who were watching for a riot had to content themselves with razzing Ebenezer Richardson, who they assumed had informed on Malcom and his tenant, “for the great Prize he’d got.”

This posting was prompted by Caitlin G. D. Hopkins’s tribute to Capt. Malcom, who died in 1769. While this stand-off outside his house cemented Malcom’s reputation as a fervent Son of Liberty, we can’t be sure sure that he would have broken with London in the end. He was an Anglican, and his brother John actually worked for the Customs service at another port.

What Sort of Tea Was Thrown into Boston Harbor?

The Boston Post-Boy of 16 Nov 1767 offered this verse for caffeinated young ladies concerned about the new Townshend duties on, among other, less consequential things, imported tea:

Throw aside your Bohea and your Green Hyson Tea,
And all good things with a new fashion duty;
Procure a good store of the choice Labradore,
For there’ll soon be enough here to suit ye.

Labrador was an herbal tea made from a plant found growing in Canada. (Loyalist judge Peter Oliver later claimed that “it brought on Disorders of Health; & among the rest a Vertigo, as fatal as that which they had brought upon theirselves with Respect to Liberty.”)

But Labrador isn’t the topic of this posting. I’m wondering about what type of tea Americans drank at the time of the Boston Tea Party? Were Bohea and Hyson the most popular kinds, as that verse implied, or were those names simply a lot easier to fit into a rhyme than “Lapsang Souchong”? A 16 Sept 1736 Boston News-Letter advertisement listed several types—Bohea, Congou, Pekoe, green, and fine imperial—with green and Bohea the cheapest and Pekoe the most expensive. (For more about some of those varieties, see TeaMuse’s article on “Teas of Yore.”)

We know that American colonists didn’t import tea bricks, though those things are so quaintly historic and easily displayed that some small museums say they did. Instead, as Ebenezer Stevens recalled and other sources confirm, the tea emptied into Boston harbor came in canvas-covered wooden boxes that had to be chopped open. The Boston Tea Party Museum (now in drydock) displays a possible surviving example of those boxes on its website. And what sort of tea was inside them?

Last week my eye fell on a passage from the diary of John Tudor, a deacon in the North End. After describing how “a number of Resolute men” had destroyed the East India Company tea, Tudor wrote:

The Tea was worth ’tis said at least 25,000 £ sterling, as a great deal of it was green Tea.

So on the day after the Tea Party, Bostonians saw a lot of the tea in their harbor as green tea. Tudor’s remark about the value of the tea also implies that green tea is one of the more expensive kinds.

Benjamin Woods Labaree’s The Boston Tea Party says, “About one-third of the tea exported from China in the eighteenth century was green tea,” with green Hyson “the choicest of all.” But the bulk of the tea that Europeans, and thus European-Americans, consumed was black tea from the Bohea mountains. And Labaree’s Table IV has the exact answer to my question above: the three tea ships at Boston contained 240 chests of Bohea, 15 of Congou, 10 of Souchong (all black teas), 60 of Singlo, and 15 of Hyson (both green teas). Green tea accounted for about 22% of the shipments’ total volume, and 30% of the value.

Was Tudor’s perception that “a great deal of it was green Tea” shaped by what people saw in the harbor the next day? Not all the leaves thrown overboard had sunk. Men went out in boats to beat the remaining shoals of leaves under the water. And perhaps the green tea was the biggest problem. A commenter on this British webpage says, “I've noticed that my Chai teabags (more smaller particles), sink faster than my green tea teabags (larger leaf particles). I suspect it is because the smaller particles get saturated fast than the larger ones.” As a “living history” experiment, does green tea take longer to sink in saltwater than black tea?