Finding Mary Fowle of Londonderry

Yesterday I cited Jane Merrill’s Sex and the Scientist: The Indecent Life of Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford (1753–1814), the latest and frankest biography of the scientist, statesman, soldier, and seducer.

That book quotes testimony from Mary Fowle of Londonderry, New Hampshire, about how Thompson had an affair with Mary (Dill) Thomas, first wife of the Boston printer Isaiah Thomas.

Merrill distinguishes that woman from the Mary Fowle whom Isaiah Thomas married in 1779, whom she identifies as both the printer’s cousin and the widow of his old master, Zechariah Fowle.

Isaiah Thomas’s second wife named Mary was indeed a cousin, having been born Mary Thomas on 9 June 1750, according to genealogy published in “The Portraits of Isaiah Thomas” by Charles Lemuel Nichols.

However, that cousin Mary didn’t marry Zechariah Fowle. Her mother, Rebecca (Bass) Thomas, did. The older printer died in Portsmouth in 1776. Rebecca (Bass Thomas) Fowle, twice widowed, died in Worcester in 1803 and was buried in her son-in-law’s family tomb.

So who was Mary Thomas’s first husband? Boston vital records show that the Rev. John Lathrop married Isaac Fowle and Mary Thomas on 11 May 1769. The Thomas and Fowle family genealogies say they had two daughters, who both died young:

• Rebecca T[homas?]. (4 Feb 1770–6 Dec 1773 in New York)
• Dorothea Whitmarsh (5 Nov 1771–10 Sept 1772)

Isaac Fowle reportedly died in 1777 while serving in the Continental Army.

That same year, Isaiah Thomas leased his financially stressed press and newspaper to his come-of-age apprentice, Anthony Haswell, and moved with his children to “a small farm in Londonderry, New Hampshire,” according to the biography published with the second edition of his History of Printing in North-America. He also initiated a divorce from his first wife.

A couple of years later, Isaiah came back and took over the print shop again. Worcester’s vital records state that on 26 May 1779 Isaiah Thomas married “Mary Fowle of Londonderry” in Boston. Since 1777 he had been a divorcé with three children, his cousin Mary had been a childless widow, and there was a war on. Mary might well have been keeping house for Isaiah in New Hampshire even before they married.

Thus, the Mary Fowle of Londonderry who provided testimony for Isaiah Thomas in his divorce case in 1777 was:

• his cousin
• a stepdaughter of his former master
• his future wife

Isaiah and Mary (Thomas Fowle) Thomas had no children. She died at Worcester in 1818, and he remarried again the next year. The picture above is the pastel portrait of Mary in the collection of the American Antiquarian Society.

“Not playing cards but fondling and kissing each other”

In preparation for tomorrow’s talk about Benjamin Thompson’s early years, I’ve been reviewing the evidence of his affair with Mary (Dill) Thomas, wife of printer Isaiah Thomas.

When Isaiah moved to divorce Mary in 1777 by petitioning the Massachusetts Council, he submitted testimony from several people who had seen his wife traveling with the militia major from New Hampshire in February 1775, behaving like man and wife.

The printer’s file also offered an affidavit from Mary Fowle of Londonderry, New Hampshire, who had stayed with the Thomases in Boston from 20 Sept 1774 to 16 April 1775.

In Sex and the Scientist, Jane Merrill quotes Fowle describing how “Major Thompson [was] then a refugee in Boston who borded in a house opposite.” Mary Thomas started visiting him several times a day even though (or because) she had two children under the age of three.

One Saturday the printer’s wife “dressed herself, shifting her Linen, which I knew was not her custom,” said her house guest. Mary Thomas came home with “a small piece of parchment, on which a Lady’s face had been drawn with a black lead pencil. . . . the Major had taken much pains with it.”

Soon Mary Thomas visited Thompson’s ”bed-chamber, where they staid the whole afternoon and part of the evening.” Fowle stated, “I could not but think there was more intimacy between them than I before tho’t of.” She observed the couple “kissing each other, laying in each others laps, speaking fondly of each without regarding me.”

One day Isaiah came home from business after his wife had gone to play cards with Maj. Thompson. Mary Fowle and a household servant went across to fetch her. They found the couple “not playing cards but fondling and kissing each other, she often laying her head on the Major’s shoulder, and their arms round each other.”

As if that wasn’t clear enough, in February 1775 Mary Thomas insisted on taking that trip to Newbury with Maj. Thompson, first having her hair “in the greatest taste much powdered.” Later the printer gathered testimony from several innkeepers about that journey. At the time, however, he just seems to have felt trapped.

On one Sunday, Isaiah Thomas and Mary Fowle went to church. When they came home, his daughter Mary Ann, who turned three years old that March, showed them a “copper” that Maj. Thompson had given her to go into another room. Fowle stated the little girl said, “The major kissed her Mama and felt her bosom.” In response, little Mary Ann’s mother told her she was lying and threatened to whip her.

Isaiah finally demanded that Mary admit to what was going on. She acknowledged having a sexual affair. And when did it start? True to Benjamin Thompson’s character, he first got into Mary Thomas’s bed right after writing a letter to his own wife back in Concord, New Hampshire.

I won’t bother asking if these marriages can be saved.

TOMORROW: Who was Mary Fowle?