Reading Documents about the Governor and the Towns

I plucked out a couple more documents from the digitized Thomas Gage Papers to see how well the automated handwriting-recognition program Transkribus has worked there.

Here’s a bit of “Intelligence” dated 25 Feb 1775. It’s a casual note, written quickly for Gov. Gage’s files, rather than an official letter. The transcription reads:

St.
It having been reported that aquantity of Shan Outs &c is
confesting of persons
now buying up for the use of the Army a Committee, from
all the Towns round met last might to consult measures to
prevent this supply from being bro: down & effectually
hinder the people from selling any hereafter & also to him,
der any large quantity of any kind of Provisions beyond
what may be daily expended from being sent into Town

I read it as:

It having been reported that a quantity of Straw Oats &c is now buying up for the use of the Army a Committee consisting of persons from all the Towns round met last might to consult measures to prevent this supply from being brot: down & effectually hinder the people from selling any hereafter & also to hinder any large quantity of any kind of Provisions beyond what may be daily expended from being sent into Town

The phrase “consisting of persons” is an insert between lines marked by a caret, and the second “hinder” fell over a line break, so it’s less surprising the program glitched on those. The “St.” at the beginning of the automatic transcription appears to be an echo of “It”—in other words, the program transcribed those marks twice. All told, not a bad start, but still falling short.

Here’s a crowded document with bleeding through the paper: a 3 Feb 1775 petition from the selectmen of six towns urging Gov. Gage not to send troops to Marshfield. It begins:

We his Addutys loyal Subjects, Selectmen of the Sevent
town of Otimouth, Kingston, Dubord, Pembrook Hanour
& Lastrate, alenly affected with a Sence of the Encreasincy
Danger Realamities, which menace one of the most prom-
ifing country upon tenth, with Political Action, cannot
but lement, that while we are Endeavouring to preserve
peace & maintain the authority of the laws; at a perod
When the bunds of Government are relieved, by Violent
Infructions on the Chinster of the Province, our Enemies
are prutifing Every Mydim, Strutages, to Seduce the
people into act of Violance, & ontrage.

My reading of those lines:

We his Majestys loyal Subjects, Selectmen of the Several towns of Plimouth, Kingston, Duxborô, Pembrook, Hanover & Scituate, deeply affected with a Sense of the Encreasing Danger & calamities, which menace one of the most promising countrys upon Earth, with Political Exition; cannot but lament, that while we are Endeavouring to preserve peace & maintain the authority of the laws; at a period When the bonds of Government are relaxed, by Violent Infractions on the Charter of the Province, our Enemies are practising Every Insidious Strategem to Seduce the people into acts of Violance, & outrage.

Then software had a much tougher time with this one. Though I can’t blame a large language model for not recognizing the word “Exition,” which the Oxford English Dictionary says went out of use by 1820. I had to look that up myself.

Perhaps the biggest flaw in the automatic transcription is the town names. Those are important since researchers might scan for those terms. Granted, the selectmen didn’t help by using unorthodox spellings. To their credit, the cataloguers at the Clements Library listed all the towns in their standard forms in the metadata for this document, so it will come up in a local-history search.

Peter Force included this petition in his American Archives, changing the spelling, capitalization, and punctuation to conform to the standards of 1837. So historians have already had the chance to see local office-holders refer to Massachusetts as “one of the most promising countrys upon Earth.”

A quick scan of the automated transcription would probably bring the phrase “we are Endeavouring to preserve peace & maintain the authority of the laws” out of the unrecognizable gobbeldygook. That might lead one to think these selectmen were supporting Gov. Gage’s policies.

In fact, these selectmen were protesting the idea of stationing soldiers in Marshfield. They said those redcoats would provoke “the people,” already upset by the Massachusetts Government Act. That law-and-order language was a way to head off criticism and turn it against the local Loyalists asking for military protection. Another lesson in the value of reading the whole document in its historical context.

TOMORROW: The present and future of transcription.

When Minutemen Marched into Marshfield

So in 1775 there were a hundred British soldiers stationed in Marshfield, mostly on the estate of Nathaniel Ray Thomas. Their commander was Capt. Nisbet Balfour of the 4th Regiment.

And on the morning of 20 April, according to Isaac Thomas (who was nine years old at the time), the Marshfield militia was summoned by musket shots and drum.

I wouldn’t just leave the story there, would I?

The colonel of the Plymouth County militia was Theophilus Cotton (detail of his gravestone shown above, courtesy of Find-a-Grave). We have many documents about militia companies that he commanded that day, such as this roster from Hanson. That’s because the men who turned out in April 1775 expected to be paid, so the Massachusetts government asked for and kept paperwork with their names and days of service.

However, we don’t have, to my knowledge, contemporaneous narratives of what happened in Marshfield, from either the locals or the British troops. Instead, we have accounts written decades later by the historians of nearby towns, based and focused on the activities of men from those towns.

Dr. James Thacher’s History of the Town of Plymouth (1832) relates two detailed and flattering anecdotes about how Plymouth’s “watchful sons of liberty” intimidated British officers visiting from Marshfield. As for the military activity in Marshfield, he wrote:

Capt. Balfour, with his company remained at Marshfield for several weeks unmolested, but the day after Lexington battle, governor [Thomas] Gage, apprised of their danger, took off his troops, by water, to Boston.

At this period minute companies were organized in town, and immediately on hearing of the bloodshed at Lexington, Col. Theophilus Cotton, of this town, marched to Marshfield with a detachment of militia under his command. There were at the same time about sixty fishing vessels with their crews on board at anchor in Plymouth harbor. The fishermen voluntarily left their vessels, and speedily marched to Marshfield with their arms, resolutely determined to attack the company of British troops. When arrived at Marshfield, their numbers had increased to near one thousand men, collected from the different towns, burning with the feelings of revenge: they might have surrounded and captured the whole company before they could get to their vessels, but were restrained by Col. Cotton, who it is said had received no orders for the attack.

A more detailed account appeared seventeen more years on in Justin Winsor’s History of Duxbury (1849):

Immediately after the news arrived of the bloodshed at Lexington, Col. Cotton with his regiment formed for an attack on Balfour’s party. On the 20th Col. Cotton and Maj. [Ebenezer] Sprout met in Duxbury, at Col. Briggs Alden’s for consultation. Maj. Judah Alden, who was in Rhode Island when the news came of the fight, had just returned, having ridden all day on horseback, and soon after learning the circumstances of the case, he met Cato, a negro who had been sent by Capt. Balfour to ascertain the numbers of the men who were marching against him. Maj. Alden suspecting his design, told him to tell Balfour, they were coming in a host after him, and dismissed him.

Col. Cotton again returned to Plymouth; and, about 7 o’clock, on the morning of the 21st, marched for Marshfield with a portion of his regiment, consisting of the Plymouth company under Capt. [Thomas] Mayhew, the Kingston under Capt. Peleg Wadsworth, and the Duxbury under Capt. Geo. Partridge. They proceeded to Col. Anthony Thomas’ [sic], about a mile N. W. of Capt. John Thomas’, where were Balfour’s troops.

At this juncture Col. Cotton and Lt. Col. Alden held a long conference, as to the course to be taken. At noon there were assembled about 500 men, including the crews of many fishing vessels in the harbor. In the afternoon Capt. [Earl] Clapp’s company from Rochester and Capt. [Jesse] Harlow’s from Plympton arrived. Capt. Peleg Wadsworth was greatly dissatisfied with the delay, and moved forward his company until within a short distance of the enemy, and then halted as his numbers were too small to venture an attack.

About 3 o’clock, P. M., two sloops hove in sight and anchored off the Brant rock. Balfour then conveyed his company through the Cut river [Green Harbor] in boats, and reaching the sloops soon sailed for Boston, leaving however several sentinels behind to watch the movements of the Americans, who also set guards for the night.

The British watch finally left and in going to their boats, they passed one of the American sentry posts, where were stationed Blanie Phillips, and Jacob Dingley, both of Duxbury. Dingley was seized, and conveyed to their boat, when they concluded to release him. Phillips escaped, fired his gun, and gave an alarm, which roused the country for many miles around.

Balfour, it is reported, said that if he had been attacked, he should have surrendered without a gun. In their hurry to escape they left much of their camp equipage behind.

That final detail is the sort that always makes me skeptical: no source for information from the other side of the war, flattering to the author and readers as local descendants. In the following sentences Winsor cited “an inhabitant of Duxbury” whom Balfour spoke with in New York later in the war, so it’s possible the captain told that person. But it’s also possible that’s what the Plymouth County men told themselves.

With Capt. Balfour and the regulars went Nathaniel Ray Thomas, who settled in Nova Scotia, and possibly some other Marshfield Loyalists. His Patriot son John regained the mansion at the center of the estate after the war. Later Daniel Webster bought that house and enlarged it, creating the Victorian structure which (after a fire) is now reproduced on the property. Locals point out that could have been the site of the second battle of the Revolutionary War.