A New Month in Boston, the Same Old Arguments

What did the Customs service’s anonymous informer report about Thursday, 1 Mar 1770, 250 years ago today?

He (or she) wrote: “the weekley Exhibition at Jacksons as usual.” Boys were once again picketing William Jackson’s hardware shop, the Sign of the Brazen Head, with signs and effigies. Even after the previous week’s protest led to one boy’s death at the hands of Ebenezer Richardson.

There were two important developments at that shop since 1760, when I left off the Saga of the Brazen Head. First, ten years later, the business was no longer operating under the name of “Mary Jackson & Son.” The widow Jackson had retired.

Second, back in 1760 the Brazen Head sign hung “a few Doors from the Town House,” as the Jacksons’ advertising said. By 1770, after the big fire, William Jackson was in business right across King Street from northwest corner of that government building. Mary Jackson was living a distance away. When William testified about the events of 5 March, he said, “I went to my mothers.”

At her home, Mary Jackson had rented space to at least one British army officer. That man no doubt got to hear his landlady’s side of the non-importation debate—how radical Whigs were condemning her son, picketing and vandalizing his shop. That officer was Capt. Thomas Preston.

Down King Street from the Brazen Head was the Customs office. On 2 March, Customs board secretary Richard Reeve wrote to Boston Gazette printers Edes and Gill with a statement from his bosses, the Commissioners:

that Ebenezer Richardson has never been employed as an Officer or Under Officer, or in any Capacity in the Customs.—That [George] Wilmot was not sent with any Message by the Commissioners, or by any Crown Officer or other Person with the Knowledge or Privity of the Commissioners or any of them.—That he has never been employed in the Service of the Commissioners, unless as a Seaman shipped by the Commander of the Sloop Liberty…

With Richardson and Wilmot in jail for murder, the Commissioners were trying to disavow all connection with them—however ridiculous that claim. Even Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson wrote privately that Richardson was a land-waiter for the Customs service.

Some politicians today deny connections to people as soon as they become embarrassing or even criminal liabilities. In our information-soaked world, that rarely works. Likewise, back in 1770 the Boston Gazette printers followed the message from the Commissioners with their own commentary:

It is well known that this same Richardson not many years past, solemnly swore before a Grand Jury that he acted in a certain riotous affair by a commission or warrant from Charles Paxton, which Paxton was then an officer in the Customs, and is now a Commissioner.

Paxton indeed upon oath denied it, and said that Richardson was a d——d villain: The Grand Jury at that Time chose rather to think that Richardson was the perjur’d person, & thereupon complain’d of him to a Magistrate; and it was currently reported that Paxton was his bondsman. If this is not true, Mr. Paxton is at liberty to set the matter right in the Boston Gazette.

Richardson has for many years been known by the name of THE INFORMER——————And we dare appeal to Mr. Paxton, Whether he has not been known to be an Informer, to the officers of the customs—And whether he himself has not frequently encourag’d him and paid him as an Informer—And if so! How could Mr. Paxton with any face desire us to publish, that “Richardson has never been employ’d in ANY Capacity in the Customs.”

That court case offers another possible reason for Richardson shouting, “Perjury! Perjury!” back on 22 February, as described here.

Thus, as March began, the Whigs were back to enforcing non-importation and blaming the Customs service for everything bad, the town was still full of soldiers, and Ebenezer Richardson was feeling abandoned in the town jail.

TOMORROW: Many ways of looking at a brawl.

(The picture above is William Jackson’s trade card, engraved for him by Paul Revere, courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society. It is now on display at the Worcester Art Museum as part of the “Beyond Midnight” exhibit.)

Sufferers from the Great Boston Fire of 1760

The scope of the Boston fire of 20 Mar 1760 really comes out in the list of victims that the newspapers published in the following week.

The list was actually a guess, based on November 1759 property assessment records. The printers acknowledged that “Several Widows and a few others are probably omitted.” And of course the names are the heads of household, not the relatives, servants, and boarders also affected.

In his later account the young printer John Boyle added, “The House of Col. Joseph Ingersol catch’d on Fire, but being Brick it was preserved. Here the Flames ended.” Ingersoll’s house was also the Bunch of Grapes tavern.

Other notices in the newspapers testify to the disruption the fire caused throughout the town.

It is desired by the Inhabitants of the Town, That those who live in the Neighbourhood where the late Fire was, would collect and send to the Town-House, all the Buckets & Bags that belong to any Society, where a Person will receive them for the respective Owners.

The town rewarded the firefighting society which was the first on the scene of a fire, and at the end of the month the selectmen gave that award to the “Master of the Marlborough Engine.”

All Persons who have had any Goods or Household Furniture deposited with them during the late Fire, and are at a Loss to whom to return them, are desired either to send them to Faneuil-Hall immediately, or give Information of the same to the Person who will attend there for that Purpose, and where proper Care will be taken that the right Owners shall have them.

The printers were looking for their own customers:

As several Customers to the Boston Evening-Post are burnt out by the late terrible fire, and the publishers not knowing what part of the town they are in, it is desired they would send for their papers

Even before that newspaper was published on 24 March, some Bostonians were looking accusingly at people living in the house where the fire started—the Sign of the Brazen Head.

COMING UP: Finger-pointing, engraving, and what this all meant for The Road to Concord.

“A most terrible Fire” Starting at the Brazen Head

The 21 Mar 1760 Boston News-Letter reported two significant fires in Boston in the preceding week and then proceeded to this hastily composed yet lengthy report:

Since the above Accounts were compos’d, for this Paper, a most terrible Fire happened in the Town, suppos’d to be greater than any that has been known in these American Colonies, far exceeding what was generally called, the great Fire, which happen’d here October 2. 1711.—

It began about II [i.e., two] o’Clock Yesterday Morning, Thursday March 20th, and broke out in the Dwelling-House of Mrs. Mary Jackson, and Son, at the Brazen-Head in Cornhill, by what Means is uncertain, tho’t by Accident:

The flames catch’d the Houses adjoining in the Front of the Street, and burnt three or four large Buildings, a Stop being put to it there, at the House improved by Mrs. West on the South, and Mr. Peter Cotta on the North; but the Fire raged most violently towards the East, the Wind blowing strong at N.W. and carried all before it; from the Back Sides of those Houses:—

All the Stores fronting Pudding-Lane, together with every Dwelling-House, from thence, excepting those which front the South side of King-Street, and a Store of Mr. Spooner’s on Water-Street to Quaker-Lane, and from thence only leaving a large old wooden House, and the House belonging to the late Cornelius Waldo, Esq; it burnt every House, Shop, Store, out-House, &c. to Oliver’s Dock:

And an Eddy of Wind carrying the Fire contrary to it’s Course, it took the Buildings fronting the lower Part of King-Street, and destroyed the Houses from the Corner opposite the Bunch of Grapes Tavern, to the Warehouse of Mess’rs. Box and Austin, leaving only the Warehouse of the Hon. John Erving, Esq; and the Dwelling-House of Mr. Hastings, standing; the other Brick-Warehouses towards the Long-Wharf were considerably damag’d.—

On the South-East Part, the Fire extended from Mr. [William] Torrey’s, the Baker, in Water-Street, and damaging some of Mr. Dalton’s new Shops, proceeded to Mr. Hall’s working-House, and from then to Milk-Street, and consumed every House from the next to Mr. [Joseph] Calfe’s Dwelling-House, to the Bottom of the Street, and the opposite Way from Mr. [Joseph] Dowse’s included, it carryed before it every House to Fort-Hill, except the Hon. Secretary [Andrew] Oliver’s, and two or three Tenements opposite; as also every House, Warehouse, Shop and Store, from Oliver’s Dock along Mr. [Benjamin] Hallowell’s Ship-Yard, Mr. Hallowell’s Dwelling House, the Sconce of the South-Battery, all the Buildings, Shops and Stores on Col. [Jacob] Wendell’s Wharf, to the House of Mr. Hunt Ship-builder.—

So that from Pudding-Lane, to the Water’s Edge, there is not a Building to be seen, excepting those on the Side of King-street and those mention’d above, all being in Ashes.—Besides which, a large Ship, Capt. Eddy late Master, lying at Col. Wendell’s Wharf, and two or three Sloops and a Schooner were burnt, one laden with Wood, and another with Stores of a considerable Value.—

COMING UP: More about Boston’s great fire of 1760.

Three Decades of Historical Context

The Saga of the Brazen Head started in 1730 with the first appearance of brazier James Jackson in the Boston newspapers, and it’s reached the year 1759.

What else was happening in New England in three decades? If we look at readily available timelines of Massachusetts history from FamilySearch.org or the World Atlas, we find the answer was: Nothing.

Of course, plenty did happen in those years. There weren’t dramatic changes in political constitutions, empire-ending wars, life-changing inventions, and the like, but there were events for Mary Jackson and her family to worry about and celebrate. So here, after some quick cramming, is the historical context for the saga so far.

The first of those decades occurred under the government of Sir Robert Walpole (1676-1745) in Britain and Gov. Jonathan Belcher (1682-1757, shown here) in Massachusetts. Walpole used European alliances to maintain international peace. That produced a lull in Britain’s wars with France and other Catholic powers of Europe, and thus relatively easy trade, fishing, and frontier settlement for British colonists in New England.

Belcher wasn’t as dominating as Walpole, but he was able to remain governor of both Massachusetts and New Hampshire for over a decade starting in 1729. Being a royal governor was a tough job. One answered to the Crown and its demands while feeling pressure from the colony’s politicians and people to serve their interests instead. And British society being what it was, governors also kept an eye out for their own economic well being.

Belcher had some advantages in being a Congregationalist merchant born in Boston and thus like his most wealthy constituents. But he couldn’t keep everyone happy forever. The royal government thought Belcher should do more to stop people felling New England tree trunks reserved as masts for the Royal Navy. (Some of Belcher’s friends benefited from this harvest.) In addition, the shortage of hard cash produced local pleas for more paper currency while the Crown wanted control over the money supply.

In 1739, Walpole couldn’t hold back the clamor for Britain to enter the War of Jenkins’ Ear. After three further years of declining popularity and military failures, he resigned.

That same war opened an opportunity for William Shirley (1694-1771, shown here), an Englishman who had moved to Massachusetts and become a critic of Gov. Belcher. He recruited troops for an early campaign in the Caribbean and so impressed London that the Crown made Shirley governor of Massachusetts in 1741. (Belcher eventually won the post of governor of New Jersey instead.)

Both Belcher and Shirley had to deal with the local campaign for the Massachusetts Land Bank. In 1740 the General Court overrode their opposition and authorized that private organization to issue bills of credit, which functioned as paper currency. Then Parliament outlawed the bank. With the Massachusetts economy in danger, Shirley and the legislature managed to bring about a soft landing for the former bank’s managers and creditors.

Those developments affected Mary Jackson and some of the people around her. All the dispute over paper money brought in papermaker Richard Fry, of course. And all those bills of credit meant Massachusetts currency was losing value.

Mary’s husband James died in 1735 while returning from a visit to Samuel Waldo’s development in southern Maine, which grew during that peaceful decade. Waldo also had a contract to supply masts to the Royal Navy, so he wanted Gov. Belcher to protect the navy’s exclusive rights. When that didn’t happen, Waldo started promoting Shirley for higher office. However, once war broke out, the Maine frontier became vulnerable to attack from both sea and land, and Waldo’s settlements shrank.

In the early 1740s, Britain’s war with Spain expanded beyond Jenkins’ Ear to become the War of the Austrian Succession or, as North Americans called it, King George’s War. In 1745 Gov. Shirley organized an attack on the French fortification at Louisbourg. The British army and navy gave only lukewarm support to that effort, but it succeeded—Massachusetts’s greatest military triumph. Decades later, the province’s Patriots still pointed to that moment as proof that they could defend themselves against the royal army.

Another effect of King George’s War was the Royal Navy impressing more sailors in Boston. In 1747, Commodore Charles Knowles (shown here) seized dozens of sailors, setting off days of riots. Huge crowds surrounded Gov. Shirley, twice at his house and once at the Town House in central Boston, close to the Brazen Head. He tried to call out the militia against the crowd, only to realize that the militia regiment and the crowd were the same men. The Massachusetts Council had to resolve the crisis, with Knowles releasing the sailors and the crowd releasing the naval officers they had grabbed.

When King George’s War ended in 1748, Britain returned Louisbourg to France. Massachusetts was still trying to get the royal government to reimburse the costs of its military campaign. One of the men who had funded that expedition was Samuel Waldo. He decided that Shirley wasn’t working hard enough to pay back his inflated expenses, so Waldo joined the governor’s political enemies. Among those foes were Dr. William Douglass, who decades before had opposed smallpox inoculation, and young political journalist Samuel Adams, son of a Land Bank director.

In 1749 Gov. Shirley sailed for London in order to deal with Waldo’s complaints. Shortly afterward, a large amount of gold and silver coin arrived in Boston harbor—the Crown had finally reimbursed the province with specie. Thomas Hutchinson, then Speaker of the Massachusetts House, wrote a law to use that hard cash to retire paper currency that had lost value. That put Massachusetts’s economy on a sounder footing. Henceforth, businesspeople like Mary Jackson distinguished between current pounds, which kept close to face value, and inflated “Old Tenor” money.

Gov. Shirley resumed his post as governor of Massachusetts in 1753. He seems to have been happiest as a war governor, and was soon preparing for another fight against France. After the death of Gen. Edward Braddock in 1755, Shirley was even commander-in-chief of British forces in North America for a while. But the Seven Years’ (or French and Indian) War brought the governor no military miracle like the Louisbourg expedition. He feuded with other commanders like Sir William Johnson, his own western campaign failed, and officials in London took against him. In 1756, Gov. Shirley was sacked. (Like Belcher, he did manage to become governor somewhere else—in the Bahamas.)

Also in 1756, hundreds of French Acadians came ashore in Boston, expelled from Nova Scotia. Their ships had actually arrived in the harbor in December 1755, but Gov. Shirley refused to let them land, and half those refugees died on their ships that winter. For the next decade, the population of Massachusetts contained a category of “French neutrals.”

This was also the period of religious fervor in colonial America later dubbed the “Great Awakening.” The Rev. Jonathan Edwards led revivals at his meetinghouse in Northampton starting in 1733 and published Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God in 1741. The Rev. George Whitefield preached up and down the North American coast in 1740, 1745, 1751, and 1754. Many New England Congregationalist meetings were roiled by splits between “New Light” and “Old Light” ministers and congregations. As Anglicans, the Jackson family was probably less affected by those disputes.

In 1757 a new royal governor arrived from London: Thomas Pownall (1722-1805). He had close contacts—i.e., his younger brother John—in the Secretary of State’s office, and a lot of big ideas about how the empire should run. He viewed the British constitution as subordinating the military power to the civil, even in wartime. He wanted to balance imperial needs and local rights. Pownall became a favorite of the Massachusetts merchants and Whigs but had a standoffish relationship with the man appointed lieutenant governor under him—Thomas Hutchinson.

Early in 1759, Pownall led a new campaign to conquer and settle the Penobscot region. Samuel Waldo came along and died that May, back on his Maine holdings. The previous year, British military forces had retaken Louisbourg. In July 1759, Gen. Jeffery Amherst finally took Fort Ticonderoga. In September, Gen. James Wolfe defeated Gen. Montcalm at Québec. Together with British and allied victories at Guadeloupe, Madras, Minden, and Quiberon Bay, these victories made 1759 an “annus mirabilis.” Boston celebrated along with the rest of the British Empire.

TOMORROW: Calamity at the Brazen Head.

A Firmer for Molding Your Square Butts

The Jackson family of the Brazen Head advertised a lot of hardware that was unfamiliar to me—not that I do much metalworking or woodworking.

I looked up a bunch of those terms while confirming my transcription and got curious about others. So here’s what I learned about the unfamiliar inventory at the Brazen Head.

close-stool pans: Close stools were cabinets with chamber pots inside.

coffin bullions: Lumps of metal used to decorate coffins, it looks like.

double and single spring chest locks, stock locks: Edward Hoppus’s Builder’s Dictionary said, “LOCKS for Doors are of various Kinds; as for outer Doors, called Stock-locks; for Chamber-doors, call’d Spring-locks, &c.”

egg nob locks: Apparently locks built with doorknobs shaped like eggs.

H & HL hinges: Door hinges distinguished by their shapes. H hinges looked like the letter H. HL hinges, as illustrated a couple of days ago, looked like an H mashed with an L; some professional guides therefore called them IL hinges instead.

firmers: Merriam-Webster says a “firmer chisel” is “a woodworking chisel with a thin flat blade,” and dates the two-word phrase to 1827. The Jacksons’ ad is considerably earlier, of course. The word comes from the French “fermoir,” meaning to form.

gimblets: Now spelled “gimlet,” a T-shaped tool with a screw-tip for boring holes.

hallow and rounds: The first type often spelled “hollow,” these are planes for molding wood, shown here.

splinter and black pad-locks: A splinter padlock had four springs, according to a nineteenth-century reference. A black padlock was presumably black.

post pepper-mills: The sort of cylindrical pepper grinder we’re used to.

handles & scutcheons: Scutcheons were small metal plates, often shaped like shields (escutcheons), to protect part of a wooden surface from handling.

prospect hinges: These seem to be hinges for the “prospect door” in a desk, which was a “single, hinged portal fashioned with a keyhole,…for private or secret documents.”

brass & iron table ketches: Even Luke Beckerdite’s American Furniture could only guess that a “table Ketch” was “possibly a tea table,” but it sounds like it was part of a table—maybe a metal reinforcement of a table leg or foot.

rule joint table hinges: Diagram of a rule joint for a table leaf here.

square butts, dovetails: I think these were metal pieces to reinforce types of joints for two pieces of wood.

girt web: Usually called “girth web,” heavy canvas straps used to strap on saddles and other things.

jobents: A specialty nail with a thick shank, made for attaching iron straps.

dutch spectacles: Spectacles that perched on one’s nose without earpieces, like pince-nez.

bath metal thimbles with steel tops: Bath metal was an alloy of zinc and copper.

aul-hafts: Handles for awls.

spinnel: Sometimes this is a term for a mineral, more usually spelled “spinel.” The phrase “short spinel” is defined as “bleached yarn” or “unwrought inkle” in nineteenth-century references. But I can’t figure out why the Jacksons would be selling either of those things, and why they would list it between “punches” and “white wax.”

Box Irons, Flat Irons: Flat irons were solid, and box irons had a metal part that could be removed and placed in the fire, then replaced in the hollow of the iron to keep it heated.

And finally…

A Quantity of large brown Paper fit for sheathing Ships: In the 1730s, there were two ways to protect ships’ hulls against shipworm. One was attaching sheets of lead to the hull, which of course didn’t help with buoyancy. The other was to plaster the hull with tar, stick on a layer of hair, and then attach a thin sheath of wood that could be replaced as it was eaten away. It looks like thick rag paper could substitute for or supplement the hair.

(When copper sheathing became standard in the late eighteenth century, paper was one way to keep different metals from touching each other in the salt water and suffering galvanic corrosion. But Mary Jackson’s 1736 ad was too early to refer to that use.)

TOMORROW: Historical context for The Saga of the Brazen Head so far.

“To be sold by Wholesale and Retail, By James Jackson”

As I research Mary Jackson and her family, I must say it would be a lot easier if they weren’t named Jackson. And if they hadn’t kept choosing first names like James, William, and Mary. But of course they weren’t the only family in eighteenth-century New England who set traps for researchers that way.

As I reported before, James and Mary Jackson had their second son baptized James at King’s Chapel on 8 May 1735. Boys named Jackson were admitted to the South Latin School in 1740 and 1742. Unfortunately, those school records don’t include full names. It’s possible that those boys were William and/or James Jackson, who would have been aged nine and seven respectively. If so, like most boys who started at a Boston grammar school in the 1700s, they never graduated, probably shifting to a writing school for better education in business skills.

This is just a guess based on their later paths, but I suspect William spent his adolescence helping Mama at the Brazen Head while James clerked for another import merchant. I’m even ready to guess that businessman was William Rand (1716-1758), who sold cloth and other dry goods “in Cornhill, The Corner Shop on the North side of the Townhouse,” per the 24 June 1751 Boston Evening-Post. In other words, very close to the Brazen Head.

This shopkeeper William Rand is often mixed with Dr. William Rand (1689-1759), who was an apothecary and a town tax collector. To confound matters further, that doctor had a namesake nephew, who in this period was a Harvard student and medical trainee and later was a counterfeiter. But I digress.

James Jackson came of age in May 1756. Already the town’s ministers were reading a notice that he intended to marry Sarah Rand—possibly the baby sister of shopkeeper William Rand, born in Charlestown in 1729. On 27 May, the couple wed at King’s Chapel. (The record there gives Sarah’s first name as Mary, just to add to the genealogical muddle. But that’s clearly an error, judging by the intention of marriage and later records of the couple.)

James Jackson thus married at an unusually young age, perhaps to a woman six years older. However, there’s no indication Sarah Rand was pregnant when they married, as many New England brides were. Instead, he seems to have been mature for his years.

James and Sarah Jackson had their own little baby James baptized at King’s Chapel on 26 June 1757, with his mother Mary standing as one of the sponsors. Five years later, on 10 Mar 1762, their son William was baptized in the same church; grandmother Mary and uncle William Jackson were sponsors.

On 26 Feb 1759 the Boston Evening-Post ran this advertisement:

Just Imported from LONDON, in the Brigantine Hannah, John Ayers Master, and to be sold by Wholesale and Retail,
By James Jackson,
At his Shop opposite Ebenezer Storer, Esq; and Son’s Warehouse in Union-street, BOSTON, very reasonable for ready Money,

A Great Variety of European and India GOODS, consisting of such a Number of Articles as would be tedious to the Reader. Likewise, a fine Assortment of Cutlery Ware, English Shoe Soles, Writing Paper, Looking Glasses, Raisins, Currants, Starch and Spices.

A similar ad followed in the Boston Post-Boy. Young Jackson had opened his own shop in the North End and was importing from Britain and beyond.

In March, the Boston town meeting elected James Jackson as one of twelve Clerks of the Market, alongside such peers as the silversmith Nathaniel Hurd. That was an entry-level elected position which the community usually gave to a young man seen as reliable and on his way up.

TOMORROW: Taking a chance with the Jackson brothers.

A New Owner at the Brazen Head

By 1756, Mary Jackson had been running her shop at the Sign of the Brazen Head in central Boston for over twenty years.

She had started as a suddenly widowed mother of two young children and for a few years had a male business partner, but then he died, too. For over a decade, Jackson had been the sole proprietor.

On 23 August, Mary Jackson’s Boston Gazette advertisement disclosed big news about the business. She had a new partner: her son William.

For folks who love historic hardware and retailing, here’s a full transcript of that ad. For anyone else, feel free to skip down to the discussion of the Jackson family.

Imported from LONDON and BRISTOL, and to be sold by
Mary and William Jackson,
At the Brazin-Head in Cornhill, by Wholesale and Retail. And as ready Money is a great Inducement, they will sell cheap for Cash. Viz.

BRASS kettles, skillets, warming-pans, frying-pans, iron dripping-pans, iron pots, kettles & skillets, powder, lead & shot of all sizes, London dishes, plates and cream-pots, spoons, pewter measures, porringers, bed and close-stool pans, turrenes, tea-kettles, & copper coffee-pots, kettle-pots, brass & copper sauce-pans, copper drinking pots, andirons, shovel and tongs, fire-pans, brass & iron candlesticks, iron chafin-dishes, flat-irons, skimmers, ladles, bellows & box-irons, nails, brads, tacks & hob nails of all sorts, coffin bullions, tin tax, double and single spring chest locks, stock locks, egg nob locks and other door locks, H & HL hinges, pew hinges, hooks and hinges, and garnets, chest hinges, door latches, compasses, hammers, firmers, gimblets, hand-saws, plows, hallow and rounds, sugars, rules, plastering & brick trowels, splinter and black pad-locks, brass nails, post pepper-mills, brass cocks, an assortment of files, desk & book-case furniture, viz. handles & scutcheons of various sorts, desk and book-case locks, book-case hinges, scutcheons and bolts, prospect hinges, schutcheons and locks, desk buttons, brass pins, clock case hinges, furniture for tea-chests, brass & iron table ketches, London glue, screws, brass & iron desk hinges, rule joint table hinges, square butts, dovetails, three barr’d, plain and crooked stirrup irons, women stirrup irons, white setts, black buckles, saddle heads, turf nails, bridle kitts, rings and staples, girt web, saddler’s billions, jobents, spurs, tinn’d curry-combs, &c. case-knives and forks, jack-knives & pen-knives, coat and sleeve buttons, swords & belts, brass and leather ink-pots, shoe & knee buckles, scissars & shears, London needles, pocket-compasses, ivory & horn combs, razors & hones, dutch spectacles, brass & iron thimbles, bath metal thimbles with steel tops, fountain pans, brass, iron, steel & japann’d snuffers, black glass necklaces, stay-hooks, snuff-boxes, powder-flasks, pewter tea-spoons, flints, money-scales and weights, jews-harps, fish-lines and hooks, gun-locks, an assortment of shoemakers tools, knives, hammers, sowing & pegging and blades, aul-hafts, rasps & knippers, tax, punches, spinnel, white wax, with a great variety of other London, Birmingham, and Sheffield cutlery wares.

Also, Good Connecticut PORK and BEEF.

N.B. Any Person in the Country, by sending a Letter, shall be as well used as if present themselves. Old Brass, Copper, Pewter, Lead and Bees-wax, will be taken in Exchange the same as Cash.

The timing of this advertisement raises a couple of questions. William made his debut in the very first installment of The Saga of the Brazen Head, when he was baptized on 13 July 1731 at King’s Chapel. That meant he came of legal age in 1752. But it took another four years before William’s mother made him her legal partner.

In fact, William arrival in the newspaper advertising coincided with his little brother James coming of age in the late spring of 1756. I’m not sure what to make of that. Was it just coincidence, or was Mary sorting out both her sons’ futures at once?

It also seems significant that Mary Jackson continued to be the senior partner in the family firm, her name listed first in the advertisements. Indeed, after 1758 the Brazen Head ads usually appeared under the name of “Mary Jackson & Son,” not even naming William.

TOMORROW: How was the younger James Jackson keeping busy?

[The photo above shows an HL hinge, courtesy of Williamsburg Blacksmiths.]

“Just imported, and to be sold by Mary Jackson”

After her business partner Robert Charles died, Mary Jackson stepped up her advertising from the Sign of the Brazen Head.

Her main business was brass hardware and metals, both made in the shop and shipped in from Britain. For example, the Boston Evening-Post for 28 Sept 1747 announced:

Just imported, and to be sold by Mary Jackson, at the Brazen Head in Cornhill, all sorts of Ironmongery, Braziery and Cutlery Ware, also Pewter and Lead by the Hundred, and Nails of all sorts by the Cask or smaller Quantities, at reasonable rates.

But hardware wasn’t all that Jackson sold. Like a lot of Boston shopkeepers and importers, she carried other goods, wherever she saw a profit. That brought her into lines more typical of “she-merchants,” such as fashionable dry goods. On 9 May 1748, her Boston Evening-Post ad said:

To be sold by Mary Jackson, at the Brazen Head Cornhill, Boston, sundry close Mournings, viz.

Bumbazeen, Alamode, Lutestring, Norwich Crapes, Tiffany, Hat-band Crape, Paper and Gause Fans, Handkerchiefs, Women’s Lamb Gloves, also Mens and Womens white Lamb Gloves, and Womens Mittens, Shalloons, Buckrams, &c. by Wholesale and Retail

N.B. The said Mary Jackson has got a handsome new Chaise to sell…

Jackson’s late husband had also advertised a chaise from the Brazen Head, back in 1735. The shop’s location on the main street near the center of town may have made it a good place to display a vehicle.

Likewise, the Brazen Head became a sales outlet for produce from New England farms, as these select advertisements from the Brazen Head show.

• Boston Evening-Press, 19 Mar 1753: “CHOICE BUTTER, either by the Firkin or Tub”
• Boston Evening-Press, 22 July 1754: “CHOICE Connecticut Pork, Florence Oil, Indigo, and Mould Candles.”
• Boston News-Letter, 4 Sept 1755: “POWDER, Shot, Flints, [various types of hardware], Desk and Book-case Furniture: With a Variety of either London, Birmingham and Sheffield Country Ware, too tedious to mention.”

In the last advertisement, Jackson also said she would sell the by-now-usual pork in “exchange for Rum, Sugar or Molasses,” indicating both the ongoing cash shortage in the colonies and her ability to sell those commodities on to others. As for the ammunition featured in the ad, that new line might reflect the oncoming war against France.

TOMORROW: A new young partner.

“The late Company of Jackson and Charles”

As proprietor of the brazier’s shop at the Sign of the Brazen Head, Mary Jackson managed a largely male staff of colleagues, journeymen, and apprentices.

The probate file for Jackson’s late husband James listed five males questioned about goods in the shop when he died: William Coffin, Benjamin Simons, George Reston, Abraham Bennet, and Isaac Beal (as near I can read the handwriting). The clear implication is that those were employees.

I looked for all five names in my usual places and could find only one, but he was a brazier. Late in the winter of 1737, Coffin took out ads in the Boston Gazette and Boston Evening-Post to state:

WILLIAM COFFIN, at the Ostrich, near the Draw-Bridge Makes & Sells Mill Brasses, Chambers for Pumps, Brass Cocks of all Sizes, Knockers for Doors, Brasses for Chaises and Sadlers. Brass Doggs of all sorts, Candlesticks, Shovels and Tongs, Small Bells, and all other Sorts of Founders Ware.

Also all sorts of Braziers and Pewterers Ware, Small Stills and Wormes, and all sorts of Plumbers Work; likewise Buys old Copper, Brass, Pewter and Lead.

Coffin had thus gone into business for himself after working for the Jacksons. But he did so up near the border of the North End.

The 29 Nov 1736 Boston Gazette named another expert working in the Jackson shop:

If any Persons desire to know the true Value of Ores, Minerals, or Metals, of what kind soever, may have them justly Essay’s on reasonable Terms, by Robert Baden, at Mrs. Jackson’s Founder, at the Brazen Head in Cornhill, Boston.

Obviously Baden’s expertise as an assayer of metals was helpful for Jackson as well.

Mary Jackson’s most important coworker—legally her partner in the early 1740s—was a man named Robert Charles. I don’t know if he was from New England or Britain. He was in Boston by 1740 when he was initiated into the St. John’s Lodge of Freemasons.

Records shows at least two Massachusetts craftsmen doing business with the firm of Mary Jackson and Robert Charles (with Jackson always listed first as the senior partner). The clockmaker Benjamin Bagnall bought “wire, brass plates, hinges, locks, and escutcheons, as well as ‘Dolphins for Clock,’” between 1739 and 1743, according to Charles L. Venable’s American Furniture in the Bybee Collection. The Dallas Museum of Art has a Bagnall clock featuring just such dolphin ornaments, shown above.

Helen Schatvet Ullmann’s The Pierponts of Roxbury, Massachusetts says that housewright Robert Pierpont bought £14.6.7 worth of “pew hinges, roundhead nails, a hand saw, a penknife, and other items, including a candlestick and a brass skillet.”

We know about the Pierpont purchases because Jackson and Charles took the housewright to court as they settled accounts to split up their business. The Boston Evening-Post for 9 Apr 1744 ran this notice:

Robert Charles, in Copartnership with Mrs. Mary Jackson, being obliged speedily to go for England, hereby desires all Persons that have any Accounts open with the said Copartnership, to come and settle them before he goes, to prevent further Trouble.

N.B. the said Jackson and Charles have a likely Negro Girl about fourteen Years old to dispose of.

That enslaved girl probably worked in the Jackson household. At the time, Mary’s two sons were a little younger than that girl.

It’s not clear if Robert Charles ever made it to England. On 6 Nov 1745, the same probate judge who oversaw the settlement of James Jackson’s estate appointed Mary Jackson an administrator of Charles’s estate. The last reference to the partnership that I’ve found is an announcement in the 6 Oct 1746 Boston Evening-Post:

All Persons that have any Demands on the late Company of Jackson and Charles, are desir’d to bring in their Accounts to Mrs. Mary Jackson, Administratrix, in order to a Settlement; and all those indebted to said Company are desir’d to pay their respective Dues, as they would avoid being sued.

Ten years after her husband’s death, Mary Jackson was once again on her own.

COMING UP: What was on sale at the Brazen Head.

“Mary makes and sells Tea-Kettles and Coffee pots”

As recounted in yesterday’s posting, by the end of 1735 Mary Jackson had reopened her husband James’s braziery shop a few weeks after he died at sea.

Mary Jackson had two sons under age five to provide for, and, according to accounts she later filed to the probate court, a staff of seven dependent on the shop. Plus her husband left well over a thousand pounds in inventory, and well over two thousand pounds in debt. So there were many reasons to make the most of the business.

Given that amount of stock at the Sign of the Brazen Head and the shop’s location near the center of Boston, Jackson immediately became one of the town’s most visible businesswomen.

The best documented “she-merchant” in pre-Revolutionary Boston was Elizabeth Murray, subject of Patricia Cleary’s 2000 biography. Murray opened a millinery shop after arriving from Scotland as a young woman in 1751. She imported the latest dress fashions, cloth, ribbons, and other dry goods, and she gave lessons in genteel embroidery and other skills for girls.

Murray married three times, gaining a great deal of wealth with her second marriage to Isaac Smith, but she was always able to support herself. She used prenuptial agreements to ensure she controlled her own wealth. And she acted as mentor to younger single women in Boston business, such as Janette Day and the Cumings sisters.

Jackson, in contrast, appears to have become a businesswoman by default because of her husband’s death. Furthermore, manufacturing brass hardware was not a traditionally female profession like millinery.

On 11 Oct 1736 Jackson published this advertisement in the Boston Gazette:

MARY JACKSON, at the Brazen-Head, in Cornhill, makes and sells all sorts of Brass and Founders Ware, as Hearths, Fenders, Shovels and Tongs, Hand-Irons, Candlesticks, Brasses for Chaises and Saddles, of the newest Fashion; all sorts of Mill Brasses; Mortars, Cocks, large and small; all sorts of polish’d Brazier’s Ware, at reasonable Rates.

A Quantity of large brown Paper fit for sheathing Ships, to be sold: Likewise buys old Copper, Brass, Pewter, Lead and Iron.

I’ve found a couple of other ads in which Jackson stated in some way that she actually produced the metal goods she sold, such as this line in the 21 June 1750 Boston News-Letter:

Said Mary makes and sells Tea-Kettles and Coffee pots; copper Drinking-pots, brass and copper Sauce-pans, Stew-pans, and Baking-pans; Kettle-pots, and Fish-Kettles.

However, in many more advertisements over the course of twenty years, Mary Jackson emphasized that she sold the hardware and other goods at the Brazen Head. So I’m not sure how hands-on she was in the production of brassware, as opposed to supervising employees’ work, managing imports from Britain, and running the retail shop. Because she was definitely the boss of the enterprise.

TOMORROW: The men who worked for Mary Jackson.

Settling James Jackson’s Estate

The last installment of The Saga of the Brazen Head ended on 12 Sept 1735 with James Jackson drowning on a trip home from Maine. He left his wife Mary with two sons under the age of five.

James left no will, so on 25 September a probate judge appointed three people to administer the estate: William Speakman, baker; John Deacon, blacksmith; and Mary Jackson, widow. Speakman and Deacon’s names don’t appear in the probate file again.

Mary Jackson in turn appears to have hired Leonard Jarvis, whose gravestone at Copp’s Hill illustrates this posting, to inventory the estate and settle some debts.

In January 1736, Jackson submitted a six-page inventory of her husband’s property. He owned no real estate. The hardware in the store started with “36 Pair of Large Brass Candlesticks” and totaled £1,469.11.8, plus about £100 of founder’s tools and raw metals. The household goods included a mahogany card table, an “old fashioned” looking glass, and 39 pieces of pewter tableware. All told, Jackson valued her late husband’s property at a little over £1,700.

That wasn’t the end of the probate process by a long shot, however.

In August 1737 the probate judge questioned five men about the Jackson estate, asking if they knew of any property not included in the inventory. From three of those men came news of:

• “old Iron & old brass carried into the Cellar to the value of one hundred weight”
• “some brass Patterns which were never shown to the Apprizers by William Who is run away”
• “old Cocks that came to be mended & a pair of old Hinges”

In November 1737 the court summoned Richard Fry, then back in Boston and feuding with Samuel Waldo. Fry owed money to the Jackson estate, with the security being a parcel of paper—“but it being So Bad that its for ye most part unvendible.” For papermaking fans, this parcel consisted of reams of “Large bag paper,” “Small Capp,” “Best Sorted Whited Brown,” “Whited Brown,” and a “Bundle.” Mary Jackson had sold most of the bag paper and best whited brown. The probate court empowered a committee to examine and value the rest.

The court had already commissioned those same men to sort out the debit side of the estate. On 24 July 1738, the Boston Gazette ran this notice:

The Commissioners to Examine the Creditors Claims to the Estate of Mr. James Jackson, late of Boston Founder, deceased, will meet once a Month at the usual time and place for Four Months longer, to Receive said Claims, of which the Creditors are to take notice.

The commissioners filed their report in October 1738. They found that the James Jackson estate owed eighty-four creditors a total of £2,696.5.10. The biggest creditor, with over £1,650 due, was the wealthy merchant Charles Apthorp. The second largest, owed only £228, was James Bowdoin.

In yet another document for the probate court, Mary Jackson reported the total amount due to her husband as £1,787.6.9, and that she had collected £221 and a penny since his death. In that filing Jackson also included a list of expenses since her husband’s death, including payments to the commissioners and others who helped settle the estate, wages for a nurse, “weeds” for mourning, and necessary household expenses. That was enough for the judge to declare the estate settled in 1739.

Mary Jackson’s expense list reveals some details of her husband’s brazier business. She paid rent to William Dummer for the shop, separate from other rent, probably for where the family lived. She reported “the Expence of maintaining 7 persons during the Shops being shut up wch. was 4 Weeks.” I’m guessing those seven people included the five men interrogated about things removed from Jackson’s estate, plus the elusive William.

The four weeks’ closure sheds new light on this advertisement that had appeared in the Boston Gazette on 27 Oct 1735:

MARY JACKSON, the Widow of the late James Jackson Founder, at the Brazen Head in Cornhill Boston, sells all sorts of Founders Ware, and all sorts of bright Braziers Ware, and likewise Casteth all sorts of Mill Brasses.

Having kept the Sign of the Brazen Head closed for a month, all the while paying the skilled staff to stay on, Mary Jackson had opened for business again.

TOMORROW: Mary Jackson, businesswoman.

“Overset in the Storm near the Isle of Sholes”

In the Boston newspapers printed on Thursday, 15 Sept 1735, we can watch the maritime town struggle to gather and digest news of a calamity at sea. First, the Boston Post-Boy:

Last Monday Night we had a hard Storm, the Wind from N. E. to S. E. in which sundry Vessels were drove on Shoar in the neighbouring Ports . . .

We hear, that a Sloop belonging to Newbury, one Offin Boardman Master, bound from Casco-Bay to this Place, having a Raft of Masts at her Stern, was overset in her Passage, on Monday Night last, and thirteen People drown’d, being all the Persons on board, Nine of them were Passengers; she was carried into the Isle of Shoals last Wednesday.

This Offin Boardman (1698-1735) was the grandfather of a man of the same name who commanded a privateer during the Revolutionary War and lived on Historic New England’s Spencer-Pierce-Little Farm after 1796.

Here’s the 15 Sept 1735 Boston Gazette:

Monday Night last in the Storm Offin Boreman bound from Casco to Newbury in a Sloop laden with Lumber, was overset in the Storm near the Isle of Sholes she had on board 8 or 10 Passengers, some belonging to this Town, among whom were three Married Women, all lost; we have heard the Names of some of ’em but not with the certainty as to mention ’em. Mr. Boreman has left a Wife and 3 or 4 Children, and had on board with him a valuable Negro.

That evening came the Boston Evening-Post:

Monday Night last we had a very severe Storm of Wind at N. E. which did some Damage to the Shipping in our Harbour . . .

The same Night a Sloop coming from Casco-Bay, Offin Boardman of Newbury Master, was overset near the Isle of Shoals, and all the People drowned. ’Tis said there were on board, (besides Three Men belonging to the Sloop,) Ten Passengers, some of which belonged to this Town, but tho’ several Sloops came in Yesterday from Casco-Bay, yet we cannot get a particular Account of their Names. We hear that the Sloop has been since found, and is towed into the Isle of Shoals.

A week later, the 22 Sept 1735 Boston Post-Boy finally provided specifics:

We have now certain Information, That in the Sloop which was overset in the violent Storm we had last Monday Night was Se’n-night, as mention’d in our last, there were but Eight Persons, all of whom were drowned, viz. Offin Boardman, Master, Thomas Coker and Edmund Pilsbury, all of Newbury; a Man belonging to the Sloop, whose Name was cannot learn; Mr. James Jackson of Boston, Founder; the Wife of Nathaniel Lock, the Wife of John Sweet, and the Wife of William Bucknam, all of Casco-Bay.

At the Sign of the Brazen Head in Boston, Mary Jackson was left a widow with two sons. William was four years old, and James was only four months.

COMING UP: Picking up the pieces.

“Brown Paper made at Mr. Fry’s Mill”

In 1734 Richard Fry finally set about making paper at the mill built for him in Stroudwater outside Falmouth (now Portland), Maine, by real-estate developers Samuel Waldo and Thomas Westbrook. Fry sublet some of that facility to another English papermaker named John Collier.

On 14 October, Fry addressed his old neighbors in yet another hortatory advertisement in the New-England Weekly Journal:

To the INHABITANTS of the GREAT TOWN of BOSTON;

It is now almost Three Years, since I Published an Advertisement, to shew you the excellent OEconomy of the Dutch, in the Paper Manufactory, in order to induce you to follow so laudable an Example; but I am sorry to say, I have had but small Effects of it as yet; when Gentlemen have been at great Expence to serve the Public, as well as their own Private Interest, it is the Duty of every Person, as much as in them lies, to help forward so useful a Manufactory; Therefore I intreat all those that are Lovers of their Country, to be very careful of their Linnen Rags, and send them to Joseph Stocker in Spring Lane, BOSTON, and they shall receive ready Money for the same.

Richard Fry.

That plea highlights what seems like a fundamental flaw in the plan to run a paper mill on the Presumpscot River. A frontier settlement didn’t have nearly as many rags as a big old port like Boston. Nor did it have printers, newspapers, attorneys, or many businessmen in need of lots of paper. Waldo was still busy recruiting settlers, as this broadside shows. But aside from supply, demand, and labor, Fry’s enterprise had great prospects.

Meanwhile in Boston, as I quoted a couple of days ago, James Jackson first advertised himself as making and selling brass goods at the sign of the Brazen Head. On 8 May 1735, James and his wife Mary had their second son, James, Jr., baptized at King’s Chapel.

After another two months, on 7 July 1735, the New-England Weekly Journal announced:

Brown paper, TO BE SOLD, for ready Money, by James Jackson, at the Brazen Head in Cornhill, Boston.

P.S. There will be no more Brown Paper made at Mr. Fry’s Mill at Stroudwater, at Casco-Bay

I’ve found no clue about how Fry and Jackson linked up. Why would a shop full of brass hardware be a good outlet for brown paper? Perhaps the two men felt some affinity as recent arrivals from England making their way among established Yankees.

In any event, at the end of that summer James Jackson took a trip up to Casco Bay. He might have been delivering or installing brass fixtures in a mill or other new building. He might have been picking up more paper to sell. Jackson might even have been exploring the possibility of joining Waldo and Westbrook’s settlement, moving his small family to the Maine coast.

He never came back.

TOMORROW: “a very severe Storm of Wind.”

“At the Brazen Head in Cornhill Boston”

One of the landmarks of pre-Revolutionary Boston was the Brazen Head—a carved head covered in bronze. It hung outside a shop near the center of town, right across from the Town House.

Earlier this year I found that several histories say the Sign of the Brazen Head was a tavern. Charles Warren did so in Jacobin and Junto (1931), and Carl Seaburg in Boston Observed (1971). More recent examples include webpages from the usually reliable Massachusetts Historical Society and the Adverts 250 Project.

I’m hoping to cut off that misconception. Dublin may have had a Brazen Head Tavern, but Boston didn’t. The bronze head hanging on Cornhill street in Boston was the shop sign of a family of braziers, or makers and sellers of brass hardware.

What’s more, that family went through a lot of drama over the course of the 1700s, so over the next few days I’ll start telling The Saga of the Brazen Head.

The first page of that story is an advertisement in the 27 Apr 1730 New-England Weekly Journal:

To be Sold by the Maker from London, a quantity of double refin’d hard metal Dishes and Plates, as also, sundry other things of the same metal, by Wholesale, or Retale, at Reasonable Rates, the Owner designing for London, in a Weeks time; to be seen at Mr. James Jackson, Founder, next Door to Mr. Stephen Beautineau in Cornhill, Boston.

It looks like Jackson was referring to himself as both the goods’ “Maker from London” and their “Owner designing for London.” In other words, he had brought Boston the metropolis’s best brasswork, was ready to sell it for good prices, and then planned to return home.

But something changed. On 10 September James Jackson married Mary Hunter in King’s Chapel. I haven’t found out anything more about her, unfortunately. If she wasn’t Anglican before, she was now.

On 22 Feb 1731, Jackson placed a new ad in the New-England Weekly Journal with no hint of impending departure:

Brass Pump Chambers and large Brass Cocks, and all sorts of Founders Ware Cast, made or mended, at reasonable rates, by James Jackson Founder from London near William’s Court in Cornhil Boston: Likewise Exchanges or buys old Copper, Brass, Pewter, Lead or Iron.

On 13 July, James and Mary Jackson baptized their first son William at King’s Chapel.

Jackson’s two advertisements located his place of business on Cornhill in central Boston, but I’m not sure if they specified different sites or the same site in different ways. By the time of his next ad, however, Jackson had settled on a shop location and found a way to make it stand out. In the 16 Dec 1734 Boston Gazette he announced in his largest notice yet:

James Jackson Founder from London, at the Brazen Head in Cornhill Boston, makes and sells all forms of Brass Work, as Brass Hearths, Stove Grates, Fenders, Tongs & Shovels, Andirons, Dogs, Candlesticks, Snuffers & Stands, Plate Warmers, Brass Knockers for Doors, all sorts of Brass Work for Coaches or Chaises, or for Saddlers, Casts Mortars large and small, Brass Chambers for Pumps, brasses for Mills or Cranes, brass Cock Gun Work, small Bells, or any other sort of Cast Work; also sells London made pewter and Brasiers Ware, Brass Kettles large and small, Brass and Copper Warming-pans, of the best sort, Copper Tea Kettles, Coffee pots, Chocolate pots, Boiling-pots, Stueing and Frying pans, brass Skillets, Chafing Dishes, Steel Tongs and Shovels, London and Country made Jacks, Box Irons, Flat Irons, brass Nails by the Thousand, Iron Nails, Files, Melting pots, Gun powder and Shot, Swords & Belts, Horse pistoles, Cabinet Work Chamber & Kitchen Bellows, and sundry other sorts of Brasiers Ware, also Buys or Exchanges, or mends any sort of Copper, Pewter, Lead or Iron, at Reasonable Rates.

Using the symbol and name of the Brazen Head was a, well, brazen move for the Londoner. According to a legend that New England Puritans no doubt disdained, the thirteenth-century monk Roger Bacon had invented a “brazen head”—a mechanical head that answered any yes-or-no question. That device showed up in a popular Elizabethan comedy (as shown above), and Daniel Defoe’s 1722 Journal of the Plague Year stated that a brazen head was one of the common symbols of a fortune-teller.

For James Jackson, however, the shiny head probably just symbolized his brassware. And for the next forty years his Brazen Head shop would be a landmark near the center of Boston.

TOMORROW: A local landmark.