The Islands of Elisha Leavitt

Elisha Leavitt (1713–1790) was a blacksmith in Hingham, and a lot more. He also traded in goods, “engaged in navigation,” and owned part of a fishing company.

In the 1760s Leavitt started to amass a particular sort of real estate: Boston harbor islands. He bought Georges Island in 1765, Lovells Island in 1767, Grape Island just off Hingham, and half of Gallops Island. All told that was over 150 acres of land useful for raising hay and pasturing livestock.

In 1771 Leavitt bought the big old Thaxter house, shown above in a stereograph from the New York Public Library. By that time his son Martin was at Harvard College, preparing to be a doctor. The family was edging into gentility.

A Hingham tradition held that Leavitt was “a bitter Tory.” However, his name doesn’t appear in the newspapers or in Massachusetts Provincial Congress records as a suspected Loyalist. Aside from one election as a constable decades before, he wasn’t politically visible.

Likewise, there’s a tradition that Leavitt let “Nathaniel Ray Thomas and other tories of Marshfield” into his mansion through a “secret door” in September 1774 and hid them until they could make their way to Boston. But no one claimed to have actually seen this hidden room in the Leavitt house before it was demolished. It doesn’t appear to have been an isolated estate, safe from prying eyes. 

I find it hard to believe Leavitt could be well known for supporting the royal government and continue to live peacefully in Hingham from 1774 into 1777 (when his name first appeared in the Boston papers in an advertisement for an until-recently-enslaved man named Primus) and beyond. Massachusetts towns weren’t very forgiving of “bitter Tories” in those years. I suspect Leavitt may have been less militant than his neighbors but was probably more neutral than Loyalist.

In The Islands of Boston Harbor (1935), Edward Rowe Snow wrote: “Realizing that the British officers needed hay for their horses quartered in Boston, [Leavitt] sent word for them to come down to Grape Island and gather the hay.” But Snow offered no documentary evidence for such an offer.

As men like William Harris, Elijah Shaw, and Henry Howell Williams found out in May 1775, the Royal Navy and army was collecting food and forage as they needed, paying owners who cooperated and just taking the supplies otherwise. After all, there was a war on. Given those alternatives, Leavitt may very well have preferred to take the money.

In any event, on 20 May Lt. John Barker of the 4th Regiment inside Boston wrote in his diary:

A Detachment of 1 Subaltern and 30 [men] sent to Crape Island, about 9 miles from Town in the Bay, to bring up hay.

Barker meant Grape Island, Elisha Leavitt’s nearest island property.

TOMORROW: The alarm.

When Minutemen Marched into Marshfield

So in 1775 there were a hundred British soldiers stationed in Marshfield, mostly on the estate of Nathaniel Ray Thomas. Their commander was Capt. Nisbet Balfour of the 4th Regiment.

And on the morning of 20 April, according to Isaac Thomas (who was nine years old at the time), the Marshfield militia was summoned by musket shots and drum.

I wouldn’t just leave the story there, would I?

The colonel of the Plymouth County militia was Theophilus Cotton (detail of his gravestone shown above, courtesy of Find-a-Grave). We have many documents about militia companies that he commanded that day, such as this roster from Hanson. That’s because the men who turned out in April 1775 expected to be paid, so the Massachusetts government asked for and kept paperwork with their names and days of service.

However, we don’t have, to my knowledge, contemporaneous narratives of what happened in Marshfield, from either the locals or the British troops. Instead, we have accounts written decades later by the historians of nearby towns, based and focused on the activities of men from those towns.

Dr. James Thacher’s History of the Town of Plymouth (1832) relates two detailed and flattering anecdotes about how Plymouth’s “watchful sons of liberty” intimidated British officers visiting from Marshfield. As for the military activity in Marshfield, he wrote:

Capt. Balfour, with his company remained at Marshfield for several weeks unmolested, but the day after Lexington battle, governor [Thomas] Gage, apprised of their danger, took off his troops, by water, to Boston.

At this period minute companies were organized in town, and immediately on hearing of the bloodshed at Lexington, Col. Theophilus Cotton, of this town, marched to Marshfield with a detachment of militia under his command. There were at the same time about sixty fishing vessels with their crews on board at anchor in Plymouth harbor. The fishermen voluntarily left their vessels, and speedily marched to Marshfield with their arms, resolutely determined to attack the company of British troops. When arrived at Marshfield, their numbers had increased to near one thousand men, collected from the different towns, burning with the feelings of revenge: they might have surrounded and captured the whole company before they could get to their vessels, but were restrained by Col. Cotton, who it is said had received no orders for the attack.

A more detailed account appeared seventeen more years on in Justin Winsor’s History of Duxbury (1849):

Immediately after the news arrived of the bloodshed at Lexington, Col. Cotton with his regiment formed for an attack on Balfour’s party. On the 20th Col. Cotton and Maj. [Ebenezer] Sprout met in Duxbury, at Col. Briggs Alden’s for consultation. Maj. Judah Alden, who was in Rhode Island when the news came of the fight, had just returned, having ridden all day on horseback, and soon after learning the circumstances of the case, he met Cato, a negro who had been sent by Capt. Balfour to ascertain the numbers of the men who were marching against him. Maj. Alden suspecting his design, told him to tell Balfour, they were coming in a host after him, and dismissed him.

Col. Cotton again returned to Plymouth; and, about 7 o’clock, on the morning of the 21st, marched for Marshfield with a portion of his regiment, consisting of the Plymouth company under Capt. [Thomas] Mayhew, the Kingston under Capt. Peleg Wadsworth, and the Duxbury under Capt. Geo. Partridge. They proceeded to Col. Anthony Thomas’ [sic], about a mile N. W. of Capt. John Thomas’, where were Balfour’s troops.

At this juncture Col. Cotton and Lt. Col. Alden held a long conference, as to the course to be taken. At noon there were assembled about 500 men, including the crews of many fishing vessels in the harbor. In the afternoon Capt. [Earl] Clapp’s company from Rochester and Capt. [Jesse] Harlow’s from Plympton arrived. Capt. Peleg Wadsworth was greatly dissatisfied with the delay, and moved forward his company until within a short distance of the enemy, and then halted as his numbers were too small to venture an attack.

About 3 o’clock, P. M., two sloops hove in sight and anchored off the Brant rock. Balfour then conveyed his company through the Cut river [Green Harbor] in boats, and reaching the sloops soon sailed for Boston, leaving however several sentinels behind to watch the movements of the Americans, who also set guards for the night.

The British watch finally left and in going to their boats, they passed one of the American sentry posts, where were stationed Blanie Phillips, and Jacob Dingley, both of Duxbury. Dingley was seized, and conveyed to their boat, when they concluded to release him. Phillips escaped, fired his gun, and gave an alarm, which roused the country for many miles around.

Balfour, it is reported, said that if he had been attacked, he should have surrendered without a gun. In their hurry to escape they left much of their camp equipage behind.

That final detail is the sort that always makes me skeptical: no source for information from the other side of the war, flattering to the author and readers as local descendants. In the following sentences Winsor cited “an inhabitant of Duxbury” whom Balfour spoke with in New York later in the war, so it’s possible the captain told that person. But it’s also possible that’s what the Plymouth County men told themselves.

With Capt. Balfour and the regulars went Nathaniel Ray Thomas, who settled in Nova Scotia, and possibly some other Marshfield Loyalists. His Patriot son John regained the mansion at the center of the estate after the war. Later Daniel Webster bought that house and enlarged it, creating the Victorian structure which (after a fire) is now reproduced on the property. Locals point out that could have been the site of the second battle of the Revolutionary War.

Rev. Ebenezer Thompson, Minister to the Marshfield Loyalists

Ebenezer Thompson was born in West Haven, Connecticut, in 1712. He graduated from Yale College in 1733, married the following March, and then did what Yale graduates weren’t supposed to do: start worshipping in the Church of England. In fact, in 1743 Thompson took holy orders in England, becoming an ordained Anglican minister.

At that time the Church of England considered most of New England to be missionary territory, hostile or indifferent to the established denomination. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (seal shown here) paid ministers to take posts there since the congregations were too small to support them.

The S.P.G. sent Thompson to Scituate, Massachusetts, at the end of 1743 with a salary of £40 per year. His job was not only to serve Anglicans in that town, where St. Andrew’s Church had been built in 1731, but also to proselytize in the neighboring towns.

In November 1748 Thompson wrote back to his employer:

I beg leave to acquaint the Venerable Society that by the blessing of God on my sincere Endeavours, the Church of England continues to increase in these parts, and people in general begin to conceive a much better opinion of it than they had when I first came here. The good people of Marshfield have so far finished the new Church that on Sunday the 18th of September last, I preached in it to a large Congregation and administered the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper to 18 regular Communicants. I hope the Honorable Society will be pleased to favour this new Church with a Bible and Prayer Book.

Thompson’s reports back to the S.P.G. appear to be almost the only records of Marshfield’s first Anglican church, called Trinity. The presence of that place of worship was a big change for the community. Marshfield was one of Massachusetts’s oldest settlements, its earliest English inhabitants defining themselves by not being Anglican. When Thompson reported performing a service in nearby Plymouth in 1755, he added, “although the town had been settled more than 120 years, the Liturgy of the Church of England had never before been used in public.”

By 1754 Thompson was preaching “once a Month to the New Church at Marshfield, where, and at his own Church of Scituate he has the Pleasure to see the neigbouring Indians come frequently to Church.” Four years later the S.P.G. understood his three churches “at Scituate, Marshfield, and Bridgewater” to be “in a flourishing and encreasing State.” He received a raise to £50 per year.

In March 1760 Thompson reported that his three congregations “live among themselves and with the Dissenters their Neighbours in Friendship and Love; some of whom, of various Denominations, observing the Order and Regularity of our Church, begin to have a much better Opinion thereof than heretofore.” As of 1763 he counted “700 Families of various Persuasions” in those towns, “50 of which profess themselves of the Church of England, and attend the publick Worship with Seriousness, Decency and Devotion.” He had forty-seven white communicants and three Indians, and preached once every five weeks in Marshfield.

Thompson’s Anglican community continued to grow through conversions. In 1771 the minister wrote, “there has been added to the Church four families of good reputation from among the Dissenters.” In 1774 the S.P.G. understood, “The Rev. Mr. Thompson's congregation at Scituate and Marshfield have received an addition of 8 families from the Dissenters.” The Anglican communicants were up to 57 people in 1774, the year that Marshfield had its open political split.

Clearly most of Thompson’s adherents were in Scituate, but it appears some of the most prominent were in Marshfield. Without surviving church records, I can’t say for sure which of Marshfield’s political leaders became Anglican. Cynthia Hagar Krusell’s 1976 pamphlet Of Tea and Tories says the White and Little families did, and Loyalist leader Nathaniel Ray Thomas was definitely C. of E. after he settled in Nova Scotia in 1776.

In the early 1770s the S.P.G. reported, “The Rev. Mr. Thompson Missionary at Scituate and Marshfield, informs the Society that there is more harmony than formerly between his People and the Dissenters.” But that denominational difference was probably significant in the split of 1774. The Anglican ministers of New England were among the strongest proponents of remaining loyal to the government of the king, who was also the head of their church. Thompson’s work was a likely factor in how Marshfield had more Loyalists, and more fervent Loyalists, than nearby towns—even Scituate.

The Rev. Mr. Thompson died on 2 Dec 1775, after the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. In reporting his death to the S.P.G. the following April, the Rev. Edward Winslow of Braintree said:

He continued firm to his principles to the last. In the support of them, and of his duty to the Church, he met with some harsh treatment, under which he gave substantial evidence of a truly Christian temper, as he also did under a long and painful exercise from bodily infirmities.

The Rev. Dr. Henry Caner of Boston’s King’s Chapel wrote, “It is said that his death was partly owing to bodily disorder, and partly to some uncivil treatment from the rebels in his neighbourhood.” An 1899 book went further: “Being a Royalist he felt it imperative upon him, during the Revolution, to continue praying for the King and was imprisoned therefor, dying from the accompanying exposure.” That was too far, in fact—there are no records of Thompson’s imprisonment. But political stress probably contributed to Thompson’s death at sixty-three.

Thompson’s widow stayed in Scituate and died there in 1813 at the age of ninety-nine. After 1775 the Anglican church in Marshfield lacked both a minister and enough parishioners to remain open. Not until decades later did Trinity Church have a significant presence in the town again.

TOMORROW: A child’s view of Marshfield’s Revolution.

The Mystery of Marshfield’s “many ill disposed people”

I’ve been tracing the political back-and-forth in Marshfield, Massachusetts, often labeled a “Tory town” but more clearly a split town.

When the story left off, the Patriot faction was in the ascendancy. Loyalist leader Nathaniel Ray Thomas had been chased out of Marshfield by crowds from the neighboring communities. As its legislative representative the town had replaced Loyalist Abijah White with a moderate Whig, town clerk and treasurer Nehemiah Thomas. A public meeting had then approved sending him to the extralegal Massachusetts Provincial Congress.

But that wasn’t the end of the seesawing. In January 1775 Abijah White and four other citizens of Marshfield, all also named White, plus five men from neighboring Scituate “In behalf of ourselves and our Associates” wrote to the royal governor, Gen. Thomas Gage:

We the Subscribers Inhabitants of Scituate and Marshfield, being loyall Subjects of his Majesty King George the Third, desireous of Supporting his Crown, & dignity and the Laws of Great Brittain, But being insulted, our persons and property’s threatned by many ill disposed people, who declare their intention of Assembling in great numbers to Attack & destroy us and many others among us who are determined as far as in us lies to Support the Laws of the Realm, and repel by force every unlawfull Attempt to destroy his Majestys good Government over us, Desire we may be Assisted with One Hundred of his Majestys troops to repair to Marshfield as Soon as conveniently may (or such number as may be thought proper) by whose Assistance we will to the Utmost of our power repel and resist any violent or rebellious attempt that may be made against us, or any other of his Majesty’s loyall & peaceable Subjects whom we can protect there are about two Hundred & forty in Marshfield & Scituate who are loyally disposed & who we have good reason to believe will stand forth in Support of his Majestys Government:

That brings us back to the moment when I started this series of posts, the arrival of Capt. Nisbet Balfour and one hundred soldiers, two drummers, four corporals, four sergeants, and three subaltern officers in Marshfield on 23 Jan 1775.

It’s unclear to me whether Nathaniel Ray Thomas was back on his large farm by that time or came back with the troops. In any event, he hosted most of the hundred soldiers while others lived at a nearby tavern belonging to a man the Boston Evening-Post called “Tory White.”

And that tilted the political seesaw once again. As I quoted back here, in February the Loyalists had the numbers to control the town meeting, and they voted official thanks to Gage and Adm. Samuel Graves for providing military support. Sixty-four men left in the minority could do no more than issue a public protest. That’s how the situation remained when the war began.

What were the tensions underlying Marshfield’s split? As of October 1765, the town had appeared united against the Stamp Act, calling it “so terrible a calamity as threatens this Province” and urging its representative to respect the Stamp Act Congress in New York. (Marshfield also condemned “the late riotous proceedings in the town of Boston,” but even Boston was embarrassed about those.) The committee who drew up that anti-Crown message included future Loyalists Abijah White and Nathaniel Ray Thomas as well as future Whig Nehemiah Thomas. So whatever divided the town so deeply and evenly appears to have happened in the next eight years.

Unlike in some other communities I’ve seen, this conflict wasn’t between people whose ancestors had joined the Puritan migration of the early 1600s and other families who had arrived more recently and thus felt a tighter tie to Britain. All the men involved had ancestors among the town’s earliest English settlers.

Nor did this political divide seem to reflect old feuds between families. Certainly family networks were involved in each side’s organizing—as in, for instance, all those Whites asking for troops. But other members of that family were Patriots, such as Benjamin White, who took the responsibility of hiding the town militia company’s gunpowder away from those regulars at his house near the town border.

Likewise, the old Little and Winslow families had politically active members on both sides of the conflict. Nathaniel Ray Thomas and Nehemiah Thomas actually descended from two different early settlers surnamed Thomas, but all the families had intermarried, so it looks very hard to draw lines between them.

Geography played some role in the disagreements. Like a lot of old Massachusetts towns, Marshfield had more than one village by this point, and people living in one spot clamored not to have to go all the way to the old town center for worship, town meetings, and school. A second Congregational meeting had been established in the northern part of town in 1738, called the “Chapel of Ease.”

I mentioned how a proposal to annex part of Scituate, to the west, had become an area of contention between almost evenly matched parties in the early 1770s. Sometime in 1774 the town voted that “one-half of the annual town meeting for the future shall be held & kept at the North meeting house.” In contrast, when Marshfield voted to participate in the Provincial Congress, the body met “at the South meeting house.” And the people who protested the town’s thank-you message to Gen. Gage complained that meeting had been “held in a part of the Town where a Town Meeting was never before had.”

Yet there doesn’t seem to have been one neighborhood where all the Loyalists lived. Crown supporters Nathaniel Ray Thomas and Dr. Isaac Winslow lived in the south part of town, as did Whig Nehemiah Thomas and radical young men like Benjamin White.

The weather may have been a factor in which party won votes at town meetings, especially if that factor was combined with having to travel longer. Generally the pro-Crown party prevailed at meetings held in January through March while the pro-Whig party won votes from June through October. But that might be just an artifact of incomplete records and turbulent years.

TOMORROW: Was the Rev. Ebenezer Thompson a factor in Marshfield’s split?

The Political Seesaw in 1774 Marshfield

As the year 1774 began, the Loyalist party in Marshfield was on top, pushing through a town-meeting resolution disapproving of the destruction of tea in Boston harbor the previous month. (And implicitly of the burning of tea in Marshfield itself.)

The town’s representative to the Massachusetts General Court, Abijah White, leaned toward the Crown; he made sure that resolution was published in the Boston papers. White’s fellow selectmen, Dr. Isaac Winslow and Ephraim Little, were also Loyalists. And behind them was Nathaniel Ray Thomas, whose estate was said to be the largest in Plymouth County.

But already those men were reported to be worried about violent opposition from their neighbors. A letter from Duxbury dated 5 February and appearing in the 14 February Boston Gazette claimed:

We hear from Marshfield that the puissant A[bijah] W[hite] Esq. lately went into a neighbor’s house and being seated, tho’ very uneasy, he was inquired of what made him so, when he instantly arose and drew forth a Sword, (being formerly a valiant Soldier) declaring he would make Day-light shine thro’ ’em, but what he would carry his Point, giving as a Reason, that he was afraid of his Life without being arm’d, tho’ never assaulted. Being thus accout’red, one Day on going to his Barn, his Cattle being affrighted, and taking him to be a Stranger, surrounded him, and we hear ’twas with Difficulty that he escaped with his Life and the Loss of his Sword.

Within months, however, the imperial government’s response to the same Boston Tea Party prompted a popular response that reversed the situation in Marshfield. First came the Boston Port Bill and the return of the British army to Boston. Then came the Massachusetts Government Act, permanently changing the province’s constitution in ways large and small.

Along with the latter law came London’s list of members of the new Massachusetts Council, appointed rather than elected. And among those gentlemen, chosen for their loyalty to the royal government, was Nathaniel Ray Thomas. He took his oath of office in Salem on 16 Aug 1774.

Already the Massachusetts people were rising up against those new measures, starting in the western part of the province. That opposition took two main forms: preventing the county courts from opening and trying to intimidate Councilors into resigning. In both types of action, men turned out in their militia units. That was an easy way for them to organize and maintain discipline, a demonstration of how they represented the bulk of the people, and an implicit threat of force.

On 2 September the “Powder Alarm” took place in Cambridge, a response to Gen. Thomas Gage‘s securing militia gunpowder and cannon for the Crown. Thousands of Middlesex County men marched into town and demanded the resignation of two Councilors from Cambridge, as well as Lt. Gov. Thomas Oliver (whose resignation was so clearly coerced that no one believed it—see the opening chapters of The Road to Concord for more detail).

That emboldened the Whigs of Plymouth County, and on 6 September crowds from several towns around Marshfield headed for Nathaniel Ray Thomas’s large house, determined to force him to resign from the Council. The 12 September Boston Gazette reported:

We hear from the County of Plymouth, that last Wednesday upwards of 2000 of the substantial Yeomanry, collected from the several Towns of Plymouth, Hanover, and Pembroke, repaired to the House of Nathaniel Ray Thomas of Marshfield, one of the new Council; but he having had some previous Intimation of the intended Visit of the People, he thought it unsafe to remain even in Marshfield, and accordingly fled the night before with all Speed to the city of Refuge.

With Councilor Thomas gone and other Loyalists perhaps cowed, Marshfield’s town meeting flipped. Later in September the town elected moderate Whig Nehemiah Thomas instead of Abijah White to represent it at the General Court. In October the men of Marshfield met again in the south meetinghouse and confirmed that their town clerk should take a seat in the Provincial Congress, disregarding any complaints about its legality.

TOMORROW: The seesaw tilts again.

Was Marshfield a Tory Town?

Because Marshfield officially voted to thank Gov. Thomas Gage for sending troops in the winter of 1775, it got a lasting reputation as a “Tory town.”

And indeed Marshfield had many more Loyalists than neighboring towns. Or at least the creation of its Association meant it had more visible, undeniable Loyalists. Men who would have remained quiet in other communities put their names on papers supporting the Crown in Marshfield.

But there was also a vocal minority against those troops, so I’d say it wasn’t so much a Tory town as a politically split town. And that was notable in itself.

New England communities liked consensus. Men were supposed to debate and consider measures thoroughly, but when it came time to vote one side was supposed to win decisively—not just by a “trifling” margin. Town clerks tended not to even record vote counts, and they took other steps to play down disagreements in the public record.

In contrast, the men of Marshfield had been split almost evenly for at least a few years. In June 1772 the town considered whether to annex a section of Scituate called “Two Mile” and rejected the idea. But the following March men from Scituate brought up the proposal again, and the town meeting voted to consider the idea—“there being 50 votes for it, and 49 against,” town clerk, treasurer, and deacon Nehemiah Thomas recorded. (The actual annexation didn’t take place until after the war.)

During the tea crisis of late 1773, Nehemiah Thomas led the town elders in confiscating tea before it could cause trouble. A couple of days after the Boston Tea Party, more radical Whigs demanded that tea—some sources say took it from Thomas’s house while he was away—and publicly burned it. The site of that burning is now Tea Rock Hill, shown above. So there was definitely a strong anti-tea faction in town.

Yet at the end of January 1774, the pro-Crown selectmen called a town meeting, as reported by the Boston News-Letter. Under the leadership of Nathaniel Ray Thomas (who asked for special permission to express his own opinion, not just moderate), that meeting resolved:

This Town taking into Consideration the late tumultuous and as we think illegal Proceedings in the Town of Boston in the Detention and Destruction of the Teas belonging to the East-India Company, which we apprehend will effect our Properties if not our Liberties, think it our indispensible Duty to show our Disapprobation of such Measures and Proceedings

The Boston Gazette responded on 7 February, “We are informed that the Resolves of the Town of Marshfield were carried by a Majority of only one Vote; and we soon expect a more intelligible account of the Meeting than has yet been given in a public paper.” And one week later fifty-one men from Marshfield, including clerk Nehemiah Thomas, signed a protest, also published in the Gazette:

…they say that the measures and proceedings in the town of Boston in the detention & destruction of the teas, belonging to the East India Co. are illegal, unjust & of a dangerous tendency, against which we take the liberty to protest. . . .

The occasion of this our protest has given us great uneasiness & we are confident those extraordinary resolves would not have taken place but by the insinuations of a certain gentleman who seems willing his constituents should share in the resentment of the whole country, which he has incurred by his conduct in a public character. We mean not to countenance riotous and disorderly conduct, but, being convinced that liberty is the life and happiness of a community, we are determined to contribute to our last mite in its defence against the machinations of assuming, arbitrary men, who, stimulated with a lust of dominion & unrighteous gain are ever studying to subjugate this free people.

Marshfield’s political arguments were already spilling out into the Boston newspapers before any British troops arrived.

TOMORROW: The political seesaw of late 1774.

[Above is the rarely visited historical marker on Marshfield’s Tea Rock Hill, photographed by Patrick Browne. His Historical Digression blog offers a thorough discussion of the Marshfield tea-burning, as well as the “almost battle” of Marshfield.]

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.