“Taking a great deal of Pains with my Colleague your Friend Mr. Cushing”

When Massachusetts’s delegation arrived at the First Continental Congress in 1774, Thomas Cushing was at its head.

Cushing had served as the speaker of the Massachusetts assembly for several years, putting his name on many of that body’s protests against royal measures. A Boston merchant, he was also the province’s commissary general, purchasing militia supplies.

All the Massachusetts Whigs had worked with Cushing. He also appears to have mentored Samuel Adams during the man’s brief, unhappy try at a mercantile career. By business and temperament, Cushing was close to John Hancock.

(The Massachusetts Provincial Congress had actually named James Bowdoin, a leader on the Council, to the delegation ahead of the speaker, but Bowdoin declined to go to Philadelphia because of illness.)

While Cushing was in Pennsylvania, people back home learned he had failed to carry out an important task. On 26 October, Josiah Quincy, Sr., wrote to his son:

The Reputation of our Friend Mr. C——g is greatly, and I fear deservedly suffering, on Account of his applying the money he received out of the Treasury, to be remitted for the brass Cannon, to the Discharge of his private Obligations.

That came in the middle of the Patriots’ effort to build an artillery force, as I described in The Road to Concord. The royal government would have stopped any cannon that Cushing ordered from Britain from being delivered, but that omission was one strike against the man.

On 2 December, the provincial congress chose delegates for the Second Continental Congress, to convene in May 1775. This time the record listed John Hancock first, followed by Cushing, Samuel Adams, John Adams, and Robert Treat Paine.

After that Congress made Hancock its chairman, Cushing was back at the top of the Massachusetts delegation, at least in how their signatures appeared on such documents as the Olive Branch Petition.

At this stage, Cushing proved more cautious than the Adams cousins. According to James Warren, in June 1775 Cushing sent a letter to another legislator downplaying news of the British reinforcing their Boston garrison and asking “whether we had not better discharge part of our Army to prevent Involving ourselves in an Immense Debt.”

As discussed yesterday, Cushing, along with Hancock and Paine, was reluctant to make Charles Lee one of the generals of the Continental Army.

When a new Massachusetts General Court convened without approval from a governor in July 1775, it moved Cushing from the assembly to the Council—“kickd up Stairs,” Samuel Adams wrote. His successor as speaker was James Warren.

On 25 November John Adams sent a long letter about deliberations in the Congress to Joseph Hawley of Northampton. Among his comments was:

But my dear Friend I must, take the Freedom to tell you that the same has happened upon this occasion which has happened on a thousand others, after taking a great deal of Pains with my Colleague your Friend Mr. Cushing, I could not get him to agree with the rest of us in Writing a joint Letter, nor could I get him to say what opinion he would give if it was moved in Congress.

Back in Massachusetts, Warren was growing even more sour about his predecessor. On 3 December, he wrote to John Adams:

It gives me great pleasure to see the Credit, and reputation of my two perticular friends [i.e., the Adams cousins], Increasing here. Their late disinterested Conduct, as it is reported here does them much Honour. A certain Collegue of yours has lost or I am mistaken A great part of the Interest he Undeservedly had. . . .

Paine I hear is gone to Gratify his Curiosity in Canada. A good Journey to him. He may possibly do as much good there as at Philadelphia tho’ I find some People here would not have pitched on him for the Business we suppose he is gone on, and perhaps there are some who would not have done it for any. Many men you know are of many Minds.

John Adams was on his way home to Massachusetts when he met the man carrying that letter. He read it and asked the rider to carry it on to Philadelphia, presumably to Samuel Adams.

The courier didn’t find Adams, so instead he handed the letter to Thomas Cushing.

TOMORROW: Falling out, voting out.

“Near or quite fifty Sail are got out to Sea”

Lt. Nahum Ward, son of Gen. Artemas Ward, carried Gen. George Washington’s letter (quoted yesterday) to Josiah Quincy, Esq. (shown here), of Braintree on 24 Mar 1776.

The squire, encouraged, started to make detailed notes about what the British fleet was doing out on the Nantasket Road, the shipping channel in the outer harbor.

“The Admiral [Molyneux Shuldam] has a Signal now flying at his main top mast Head,” Quincy wrote the next day, 250 years ago today. “I wish it was in my Power to construe it.” Yes, that would have been more helpful.

But then he saw movement.

11 OClock. This Moment an Explanation of the above Signal occurrs: Part of the Fleet are come to Sail: I shall proceed, journalwise, to inform your Excellency of their Movements, ’till the Bearer, who is gone to see Colo. [Benjamin] Tupper, returns.

1 OClock They are still coming to sail: near or quite fifty Sail are got out to Sea; about half of them Brigs, Schooners, and Sloops; one or two Frigates, and the remainder Transport Ships; their Course shaped for Cape Cod: May not this Division be bound for Martha’s Vineyard, and the Islands in that Sound to procure fresh Provision for the Fleet, which is to rendevous at Hallifax, and from thence to proceed to Quebec?

3 OClock My Servant, who was directed to take an Account of the Number that have sailed, informs me, there are in all fifty two: One transport Brig: is just arrived: . . .

5 OClock The Adml has just now hoisted another Signal a Pendant under his Flagg two more Ships are under Sail going out of the Harbor: 7 O’Clock, Mr Ward & Colo. Tupper are just arrived: They are of Opinion, that the Ships which sailed to Day, have carried off the Tories, and are bound with them to Lewisburgh.

Tuesday Morng [26 March] Mr Ward’s tarrying in Town, gives me a further Opportunity to inform your Excellency that the Fleet, consisting of about 100 Sail, chiefly large Ships, remain as they were last Night.

10 OClock The same Signal is now flying at the Admiral’s Main top mast Head as was hoisted yesterday morning: Scarce hoisted before it was lower’d again, & in abt ½ an hour a blew [blue] flag is flying at mizen Top mast Head and a Pendant at his mizen Peek.

11 O’Clock The above Signals are changed, for a red Ensign hoisted just under his Mizen Yard: A signal is just now hoisted upon the Top of the Light House, for Vessels in the Offing; and immediately followed, by a blew broad Pendant from the middle of the Tower: In less than 10 Minutes the Signal first mentioned vizt a Pendant is flying from his main top mast Head.

12 O’Clock A red Ensign is now flying at his mizen top mast Head; a blew Ensign at his starboard mizen Shrouds, and a pendant thrown out between, by hand, & immediately taken in again.

2 OClock The 60 gun Ship in King Road is come to Sail & going down to Nantasket: The Admiral’s red Ensign is struck; the blew one remains: a large transport Ship and a Brig are just arrived within the Light.

Quincy wasn’t sure all that detail could be useful, but he promised Washington he’d keep sending it until the general said otherwise. He really wanted to be part of the effort to defeat the British.

About half of the fleet had moved off, heading for the safe port of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Most of the rest would follow by the end of 26 March. A few warships stayed behind to patrol Boston harbor.

TOMORROW: Aboard one of those ships.

“Fire Ships and fire Rafts, covered by the Smoke of Cannon”?

After evacuating Boston on 17 Mar 1776, the British military was gone—and yet not gone.

The troops, their families, their support staff, royal appointees, and more than a thousand Loyalists had embarked on more than a hundred ships, but those ships were bobbing in the outer harbor.

People worried that the army or navy would attack Boston or other coastal towns, either for supplies or for revenge. The Continental forces had a few armed schooners, good for capturing isolated merchant ships but not up to taking on a royal frigate, much less a fleet.

On 21 March, Josiah Quincy wrote to Gen. George Washington about what he could see from Braintree:

Since the Ships and Troops fell down below, we have been apprehensive of an Attack from their Boats, in Pursuit of live Stock; but, yesterday in the Afternoon, we were happyly relieved, by the Appearance of a number of Whaleboats, streching across our Bay, under the Command (as I have since heard) of the brave Lieut. Colo. [Benjamin] Tupper, who in the forenoon had been cannonading the Ships, with one or more field Pieces from the east Head of Thompson’s Island; and, I suppose, last Night cannonaded them again from the same Place, or from Spectacle Island.

This judicious Manœuvre had its genuine Effect; for, this Morning, the Admiral [Molyneux Shuldam], and all the rest of the Ships, except one of the Line came to sail, and fell down to Nantasket Road; where a countless Number is now collected:

In Revenge for their burning the Castle last Night; were we provided with a sufficient Number of fire Ships and fire Rafts, covered by the Smoke of Cannon from a few Row Gallies; this Night, might exhibit, the most glorious Conflagration, that was ever seen upon the watery Element, and the probable Consequences of it, a Period to the present War, otherwise, Humanity revolts at the Destruction of so great Number, even of our Enemies.

A fireship, as Samuel Johnson defined it, was “A ship filled with combustible matter to fire the vessels of the enemy.” Sometimes they carried not just combistibles but explosives. The tactic was to send such a ship toward a group of enemy vessels, set it afire, and get off safely while it continued on. A flaming fireship was probably the most fearsome single weapon of eighteenth-century warfare. Even if it didn’t damage enemy ships, they had to scramble to stay out of its way, and captains might decide to move on.

It seems significant that the Americans at this time wrote mostly about “fire Rafts.” That seems like a cheaper form of fire ship, not able to carry as much or be steered as easily, dependent on prevailing currents.

Quincy was a senior member of the Massachusetts Council and energetic supporter of the war. Gen. Washington wrote back to him on 24 March, 250 years ago today: 

The continuance of the Fleet in Nantasket Road affords matter for Speculation—it surpasses my comprehension—and awakens all my Suspicions—I have taken every step in my power to guard against Surprizes, but the temper of your People, seems to me to be, to apprehend no danger till it stares them in the Face—

I do not think there is cause to apprehend such Marauding parties as you dread—if any stroke is aimd, it will be a capitol one, for which reason I wish to be much upon my guard; & therefore have appointed Guard Boats, lookouts, &ca—there is one evil I dread, & that is their Spies, I could wish therefore that the most attentive watch was kept to prevent any Intercourse between the Ships & Main

He urged Quincy to set up a shore guard watching for such infiltrators, promising to pay those men’s wages.

Washington sent that reply through Gen. Artemas Ward and added this order for his second-in-command:

As these favourable Winds do not waft the fleet from Nantasket, my Suspicion’s are more and more roused. I wish therefore the Fire Rafts talkd of by Colo. Tupper, could be attempted in a Windy, or dark Night, I think this would discover their designs if no other good effect resulted from it.

TOMORROW: The next day’s action.

The Reality of “Dr. Cutts”

Back here, I quoted Edmund Quincy’s story of his father, little Josiah Quincy, starting to study Latin at the Phillips Academy in Andover in 1778 alongside a man more than twenty years older—a former Continental Army surgeon named Cutts.

It’s significant that that story appeared in Edmund Quincy’s biography of his father not in Mayor Quincy’s own words but in those of the author (shown here), remembering what he’d heard from his father decades before.

As I stumbled across gathered evidence, it became clear that the younger Quincy amalgamated multiple figures from his father’s school days into a composite “Dr. Cutts.”

The first figure was James Anderson of Londonderry, New Hampshire, admitted to the same inaugural class at the academy alongside six-year-old Josiah even though he was twenty-nine. As beginning students, they may indeed have been seated together, as Edmund Quincy described.

Next were a pair of young brothers named Cutts, who joined the school in 1782. Josiah Quincy and Richard Cutts (1771–1845) went on to be Harvard classmates who both represented Massachusetts in the U.S. Congress in the first decades of the nineteenth century, albeit in different parties. Edmund Quincy remembered that surname.

Finally there was John Brown Cutting, whose last name was easily confused with “Cutts” and equally appropriate for a surgeon. He entered the Phillips Academy in 1781, when Josiah Quincy was nine. According to academy records, Cutting was then 23 years old. (According to the age reported when he died, Cutting was a little older, born about 1755.)

John Brown Cutting came to the school from the Continental Army medical department. But he wasn’t a surgeon or surgeon’s mate; rather, starting in 1775 he served as an assistant apothecary. In this period, apothecaries were routinely addressed as “Doctor,” and Cutting definitely used that title.

Other details of John Brown Cutting’s life also connect with what Edmund Quincy described about “Dr. Cutts.” He did spend many years after the Revolutionary War in Europe. In 1806 he did marry a gentlewoman in Virginia: Sally (Carter) Carter (1767–1814), widow of George Carter.

Later Cutting worked for the U.S. government and started spelling his middle name with a terminal E. He died in Alexandria in 1831. Laudatory obituaries appeared in national newspapers and in the Boston Palladium, which likely prompted Josiah Quincy to tell his son stories of his old schoolmate.

Mayor Quincy probably remembered John Brown Cutting vividly not just because he was an unusual older student at Andover but because the man was a world-class networker, schmoozer, and unabashed gossip. Cutting served John Adams as a fill-in secretary in 1787. He aided American sailors as a self-appointed diplomat. He corresponded with both John and Abigail Adams, Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Knox, Jackson, Pickering, and more. Gouverneur Morris once described him entering the room with “a World of News.”

I plan to explore stories from the life of John Brown(e) Cutting. For now, though, I simply wish to establish that Edmund Quincy’s tale of a “Dr. Cutts” turns out to have some basis in reality, but not exactly as printed.

Seeking Josiah Quincy’s Much Older Schoolmate

The upstart rural academy in Andover that became the prestigious Phillips Andover prep school published records of exactly who attended. Of course it did.

The Biographical Catalogue of the Trustees, Teachers and Students of Phillips Academy Andover, 1778-1830 confirms one detail of the story from Edmund Quincy’s biography of his father that I quoted yesterday.

Namely, that age six, Josiah Quincy (1772–1864, shown here past age six) was indeed the youngest student at the school when it opened in 1778. There were five seven-year-olds, though.

The alumni list also confirms that one student at the academy that year was “a man nearly thirty years of age”: James Anderson of Londonderry, New Hampshire, aged twenty-nine.

It’s therefore conceivable that little Josiah and old Mr. Anderson were seated together as the most rank beginners among the Latin scholars. This history of the school makes that assumption.

Otherwise, however, James Anderson doesn’t match Edmund Quincy’s description of his father’s classmate: a former Continental Army surgeon named Cutts who went on to an overseas career and marriage to an heiress in the vicinity of Alexandria, Virginia.

A man from Londonderry named James Anderson did serve as a lieutenant in the first year of the war. He was not, however, a surgeon or surgeon’s mate. His military duties didn’t take him anywhere near Virginia. And we have no indication that that former officer decided to go back to school.

The academy said its James Anderson went on to Harvard College in 1784. Sometimes men of limited means who were fixed on clerical careers started their higher education late, and they might spend a couple of years intensively studying Latin and Greek to qualify for college.

Harvard says its James Anderson didn’t go on to earn a master’s degree, as most aspiring clergymen did. He died in 1835. I can’t find anything more about him. His common name doesn’t help. (In the 1790s, for example, George Washington was corresponding with a Scottish botanist named James Anderson while employing a different James Anderson to operate his distillery.)

When the Sibley’s Harvard Graduates series reaches the class of 1784, it might have more to say about this James Anderson. (This year’s volume covers the classes of 1775 through 1777.) His profile will surely not reveal he went by the name of “Dr. Cutts,” though.

In 1782, a couple of brothers named Cutts arrived at the academy. But they were about Josiah Quincy’s age, not army veterans and not doctors.

So does Edmund Quincy’s account of his father’s adult schoolmate Dr. Cutts have any basis in reality?

TOMORROW: Meet Dr. John Brown Cutting.

“This mature schoolfellow, Cutts by name”

Edmund Quincy wrote The Life of Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts (1867) by drawing on his father’s writings and his own memories.

The father, namesake son of the Patriot Josiah Quincy, Jr., wrote a detailed reminiscence about his years as a student at what became the Phillips Andover Academy. I quoted some here.

To that first-hand account Edmund added information he recalled hearing, such as this anecdote about one of his father’s classmates:

The Phillips Academy at Andover had just been founded [in 1778], mainly by the contributions of his grandfather [William Phillips] and other members of the Phillips family; and it was thought expedient that the founders should show their confidence in the school by sending their children and grandchildren to it. . . .

And at six years old he took his seat on the lowest form by the side of a man nearly thirty years of age, and they began their Cheever’s Accidence [the standard Latin textbook] together.

This mature schoolfellow, Cutts by name, had been a surgeon in the Continental army, who, having scrambled into as much surgical skill as was then thought sufficient for that position without any early advantages of education, was made so sensible of his deficiencies, through associating with the cultivated men he was thrown among in the army, that he resolved to supply them as soon as he had an opportunity.

Resigning his commission, he came to Andover Academy, and went regularly to school for two years, to make up in some degree his classical shortcomings. Out of school, of course, he associated on equal terms with the Preceptor and the other gentlemen of the town. He was a man of wit and talent, and the two ill-mated form-fellows were friends in later years.

Various romantic stories are told of him, of which this is one. During his military service he had won the heart of the daughter of a rich Virginia planter, who would not consent that her hand should go with it to the penniless young surgeon. His scholastic training as well as his military career being ended, Dr. Cutts, after various adventures, went to Europe, where he lived for many years, nobody knew how.

After long years a letter from the lady of his youthful love found him out, which told him that her father, and I think her husband, and whatever other obstacles had hindered the course of their true love from running smooth, were now out of the way, and that, if he retained his old affection for her, and chose to claim her early promise, she was ready to fulfil it. On this hint he hastened home, married his early love, and spent the rest of his life at ease. . . .

All this I remember my father telling us at breakfast, many years ago, on reading in the newspaper the death of his old schoolfellow, somewhere near Alexandria, at a good old age.

Now that’s a fine anecdote of a marriage being saved. Unfortunately, it’s tough to find any evidence to support it, and easy to find contradictory records.

TOMORROW: Little Josiah’s big classmate.

“Swelled to three times his size, black as bacon”

Here’s another account of anti-epidemic measures from the Adams family papers, this one a 17 Apr 1764 letter from John Adams to his fiancée, Abigail Smith.

John had gone into Boston to be inoculated with smallpox under the care of Dr. Nathaniel Perkins, and he reported:

Messrs. Quincy’s Samuel and Josiah, have the Distemper very lightly. I asked Dr. Perkins how they had it. The Dr. answerd in the style of the Faculty “Oh Lord sir; infinitely light!” It is extreamly pleasing, says he, wherever we go We see every Body passing thro this tremendous Distemper, in the lightest, easiest manner, conceivable.

The Dr. meaned, those who have the Distemper by Inoculation in the new Method, for those who have it in the natural Way, are Objects of as much Horror, as ever.

There is a poor Man, in this Neighbourhood, one Bass, now labouring with it, in the natural Way. He is in a good Way of Recovery, but is the most shocking sight, that can be seen. They say he is no more like a Man than he is like an Hog or an Horse—swelled to three times his size, black as bacon, blind as a stone. I had when I was first inoculated a great Curiosity to go and see him; but the Dr. said I had better not go out, and my Friends thought it would give me a disagreable Turn.

My Unkle [Dr. Zabdiel Boylston?] brought up one [John] Vinal who has just recoverd of it in the natural Way to see Us, and show Us. His face is torn all to Pieces, and is as rugged as Braintree Commons.

This Contrast is forever before the Eyes of the whole Town, Yet it is said there are 500 Persons, who continue to stand it out, in spight of Experience, the Expostulations of the Clergy, both in private and from the Desk, the unwearied Persuasions of the select Men, and the perpetual Clamour and astonishment of the People, and to expose themselves to this Distemper in the natural Way!—

Is Man a rational Creature think You?—Conscience, forsooth and scruples are the Cause.—I should think my self, a deliberate self Murderer, I mean that I incurred all the Guilt of deliberate self Murther, if I should only stay in this Town and run the Chance of having it in the natural Way.

Smallpox continued to spread well into the age of photography, so there’s graphic documentation of how victims look when the blisters break out. I don’t recommend it.

“No Carriage from L. & if there was—no permiso. to pass”

On 22 Apr 1775, three days after the Battle of Lexington and Concord, the Boston merchant and magistrate Edmund Quincy sat down to write a letter to John Hancock.

Quincy wasn’t just a colleague of Hancock in the Boston Patriot movement. He was also the father of Dorothy Quincy, Hancock’s fiancée (shown here).

Earlier that month, Dorothy had taken the family carriage out to Lexington and then used it to flee with Lydia Hancock from the regulars on 19 April. That left her father stuck inside Boston as the siege began.

Justice Quincy wrote to Hancock:

Dear Sir,

Referring you to a Ltr. wrote the 8th. currt: [i.e., of this month] I’m now to enclose you one I had this day out of [ship captain John] Callihan’s bag:—32 days fro. Lond: into Salem pr young Doct. [John] Sprague—who tells me [captain Nathaniel Byfield] Lyde sail’d 14 days before them wth. Jo. Quincy Esq & other passengers—that some of ye Men of War & transports sail’d also before Callihan. As to ye times [?] at home—ye Doctr. is little able to inform us—youl probably have Some papers via Salem.—————

As to my Scituation here ye unexpected extraordy. event of ye 19th: of wch. Ive wrote my thots—) now & for days past impedes my leaving town[.] No Carriage from L[exington]. & if there was—no permiso. to pass ye lines—The people will be distress’d for fresh provisions—in a Short time—

The Govr: & Genl.—is very much concern’d about ye Provl. troops without—wch. probably will be very numerous ’ere long if desired—Dorchester hill—I’m just now told, is possess’d by our provls—& I hope its true, for Ive reason to believe, ye Genl. had ye same thing in Contemplation——

Here they say & swear to it all round, in excuse of ye Regulars, proceeding at Lexinton—that they were attack’d first & I doubt not many oaths of Officers & men are taken before J. G—ley [Justice Benjamin Gridley], to confirm it—but among others who contradict ’em—Lt. [Thomas] Hawkshaw yesterday near expiring thro. his bad wounds——Call’d Several Credible persons to him & told ’em as a dying man—that he was obliged in Conscience to confess—that the first Action of ye Whole at L. was done by the Kings troops—wr. they killd & wounded eight men—but doubtless you have sufficient proof of ye Fact & every Circumstance attending near at hand—

my advice is that the Whole Matter—be forwarded at ye province expence or otherwise wth. the Greatest dispatch—that so your Advices may be in London as early as GG’s——

If the people of G:B: are not under a political Lethargy—The Account of ye late Memorable Event, will excite them to consider of their own Close Connexion wth. America; and to Suppose at length, that ye Americans especially N. Englanders will act as they’ve wrote, & engag’d—A Blessed Mistake our prudent G[ag]e has indeed made, & ye Sensible part of his Officers & Soldiers own it—& are vastly uneasie—

I had been at L— days to pay my real regards to yr. good Aunt & Dolly—but wn. we shall have ye passage clear I dont [know] we are in hopes of effecting soon. But ye Gl. is really intimidated & no wonder wn. he hears of 50.000 men &c.—Much is Confess’d of ye intripedity of ye provinls. Im much Surpriz’d to hear that the Regulars abt. 1700—were drove off & defeated by near an Equal Corps only.—

Capt. [John] Erving, at his house yesterday Gave me ye Account of Hawkshaws Confesso.-proved to him at ye No: End yesterday to be real, he also says that from all he can gather from ye Circumstances of the people of Gt. Bn. they are by this day in a State of fermentation—if we could be so happy, as to get speedily home, the necessary advices—I doubt not a Flame would soon appear—& ere its quench’d, may it burn up ye heads of the Accursed Faction fro. whence ye present British Evils spring

Genl. Gage is thrown himself into great perplexity—Ld. Percy is a thorn in his side & its said has menaced him Several times, for his late imprudence—a Good Omen

I cant nor ought I to add, but my best regards—& Love respectively & that I am
Dr. Sir Your most affecto: Friend
& H. Servt.
Ed. Quincy

youl excuse erro. for Ive not time to correct em

There are a lot of interesting bits of intelligence in this letter—Gen. Thomas Gage hoping to seize the heights of Dorchester, Col. Percy criticizing his Concord mission, Lt. Hawkshaw saying the British soldiers had fired first. Quincy urged Hancock and his colleagues to send the Patriot side of events to London as quickly as possible.

How did John Hancock respond to seeing this letter? In fact, he never saw it.

TOMORROW: Diverted mail.

“So they painted the little maid”

The Discover Quincy website now says in its description of the Dorothy Quincy Homestead in Quincy:

The childhood home of Dorothy Quincy, who became Mrs. John Hancock; the second President of the Continental Congress, first signer of the Declaration of Independence and the first Governor of Massachusetts.

There’s no mention of any other Dorothy Quincy.

But there was (at least) one, and records are clear that that house was named after an earlier woman named Dorothy Quincy (1709–1762, shown here courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society). She was an aunt of the woman who married Hancock.

The earlier Dorothy Quincy married the merchant and mill-owner Edward Jackson. One of their children was the merchant and politician Jonathan Jackson. The other child, a daughter named Mary Jackson, married the Boston merchant and politician Oliver Wendell.

A portrait of young Dorothy (Quincy) Jackson descended in the Wendell family to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., who became a very popular author. He wrote about the painting and its subject in “Dorothy Q.: A Family Portrait” in 1871. That poem begins:

Grandmother’s mother: her age, I guess,
Thirteen summers, or something less;
Girlish bust, but womanly air;
Smooth, square forehead with uprolled hair;
Lips that lover has never kissed;
Taper fingers and slender wrist;
Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade;
So they painted the little maid.

On her hand a parrot green
Sits unmoving and broods serene.
Hold up the canvas full in view,—
Look! there's a rent the light shines through,
Dark with a century’s fringe of dust,—
That was a Red-Coat’s rapier-thrust!
Such is the tale the lady old,
Dorothy’s daughter’s daughter, told. . . .

This was one of several poems Holmes wrote about the memory of the Revolution and its shadow on his time, such as “The Last Leaf” and “Under the Washington Elm.” He was so good at creating images and phrases that people overlook how he often simultaneously raised questions about those icons.

But Holmes wasn’t correct on the painting’s subject, either. His footnote for this poem said:

Dorothy was the daughter of Judge Edmund Quincy, and the niece of Josiah Quincy, junior, the young patriot and orator who died just before the American Revolution, of which he was one of the most eloquent and effective promoters. . . . The canvas of the painting was so much decayed that it had to be replaced by a new one, in doing which the rapier thrust was of course filled up.

Dorothy (Quincy) Jackson’s father was an Edmund Quincy, but a later Edmund Quincy was the father of the later Dorothy Quincy. That Dorothy Quincy did have an uncle named Josiah Quincy, but a later Josiah Quincy was the Patriot who died in 1775. So the confusion is understandable.

Nonetheless, it’s worth maintaining the knowledge of how the Dorothy Quincy Homestead got its name. It represents a confluence of the Colonial Revival and the Fireside Poets, and it stood for decades of family history. Discover Quincy’s current write-up is all about big names from the Revolutionary years only.

“The house of Francis Shaw was assigned for quarters”?

Yesterday I quoted the story of Samuel Shaw’s interaction with British marine officers staying in his father’s house in late 1774 or early 1775.

People sometimes point to the Shaw family as an example of colonists forced to host the king’s soldiers in their home under the Quartering Acts of 1765 and 1774.

Author Josiah Quincy’s language, especially the use of the passive voice, pushed that reading:

…the officers of the army were billeted on the inhabitants. The house of Francis Shaw was assigned for quarters to Major [John] Pitcairn and Lieutenant [John] Wragg.

But that’s not the way Britain’s Quartering Acts worked. Those laws required communities to provide barracks and firewood for regiments stationed in their cities and towns. They empowered the army to use uninhabited buildings if necessary, eventually with the help of royally appointed magistrates. Military commanders didn’t actually want to disperse their soldiers into different households; that was a recipe for desertion.

Furthermore, the Shaw family hosted officers, and officers didn’t live in barracks. As gentlemen, they made individual arrangements with homeowners to rent rooms. And as gentlemen, paying in hard currency, they were desirable tenants, especially when the local economy had been stifled by the Boston Port Bill.

Quincy’s word “assigned” suggests there was some formal process for matching officers with homes. Any bureaucracy produces paperwork, but there’s no evidence of such assignments. Nor were there complaints in the newspapers, and Boston’s newspapers ran lots of complaints. Instead, military officers asked around about rooming possibilities and reached deals with willing homeowners.

But didn’t Bostonians have political objections to hosting army and marine officers? Some surely did. We have no anecdotes about Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and other activists agreeing to rent rooms to military men—nor of them being forced to do so.

(After the war began, many of those politicians had moved out of Boston and more troops arrived. During the siege, officers did move into empty private homes. But neither the Quartering Act nor the Third Amendment apply in wartime.)

TOMORROW: Shaw family politics.

“Thus ended the Superior Court”

As I described yesterday, when the Massachusetts Superior Court tried to open a new session in Boston on Tuesday, 30 Aug 1774, all the men chosen for juries refused to serve under Chief Justice Peter Oliver.

John Adams was away at the First Continental Congress, so his former clerk William Tudor described the judges’ response for him: “The Court told them they should consider of their Refusal, and then adjourn’d to next Day.”

The jurors didn’t change their minds. On the morning of 31 August the court sat again. Oliver and associate justices Foster Hutchinson and William Browne were at the Province House, meeting with Gen. Thomas Gage as part of his appointed Council. That body advised the governor to keep his redcoats in Boston and not “send any Troops into the interior parts of the Province.”

Tudor wrote that the justices who remained on the bench

…continued all the continued Actions till next Term. They agreed to let us file Complaints and to enter up Judgement on them; which we had imagined they would not consent to, as some of the Judges the first Day had said that if the County would rise and prevent them doing Business generally, they should decline finishing it partially, and the County must thank themselves for the Inconveniences of their own Madness.

The next day:

One small Point was argued by Mr. J[osiah]. Q[uincy]. and [Samuel] Fitch, a few Complaints read, and after Mr. Fitch, in Complyance with a previous Vote of the Bar, had reccommended four of Us to be admitted to the Atty.’s Oath, the Court adjourn’d to next Day.

Tudor was among the young men hoping to be admitted to the Boston bar at this session.

On the morning of Friday, 2 September, “there were a Number of printed Bills stuck up at the Court house and other Parts of the Town, threatening certain Death to any and all the Bar who should presume to attend the Superior Court then sitting.” Someone with access to a print shop had produced those death threats, making them all the more ominous.

The justices postponed “All the new enter’d Actions” as well as the old ones. Then the jurists noticed that people were taking advantage of the lack of juries to enter appeals, thus postponing judgments against them. Tudor wrote to Adams at length on whether this tactic was valid. “You had but one [case] in this Predicament,” he added.

The court swore in one new attorney: Nathaniel Coffin, Jr., a professed Loyalist. The other three young men hung back. Finally, the justices adjourned. “Thus ended the Superior Court and is the last common Law Court that will be allowed to sit in this or any other County of the Province,” Tudor wrote.

That same day, thousands of rural militiamen gathered in Cambridge in what was later dubbed the “Powder Alarm.” People inside Boston worried about an armed invasion. By evening, it was clear that the rest of the province was no longer going to cooperate with the royal authorities at all.

William Molineux’s refusal to serve as a juror under Chief Justice Oliver in the summer of 1773 had grown into the legislature’s march to impeaching Oliver, crowds closing the courthouses in rural counties, Suffolk County citizens boycotting juries, and finally a halt to all Superior Court business. Colonial Massachusetts’s judicial system was frozen, and in some areas would stay jammed up until past the Shays Rebellion in the late 1780s.

2023 Revolutionary War Conference in the Mohawk Valley, 9–11 June

On the weekend of 9–11 June, the Fort Plain Museum will host its annual Revolutionary War Conference in the Mohawk Valley.

This year’s session is called “Conference 250,” with several presentations looking back at events in 1773 and others looking forward to the Sestercentennial.

The lineup of speakers includes:

• James Kirby Martin in conversation with Mark Edward Lender, professor and former student discussing the Revolutionary War and its 250th anniversary
• Friederike Baer, “Hessians: The German Soldiers in the American Revolutionary War”
• John “Jack” Buchanan, “The Battle of Musgrove’s Mill, 1780”
• Benjamin L. Carp, “The Boston Tea Party at 250: Reflections on the Radicalism of the Revolutionary Movement”
• Vivian E. Davis, ”Over 250 Years Ago!: The Battle of Golden Hill, January 19, 1770”
• Holly A. Mayer, “Congress’s Own: A Canadian Regiment, the Continental Army, and American Union”
• Steven Park, “250 Years of Remembering: The Changing Landscape of Gaspee History”
• Nina Sankovitch, “The Abiding Quest of a Forgotten Hero: How Josiah Quincy Battled Overwhelming Odds to Bring Together the Northern and Southern Colonies in 1773”
• Eric H. Schnitzer, “Picturing History: The Images of the American War for Independence”
• Sergio Villavicencio, “St. Eustatius and the American Revolution”
• Kelly Yacobucci Farquhar, “Jellas Fonda, a Letter, and the Boston Tea Party: A Look Back 250 Years Later”
• Terry McMaster, “A Revolutionary Couple on the Old New York Frontier: Col. Samuel Clyde & Catharine Wasson of Cherry Valley”
• “New York State and the 250th: Where Things Stand” presented by Devin R. Lander, New York State Historian; Phil Giltner, Director of Special Projects, New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation; and Lauren Roberts, Saratoga County Historian
• Norman J. Bollen, Fort Plain Museum board chairman, “The Fort Plain Museum & Historical Park’s Grand Enhancement Plan: Rebuilding the Blockhouse for the 250th”

Before the conference and under a separate registration, there will be a bus tour of “Forts and Fortified Homes of the Mohawk Valley” led by Bruce Venter, Wayne Lenig, and Norm Bollen. This is a new, in-depth tour of the historic forts, fortified homes, and other sites that formed the defensive perimeter around Fort Rensselaer (Fort Plain). Lunch will be included.

The conference will take place in the theater of Fulton-Montgomery Community College in Johnstown, New York. Based on past events, I expect an excellent selection of Revolutionary history books to be on sale.

For the full schedule as currently planned, additional information, and registration forms, visit this website.

The Mystery of “Mr. Inspector Williams”

I’ve been laying out a new interpretation of these entries from Josiah Quincy, Jr.’s journal of his trip to London in 1774:

November 17. Proceeded to London, where I arrived about 11 oClock a.m. . . . Was waited upon by Messrs. Thomas Bromfield, and Edward Dilly, and Mr. Jonathan Williams—from all of whom I received many civilities. . . .

November 18. This morning Jonathan Williams Esqr., Inspector of the Customs in the Massachusetts Bay[,] waited upon me and we had more than an hour [of] private conversation together.

The only Jonathan Williams from Massachusetts in London in late 1774 was the one born in 1750, a young merchant using his status as the famous Benjamin Franklin’s great-nephew to amass contacts.

But based on the second journal entry, the editors of the Quincy diary concluded that he had secured a no-show job as “a customs inspector in Massachusetts.” When I read that, my first thought was that a twentysomething would have to be very lucky to snag a government appointment at that level. Maybe nepotism helped—he was Franklin’s protégé, after all, plus a nephew of John Williams, documented elsewhere as Inspector-General of Customs in North America. But I couldn’t find anything more about a Jonathan Williams being in the Customs service. And if he had that job, why had he been sailing back and forth to Boston with goods to sell? 

After several days I had a breakthrough. We have to read Quincy’s diary carefully—and to recognize his own confusion about Williamses.

Look at how Quincy wrote about his visitors on those two successive days: “Mr. Jonathan Williams” on 17 November and “Jonathan Williams Esqr., Inspector of the Customs” on 18 November. Under eighteenth-century etiquette, a plain ‘Mr. Williams’ ranked below a ‘Williams, Esq.’ In his journal Quincy was indicating two different men. One was a young merchant, the other a middle-aged government official. When in his diary Quincy went to the trouble of referring to “Jonathan Williams Esqr.” and “Mr. Inspector Williams” at the start of an entry, he was referring to the second man.

Furthermore, I think Quincy misstated the first name and title of the Customs official who visited on 18 November. That was actually John Williams, who had been Inspector-General of His Majesty’s Customs in North America since 1767. Knowing so many men from Boston named Jonathan Williams, Quincy slipped and created one more.

In writing “Inspector of the Customs in the Massachusetts Bay,” Quincy referred to how John Williams was normally based in Boston, but the man’s job wasn’t limited to one colony. As Inspector-General, Williams didn’t inspect ships like lower Customs officers. Instead, he was tasked with visiting the Customs offices in all North American ports to make sure they were efficient and uncorrupted. Since he worked for a bureaucracy, Williams’s professional activity is well documented; here’s a whole William & Mary Quarterly paper based on his reports about the Chesapeake region.

Boston’s waterfront crowd attacked John Williams’s house during the Liberty riot of 1768, as reported by a colleague. He then got into a dispute with the Customs Commissioners over compensation. John Adams recorded Williams speaking snarkily about his bosses in late 1769. Soon he headed off to London to complain that he deserved more money. John Williams wasn’t a close relative of Franklin, being a half-sister’s daughter’s husband’s brother, but he did try to borrow funds in the summer of 1773.

Thus, in late 1774 Inspector-General John Williams was in London with, at least nominally, an important role in imperial government. He was somewhat alienated from the North American Customs department. He was also linked to the Boston Whig business community through his brother, Jonathan Williams, Sr. That position between the two hostile camps goes a long way to explaining why Inspector Williams tried to set himself up as an intermediary between Quincy and the government ministers in London.

My annotations for the diary passage above would be:

• “Mr. Jonathan Williams: Benjamin Franklin’s grandnephew (1750–1815). His father Jonathan, Sr., a wealthy Boston merchant and prominent Whig, had married Franklin’s niece, Grace Harris. In the early 1770s the younger Williams was establishing himself as a transatlantic merchant, using contacts gained during visits to his great-uncle. On January 16, 1775, he would deliver a letter from Dr. Joseph Warren to Quincy.”
• “Jonathan Williams Esqr., Inspector of the Customs in the Massachusetts Bay: Quincy misstated the given name of John Williams, Esq., Inspector-General of Customs in North America (d. 1791). Inspector Williams was an uncle of the Jonathan Williams who had visited Quincy the day before. Quincy took care to use ‘Inspector’ or ‘Esq.’ when referring to the older man. At odds with his supervisors in Boston, Inspector Williams spent most of the 1770s in London lobbying unsuccessfully for better compensation. He would engineer Quincy’s meetings with Lord North, the Earl of Dartmouth, and Customs Commissioner Corbyn Morris.”

Again, blame for the confusion starts with Quincy not getting the Inspector-General’s given name right. But in Quincy’s defense, colonial Boston was just running over with men named Jonathan Williams.

Three Cousins Named Jonathan

As I wrote yesterday, Jonathan Williams, Esq., merchant and town official in Boston, married Benjamin Franklin’s niece Grace Harris in 1746. They had a son named Jonathan in 1750.

Jonathan, Jr., went into business, starting with a trip to London to make contacts. While there he lived with his great-uncle Franklin and helped to keep the man’s accounts.

Boston newspaper advertisements say Jonathan, Jr., arrived back in Boston in September 1771 with “English Goods” and “Bohea Tea” to sell.

In April 1773 the young merchant wrote to Franklin from Boston, angling for part of the East India Company tea franchise for himself and his father. That was before the Tea Act became controversial. By the end of the year, Jonathan, Sr., had taken a prominent role in how Boston organized to stop any tea from being landed.

Jonathan, Jr., set out from Boston again in May 1774, allowing him to be in London late that year. His correspondence with his great-uncle Franklin shows he traveled around the British Isles through October, making contacts among rich businessmen and noble families.

Jonathan, Sr.’s sister Mary married Samuel Austin, another Boston merchant and official. They had a son in 1751 whom they named Jonathan Williams Austin. He went to Harvard College (shown above), graduating in 1769. While studying law under John Adams, he was a witness at the Boston Massacre trial, which these days would be flagged as a honking conflict of interest.

In April 1773 the Massachusetts Spy published a version of James Otis’s argument in the 1761 writs of assistance case. Adams later wrote that this text was based on his notes, which Austin “stole from my desk and printed in the Massachusetts Spy, with two or three bombastic expressions interpolated by himself.”

By that time, Jonathan Williams Austin had moved out to Chelmsford to establish his own practice. In late 1774 that town elected him as a delegate to the Middlesex County Convention and then to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress.

Jonathan, Sr., and Mary’s brother John Williams also had a son named Jonathan, born in 1753. He went to Harvard College, class of 1772. Then he followed his Austin cousin’s career path by becoming a clerk for John Adams. His correspondence with Adams shows he was in Massachusetts in the fall of 1774.

That gives us some of the data we need to interpret these entries from Josiah Quincy, Jr.’s journal of his trip to London in 1774:

November 17. Proceeded to London, where I arrived about 11 oClock a.m. . . . Was waited upon by Messrs. Thomas Bromfield, and Edward Dilly, and Mr. Jonathan Williams—from all of whom I received many civilities. . . .

November 18. This morning Jonathan Williams Esqr., Inspector of the Customs in the Massachusetts Bay[,] waited upon me and we had more than an hour [of] private conversation together.

In the Colonial Society of Massachusetts multivolume publication of Quincy’s writings, the note for this passage identifies Jonathan Williams as:

Benjamin Franklin’s grandnephew. His father John, a wealthy Boston merchant and Patriot leader, had married Franklin’s niece, Grace Harris. The younger Williams studied law under John Adams’s tutelage and was then living in London with his great-uncle, his post as a customs inspector in Massachusetts essentially a sinecure.

That note conflates the two cousins named Jonathan Williams. The one born in 1750 was Franklin’s grandnephew, but the one born in 1753 was Adams’s law student. Only the first could have been in London in late 1774. The note also misstates the name of that eldest cousin’s father, the “wealthy Boston merchant and Patriot leader”—that man was also named Jonathan. The youngest cousin’s father was named John.

But the biggest error came earlier. I puzzled over this passage and other documents for weeks, trying to reconcile odd details. And I finally decided that the most likely explanation is that Josiah Quincy met with two different men and wrote down the wrong name for one of them.

TOMORROW: Who was “Mr. Inspector Williams”?

Identifying Benjamin Franklin’s “Cousin Williams”

A couple of weeks back I dissected the records of Josiah Quincy, Jr.’s 1774–75 visit to Britain, and in those postings I now believe I misidentified a man.

I think I erred because of an error in the notes to Quincy’s London journal as edited by Daniel R. Coquillette and Neil Longley York for the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. And I think Coquillette and York erred because of an error by Josiah Quincy, Jr., himself.

So let’s go back to the start of the eighteenth century. When Benjamin Franklin was a boy, he was already an uncle. That was because little Ben was the youngest son of the second marriage of Josiah Franklin (1657–1745). That man had had seven children by his first wife, starting in 1678 before the family moved to Massachusetts.

Baby Ben was thus almost thirty years younger than his oldest half-sibling, and the earliest half-siblings married and had children as he was growing up. When Ben was six years old, his half-sister Anne (1687–1729) married William Harris, and when Ben was twelve that couple had a baby named Grace (1718–1790). Grace was thus a niece of young Benjamin Franklin.

In 1746 Grace Harris married a man named Jonathan Williams. At this point the situation becomes confusing because there were two prominent men named Jonathan Williams in mid-1700s Boston, and authors have amalgamated the records of their lives. As a result, at Founders Online the editors of the Franklin Papers and the Adams Papers disagreed on when the Jonathan Williams who married Grace Harris was born and died.

The Adams Papers at one point said that man “(d[ied]. 1788),” probably based on a report in the Massachusetts Centinel of 29 Mar 1788 that “Deacon Jonathan Williams” had just died at age 88. The records of the First Meetinghouse say “Jonathan Williams (Son of the late Deacon Williams)” was himself chosen a deacon in 1737, and he appeared in those papers through 1776. However, that deacon’s widow was named Sarah, according to her own death notice in the 16 Sept 1789 Centinel.

On 14 Apr 1790 the Centinel reported the death of “Mrs. GRACE WILLIAMS, aged 71, the consort of Jonathan Williams, Esq. of this town, merchant.” That woman’s given name indicates she was Franklin’s niece. Her husband survived her for a few years, moving to his son’s home at Mount Pleasant near Philadelphia. Then the 1 Oct 1796 Columbian Centinel reported the death there of “Jonathan Williams, Sr., formerly a reputable merchant in this town [Boston].”

Therefore, after going back and forth on the question many times, I’ve decided that the Franklin Papers were correct in saying that the Jonathan Williams connected to the Franklin family lived “1719–1796.” (The Adams Family Correspondence volumes adopted these dates, too.) I can’t find confirmation for the birth year but can say that, contrary to many profiles of him, this man wasn’t the son of the Deacon Jonathan Williams who appeared in Samuel Sewall’s diary.

The Jonathan Williams who married Grace Harris was a successful merchant and Boston town official, thus earning the suffix “Esq.” As a Whig, he served on some town committees and in November 1773 moderated of one of the extra-legal tea meetings in Old South.

Franklin used this merchant Jonathan Williams as his business agent in Boston, referring to him as “Cousin Williams” and “Loving Cousin” since our language doesn’t have a specific term for a niece’s husband. However, when he was feeling conspiracy-minded, Thomas Hutchinson described that Williams as “a Nephew of Doctor F———ds,” making the relationship closer than it really was.

Now here’s where it gets more confusing. Jonathan Williams, Esq., had a brother named John (d. 1791). In 1767 Franklin told his son William that this man was “brother to our cousin Williams of Boston.” John Williams went to work for the Customs service in the late 1760s, though he ended up feuding with his superiors and spent most of the 1770s trying to go over their heads in London.

And here’s where it gets even more confusing. Both brothers, Jonathan Williams and John Williams, had sons in the 1750s whom they named Jonathan. So did their sister Mary, who married Samuel Austin. Two of those three first cousins named Jonathan studied law under John Adams. A different two spent years in France during the Revolutionary War. And two died during the war.

So who met with Josiah Quincy in London in 1774?

TOMORROW: Sorting through the Jonathan Williamses (and John).

“To support the Authority we have claimed over America”

Yesterday I wrote about how Josiah Quincy, Jr., was so rooted in his position in November 1774 that he couldn’t hear what some of the top ministers in the British government were telling him.

He wasn’t the only man in those meetings with that problem, though. Lord North, Lord Dartmouth, and other royal officials were equally committed to what they believed.

Former Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson kept track of Quincy’s activities in London. He wrote of the visiting attorney:

It seems his chief business was, to represent the Massachusets people to be engaged almost to a man, and so determined as that they would sooner die than submit, and particularly the two counties of Hampshire and Berkshire, which heretofore were the most loyal in the Province, to be now the most zealous and unanimous in opposition; and this, not from compulsion, but from conviction: and he added that the people were more enraged than otherwise they would have been, by the appointment of the most obnoxious persons for Members of the Council…

In other words, the constitutional changes of the Massachusetts Government Act had prompted an uprising in the province, pushed not by mercantile malcontents in Boston but by ordinary farmers in the western counties driven by “conviction.”

That development had come as a pleasant surprise to the Boston Whigs. For once they weren’t trying to drag along the rest of the colony. Though the news Quincy brought gratified his political outlook, it was also accurate.

Indeed, Gen. Thomas Gage reported much the same situation to London after the first week of September. He warned of new appointees driven out of communities they had long dominated, of preparations for a military uprising, of virtually all of New England slipping out of Crown control.

And Lord North, Lord Dartmouth, and their colleagues didn’t believe it. They were certain their government had the legal and military resources to quell any problems. Dartmouth talked to Hutchinson about “an Act of Parlt. to suspend all the Militia laws of Mass. Bay.” By that time, Massachusetts towns had already started to reorganize their militia companies independent of royal authority. (And of course to collect cannon.) No “suspension” would have had any worthwhile effect.

In his polite, self-deprecating style, Lord North warned Quincy that his government was not going to back down:

His Lordship more than thrice spoke of the powers of Great Britain, of the determination to exert to the utmost in order to effect the submission of the Colonies. He said repeatedly We must try what we can do to support the Authority we have claimed over America, if we are defective in power we must set down contented and make the best terms we can, and nobody then can blame us after we have done our utmost; but till we have tryed what we can do we can never be justified in acceding; and we ought and shall be very carefull, not to judge a thing impossible, because it may be difficult, nay we ought to try what we can affect, before we determine upon its impracticability.

Quincy had sailed to Britain hoping to effect a political reconciliation. All his mission accomplished was to show how the two sides were on a collision course. 

“Your Countrymen must fail in a contest with this great and powerfull people”

Josiah Quincy, Jr.’s mission to London in 1774 was a failure after its first week, and he didn’t know it.

Quincy met with the prime minister on 19 November. Four days later the secretary of state, Lord Dartmouth, told Thomas Hutchinson that Lord North had concluded Josiah Quincy, Jr., was “a bad, insidious man, designing to be artful without abilities to conceal his design.”

Hutchinson wrote back to Robert Auchmuty in Massachusetts, “If the remarks which Ld. North made upon the first visit are truly reported, there will probably be no second visit to cause a dispute.” You think?

Dartmouth went into his own meeting with Quincy the next day. It didn’t go any better. The earl had also heard “Quincy intended to go to Holland,” seeking military supplies or other support from one of Britain’s rivals, which provided another reason to mistrust the young attorney from Massachusetts.

In that same week John Williams set up one other meeting for Quincy with a royal official: Corbyn Morris, a long-time Commissioner of His Majesty’s Customs. On 22 November, Quincy recorded in his journal:

Dined with Corbin Morris Esqr., one of the Commissioners of the Customs, (supposed framer of the annual ministerial budget, being a choice friend of the Ministry) in company with one of the officers of the Treasury and Jonathan [sic] Williams Esqr. Mr. Morris was sensible, intelligent and very conversible. The who[le] conversation was on American affairs. He enter[ed] largely into the claims, the rights and the duty of Parliament. He spoke as might be expected. I observed a remarkable conformity of sentiments between him and Lord North, and an equally observable similarity of language. Mr. Morris expatiated largely upon the infinite resources of Commerce[,] wealth and power of the English nation. I heard him.

The following address to me was a little singular, not to say laughable—but I never smiled. “Mr. Quincy you are a man &c. (flummery). You have seen some of the ministry and have heard more of the disposition of [the] administration. You find that they have no inclination to injure, much less to oppress the Colonies. They have no wish, but that of seeing the Americans free and happy. You must be sensible of the right of Parliament to legislate for the Colonies, and of the power of the nation to enforce their laws. No power in Europe ever provoke[d] the resentment or bid defiance to the Powers of this Island, but they were made to repent of it. You must know your Countrymen must fail in a contest with this great and powerfull people. Now as you find how inclined Administration are to lenity and mildness, you should, you ought to write to your friends this intelligence, and endeavour to influence them to their duty. I don’t doubt your influence would be very great with them, and you would by this means be doing a lasting service to the Country.” ! ! !

Morris was apparently trying to give Quincy straight talk: the Crown government was constitutionally sound, beneficent, powerful, determined, and—for a limited time—willing to be lenient. But Quincy found the warning “laughable.” He even appears to have been suspicious that Lord North had said much the same thing.

Quincy might also have felt that Morris’s suggestion he use his “influence” to win over other Massachusetts Whigs might be followed by a financial reward for his “lasting service.” Quincy was already “upon my guard against the temptations and bribery of Administration.” One man in Massachusetts even told his sister that he ”loved money too much, to be trusted at a Court where every thing is bought and sold.” So he was determined not to bend his position.

Quincy remained in London, talking to local supporters of the American cause. But he had no more access to people who were actually in power. In early December Lord Chief Justice Mansfield told another official “Quincy had desired to see him, but he would not admit him.”

In early March 1775, Josiah Quincy, Jr., sailed home. By the time his ship arrived off the coast of Massachusetts, the province was at war and he was dying.

TOMORROW: More failure of communication.

“They understood he was not the person intended”

One of the minor but telling disagreements between Josiah Quincy, Jr., and the government ministers he met in London in November 1774 involved the new lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Oliver.

After meeting with Quincy, the secretary of state, Lord Dartmouth, described their conversation to former governor Thomas Hutchinson.

Among other things Quincy warned that the people of Massachusetts were strongly opposed to the new Council, appointed by writs of mandamus from London rather than elected. Specifically, he said:

the new Counsellors were in general persons the most exceptionable to the Province, of any which could have been pitched upon, and only one whom the people were satisfied with, which was the Lt. Governor, and he by chance, for they understood he was not the person intended, but that the name of the Ch. Justice was mistaken.

That new appointee, Thomas Oliver, was only in his forties and had not been active in politics before. Massachusetts Whigs suspected that the government in London really meant to name Chief Justice Peter Oliver to succeed his late brother, Andrew Oliver (shown above). Or at least that bureaucrats believed Thomas Oliver was a member of the same family.

I thought the same thing, and said so, in presentations about the “Powder Alarm,” in which Thomas Oliver played a central role. There just didn’t seem to be any other explanation for how the man attracted any attention in London.

But then John W. Tyler, who’s busy editing the Correspondence of Thomas Hutchinson for the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, alerted me to a 29 Mar 1774 letter, to be published in an upcoming volume. In that dispatch to Lord Dartmouth, Gov. Hutchinson discussed candidates to replace Andrew Oliver. William Browne of Salem preferred a seat on the bench. Hutchinson’s next choice was Customs Commissioner William Burch. The provincial secretary, Thomas Flucker, might be persuaded to exchange his hard job for an easier one with a slightly smaller compensation.

And then:

There is a gentleman of the same name with the late Lieut. Governor but of another family Thomas Oliver Esq. of Cambridge, now Judge of the Provincial Court of Admiralty which he must quit in case of his appointment. He has a handsome Estate, is a very sensible man & very generally esteemed. He is Cousin German to Mr. [Richard] Oliver the Alderman and City Member [of Parliament]. I know not how the Alderman stands affected to Government but this Gentleman has been steady in his opposition to all the late measures and I think the Administration in case of the absence of the Governor may be safely trusted with him.

Thus, when the secretary of state appointed Thomas Oliver to be Massachusetts’s new lieutenant governor, he had heard about the man and knew he wasn’t part of the same family.

How did Lord Dartmouth respond to Josiah Quincy suggesting the new lieutenant governor was nothing but a big mistake? According to Hutchinson, “Ld. D. interrupted him here and said it was strange the people of N.E. should suppose the Ministry so inattentive as not to ascertain the names of the persons they appointed.”

Quincy doesn’t seem to have recognized that that was a polite aristocratic way of telling him he was talking through his hat.

As with so many of these conversations, Quincy’s outlook was so far away from how the ministers saw things, and all the men were so certain about their beliefs, that they were speaking past each other.

TOMORROW: A failure of communication.

“His Ldship. did not suppose he would say this was a misrepresentation”

I’ve quoted Josiah Quincy, Jr.’s descriptions of his meetings in November 1774 with Lord North, the prime minister, and the Earl of Dartmouth, the secretary of state for North America.

So far as I know, we don’t have accounts of those discussions directly from those ministers or their aides. But we do have what former governor Thomas Hutchinson wrote after hearing from Lord Dartmouth and others, and it presents a very different picture of the conversations.

Of course Hutchinson was an interested party, in that one of Quincy’s main talking-points in London was that the former governor had been lying about Massachusetts and Boston. So Hutchinson was probably pleased to hear that the ministers showed no sympathy for that complaint. On the other hand, he would have recorded any hint that the ministers were sympathetic, so I think we can take Hutchinson’s reports as accurate.

From the start, it appears, Lord North and Lord Dartmouth listened to things Quincy said and oh-so-politely tried to correct him. For example, Dartmouth gave Hutchinson this account of Quincy’s meeting with Lord North:

[Quincy said] the people of the Massachusetts must have been much wronged by the misrepresentations which had been made from time to time to the Ministry, and which had occasioned the late measures: that there was a general desire of reconciliation, and that he thought three or four persons on the part of the Kingdom, and as many on the part of the Colonies, might easily settle the matter.

Lord North said to him, he had been moved by no informations nor representations: it was their own Acts and Doings, (of which he had been furnished with attested authentic copies,) denying the authority of Parliament over them. His Ldship. did not suppose he would say this was a misrepresentation.

But of course that’s what Quincy was saying, and would say again.

Quincy wrote: “We spoke considerably upon the sentiments of Americans of the rights claimed by Parliament to tax.” Lord North’s position on that was, in modern terms, Parliament’s sovereignty under the British constitution doesn’t care about your sentiments.

(In this same week Lord North was reading Gov. Thomas Gage’s suggestion that the ministry suspend some of the Coercive Acts as a pragmatic measure. The prime minister told Hutchinson, “He did not know what General Gage meant by suspending the Acts: there was no suspending an Act of Parliament.”)

To Lord Dartmouth, Quincy suggested that the Lord Chief Justice (shown above, as painted by John Singleton Copley) could help to mediate the dispute; “he had the highest opinion of Lord Mansfield, and he did not doubt his Lordship was capable of projecting a way to reconcile the Kingdom and the Colonies.”

The secretary of state replied that “he believed Lord M. was fully of opinion that the proceedings in Massachusetts Bay were treasonable.” There had been serious discussions about that in the wake of the Boston Tea Party. 

Rather than take the hint that a legal authority he’d just praised didn’t approve of his party’s actions, Quincy responded that “he knew the people in N.E. had no idea that they were guilty of Treason.”

Once again, the government minister might have replied that what the people in New England thought they were doing did not carry the legal weight of what the Lord Chief Justice thought.

TOMORROW: Invoking the lieutenant governor’s name.