“Touching the delivery of the Papers found upon Mrs. Hill”

As recounted yesterday, on 21 Oct 1776 Boston’s committee of correspondence, inspection, and safety questioned Elizabeth and Mary Hill about the documents they had tried to carry into British-occupied New York.

One of those letters was from Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr. The Patriot authorities were pretty certain he had spied for Gen. Thomas Gage, but they were still lacking solid evidence. If that letter had been incriminating, they would have used it.

In the second letter, Elizabeth’s husband John suggested that the merchant John Timmins was a fellow Loyalist.

And when asked who had brought John’s letter out of the Boston jail to her, Elizabeth said it might have been Richard Newton.

The committee sprang into action:

Collo. [Nathaniel] Barber and Mr. [Ebenezer] Dorr were appointed to go to Mr. [Alexander?] Orracks where Newton lodges in order to secure his Papers for the Inspection of the Committee.

A Complaint signed by the chairman [William Davis], was entered with Mr. Justice [Joseph] Greanleaff one of the Court of Enquiry; praying that the said Newton, might be immediately apprehended, & examined, touching the delivery of the Papers found upon Mrs Hill.

Richard Newton appears to have been a merchant, but not one who had been in Boston for long. He had evacuated Boston on the brig Elizabeth in March along with the Hills, William Jackson, Crean Brush, and other hopeful Loyalists. But Capt. John Manley captured that ship.

In April the Massachusetts Council had ordered Newton, Jackson, Brush, and a couple of other men to be detained in the Boston jail. Later they sent John Hill to jail, too.

In August, Newton signed a bond for good behavior, so he was presumably let out then. It seems quite plausible that Newton brought out a letter from Hill to his wife. That letter probably had more to say about the family’s survival than Boston’s defenses. After all, how much could Hill have learned over the summer in jail?

On 22 October the committee met “at their Chamber in King Street,” perhaps in the Town House. This time Ellis Gray chaired.

The Committee appointed to secure Mr. Newtons Papers Reported, that they had examined the same and could not find any one of a criminal nature among them.

Voted, that Mr. Newton shall have his Trunks of Papers returned him by the Committee — also —

Voted, that the Complaint entered with Mr. Justice Greanleaff, one of the Court of Enquiry against Richard Newton be withdrawn.

As for John Timmins, he was also a merchant. In 1768 he had married the young widow Mary (Olney) Greene, and they had children baptized at Trinity Church. During the tea crisis of 1773 he was agent for the cargo on the Beaver and publicly promised not to unload the East India Company’s tea.

The following year, Timmins signed the merchants’ addresses to Govs. Thomas Hutchinson and Thomas Gage. All of which is to say Timmins really did look like a Loyalist before the war. But he hadn’t left town with the British military.

The committee record says:

Mr. John Timmons name having been mentioned in one of the Papers found upon Mrs. Hill, the Committee sent for her Husband who gave the Paper, and having examined him strictly with respect to what he had written, together with his Wife and Daughter, and also made inquiry of Mr Timmins — the Question was put viz. — “Whether the Committee are fully satisfied, that Mr. Timmons conduct with respect to what passed between Mrs. Hill & himself has been quite unexceptionable — passed in the Affirmative unanimously.

The letters that Elizabeth and Mary Hill had been carrying therefore turned out to be less incriminating than first newspaper reports hinted. Yes, John Hill had communicated to them from the jail. Yes, he’d written about Timmins as a potential helper. Yes, Mary Hill and Ralph Cunningham, attached to the British army, were on their way to marrying. But the committee found no sensitive military information or the like.

Nonetheless, Elizabeth and Mary Hill were still locked up in the Boston jail in February 1777. According to John’s claim to the Loyalists Commission, the family “were all tried For their lives, but not Condemned.” Instead, “In November 1777, they were Exchanged, went to Halifax, and afterwards to New York…”

As for John Timmins and Richard Newton, both those men eventually left Boston for Britain. They decided to be Loyalists in the end.

Interrogating Elizabeth and Mary Hill at the Boston Jail

Back in April I wrote a series of postings about John Hill, his wife Elizabeth (?), and their daughter, captured on board the brig Elizabeth as they evacuated Boston in March 1776.

Recently I stumbled back across a source I may have seen before since I could have mentioned it in 2012. But I viewed it with new eyes.

As you recall, on 12 Oct 1776, Patriots in New London detected the two female Hills trying to carry secret letters onto British-occupied Long Island. They sent those women back to Boston, where John Hill was locked up, for questioning.

The records of the Boston committee, inspection, and safety, published by the New England Historical Genealogical Society in 1880, let us fill out that story.

On 21 October, the committee met at the house of Joseph Otis, the jailkeeper. The merchant William Davis chaired. They summoned “One Mrs. Hill Wife of one Hill now in the Jayl of this County examined together with her Daughter” about the incriminating papers they were carrying when detained.

The committee minutes say:

A Letter of recommendation given Mrs. Hill by Dr. [Benjamin] Church was read, together with the other Papers found upon her.

Mrs. Mary Hill the younger was brought in, and examined particularly with respect to Dr. Church, and one Ralph Cunningham mentioned in the Paper, the latter of whom appeared to be a Person who had made Courtship to the said Hill & supposed to be in the British Army at New York.

This source thus tells us that John Hill’s daughter was named Mary, and that she must have been the daughter of John Hill who married Lt. Cunningham of the Legion in 1779, as I guessed here.

Mrs. Hill the Mother was brought in & examined more particularly with respect to Mr. John Timmins of this Town Merchant, who was characterized by Hill the Husband, as a person who had been faithful to Government [i.e., Loyalist].

Mrs. Hill being asked who it was that delivered her the Paper wrote by her Husband answered. that she could not well recollect but thought it was one Richard Newton.

Well, of course we know what happened next: the authorities went on a hunt for Timmins and Newton.

TOMORROW: Further investigation.