Summer Saturdays at the Paul Revere House

The Paul Revere House has a special program included with admission on every Saturday afternoon this summer. Unless otherwise stated, all these events run 1:00 to 3:00 P.M.

25 May
Colonial Dance Tunes and Love Songs from Al Petty & Deirdre Sweeney.

1 June
Colonial Weaving Demonstration by fiber artist Zoe Lawson.

8 June, 1:00, 1:45, 2:30 P.M.
Meet Harriet, Daughter of Paul Revere: Diane Lent portrays one of Paul Revere’s sixteen children, reminiscing about her father and growing up in the North End.

15 June
Patriot Fife and Drum concert by David Vose and Sue Walko.

22 June, 1:00, 1:45, 2:30 P.M.
Meet Loyalist Tea Consignee Joshua Winslow: Father of young chronicler Anna Green Winslow, Winslow was named one of the East India Company’s tea consignees. After watching one protest, he retreated to a family home in Marshfield. Meet him today, as portrayed by Michael Lepage, on a rare venture into Boston before he was forced into exile.

29 June
Hammered Dulcimer played by award-winning musician Dave Neiman.

6 July
Colonial Dance Tunes and Love Songs from Al Petty & Deirdre Sweeney.

13 July
Patriot Fife and Drum concert by David Vose and Sue Walko.

20 July
Hammered Dulcimer played by award-winning musician Dave Neiman.

27 July, 1:00, 1:45, 2:30 P.M.
John Adams: The Colossus of Independence: The lawyer discusses his beginnings in Braintree through his days as delegate to the Continental Congress and diplomat. As portrayed by Michael Lepage, hear how he longs to be home with his wife and children. 

3 August, 1:00, 1:45, 2:30 P.M.
The Many Rides of Paul Revere: The silversmith traveled far from home many times as a courier for the Boston Patriots, including a May 1774 trip to New York and Philadelphia bearing news of the Boston Port Bill. Learn about these trips as Michael Lepage portrays the home owner.

10 August
The Tailor’s Craft: Clothing historian Henry Cooke takes on the role of an early Boston tailor. 

17 August
Hammered Dulcimer played by award-winning musician Dave Neiman.

24 August
Patriot Fife and Drum concert by David Vose and Sue Walko.

31 August, 1:00, 1:45, 2:30 P.M.
Meet Harriet, Daughter of Paul Revere: Diane Lent portrays one of Paul Revere’s 16 children, reminiscing about her father and growing up in the historic North End.

“To wait upon the Messrs. Hutchinsons at Milton”

Over the two days of 5–6 Nov 1773, the Boston town meeting tried to finish the job an informal committee of businessmen (and rioters) had failed to do: convince the East India Company’s agents in Boston to resign from that responsibility.

The first step was getting those men to actually admit to having been appointed. Although there were plenty of reports that the company had decided to sell its tea through Thomas and Elisha Hutchinson, Richard Clarke and Sons, and Benjamin Faneuil and Joshua Winslow, no official paperwork had arrived.

Furthermore, those merchants were keeping low profiles after their confrontation with the crowd on 3 November.

The official record of the town meeting describe how that effort played out.

On the morning of 5 November, the meeting named a high-powered committee to ask those agents to resign: John Hancock as meeting moderator; merchants Henderson Inches, Benjamin Austin, and Jonathan Mason; and all the selectmen—Hancock again, plus John Scollay, Timothy Newell, Thomas Marshall, Oliver Wendell, Samuel Austin, and John Pitts.

Those men evidently went out with their message during the dinner break. At 3:00 P.M. the town meeting resumed with the committee’s report that Clarke and Faneuil had declined to respond on the excuse that they couldn’t consult with the Hutchinson brothers, who were out at their father’s house in Milton.

The meeting then named Samuel Adams, William Molineux, and Dr. Joseph Warren—three men not currently active as merchants but among the most radical political leaders—to deliver a more forceful demand to Clarke and Faneuil. They came back with a promise of a reply in half an hour.

The gathering then decided that Hancock, Pitts, Adams, Warren, William Powell, and Nathaniel Appleton would go out to Milton with the same message for the Hutchinsons.

Someone brought in Clarke and Faneuil’s written message on behalf of their firms. Those men stated that since they didn’t yet have the details of the tea consignment, they couldn’t comply with the town’s request. The town unanimously voted that response unsatisfactory.

The meeting resumed the next day at 11:00 A.M., “still continuing very full.” Town clerk William Cooper recorded:

The Committee appointed to wait upon the Messrs. Hutchinsons at Milton—Reported—That they had enquired the last Evening and this Morning at the House of Elish Hutchinson Esq. in this Town, and were informed that those Gentlemen were at Milton;

the Committee proceeded this Morning to Milton and calling at the Governors Seat were informed that only Mr. Elisha Hutchinson lodged there the last Night, who had set out early this Morning for Boston;

on their return they called at his House, and were told that he had been at home this Morning but had again set off for Milton—

they then went to the House of Thomas Hutchinson Esq. who was then at home, where they read and delivered to him an attested Copy of the Towns Vote, when he acquainted the Committee, that the Town might expect his answer in one quarter of an Hour—

The following Letter was soon after sent into the Moderator, signed Thomas Hutchinson, which was read, vizt.

Sir

I have nothing relative to the Teas referred to in the request or Vote of the Town, except that one of my Friends has signified to me by Letter, that part of it he had reason to believe would be Consigned to me and my Brother Jointly, but upon what terms he could not then say——

Under these circumstances I can give no other answer to the Town, at present, then that if the Teas should arrive & we should be appointed Factors, we shall then be sufficiently informed to answer the request of the Town—

I am for my Brother & self
Sir Your humble Servant
T. Hutchinson Junr.

The meeting voted that unsatisfactory with no dissent. Then the citizens declared, once against unanimously, that all the tea consignees’ behavior was “Daringly Affrontive.” They voted to send the record of this meeting to every town in Massachusetts, and thus to the newspapers.

There was one last action:

A Motion was then made, that the Thanks of the Town be given to the Honble. John Hancock Esq. the Moderator of this Meeting for the dispatch he has given to the Business thereof—but the Motion was objected to by himself and Mr. Adams, and it seemed to be the sense of the Town, that a Vote of Thanks should be only given upon very special and signal services performed for the Publick——

Hancock and his colleagues had, after all, simply been carrying out their duties as patriotic citizens. (Though I’m sure Hancock enjoyed the gesture of public praise.)

Meanwhile, in between those two town meeting sessions Boston had observed its traditional Pope Night.

TOMORROW: And how had that gone?

(The picture above, courtesy of the Milton Historical Society, is the only known image of Gov. Thomas Hutchinson’s country mansion in Milton, where his son Elisha spent the night of 5 Nov 1773. John Ritto Penniman painted this picture in 1827, so it shows the house as it existed fifty years after the Revolution, having perhaps been remodeled.)

“I am (as we say) a daughter of liberty”

For a presentation this week that didn’t come off, I picked out three extracts from the letters of young teenager Anna Green Winslow to her mother in Nova Scotia, showing her political awakening. She wrote between November 1771 and May 1773.

Richard Gridley, retired artillery colonel, explained the political factions to Anna.

As a girl, and an upper-class girl at that, Anna wasn’t supposed to demonstrate in the streets. But the Whig movement encouraged girls to participate in other ways, such as learning to spin so that local weavers could make more cloth so that local merchants didn’t have to import so much from Britain.

But Anna didn’t know how to spin.

So she contented herself by visiting the Manufactory where her cousin Sally’s yarn had been woven into cloth, and doing a little dance there.

Anna could also participate in the movement as a consumer, choosing to buy more locally produced goods. In one letter she proudly described herself to her mother as a “daughter of liberty.”

I’m not sure how Anna’s family felt about the politics she was learning in Boston. Her father, Joshua Winslow, was more closely allied with royal officials. Later in 1773 he lucked out (he thought) in being named one of the East India Company’s tea consignees in Boston. But when the town mobilized against allowing that tea to be landed, he had to lie low in Marshfield. Eventually, he left Massachusetts as a Loyalist.

Anna Green Winslow remained in the state, living in Hingham, but she died in 1780. Alas, outside of those letters to her mother in 1771–1773 we have almost no sources about Anna’s life, so we don’t know how her political outlook changed after the Whigs made her father an enemy for agreeing to sell tea, and after the war began.

“All possible exertions to stem the current of the mob”

Richard Clarke and Sons weren’t the only merchants tapped by the East India Company to import tea into Boston in 1773. The others were:

• Business partners Benjamin Faneuil, Jr. (1730-1787) and Joshua Winslow (1727-1801).
• Thomas Hutchinson, Jr. (1740-1811), and his brother Elisha (1745-1824). They were sons of royal governor Thomas Hutchinson, who had invested about £1,000 in their business—what some of us today would call a conflict of interest. 

Those firms didn’t treat each other as competitors. In fact, Richard Clarke was Joshua Winslow’s uncle by marriage. Winslow and the Hutchinsons were third cousins. Everyone was in close contact with the governor.

When all three firms received the unwelcome invitation to Liberty Tree on 3 Nov 1773 that I quoted yesterday, they agreed to act in concert. The Clarkes later wrote:

The gentlemen who are supposed the designed factors for the East India Compy, viz: Mr. Thos. Hutchinson, Mr. Faneuil, Mr. Winslow & Messrs. Clarke, met in the forenoon of the 3rd instant, at the latter’s warehouse, the lower end of King Street. Mr. Elisha Hutchinson was not present, owing to a misunderstanding of our intended plan of conduct, but his brother engaged to act in his behalf.

You may well judge that none of us ever entertained the least thoughts of obeying the summons sent us to attend at Liberty Tree. After a consultation amongst ourselves and friends, we judged it best to continue together, and to endeavour, with the assistance of a few friends, to oppose the designs of the mob, if they should come to offer us any insult or injury. And on this occasion, we were so happy as to be supported by a number of gentlemen of the first rank.

There appear to have been over a dozen friends and supporters in the Clarkes’ warehouse, in addition to the family and the other importers.

About one o’clock, a large body of people appeared at the head of King Street, and came down to the end, and halted opposite to our warehouse. Nine persons came from them up into our countingroom, viz: Mr. [William] Molineux, Mr. Wm. Dennie, Doctor [Joseph] Warren, Dr. [Benjamin] Church, Major [Nathaniel] Barber, Mr. Henderson, Mr. Gabriel Johonnot, Mr. [Edward] Proctor, and Mr. Ezekiel Cheever.

Caleb H. Snow’s 1825 History of Boston didn’t list anyone named Henderson on this impromptu committee. Francis S. Drake’s Tea Leaves identified this man as Henderson Inches, and Bernhard Knollenberg’s Growth of the American Revolution, 1766-1775 guessed he was tax collector Benjamin Henderson.

This man was almost certainly Joseph Henderson, who this same week signed a letter asking the selectmen to call an urgent town meeting about the tea tax. On that document his name appears right below those of Samuel Adams, Church, and Proctor. Henderson was then a merchant and proprietor of Long Wharf; later he became commissary of prisoners and sheriff of Suffolk County. (Interestingly, John Rowe wrote that in July 1771 a crowd “Routed the Whores” at a waterfront house that Henderson owned.)

Henry Pelham estimated the crowd behind that committee of nine as “about 300 People.” A similar crowd, including most of the town’s top elected officials, were waiting behind at Liberty Tree. The Clarkes’ report goes on:

Mr. Molineux, as speaker of the above Comtte., addressed himself to us, and the other gentlemen present, the supposed factors to the East India Comy. and told us that we had committed an high insult on the people, in refusing to give them that most reasonable satisfaction which had been demanded in the summons or notice which had been sent us, then read a paper proposed by him, to be subscribed by the factors, importing that they solemnly promise that they would not land or pay any duty on any tea that should be sent by the East I. Comy, but that they would send back the tea to England in the same bottom, which extravagant demand being firmly refused, and treated with a proper contempt by all of us, Mr. Molineux then said that since we had refused their most reasonable demands, we must expect to feel, on our first appearance, the utmost weight of the people’s resentment, upon which he and the rest of the Comtte. left our countingroom and warehouse, and went to and mixed with the multitude that continued before our warehouse.

Soon after this, the mob having made one or two reverse motions to some distance, we perceived them hastening their pace towards the store, on which we ordered our servant to shut the outward door; but this he could not effect although assisted by some other persons, amongst whom was Nathaniel Hatch, Esqr. one of the Justices of the inferior Court for this country, and a Justice of the Peace for the county.

Nathaniel Hatch (1723-1784) was born in Dorchester and graduated from Harvard in 1742. He became a bureaucrat, accumulating royal appointments: clerk of the Massachusetts Superior Court, comptroller of the Customs office, justice of the peace and of the quorum, member of a commission to wind down the Land Bank. In 1771 he was seated on the Suffolk County court of common pleas, and at the end of 1772 Thomas Hutchinson, Jr., joined him on that bench.

Hatch also had a family tie to at least one tea agent. In 1768 his stepdaughter Elizabeth Lloyd had married Joshua Loring, Jr., whose sister was the wife of Joshua Winslow.

This genm. made all possible exertions to stem the current of the mob, not only by declaring repeatedly, and with a loud voice, that he was a magistrate, and commanded the people, by virtue of his office, and in his Majesty’s name, to desist from all riotous proceedings, and to disperse [i.e., he read the Riot Act], but also by assisting in person; but the people not only made him a return of insulting & reproachful words, but prevented his endeavors, by force and blows, to get our doors shut, upon which Mr. Hatch, with some other of our friends, retreated to our counting-room.

Soon after this, the outward doors of the store were taken off their hinges by the mob, and carried to some distance; immediately a number of the mob rushed into the warehouse, and endeavored to force into the counting-room, but as this was in another story, and the stair-case leading to it narrow, we, with our friends—about twenty in number—by some vigorous efforts, prevented their accomplishing their design.

The mob appeared in a short time to be dispersed, and after a few more faint attacks, they contented themselves with blocking us up in the store for the space of about an hour and a half, at which time, perceiving that much the greatest part of them were drawn off, and those that remained not formidable, we, with our friends, left the warehouse, walked up the length of King Street together, and then went to our respective houses, without any molestation, saving some insulting behavior from a few despicable persons.

Thus ended the first physical confrontation of the tea crisis in Boston. According to Gov. Hutchinson, “This seems to have been intended only as an intimation to the consignees, of what they had to expect.”

TOMORROW: Shooting on School Street.

Looking for Mrs. Hannah Winslow

Late last week, Thomas B. Allen, author of George Washington, Spymaster and other history books, asked if I had any ideas about the identity of a woman named among the civilians who evacuated Boston with the British military in March 1776.

The British authorities made a list of all heads of household and the number of people in their parties, about a thousand total. This list was published by the Massachusetts Historical Society and elsewhere. One section in the Ws looks like this:

Winslow, Isaac, 11
Winslow, Pelham, 1
Winslow, John, 4
Winslow, Mrs. Hannah, 4
Winslow, Edward, 1

Who was “Mrs. Hannah Winslow”? Was she a widow, or for some reason not traveling with her husband? And why couldn’t she have had a less common first name than “Hannah,” and a less common last name than “Winslow”?

I did some research and sent off my guess: that she was the wife of Customs collector Edward Winslow, Sr., who was under house arrest in Plymouth. Then I settled down to present the evidence for that guess in this posting. But as I did more research in period newspapers, I came across another candidate. In fact, a more promising candidate.

So, with apologies to Mr. Allen for my email, here’s who I now suspect Mrs. Hannah Winslow was. I’m relying mostly on Eva Phillips Boyd’s article on the Loring family, available from the Jamaica Plain Historical Society

Hannah Loring was born in on 15 Dec 1742 to Commodore Joshua Loring, Sr. In 1760, the family moved into a big house in Jamaica Plain. Three years later, on 26 Dec 1763, Hannah married Joshua Winslow, about to turn twenty-eight and a busy partner in his father’s mercantile firm. John Singleton Copley painted a portrait of the bride showing off her lace, now at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

The young Joshua Winslow took over his father’s place in the family firm in 1767, and in 1773 became one of the tea consignees—the merchants designated in London to receive and resell East India Company tea. He deferred to his colleagues (most of whom were also relatives) and didn’t take a prominent role in defying the tea boycott or trying to get the tea landed. Nevertheless, the political confrontation over that tea put Winslow squarely on the side of the royal government.

On 20 Mar 1775, as the province rolled toward war, Joshua Winslow died. The 23 March Boston News-Letter ran this notice:

Last Monday Afternoon, departed this Life, after a short Illness, in the 39th Year of his Age, Mr. Joshua Winslow, Merchant of this Town:—

A Man in whom was united, almost every useful Accomplishment of Life: To a chearful benevolent Disposition was joined a sound and penetrating Judgment, which enabled him to discharge the various Duties of his Station, to the general Approbation of Mankind; and we trust to his own inward Peace. . . .

As a Husband, he was tender and affectionate: As a Parent kind and indulgent: As a Master, humane and compassionate: As a Friend, faithful and sincere. . . .

He has left a sorrowful Widow and six Children. His Funeral is to be this Afternoon, at which Time the Friends of the Deceased are desired to attend.

Winslow’s death was a shock to his family and friends. On 3 April, Henry Pelham wrote to Copley, his half-brother:

Mr. Joshua Winslow, Commodore Loring’s Son-in-Law was abroad [i.e., out of doors] the 16 of Last Month, and on the 23d was an inhabitant of the silent Tomb.

Hannah was a widow at thirty-three.

A little less than a year later, the refugee list indicates, “Mrs. Hannah Winslow” departed Boston in a party of four. Where were the other three children? Some might have traveled with their Loring grandparents, and some might have died. Some might even have stayed, though I’m not sure where.

The 15 Mar 1777 Freeman’s Journal, published in Boston, printed a long list of Loyalist refugees and where they were reportedly settling. “Mrs. Winslow Widow to Joshua Winslow” is named among the refugees still at Halifax. According to Boyd’s article, Hannah Winslow died in Canada in 1785.