Abraham Fuller and “the exact records of the military stores”

Yesterday I quoted a description of the Rev. Jonathan Homer of Newton late in life, by the poet and doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Homer’s writings include a “Description and History of Newton, in the County of Middlesex,” published in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1798. And that article includes an anecdote related to the British army expedition to Concord 250 years ago next month.

In writing about the local politician Abraham Fuller (1720–1794), Homer said:

To him, as principal of a committee of the Provincial Congress at Concord, were committed the papers containing the exact records of the military stores in Massachusetts at the beginning of 1775. Upon the recess of the Congress, he first lodged these papers in a cabinet of the room which the committee occupied.

But thinking afterwards, that the British troops might attempt to seize Concord in the absence of the Congress, and that these papers, discovering the public deficiency in every article of military apparatus, might fall into their hands, he withdrew them, and brought them to his house at Newton.

That foresight and judgment, for which he was ever distinguished, and which he displayed in the present instance, was extremely fortunate for the country. The cabinet was broken open by a British officer on the day of the entrance of the troops into Concord, April 19, 1775, and great disappointment expressed at missing its expected contents.

Had they fallen into their hands, it was his opinion, that the knowledge of the public deficiency might have encouraged the enemy, at this early period, to have made such a use of their military force, as could not have been resisted by the small stock of powder and other articles of war which the province then contained. He considered the impulse upon his mind to secure these papers, as one among many providential interpositions for the support of the American cause.

Fuller was indeed a member of a Massachusetts Provincial Congress committee appointed on 22 Mar 1775 “to receive the returns of the several officers of militia, of their numbers and equipments,” plus inventories of the towns’ “stock of ammunition.”

He wasn’t the senior member, named first and thus by tradition the chair. All the others—Timothy Danielson of Brimfield; Joseph Henshaw of Leicester, Spencer, and Paxton; James Prescott of Groton; and Michael Farley of Ipswich—were colonels in the Massachusetts militia while Fuller was still a major. But he lived the closest to Concord, so it makes sense he felt responsible for securing the committee’s sensitive records.

(I should note that at this time, the congress included both Abraham Fuller from Newton and Archelaus Fuller from Middleton, and that spring both men held the militia rank of major. Sometimes clerk Benjamin Lincoln remembered to identify which “Major Fuller” the congress meant, and sometimes not. In this case, the official record dovetails with Homer’s story.)

Another version of this anecdote appears in the family genealogy Records of Some of the Descendants of John Fuller, Newton, 1644–1698, published in 1869 by Samuel C. Clarke:

Judge Fuller was a very earnest patriot before the Revolution, and it is told that previous to the fight at Concord, fearing that the British might destroy the County Records at that place, he rode over from Newton the day before the fight, and carried away the most valuable of the papers in his saddlebags to his house in Newton.

Interestingly, in a footnote Clarke quoted Homer’s text, which says Fuller hid sensitive records for the whole province, making his action more important. Yet Clarke stuck to what seems to be the family’s idea that those were only “County Records.” In a way they were, since the militia regiments were organized at the county level.

Clarke’s version also said that Fuller wanted to prevent the British regulars from destroying those records rather then to prevent those soldiers from reading them. That seems more in keeping with the Patriot mindset in early April 1775. They thought they were preparing well for war, not woefully deficient, and feared the army might destroy their means of self-governance.

All that said, I’ve never come across evidence that the British troops in Concord were looking for Provincial Congress records. Gen. Thomas Gage didn’t gather any intelligence about where those documents were kept or put them on his list of what the regulars should look for. No British officers on the march described such a search.

I therefore think that everything Homer wrote about “a British officer” breaking into the cabinet because he “expected” to find records inside is probably imaginary.

Fuller took care to keep those papers away from the army, just as Paul Revere and John Lowell took care to move John Hancock’s trunk into the woods at Lexington, and just as Azor Orne, Elbridge Gerry, and Jeremiah Lee took care to hide from the troops passing by their tavern in west Cambridge. But that doesn’t mean those careful actions thwarted the British mission in any way. We like to think our actions have an effect on the world.

(The photo above, courtesy of Find a Grave, shows the Fuller family tomb in Newton’s east burying-ground. It’s about half a mile from my house.)

“The procession of the old clergymen who filled our pulpit”

Back in January I quoted Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes on one of the impressive clergymen who came to preach in his father’s pulpit in Cambridge while he was a boy.

Young Oliver was born in 1809 in the house that had belonged to the Harvard College steward Jonathan Hastings. In 1775 the Massachusetts committee of safety and Gen. Artemas Ward took it over as the first rebel headquarters of the war.

In The Poet at the Breakfast Table, Holmes described some ministers whose names I know because they wrote recollections about the Revolutionary period when they themselves were boys.

Holmes recalled the Rev. Thaddeus Mason Harris (1768–1842) of Dorchester this way: “already in decadence as I remember him, with head slanting forward and downward as if looking for a place to rest in after his learned labors.”

The Rev. David Osgood (1747–1822) has made only one appearance in Boston 1775, guarding his privilege to perform all marriages in his town. Holmes recalled him as “the most venerable David Osgood, the majestic minister of Medford, with massive front and shaggy over-shadowing eyebrows.”

Holmes’s longest profile limned the “attenuated but vivacious little Jonathan Homer of Newton, who was, to look upon, a kind of expurgated, reduced and Americanized copy of Voltaire, but very unlike him in wickedness or wit.”

Homer (1759–1843) was minister of the first congregation in Newton, where Homer Street preserves his name. Holmes went on:

The good-humored junior member of our family [Holmes himself?] always loved to make him happy by setting him chirruping about Miles Coverdale’s Version, and the Bishop’s Bible, and how he wrote to his friend Sir Isaac (Coffin) about something or other, and how Sir Isaac wrote back that he was very much pleased with the contents of his letter, and so on about Sir Isaac, ad libitum,—for the admiral was his old friend, and he was proud of him.

Homer and Coffin had been classmates at the South Latin School, one becoming an American clergyman and the other a British admiral. Coffin’s recollections of life in that school were invaluable to me in writing about its culture.

The kindly little old gentleman was a collector of Bibles, and made himself believe he thought he should publish a learned Commentary some day or other; but his friends looked for it only in the Greek Calends,—say on the 31st of April, when that should come round, if you would modernize the phrase.

In other words, that magnum opus’s day of publication would never arrive.

Young James Lovell Makes His Move

Yesterday, when we left James Lovell, the illegitimate son of the South Latin School usher of the same name, he had stormed out of that school, angry that his grandfather, Master John Lovell, had whipped him so much. Young James said he would attend Master John Proctor’s Writing School instead.

According to the Rev. Dr. Jonathan Homer, James then “met one of Master Proctor’s boys, who asked him whither he was going, and when informed, warned him not to go, for he would fare worse.”

So the younger James Lovell eventually returned to his grandfather’s and father’s school and completed the course there. In the expected fashion, he moved on to Harvard College, where he graduated in 1776.

In 1777, at the age of nineteen, Lovell became an ensign (equivalent of second lieutenant) in Col. Henry Jackson’s regiment of the Continental Army. In 1780 he was with Lt. Col. Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee’s battalion of light dragoons. (The picture above shows Lee, courtesy of Stratford Hall.) Lovell usually served as adjutant, or administrative officer. He spent considerable time in South Carolina.

According to Southern Womanhood and Slavery, by Leigh Fought, Lovell claimed to have been “the favorite secretary of General George Washington” when he wooed and married a wealthy Orangeburg, South Carolina, widow named Ann Reid. (Some people heard even wilder tales about “Major Lovell.”)

Some of Ann Lovell’s relatives remembered that James ran through her fortune quickly, “leaving her poor and with several children.” However, Fought notes that tax records showed that Ann Lovell remained rich, and actually became richer, from 1790 to 1810. Other family traditions confirm that the plantation flourished. The source of marital trouble was not that James got his hands on her property, but that he couldn’t.

By 1806, the couple’s children had all died, and James Lovell lit out for New Orleans, where he remained until 1811. On James’s return, Ann took legal steps to preserve her property outside his control. The couple quarreled over an inheritance in 1826, and James left again. Ann died in 1834 while James lived on, returning to Cambridge for Harvard commencement in 1846. He died in Orangeburg in 1850.

(As far as I’ve seen, sources in Massachusetts have nothing but good things to say about James Lovell while sources from South Carolina have almost nothing good to say.)

Latin School Entrance Exam

Master John Lovell (shown here, in an image from the 1886 Catalogue of the Boston Public Latin School) didn’t let just any child into Boston’s South Latin School in the decades before the Revolutionary War. No, a child had to be male and white. He had to be old enough—usually seven years old. He had to read English already. And it helped to be prompt.

Harrison Gray Otis (1765-1848) recalled the admission process in a letter he wrote to a Boston newspaper in 1844, which was quoted in the Catalogue:

I perfectly remember the day I entered the School, July, 1773, being then seven years and nine months old.

Immediately after the end of [Harvard] Commencement week, I repaired, according to the rule prescribed for candidates for admission to the lowest form [i.e., the youngest class], to old Master Lovell’s house, situate in School Street, nearly opposite the site of the old School House. I was early on the ground, anticipated only by Mr. John Hubbard, who lived near—it being understood that the boys were to take their places on the form in the same routine that they had presented themselves at the house.

The probationary exercise was reading a few verses of the Bible. Having passed muster in this, I was admitted as second boy in the lowest form.

Throughout their scholastic career, the boys were seated according to their class rank. That made it clear to them and everyone else how well they were performing. Thus, ambitious young Harry Otis kept careful track of his ranking, and might have resented John Hubbard for living close enough to Master Lovell’s house to get an early lead.

In fact, lists kept by Master Lovell and his son and by classmate Joshua Green, Jr., show that Harry was initially ranked third or fourth, behind an unidentified Lovell, Hubbard, and Samuel Taylor. But by the end of 1773 “H. G. Otis” was at the head of his form, and probably stayed there until the Revolution began.

Jonathan Homer (1759-1843) had a different reason to feel miffed about this admission process because the Lovells turned him away, probably for being too young:

At the age of six and a half years, I was sent to master John Lovell’s Latin School. The only requirement was reading well; but, though fully qualified, I was sent away to Master [John] Griffith, a private teacher, to learn to read, write and spell.

Homer returned to the South Latin School the next year, went on to Harvard, and became a minister in Newton, where Homer Street starts (or ends) at the site of his church.