Dinner at the Sign of Liberty Tree

On 14 Aug 1769, 250 years ago today, Boston’s Sons of Liberty gathered to celebrate the anniversary of the first public protest against the Stamp Act, four years earlier.

Of course, they were also celebrating what they saw as their triumph over Gov. Francis Bernard, who had sailed away from Massachusetts at the start of the month, never to return.

The celebration actually began with fourteen toasts at Liberty Tree at eleven o’clock. Those started with “The KING” and “The QUEEN and Royal Family,” moved through John Wilkes, the “Glorious Ninety-Two,” Paschal Paoli and his Corsicans, “American Manufactures,” and finally “May the 14th of August be the annual Jubilee of Americans, till Time shall be no more.”

Then the company left town. The Sons had organized dinner for more than 300 at Lemuel Robinson’s tavern in Dorchester, the Sign of Liberty Tree. [In the winter of 1775, that tavern was a crucial spot in the story of The Road to Concord.] By dining outside of Boston, the upper-class politicians guaranteed that they could control their setting and the level of festivity.

This dinner was in honor of “the Farmer”—John Dickinson, author of The Farmer’s Letters and coauthor of “The Liberty Song.” He wasn’t there. But two of his friends from Philadelphia were: his brother, Philemon Dickinson, and Joseph Reed, then secretary of the colony of New Jersey.

John Hancock’s business protégé William Palfrey made a list of 355 gentlemen at the dinner. That list included far more than Boston's political activists. The most important elected officials were all there, including some who would later be Loyalists. The town’s schoolmasters had taken the day off, as had many merchants, doctors, lawyers, and militia officers. John Adams wrote in his diary about feeling pressure to attend: “many might suspect, that I was not hearty in the Cause, if I had been absent whereas none of them are more sincere, and stedfast than I am."

Adams described the banquet setting this way:

We had two Tables laid in the open Field by the Barn, with between 300 and 400 Plates, and an Arning of Sail Cloth overhead, and should have spent a most agreable Day had not the Rain made some Abatement in our Pleasures.

There’s that New England non-rhotic R in how Adams spelled “awning.”

Because the fourteen toasts before noon weren’t enough, after dinner the party drank forty-five more. This series started with the “King, Queen and Royal Family,” followed by “A Discharge of Cannon, and three Cheers.” The toasters named fourteen British politicians considered friendly to America and the historian Catharine Macaulay. They honored “The Cantons of Switzerland,” “The States General of the seven United Provinces” of Holland, and “The King of Prussia.”

Some of the after-dinner toasts delineated the Whigs’ political ideals: “Annual Parliaments,” “A perpetual Constitutional Union and Harmony between Great Britain and the Colonies,” and “Liberty without Licentiousness.” Others identified enemies: “May the detested Names of the very few Importers every where, be transmitted to Posterity with Infamy” (more cannon). And finally “Strong Halters, Firm Blocks, and Sharp Axes, to all such as deserve either.”

Evidently the diners didn’t imbibe deeply at each and every toast because Adams declared, “To the Honour of the Sons, I did not see one Person intoxicated.”

As for the subsequent entertainment, the Sons of Liberty had provided…a hatter.

TOMORROW: But not just any hatter.

“Sent you one of phillis whetleys books”

Yesterday I quoted from a letter that Deborah Cushing sent her husband Thomas in September 1774 when he was serving in the First Continental Congress.

When that letter is cited today, it’s usually because Cushing mentioned the poet Phillis Wheatley. She said:

I rote you by Mr [Richard] Cary and sent you one of phillis whetleys books which you will wonder att but Mrs. Dickerson and Mrs. Clymer Mrs. Bull with some other ladys ware so pleasd with Phillis and her performances that they bought her Books and got her to compose some pieces for them which put me in mind of mrs vanhorn to hume

I thought it would be very agreabel

In an undated letter that talks about Gov. Thomas Gage removing John Hancock from command of the Cadets, and therefore must come from August 1774, Deborah Cushing wrote that “mr Dickerson & mr Climer & ladies” had recently visited her. (She also cautioned her husband, “Dont Eat any meat super which you know always make you sick.”)

George Clymer (shown above) was one of the more radical Philadelphia Whigs. In 1774 he made his second visit to Boston, having previously traveled there for his health.

As for “Dickerson,” we can narrow down his identity with the help of John Adams’s diary for 31 August:

Mr. [John] Dickenson, the Farmer of Pensylvania, came to Mr. Wards Lodgings to see us, in his Coach and four beautifull Horses. He was introduced to Us, and very politely said he was exceedingly glad to have the Pleasure of seeing these Gentlemen, made some Enquiry after the Health of his Brother and Sister, who are now in Boston.

Dickinson’s most famous brother was Philemon Dickinson, a general in the Revolutionary War and later a U.S. senator. But there were other brothers and half-brothers. Back in 1769, a Dickinson brother had visited Boston and dined with the Sons of Liberty at Lemuel Robinson’s tavern in Dorchester. However, the list of attendees and John Adams’s diary for that date both refer to Dickinson’s brother simply as his brother, poor guy. And we don’t even know if the man visiting in 1774 was the same brother.

Nor have I been able to identify the sister of John Dickinson who was visiting Boston. Was she “Mrs. Bull”? Complicating that inquiry is that people of the time sometimes referred to their siblings-in-law without the “in-law” appendage, so by Dickinson’s “Brother and Sister” Adams could have meant his “brother and his brother’s wife.”

Lastly, I’m baffled by what Deborah Cushing meant by “got her to compose some pieces for them which put me in mind of mrs vanhorn to hume.” Cushing wasn’t great with names (see “Dickerson”), but clearly she had some allusion in mind. Any ideas?

On 4 October, Thomas Cushing wrote back to Deborah, saying he had shown her letters to John Dickinson, Thomas Mifflin, Charles Thomson, and their wives, and they had praised her “patriotic, calm & undaunted spirit.” Which I hope was reassuring since she’d already reminded him she was nervous about her writing skills.