A City Project to Reconstruct Charlestown in June 1775

Last month, on the anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, the Boston’s Archaeology Program announced the release of research on the people who lived in Charlestown at that time.

During the battle, most of the town burned to the ground. That event provided a physical marker in the ground, and also a documentary milestone as inhabitants filed claims for their losses. However, the department notes, “Despite multiple attempts over half a century, no funds were ever granted.”

Using real estate records compiled by Thomas Bellows Wyman in The Genealogies and Estates of Charlestown (two volumes, 1879), the City Archaeology Team produced a map of property ownership in June 1775 that can be viewed here. The announcement says, “Each property is clickable, with details including a direct link to the property deed (via free familysearch.org account).”

The next step: “property descriptions based on deeds and claims documents to better understand the layout of buildings, structures, wharves, agricultural spaces, fences, and other landscape features for a future 3D landscape reconstruction of 1775 Charlestown.”

Another product of this effort is a reconstructed “census” for Charlestown in 1775, here in spreadsheet form.

Finally, there are multiple databases about the claims themselves, now housed in the Boston Public Library. Those documents have been scanned and are being transcribed, but the index is already available.

One name that stood out for researchers and myself was Margaret Thomas, filing for the loss of a house and furnishings worth £68.9, as shown here.

Wyman listed Margaret Thomas as “Spinster,” house owner, and “negro of Bartholomew Trow,” a Charlestown militia officer. Perhaps she had been enslaved in the Trow family, and anxious authorities still recorded that link even after she was buying real estate of her own.

Was this the same Margaret Thomas who worked at Gen. George Washington’s Cambridge headquarters by February 1776, joined the general’s traveling domestic staff, and married William Lee before the end of the war? We know that other people who came to work at the commander’s headquarters in 1775–76 had been burned out of Charlestown.

The handwriting on the “Summary Accompt.” filed with the town doesn’t match the signature on a receipt Margaret Thomas signed in Valley Forge in April 1778. But it’s possible that the claim was filed by someone else on Thomas’s behalf, or that this summary was copied by someone else. It’s definitely a lead worth following up.

“The Work of Revolution” in Cambridge, 23 June

History Cambridge (previously the Cambridge Historical Society) is headquartered in the oldest of the colonial houses along what was later dubbed “Tory Row.”

Some years before the Revolution, the families in those houses were all related, and they all had ties to slave-labor plantations on Jamaica and Antigua. Most if not all of those families also had enslaved people working for them on their Cambridge estates.

History Cambridge is now hosting an art installation on its lawn titled “Forgotten Souls of Tory Row: Remembering the Enslaved People of Brattle Street.” Created by Black Coral, Inc., this artwork in glass and metal adopts the tradition of bottle trees to evoke the power of ancestors.

History Cambridge is also organizing an online panel discussion called “The Work of Revolution” on Thursday, 23 June. Its event description says:

How did unpaid labor enable the Revolutionary leaders of Cambridge to foment rebellion and to carry out the political and military duties of the War?

Although much is known about George Washington’s residency in Cambridge in the early days of the Revolution, the reality is that it was the labor of women and people of color that enabled the Continental Army to function, as well as feeding, housing, and serving both the American and British troops present in the city. By centering the work experiences of women and BIPOC during this period, we will be expanding the scope of the Revolutionary narrative and bringing to light stories that have not often been shared with a wider audience.

Prof. Robert Bellinger, professor of history and founder and director of the Black Studies Program at Suffolk University, will lead the discussion.

History Cambridge has invited me to be part of this panel, talking about what we know of the people who tended Gen. George Washington’s headquarters in the years 1775 and 1776.

The general brought some enslaved workers from Mount Vernon with him, including his body servant William Lee. Martha Washington probably brought more. Washington also employed a free black woman named Margaret Thomas, as well as a family and a teenager burned out of their homes in Charlestown during the Battle of Bunker Hill. 

Though Tory Row was a place of slavery in those years, it soon became a place of liberation. While in Cambridge, Washington was convinced to let black soldiers remain in the Continental Army. The absence of the Loyalist homeowners, shifting mores, and a change in Massachusetts law meant the people enslaved on “Tory Row” had a good chance to become free by the end of the war.

The “Work of Revolution” discussion is scheduled to start at 7:00 P.M. Register at this page.

There will be a public celebration of the “Forgotten Souls” artwork on 16 July, and a question-and-answer session with the artists on July 21. For more information, visit this page.

“The Women of Washington’s Headquarters” in Cambridge, 13 Mar.

I’ll miss Ray Raphael’s talk in Worcester on Thursday evening because at that time I’ll be speaking in Cambridge on “The Women of Washington’s Headquarters.”

This is the latest in a series of talks I’ve given at Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site to commemorate Evacuation Day, when Gen. George Washington saw the siege of Boston brought to a successful end. This year’s topic, though we didn’t think about this when we planned, also fits with National Women’s History Month.

I’ll talk about some of the women who lived and worked at John Vassall’s confiscated mansion in 1775-76. In particular, I’ll discuss:

• Lydia Austin
• Elizabeth Chapman
• Martha Washington
• Margaret Thomas

One of them is, of course, a household name. The others have their own stories, faintly recorded, and they helped to keep the military headquarters functioning.

This talk will start at 6:30 P.M. It’s free, but space is limited, so the park service asks people to phone 617-876-4491 to reserve seats. If you’ve got time, ask about Ranger Garrett Cloer’s Revolutionary-themed tour of the House in the afternoon before the talk.

(Seasonal photograph above by Tom Stohlman.)

Margaret Thomas: free black woman at Washington's headquarters

Margaret Thomas was a free black woman who joined the staff of Gen. George Washington's headquarters in February 1776, according to the accounts of his household manager Ebenezer Austin. At that time, Washington was living in the Cambridge mansion now known as Longfellow House, trying to push the British military out of Boston.

Thomas's duties included washing and mending clothes. She seems to have remained with the commander-in-chief's shifting headquarters throughout the first years of the war, judging by such documents as this 1778 receipt she signed at the bottom (courtesy of the Library of Congress's online collection of Washington papers). At the end of her service, she apparently went to live in Philadelphia, and the general never expected to see her again.

But in 1784, Washington's bodyservant and riding companion Will Lee came to him with a request, as he described in this 28 July letter to his Philadelphia agent, Clement Biddle:

The mulatto fellow William, who has been with me all the War is attached (married he says) to one of his own colour a free woman, who, during the War was also of my family.

She has been in an infirm state of health for sometime, and I had conceived that the connection between them had ceased, but I am mistaken; they are both applying to me to get her here, and tho' I never wished to see her more yet I cannot refuse his request (if it can be complied with on reasonable terms) as he has lived with me so long and followed my fortunes through the War with fidility.

After promising thus much, I have to beg the favor of you to procure her a passage to Alexandria either by Sea, by the passage Boats (if any there be) from the head of Elk, or in the Stage as you shall think cheapest and best, and circumstances may require.

She is called Margaret Thomas als. Lee (the name which he has assumed) and lives at Isaac and Hannah Sills, black people who frequently employ themselves in Cooking for families in the City of Phila.

As I read this letter, Washington was skeptical that Will Lee and Margaret Thomas were truly married. He may have suspected they had come up with this plan to secure Thomas a more comfortable home while she was sick. The general worried about creating resentment among his enslaved workers at Mount Vernon by employing free blacks, and he had no individual liking for Thomas.

Yet Washington didn't feel he could refuse Lee's request. He agreed to do a big favor for his long-time slave. To borrow an analogy from former Mount Vernon staffer Bruce Harris (now head of the Literary Trail of Greater Boston), since Washington had been raised to consider slaves as property, this was rather like one of us agreeing to make space for another refrigerator because our current refrigerator asked.

There's no evidence that Margaret Thomas ever made it to Virginia, however. It's unclear whether Biddle found her in Philadelphia, if she was in shape to travel, or if she cared to.

Washington freed Will Lee in his will, leaving it to his widow Martha to complete the emancipation of the rest of their human property. Lee remained at Mount Vernon until 1828, working for wages as a shoemaker. There's a chapter about him in Fritz Hirschfeld's George Washington and Slavery: A Documentary Portrayal.