“A ceaseless and voluminous writer for the newspapers”

In his 1906 History of Washington County, Maryland, Thomas J. C. Williams wrote a lot about Benjamin Galloway, who, he said, died in August 1831 at the age of seventy-nine.

In addition to mentioning Galloway at many points in the book, usually in discussions of local politics, Williams wrote:

Possibly there are some citizens of Hagerstown now living who can remember an eccentric old gentleman with long white hair, with elegant manners and courteous demeanor, who lived in the stone house at the corner of Washington and Jonathan streets . . .

He was somewhat convivial, and very fond of writing for the newspapers. He generally wore a blue coat the pockets of which were filled with newspapers and manuscript. It was difficult for an acquaintance to pass him on the street. He was anxious to declaim upon politics, or to read his latest communication to the [Hagerstown] Torch Light or his last poem, to anyone who was willing to listen to him.

This gentleman was Benjamin Galloway, for nearly forty years one of the best known and most conspicuous citizens of the County. Galloway was born in England in 1752, was educated at Eton and received a legal education at the Temple in London. Throughout the contentions between the home government and the Colonies which led to the war for Independence his sympathies were with the Colonists, and before the declaration of hostilities he embarked for America and settled in Anne Arundel County.

According to J. Reaney Kelly’s article about the Galloway family estate, “‘Tulip Hill,’ Its History and Its People,” published in the Maryland Historical Magazine in 1965, Benjamin Galloway was actually born in Maryland. Or if he was born in England, it was because his American-born parents were visiting there.

Benjamin was sent to Britain for education in 1769, which seems too late for Eton. He was back in Maryland in late 1771, then in London again in May 1773, meeting “Mr. [Charles Willson] Peale the artist” and hoping to study law. In Britain when the war began, Benjamin Galloway returned home to marry by July 1777.

By that time, Galloway was a member of the Maryland house of delegates, though for only a couple of sessions. Williams wrote:

He was a member of the first State Legislature and, attracting attention by his zeal for the patriot cause, he, although but twenty-five years of age, received the appointment of Attorney General in the new government. This office he held but a very short time, not more than a month, when he resigned. This unfortunate resignation returned to torment Galloway at every political controversy into which he entered, and he was never out of them. It was charged each time that the office of Attorney General had been renounced because of timidity, or because he was secretly a Tory. These accusations were furiously repelled. He had resigned, he said, only in deference to the commands of a timid father.

Indeed, Maryland’s official record says Benjamin Galloway was named state attorney general on 6 January 1778. Officially, he declined the appointment, not even getting into office, and Luther Martin (shown above) was appointed to the job on 11 February and held it for more than a quarter-century. By 1803, Galloway was feuding with Martin.

Galloway married Miss Henrietta Chew, of Washington County, and removed from Anne Arundel to reside on “Chew’s farm” near the Potomac, six miles below Williamsport. There he was living in 1798. His republicanism was so pronounced, that in that year, when war with France seemed unavoidable, during a temporary absence from his home, a report was circulated that he sympathized with the French against his own government, and had declared his intention of joining them if they landed on our soil. This report he denounced in the newspaper as the work of a calumniator and a villain.

In 1800, he had removed to Hagerstown, and occupied a house owned by Nathaniel Rochester. In 1802, he received the appointment of Associate Justice for Washington County, but shortly resigned the office. He was a member of St John’s Episcopal Church, and for a time a vestryman of the parish.

All through his life he was a ceaseless agitator. He was constantly a candidate for the legislature, and several times for elector of the Senate. In 1822, he was elected, and made a diligent member. Again in 1823 he was elected after a fierce campaign at the head of the “Christian ticket,” in opposition to the removal of the disabilities of the Jews. He was a ceaseless and voluminous writer for the newspapers, and gave and received many trenchant blows. One of his favorite objects of assault was the banks. The prevailing system of banking he declared to be nothing more than public swindling and called and addressed a public meeting on this subject.

Another detail Williams reported was that Galloway “greatly indulged” his “large number of slaves,” particularly “a girl who was raised in the house as a family pet, and who frequently engaged in capers which would have made a less indulgent master sell her to the cotton fields.” This was not presented as a sign of Galloway’s good character.

In sum, Williams described Benjamin Galloway as a conspicuous crank, especially on political subjects, though no doubt wealthy, intelligent, and courteous.

Williams also reprinted Galloway’s anecdote about George Washington. But given the sketch of his character, how reliable does that story seem?

TOMORROW: Reasons for skepticism.

“A good amount of the Franklin Papers”

For anyone who cares about preserving the papers of important Founders, Valerie-Anne Lutz recounted quite a heart-stopping adventure for the American Philosophical Society in January.

Lutz wrote about Benjamin Franklin’s surviving papers:

When Franklin left for London in 1764 1776, he left his papers with his friend and fellow Pennsylvania Assembly member Joseph Galloway. Galloway kept the papers in his vault, a stone building on his property, along with some of his family’s papers and early Bucks County records.

By the time of the American Revolution, Galloway, a Loyalist, believed that the colonies should remain under British rule. This led to his departure for England in 1778 and the confiscation of his estate in 1779. The property was raided by either British or Continental forces, or both, who broke into Galloway’s vault, stole some of the papers, and left others scattered about the grounds. . . .

The letterbooks were, unfortunately, never found. For this reason, most of Franklin’s papers consist of letters to Franklin, rather than letters from Franklin. However, [son-in-law Richard] Bache was able to rescue a large amount of materials, which represent a good amount of the Franklin Papers that eventually found their way to APS.

In his will, Franklin left his papers to his grandson, William Temple Franklin, known as Temple. Intending to publish his grandfather’s papers, Temple set off for London with a portion of them, but left the largest portion with family friends, the Fox family, near Philadelphia. . . . In 1840, Charles Pemberton Fox and his sister Mary Fox gave the collection to the American Philosophical Society, where they have been ever since. . . .

A somewhat smaller collection of Franklin Papers held by the Fox family was overlooked for another 25 years. During the Civil War, the family sold some old papers from their barn to a paper mill. A house guest, identified as Mrs. Holbrook, noticed that some of the papers bore Franklin’s handwriting. She rescued them and left the papers to her son, George O. Holbrook, who, with the encouragement of physician S. Weir Mitchell, sold the collection to the University of Pennsylvania in 1903.

As for the papers that William Temple Franklin took to London, they were discovered in the 19th century in a tailor shop below where Temple had lived, where they were being used as clothing patterns. They were rescued, and after a series of legal issues, eventually were donated to the Library of Congress.

The Papers of Benjamin Franklin project built from these collections and added documents saved elsewhere to create as full a picture of the man’s correspondence and writings as possible. And we can enjoy the result through Founders Online.

Also recommended, though not as adventure reading: Jack Hitt’s article “In the Franklin Factory,” about the Papers of Benjamin Franklin as it operated about twenty-five years ago, published in Quick Studies: The Best of Lingua Franca.

The Mixed Meaning of Richard Stockton

In 2008 I posted a multi-part inquiry into the legend of Richard Stockton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence from New Jersey.

According to the standard story, in late 1776 the British forces captured Stockton and treated him so badly that he was in poor health until he died from the consequences in 1781. That story led to New Jersey honoring Stockton in multiple ways, including putting his statue in the U.S. Capitol as a state hero.

I pointed out that:

• Stockton’s Continental Congress colleagues immediately shared reports and concerns that after being captured he abjured his support for independence.
• Sources from the 1770s and 1780s say little about mistreatment or extended illness arising from it. Stockton died of an oral cancer, not something normally brought on by cold.
• Only in the 1820s did American authors start to complain that Stockton was mistreated and died as a result. Reported details of that treatment, still unsupported by documents, became worse as time went on.

The following year, Todd Braisted, now author of Grand Forage 1778, provided a smoking gun: a December 1776 letter from a British army officer stating that Adm. Lord Richard Howe and Gen. Sir William Howe had “granted a full pardon to Richard Stockton, Esq”. The judge then removed himself from politics and the war. Not only does that letter suggest that Stockton reached some kind of agreement for his freedom, but it also shows he was in British custody for less than a month.

Drawing on those postings and further research, Christian McBurney discussed Stockton’s case in detail in his book Abductions in the American Revolution and in this 2016 article for the Journal of the American Revolution. He questioned whether New Jersey should continue to have Stockton be one of the two figures it displays in the U.S. Capitol, given the state’s other heroes.

This month brought news that Stockton University in New Jersey has removed a bust of Richard Stockton (shown above) from its library. The reason was not, however, because his iconic status in the state rests on a shaky legend of stoic suffering at the hands of the enemy.

Rather, the university removed the bust because Stockton owned slaves. Those people are documented in his will, in which the judge said his widow Annis could free them if she chose. (I’ve found no evidence she did so. Their son Richard owned slaves as an adult, as did their daughter and son-in-law, Dr. Benjamin Rush—even though he advocated for an end to slavery.)

As a public university, and one founded to provide more opportunities for students who don’t have advantages in our society, Stockton University has good reason not to glorify someone who participated in slave-owning even while championing liberty for gentlemen like himself.

At the same time, I don’t see how removing Stockton’s bust will fix that contradiction when the institution is still, you know, named Stockton University.

The school started in the 1970s as South Jersey State College and evolved through Stockton State College, Richard Stockton State College, and the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey before becoming Stockton University in 2015. Has the Stockton name developed enough of its own legacy to leave the judge behind? Does Stockton’s documented interest in higher education (as a trustee of Princeton College) make him a good namesake for a university despite his other behavior?

Ironically, Stockton University is in Galloway Township. There’s some thought that the Crown named that settlement in 1774 after the Pennsylvania politician Joseph Galloway. He was one of America’s leading Loyalists, fleeing to exile in Britain four years later. And yet the name lives on.