Marshfield Voters “greatly aggrieved at the conduct of the said Town”

As I described yesterday, in February 1775 Marshfield’s Loyalist selectmen led a town meeting in voting to publicly thank Gen. Thomas Gage and Adm. Samuel Graves for providing them with military assistance.

At the time there slightly more than one hundred regulars barracked in the town, and a Royal Navy gunship off shore.

As town clerk, Nehemiah Thomas (represented here by his gravestone, courtesy of Find-a-Grave) kept the record of that meeting, but he wasn’t a Loyalist. He was the town’s representative at the Massachusetts Provincial Congress that the meeting formally objected to. Thomas was most likely one of the sixty-four local men who signed a public protest against those proceedings:

We, the subscribers, inhabitants of the Town of Marshfield, being greatly aggrieved at the conduct of the said Town at their late meeting, on the 20th of February last, and sensible of the high colouring which the Tories never fail to bestow on every thing that turns in their favour, think ourselves obliged in duty to our King, our country, ourselves, and posterity, to remonstrate and declare,

First, That it is our opinion, that the Selectmen of the Town of Marshfield, with a design to answer a purpose, having previously raised the State Bill, which increased the number of voters in the Tory, more than in the Whig interest, so far availed themselves of it, that in the choice of a Moderator, who happened to be a Tory, there appeared about twenty-six or twenty-seven more Tory than Whig voters.

Secondly, that contrary to our minds, the Selectmen and others, inhabitants of this Town, have petitioned his Excellency, agreeable to a late Parliament Act, for leave to hold a meeting here (a thing so contrary to the general sense of the people in this Province) without the knowledge or advice of many in this Town.

Thirdly, That the vote which passed in the negative, whether the Town will adhere to, and abide by the Resolves of the Continental and Provincial Congresses, or any illegal assemblies whatsoever, we think was craftily drawn, and put as if these Congresses were illegal, when we suppose the present situation of our publick affairs makes them both legal and necessary.

Fourthly, That the Town voted thanks should be returned to General Gage and Admiral Graves, for their ready and kind interposition, assistance and protection, from further insults and abuses, with which we are continually threatened, when we do not know or believe that any of the inhabitants of this Town are threatened with insults and abuses.

Lastly, That the Selectmen gave but a single day’s warning for the said Meeting; ordered it to be held in a part of the Town where a Town Meeting was never before had, and that information was not given in the notification of the design of said Meeting.

In sum, those men wrote, the system had been rigged. Patriot newspapers made sure that protest got out to the public. However, it didn’t have the legal weight of the town meeting’s resolutions and communications. Marshfield remained the only Loyalist bastion of Massachusetts outside of Boston.

TOMORROW: London takes notice.

Marshfield Town Meeting “penetrated with the highest sense of gratitude”

In February 1775 Marshfield’s Loyalist community was feeling emboldened by the presence of a hundred British regulars, and perhaps upset by the complaints from neighboring towns about those troops.

At that time, local historian Lysander Salmon Richards later wrote, Marshfield had only three selectmen: Dr. Isaac Winslow, Abijah White, and Ephraim Little. And they were all in the Loyalist camp.

Thus, those men could call an official town meeting on the terms they chose. Which started with applying to Gen. Thomas Gage for permission to hold such a meeting. The Massachusetts Government Act had forbidden towns from meeting more than once a year without the royal governor’s approval, which was a big strike at local self-government and thus a big grievance for the Patriot side.

According to Boston businessman Harbottle Dorr, Marshfield was the first town to approach the governor under the new law. Most towns were either claiming to meet by adjournment from a previous session or just gathering without official sanction.

Marshfield’s meeting took place on 20 February. The attendees chose Dr. Winslow to moderate. The records of that meeting say:

A vote was put to know the mind of the Town, whether they will adhere to, and abide by the Resolves and Recommendations of the Continental and Provincial Congresses, or any illegal assemblies whatsoever? and it passed in the negative.

Secondly, The vote was put to know the mind of the Town, whether they will return their thanks to General Gage, and Admiral [Samuel] Graves, for their ready and kind interposition, assistance, and protection from further insults and abuses with which we are continually threatened? and it passed in the affirmative.

Thirdly, They voted that a Committee be chosen to draw up and send the same to General Gage, and Admiral Graves, said Committee consisting of 23 persons.

Dr. Winslow chaired that large committee and probably drafted the addresses in the home he had recently inherited. (That home is shown above; now the 1699 Winslow House, I’m speaking there this evening.) Marshfield’s address to Gen. Gage matches the neighboring towns’ complaint in its high-flying rhetoric:

We, the Inhabitants of Marshfield, in legal Town Meeting assembled, this 20th day of February, 1775, beg leave to return your Excellency our most grateful acknowledgments for your seasonable assistance and protection, in sending a detachment of his Majesty’s Troops to secure and defend the loyal people of this Town, from the threats and violence of an infatuated and misguided people. We assure your Excellency (whatever may have been surmised to the contrary) that there were sufficient ground and reasons for making application; and we are fully convinced that this movement has preserved and promoted, not only the peace and tranquillity of this Town in particular, but of the County in general; owing, in great degree, to the prudence, firmness, and good conduct of Captain [Nisbet] Balfour, who, with pleasure as well as justice we say it, has done every thing in his power to obtain those laudable ends and purposes.

Thankfully we acknowledge our obligations to our Sovereign, for his great goodness and wisdom, in placing at the head of affairs, in this Province, in this day of difficulty, confusion, and discord, a gentleman of your Excellency’s well known humanity, moderation, capacity and intrepidity, and shall constantly implore the Supreme Governour of the universe to assist and direct you in the faithful discharge of the various functions of your exalted station, with fidelity to your King, with honour to yourself, and with happiness to the people committed to your charge.

With pleasure we embrace this opportunity of expressing our detestation and abhorrence of all assemblies and combinations of men (by whatever specious name they may call themselves) who have or shall rebelliously attempt to alter or oppose the wise Constitution and Government of Great Britain.

Furthermore, we beg leave to inform your Excellency, that in the most critical and dangerous times, we have always manifested and preserved our loyalty to the King, and obedience to his laws; carefully avoided all constitutional covenants and engagements whatsoever, that might warp us from our duty to our God, our King, and country; and as we are determined to persevere in the same course, we flatter ourselves that our endeavours and exertions will meet with our most gracious Sovereign’s approbation, as well as your Excellency’s, and that under his and your gentle and humane government and kind protection, we may peaceably and quietly sit under our own vines and fig-trees, and have none to molest or make us afraid.

(Fans of Hamilton will recall how George Washington also liked to quote Micah 4:4.)

The address to Adm. Graves was shorter but similar in tone:

We, the Inhabitants of Marshfield, in Town Meeting legally assembled, the 20th of February, A.D. 1775, penetrated with the highest sense of gratitude, present our sincere and hearty thanks to you sir, for your ready compliance with a request of a number of our inhabitants, in ordering an armed Vessel to protect and defend us from the lawless insults and abuses with which we were threatened by numbers of seditious and evil-minded people, for no other reason (that we can conceive) but our loyalty to the best of Kings, and firm adherence to the laws of Government. With hearts replete with gratitude, we contemplate the paternal care and goodness of our most gracious Sovereign, in the appointment of a gentlemen to command his Navy in America, at this critical juncture, whose duty, inclination, and abilities, so happily coincide to answer the good purposes of his department.

Permit us to acquaint your Honour, that we have always endeavoured to comport ourselves, and regulate our conduct agreeable to the laws of England and this country; that we have not been guilty of any riots or illegal assemblies, or adopted or subscribed any unconstitutional resolves, covenants, or combinations whatsoever, but have constantly and uniformly borne, our testimony against such measures and proceedings; that it is our serious intention and firm resolution to respect the English Constitution; and demean ourselves like true, loyal and obedient subjects, by doing which we apprehend we shall entitle ourselves to the continued protection of our most gracious King, your Honour, and every friend to peace and good Government.

Dr. Winslow and his Loyalist colleagues weren’t the only men at that meeting, however. Marshfield’s longtime town clerk, Nehemiah Thomas, also attended to keep the official record. And he surely didn’t like what was going on.

TOMORROW: The Patriot party objects.

A Plymouth County Protest “as if written with a sunbeam”

The letters I quoted yesterday described the arrival of about a hundred British soldiers in Marshfield on 23 Jan 1775, sent by Gen. Thomas Gage to support the local Loyalists. Those letters also reported that Patriots in the region had started to muster against those troops but hung back.

Instead, the nearby communities protested through their civil representatives and some high-flying rhetoric. They sent a letter to the governor that was published in the 27 Feb 1775 Boston Evening-Post:

We, his majesty’s loyal subjects, selectmen of the several towns of Plymouth, Kingston, Duxbury, Pembroke, Hanover, and Scituate, deeply affected with a sense of the increasing dangers and calamities which menace one of the most promising countries upon earth with political excision, cannot but lament, that, while we are endeavoring to preserve peace and 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 stratagem to seduce the people into acts of violence and outrage.

We beg leave to address your excellency, on a subject which excites our apprehensions extremely: and, in the representation of facts, we promise to pay that sacred regard to truth, which, had our adversaries observed, we flatter ourselves, it would have precluded the necessity of our addressing your excellency, on this occasion.

We are informed, from good authority, that a number of people from Marshfield and Scituate, have made application to your excellency, soliciting the aid of a detachment of his majesty’s troops, for the security and protection of themselves and properties. That their fears and intimidation were entirely groundless, that no design or plan of molestation, was formed against them, or existed but in their own imaginations, their own declarations, and their actions, which have a more striking language, abundantly demonstrate.

Several men of unquestionable veracity, residing in the town of Marshfield, have solemnly called God to witness, before one of his majesty’s justices of the peace, that they not only never heard of any intention to disturb the complainants, but repeatedly saw them after they pretended to be under apprehensions of danger, attending to their private affairs, without arms, and even after they had lodged their arms a few miles from their respective houses. They frequently declared, in conversation with the deponents, that they were not apprehensive of receiving any injury in their persons or properties, and one of them, who is a minor, as many of them are, being persuaded to save his life by adjoining himself to the petitioners, but afterwards abandoning them by the request of his father, deposeth, in like solemn manner, that he was under no intimidation himself, nor did he ever hear any one of them say that he was.

It appears as evident, as if written with a sunbeam, from the general tenor of the testimony, which we are willing to lay before your excellency if desired, that their expressions of fear, were a fallacious pretext, dictated by the inveterate enemies of our constitution, to induce your excellency to send troops into the country, to augment the difficulties of our situation, already very distressing; and, what confirms this truth, if it needs any confirmation, is, the assiduity and pains which we have taken to investigate it. We have industriously scrutinized into the cause of this alarm, and cannot find that it has the least foundation in reality.

All that we have in view in this address is, to lay before your excellency a true state of facts, and to remove that opprobrium, which this movement of the military reflects on this country: and as a spirit of enmity and falsehood is prevalent in the country, and as every thing which comes from a gentleman of your excellency’s exalted station naturally acquires great weight and importance, we earnestly entreat your excellency to search into the grounds of every report, previous to giving your assent to it.

(This transcription was published in the journals of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress with 1800s spellings and punctuation. A contemporaneous printing is preserved in the Harbottle Dorr newspaper collection.)

Those towns also petitioned to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, which on 15 February voted:

That the Congress do highly approve of the vigilance and activity of the selectmen and the committees of correspondence of the several towns of Plymouth, Kingston, Duxbury, Pembroke, Hanover, and Scituate, in detecting the falsehoods and malicious artifices of certain persons belonging to Marshfield and Scituate, not respectable either in their numbers or their characters, who are, with great reason, supposed to have been the persons who prevailed upon General Gage to take the imprudent step, of sending a number of the king’s troops into Marshfield, under pretence of protecting them: whereby great and just offence has been given to the good people of this province, as very fatal consequences must have arisen therefrom, if the same malevolent spirit which seems to have influenced them, had actuated the inhabitants of the neighboring towns; or if the same indiscretion which betrayed the general into the unwarrantable measure of sending the troops, had led this people to destroy them.

At this point the Massachusetts Patriots were anxious to deny or play down any reports of violence and intimidation, presenting themselves to the world as peaceful citizens. The Boston Gazette’s first comment on the troops in Marshfield carried a similar message.

No matter that there had indeed been some documented incidents of violence in the Massachusetts countryside. Or that fear of crowds had driven many supporters of the Crown out of their home towns and into Boston. Or that the Provincial Congress was secretly, as I discuss in The Road to Concord, gathering cannon.

TOMORROW: The Marshfield town meeting.

Marshfield’s Special Spot on the Road to Concord, 7 July

On Thursday, 7 July, I’ll speak on “The Road to Concord: How Massachusetts Moved Toward War in 1774-75” at the Winslow House in Marshfield. There will be a book signing and light refreshments afterwards. Admission is $5 for members of the Historic Winslow House Association, $7 for others. If you’re on the South Shore, please come!

In The Road to Concord, and in my talks about it, I say that after the “Powder Alarm” on 2 Sept 1774, Gen. Thomas Gage’s authority as royal governor of Massachusetts stopped at the gates of Boston. That was of course more than seven months before actual war broke out.

In the fall of 1774 Gage held power in Boston and in nearby Castle William. In every other town of the province, people were free to ignore the Massachusetts Government Act, and they did. They kept the courts closed and the Provincial Congress open, and there was almost nothing the governor could do about it.

There was one exception to that pattern, however. In 1775 Gen. Gage wrested back some control over Marshfield, a coastal town in Plymouth County.

That episode started with a call by Timothy Ruggles, a former speaker of the Massachusetts House and militia general, for men to form a military Association to support the royal government. A large contingent of Loyalists from Marshfield answered that call, led by Nathaniel Ray Thomas, one of the mandamus Council. A letter sent from Boston on 26 Jan 1775 described how folks in the neighboring towns responded in turn:

About a week ago, one hundred and fifty of the principal inhabitants of the Town of Marshfield entered into General Ruggles’s Association against the Liberty plan. When this was known at Plymouth, the faction there threatened to come down in a body and make them recant, or drive them off their farms; on this the Marshfield Associators sent an express to General Gage, to acquaint him with their situation and determination, and to beg his support.

On 23 January, the governor detached Capt. Nisbet Balfour of the 4th Regiment to support the Marshfield Loyalists. The letter described him as bringing “three Subalterns, and a hundred private men,” plus “three hundred stand of Arms for the use of the gentlemen of Marshfield.” Those companies landed near the mouth of the North River and moved into buildings on Thomas’s estate.

The next day, one of those supporters reported on the regulars’ arrival in a letter which James Rivington later printed in his newspaper in New York:

Two hundred of the principal inhabitants of this loyal Town, insulted and intimidated by the licentious spirit that unhappily has been prevalent amongst the lower ranks, of people in the Massachusetts Government, having applied to the Governour for a detachment of his Majesty’s Troops to assist in preserving the peace, and to check the insupportable insolence of the disaffected and turbulent, were happily relieved by the appearance of Captain Balfour’s party, consisting of one hundred Soldiers, who were joyfully received by the Loyalists.

Upon their arrival, the valour of the Minute-Men was called forth by [Samuel] Adams’s crew; they were accordingly mustered, and to the unspeakable confusion of the enemies of our happy Constitution, no more than twelve persons presented themselves to bear Arms against the Lord’s anointed. It was necessary that some apology should be made for the scanty appearance of their volunteers, and they coloured it over with a declaration that “had the party sent to Marshfield consisted of half a dozen Battalions, it might have been worth their attention to meet and engage them; but a day would come when the courage of their Minute host would be able to clear the country of all their enemies, howsoever formidable in numbers.”

The King’s Troops are very comfortably accommodated, and preserve the most exact discipline; and now every faithful subject to his King dare freely utter his thoughts, drink his Tea, and kill his Sheep as profusely as he pleases.

The Patriot movement was encouraging Americans to make as much wool as possible so as to supply American spinners and weavers and cut down the need for imported cloth. Killing a sheep for meat had therefore become a political act.

On 27 January, Gen. Gage reported to the Earl of Dartmouth in London:

The town of Marshfield, with part of that of Scituate, having been lately under terrors…from the threats of their neighbours, for having formed some associations amongst themselves, applied to me for protection; and I have sent a detachment of one hundred men to their relief. It is the first instance of an application to government for assistance, which the faction has ever tried to persuade the people they would never obtain, but be left to themselves.

Three weeks later he confidently added, “The sending a detachment to Marshfield has had a good effect in that quarter of the country, and I hope will encourage other places, where oppression is felt, to make applications of the same nature.”

TOMORROW: Protests from the neighboring towns.

“Creativity in Bondage” Discussion in Hingham, 7 Feb.

On Sunday, February 7, the Abigail Adams Birthplace and the Hingham Public Library will present a program on “Creativity in Bondage: Slave Artist Prince Demah and Writer Briton Hammon.”

The event description says:

Prince Demah’s portraits of his owners, Christian and Henry Barnes, now in the collections of the Hingham Historical Society, are among the earliest known paintings by an African-American. Demah, who lived in Boston but had ties to the South Shore, received training in London and was described as a creative “genius.” Hingham resident Paula Bagger, who recently co-authored an article on Demah for The Magazine Antiques, will discuss her research into his life and work. Ms. Bagger is a member of the board of directors of the Hingham Historical Society and a practicing attorney.

Briton Hammon, an eighteenth-century slave belonging to General John Winslow of Marshfield (later of Hingham), is considered the author of one of the first published American slave autobiographies. His 1760 narrative recounts his confrontations with Native Americans and capture by Spanish sailors while on a sea voyage, and the ensuing thirteen-year ordeal in which he faced battle, torture, and imprisonment. Aaron Dougherty, executive director of Marshfield’s 1699 Winslow House and Cultural Center, will speak about Hammon’s life experiences and writings, and will discuss how narratives such as his eventually helped fuel the abolitionist movement.

The event’s moderator will be Michelle Marchetti Coughlin, author of One Colonial Woman’s World: The Life and Writings of Mehetabel Chandler Coit.

This program is scheduled to run from 3:00 to 5:00 P.M. in the the Whiton Room of the Hingham Public Library, 66 Leavitt Street. That will include time for audience questions and discussion. Admission is free and open to the public.

Lieutenant Little Chases a Sea Serpent

George and Luther Little were two brothers from Marshfield who both served as officers aboard the Massachusetts navy vessel Protector under Capt. John Foster Williams from 1779 to 1781.

Luther, the younger by two years, was badly wounded during a sea battle. Later George was captured, held briefly on the Jersey prison ship, and sent to the Mill Prison in England. He and other officers bribed a guard and escaped to France.

In 1804, George wrote a letter to Alden Bradford about another of his adventures during the war. In 1820 that letter was published in the American Journal of Science as follows:

Marshfield, 13th March, 1804.

Sir,
In answer to yours of the 30th of January last, I observe, that in May, 1780, I was lying in Round Pond, in Broad Bay [off Waldoboro, Maine], in a public armed ship. At sunrise, I discovered a large Serpent, or monster, coming down the bay, on the surface of the water. The Cutter was manned and armed. I went myself in the boat, and proceeded after the Serpent. When within a hundred feet, the marines were ordered to fire on him, but before they could make ready, the Serpent dove. He was not less than from 45 to 50 feet in length; the largest diameter of his body, I should judge, 15 inches; his head nearly of the size of that of a man, which he carried four or five feet above the water. He wore every appearance of a common black snake. When he dove he came up near Muscongus Island—we pursued him, but never came up within a quarter of a mile of him again.

A monster of the above description was seen in the same place, by Joseph Kent, of Marshfield, 1751. Kent said he was longer and larger than the main boom of his sloop, which was 85 tons. He had a fair opportunity of viewing him, as he was within ten or twelve yards of his sloop.

I have the honor to be, sir, Your friend and humble servant,
GEO. LITTLE.

A couple of decades later, Luther Little dictated his memoirs, eventually published in the Journal of American History. Luther corroborated his older brother’s experience:

The Capt. thought it necessary to put into an eastern port for wood and water;—we sail’d for Broad Bay, and arrived at the mouth and anchored in a cove near the shore, called Muscongus. The Capt. made arrangements with a farmer at this place to land our sick, at an out building leaving the surgeons mate to take care of them, making a sort of hospital. I was then sufficiently recovered [from my wound] to be able to walk the deck. The next day, at four in the afternoon, we discovered a large black snake coming down from out the bushes abreast the ship; he took the water and swam by us; we judged him to be 40 feet long, and his middle the size of a man’s body; he carried his head six feet above water. We manned a barge, and went in chase of him; when fired at, he would dive like a sea-fowl. They chased him a mile and a half firing continually. The snake landed at Lowd’s Island, and disappeared in the woods. The barge returned to the ship.

Luther’s account suggests he saw the serpent from the deck of the Protector but didn’t join George in the boat that chased it.

Did anyone outside the Little family tell this odd story?

TOMORROW: Tales from a midshipman.

(The Protector was a 26-gun frigate launched in 1779. The picture above shows H.M.S. Cleopatra, a 32-gun frigate launched the same year; that’s the closest I could find.)

Winslow House Events in July

The Winslow House Association in Marshfield has sent information about four events this month with links to Revolutionary times.

Tavern Night
Friday, 11 July, 7:00 P.M.
During the late colonial and early revolutionary periods taverns or ordinaries in Colonial America became increasingly popular. The tavern was a place to gather, have a pint of ale or cider, share a newspaper, engage in political debate, or partake in a game of chance. The Winslow House recreates an 18th-century Publick House with musical entertainment with Three of Cups and colonial card and strategy games. Admission includes our version of 1700s tavern fare (snack-sized) and non-alcoholic beverages. Immerse yourself in the atmosphere and try your hand in colonial games of chance and historical trivia. Admission is $10/person or $25/family or household.

Fort Halifax: Winslow’s Historic Outpost
Tuesday, 15 July, 11:00 A.M.
On July 25, 1754, Gen. John Winslow arrived with a force of 600 soldiers to establish the fort at the confluence of the Kennebec River with the Sebasticook River. Beginning as a French and Indian War garrison and trading post, the fort welcomed historic figures from Benedict Arnold and Aaron Burr to Paul Revere and Chief Joseph Orono. This talk is by Daniel Tortora, an assistant professor of history at Colby College and member of the Fort Halifax Park Implementation Committee. Admission is $5, or $3 for Winslow House Association members.

Speaking Ill of the Dead: Jerks in Boston History with Paul Della Valle
Thursday, 17 July, 7:00 P.M.
The lives of notorious bad guys, perpetrators of mischief, visionary—if misunderstood—thinkers, and other colorful antiheroes, jerks, and evil doers from Boston history all get their due by author Paul Della Valle. The book’s profiles start with the Rev. Cotton Mather, governor Thomas Hutchinson, and Dr. Benjamin Church, and end in the late twentieth century. Admission is $7, or $5 for members.

Marshfield During the Revolutionary War
Tuesday, 22 July, 10:30 A.M.
With new information researched by Town Historian Cynthia Krusell, Dr. Isaac Winslow’s wife Elizabeth, portrayed by Regina Porter, will reminisce about the life and times in Marshfield during the American Revolution. Who was actually living in the Winslow House? Were we really a “Tory town”? Crossing political and social status, Mistress Winslow will speak on the impact this war had here in Marshfield. Admission is $5, or $3 for members.

Luther Little’s Low Point

Luther Little (1756-1842) was an American naval officer during the War for Independence. He was a lieutenant on the Protector, a Massachusetts ship that was captured by the Royal Navy in 1781.

Little escaped captivity, however, because he’d been assigned to command a vessel the Protector had captured previously on its voyage into a friendly port.

On a later voyage, however, Capt. Little’s ship was wrecked in a storm and he broke his leg. But eventually he made it back to his home town of Marshfield.

In 1841 Little dictated a memoir of his life to a relative, and in the 1910s the Journal of American History published that manuscript. This is the incident he started with:

At the age of ten years, 1766, I recollect going to swim in the North River, a stream that runs between Scituate and Marshfield, accompanied by several boys in the neighbourhood. While we were thus amusing ourselves the tide rose and took off my clothes. Aided by the boys, I chose the least conspicuous path home, two miles and a half; got into a chamber window, and instead of the fig leaves chosen by Adam and Eve for a similar purpose, I took to my bed and feigned myself sick. I lay there quietly until my mother came up, who, hearing my story, gave me herb-tea, &c, and by this means I escaped a good whipping.

The following sketch of my life will show that I have been exposed to danger, and eminently so, both by sea and land, but never have I felt any depression of spirits so sensibly as at the loss of this suit of clothes.

“Undoubted intelligence of hostilities being begun at Boston”

The 28 Apr 1775 Pennsylvania Mercury newspaper contained several letters about the fighting in Massachusetts nine days before. One that had just arrived in Philadelphia the previous evening began:

Hartford, April 23, 1775.

Dear Sir,

These are to inform you, that we have undoubted intelligence of hostilities being begun at Boston by the regular troops; the truth of which we are assured divers ways, and especially by Mr. Adams the post [rider]; the particulars of which, as nigh as I can recollect, are as follow:

General [Thomas] Gage, last Tuesday night, draughted out about 1000 or 1200 of his best troops in a secret manner, which he embarked on board transports, and carried and landed at Cambridge that night, and early Wednesday morning by day break they marched up to Lexington, where a number of the inhabitants were exercising before breakfast as usual, about 30 in number, upon whom the regulars fired without the least provocation about 15 minutes, without a single shot from our men, who retreated as fast as possible, in which fire they killed 6 of our men, and wounded several, from thence they proceeded to Concord;

on the road thither, they fired at, and killed a man on horseback, went to the house where Mr. [John] Hancock lodged, who, with Samuel Adams, luckily got out of their way by secret and speedy intelligence from Paul Revere, who is now missing, and nothing heard of him since;

when they searched the house for Mr. Hancock, and Adams, and not finding them there, killed the woman of the house and all the children, and set fire to the house; from thence they proceeded on their way to Concord, firing at, and killing hogs, geese, cattle and every thing that came in their way, and burning houses. 

The letter’s description continued through the action at Concord, the march of the British reinforcement, the capture of prisoners, and many other events. Interesting events like “the death of General [Frederick] Haldimand,” Lord Percy being “burnt with other dead bodies, by the troops in a barn,” and the 300-man British contingent at Marshfield “all killed and taken prisoners.”

Alexander McDougall, one of the Patriot leaders in New York, had endorsed this document as an accurate copy of the original letter. Sharing and copying such letters was a common way to spread news in a crisis.

Of course, much of the information in this letter was completely false. Ironically, it’s one of the few public reports of Paul Revere’s part in the Battle of Lexington and Concord, but he’s lost in a great fog of unfounded accusations about the royal troops and unfounded boasts about the damage the provincials had done.

Tomorrow night I’ll speak to the Lexington Historical Society about the Massachusetts Patriots’ efforts to spread news of the events of 19 Apr 1775 and win public sympathy for their actions. I’m not sure whether this letter would count in that campaign as a success or a failure.