“Humourously call’d the Little Pope”

Here’s one more detail from the merchant John Andrews’s 22 July 1774 letter about how over a hundred Boston merchants came to sign one of two protests against the Boston committee of correspondence.

Andrews wrote that the shorter, milder protest that he signed was “humourously call’d the Little Pope.”

That’s a Pope Night reference! Joshua Coffin’s 1845 Sketch of the History of Newbury, Newburyport, and West Newbury stated:

In the day time, companies of little boys might be seen, in various parts of the town, with their little popes, dressed up in the most grotesque and fantastic manner, which they carried about, some on boards, and some on little carriages, for their own and others’ amusement.

Pierre Eugène du Simitière drew a Boston boy with such a “little pope” on a board in 1767. It’s a miniature version of one of the big wagons rolled around on the night of 5 November with (from left) a horned devil holding a lantern, the papal effigy, and a big lantern.

The milder protest was thus like a miniature effigy carried by little boys while the larger, broader protest was like a full Pope Night wagon. That might not reflect well on Andrews and his cohort, but he had enough of a sense of humor to share the joke. 

The Mystery of “Mr. Swift from the North”

I’ve been analyzing the publication of the story from Samuel Swift’s descendants that he tried to instigate an uprising against British troops inside besieged Boston before dying in the summer of 1775.

In the early twentieth century American historians did a lot of debunking. The Colonial Revival period had brought a lot of dramatic stories and traditions into print. Taking a more evidence-based approach, the next generations of authors lopped away at myths and hagiography.

The dramatic story of Samuel Swift’s martyrdom—coming from his family, unsupported by other evidence, incredible in its details—was the sort of lore that debunking authors tried to clear out of reliable histories.

But Samuel Swift’s reputation as a strong Patriot survived into the mid-1900s.

That’s because of a conjunction of sources. First, back on 7 Nov 1765 the Boston News-Letter reported about that year’s tightly controlled 5th of November celebration:

The Leaders, Mr. McIntosh from the South, and Mr. Swift from the North, appeared in Military Habits, with small Canes resting on their Left Arms…

(Pierre Eugène du Simitière’s sketch of leaders of the 1767 Pope Night parades, with canes and speaking trumpets, appears above.)

In the nineteenth century the authors Caleb Snow, Samuel A. Drake, and Francis S. Drake reprinted or paraphrased that 1765 news story, including the name “Swift.”

In 1891, the editors of the Jeremy Belknap Papers from the Massachusetts Historical Society identified Samuel Swift as “one of the Committee of Safety, and a prominent man at the North End.”

The “Committee of Safety” reference probably derives from a line in Samuel Swift’s 2 Oct 1774 letter to John Adams: “The Committee of Safety by me pay their best Regards to you.” But there was no formal “committee of safety” at the time. The town of Boston hadn’t named Swift to its committee of correspondence. He wouldn’t even be on the larger committee named on 7 December to enforce the Continental Congress’s Association boycott. It appears Swift was passing on regards from other men.

As for being “a prominent man at the North End,” Swift wasn’t a member of the North End Caucus. He didn’t hold high political office or militia rank. He was a justice of the peace from 1741 to 1760, but wasn’t reappointed under George III. As an attorney, Swift wasn’t a big employer, like shipyard owner John Ruddock.

I suspect the mention of “Mr. Swift from the North” in the 1765 newspapers caused those Belknap editors to identify that leader of the North End gang as Samuel Swift, thus making him “a prominent man” in that neighborhood.

Certainly that’s where George P. Anderson stood when he presented his ground-breaking paper “Ebenezer Mackintosh: Stamp Act Rioter and Patriot” to the Colonial Society of Massachusetts in 1924:

The leaders—Mackintosh of the South End and Samuel Swift of the North End—appeared in military habits, with small canes resting on their left arms, having music in front and at flank.

For decades after that, historians identified Samuel Swift as the leader of the North End gang. After all, well respected scholarly sources said so. 

But that never made sense. The Pope Night gangs were composed of young men and older boys from the working classes. Samuel Swift, a genteel fifty-year-old lawyer in 1765, was the sort of man they begged money from, not the sort to lead their raucous street processions.

In The Boston Massacre (1970), Hiller B. Zobel noted that Samuel Swift didn’t even live in the North End. The Thwing database shows he owned a house on Pleasant Street in the South End.

But among the people indicted for rioting after the 1764 Pope Night disturbances, Zobel reported, was a teen-aged shipwright named Henry Swift. Following his lead, many authors since 1970 have identified Henry Swift as the North End captain.

References to Samuel Swift as a politically active North End leader survive, however, including in the footnotes of older volumes digitized at Founders Online. He was an interesting character, but he wasn’t a militant in either 1765 or 1775.

“A living body not only singed, but scorched all over”

The Philadelphia Packet published its first detailed report about the lightning strike on the French minister’s house on 2 Apr 1782.

Four days later, on 6 April, a second long article appeared, also perhaps written by Arthur Lee and Benjamin Rush, who both had medical training. The second story went into detail about the artillery lieutenant hit by that lightning, Albert Rémy de Meaux:

He was alone, seated near a window, his right arm resting on the window cill, the electrical matter, proceeding from conductor to conductor, fell upon his shoulder, descended along his right arm on the window-cill, where it made so great an explosion, that every thing near it was broken in pieces: the arm making but a weak resistance to the explosion, was not broken or fractured, but bruised and burnt all over in a terrible manner.

All his body, and particularly his right side, from the shoulder to the end of his foot, served as a conductor for another part of the electric matter, which set fire every where as it passed.

It was not till six or eight minutes after he was struck that any body knew of his misfortune, when upon entering the room, they saw this unfortunate person surrounded with flames. When they had stripped off what little cloaths the flames had not time to burn, and had restored him to life again, he exhibited a most terrible spectacle; a living body not only singed, but scorched all over, and the miserable object making the most lamentable groans.

The parts which have been the most damaged are the left hand, which was burnt in such a manner that it must have undergone an amputation if he had lived; all the lower part of his belly, the inside of his thigh, was burnt so as to lose all feeling; the other wounds caused him to suffer incessantly for three days the most excruciating pains, when the gangrene began to appear in several places, after which his body gradually perished, and finally he died on the 3d of April at two o’clock in the morning; he preserved his reason, senses and presence of mind to his last breath.

In 1796, in a footnote to his translation of Chastellux’s Travels, George Grieve stated: “his private parts [were] reduced to ashes.” Grieve also wrote that De Meaux “survived but a few hours,” and we know he actually lived for six and a half days, so his information might not be totally reliable.

Another footnote to the lieutenant’s death appears in the papers of the artist Pierre Eugène du Simitière, who was assembling a museum in Philadelphia. He recorded acquiring in March 1782:

a fine miniature picture on vellum, representing a young gentleman with a large flowing wig, a laced cravat, and scarlet cloak turned over the Shoulder Supposed by the dress to have been done in france in the begining of this century

[Donor’s name in red ink] by Monsr. De Meaux officer in the artillery of the french army of Count De Rochambeau who died in Phila., from the hurt received by the lightning that struckt the minister of France’s house March 1782.

It’s possible that De Meaux gave Du Simitière this miniature portrait earlier in the month, before the accident, and Du Simitère added the note later. But the officer may have disposed of this possession in the days after he was badly injured and understood he was dying.

The lightning strike on the French ambassador’s house raises one big question. It happened in Philadelphia, the city where Benjamin Franklin had invented the lightning rod thirty years before. That invention had become internationally famous, establishing Franklin, Philadelphia, and America in the world of Enlightenment science. So how could lightning cause so much fatal damage to a Philadelphia house?

TOMORROW: The landlord.

Copley’s One and Only Political Cartoon

As long as I’m writing about political cartoons and about John Singleton Copley, I should note the only cartoon that Copley ever published.

It survives in a single copy at the Library Company of Philadelphia collected by the Swiss artist Pierre Eugène du Simitière, who came through Boston on his way south in 1767. Du Simitière penciled Copley’s name on his copy and also saved a Pennsylvania knock-off that he deemed “a wretched copy.”

This picture was announced by an item in the 7 Nov 1765 Boston News-Letter:

On the fatal First of November, 1765, was published, a caricatura Print, representing the deplorable State of America, and under what Influence her Ruin is attempted.----

At the Top is a Figure representing France, holding in one Hand a Purse of Money to a Comet, marked with a Jack-Boot, and out of her Mouth a Label, by which we find she actuates the Star to shed its baneful Influence on Britannia; who presents a Box to America, telling her it is the St--p A--t: but on it is wrote Pandora’s Box (which, according to the Poets, was fill’d with all Kinds of Calamities[)].

America, who is in deep Distress, calls out to Minerva to secure her, for she abhors it as Death! Minerva (i. e. Wisdom) forbids her taking it, and points to Liberty, who is expiring at the Feet of America with a Label proper to his Extremity.

Close by is a fair Tree, inscribed to Liberty; at whose Root grows a Thistle, from under it creeps a Vine, and infixes its Stings in the Side of Liberty.--

Mercury (who signifies Commerce) reluctantly leaves America, as is expressed by the Label.—

Boreas, near the Comet, blows a violent Gust full upon the Tree of Liberty; against which Loyalty leans, and expresses her Fear of losing her Support.—

Behind, a Number of Shops haul’d up and to be sold; a Croud of Sailors dismiss’d, with Labels proper to them.

On the other Side a Gallows, with this Inscription, Fit Entertainment for St---p M--n: A Number of these Gentlemen, with Labels expressing various Sentiments on the Occasion. At the Bottom is a Coat of Arms, proper for the St—p M—n.

The above is to be Sold by Nathaniel Hurd, near the Town House.

Scholars agree that Copley took inspiration for this picture from a British cartoon published in March 1765 under the title “The Deplorable State of America or Sc——h Government,” shown here.

Both the British original and Copley’s picture blame the Stamp Act on the Earl of Bute, a former prime minister supposedly influenced by France. They both forecast wounded liberty and damaged trade, and they shows gallows for stamp agents.

However, though Copley drew on the same classical and political symbolism as the London artist, he greatly reinvented the picture. He traced nothing, instead:

• posing the figures differently
• replacing the French king with an abstract flying woman
• replacing the British king losing his crown with the female figure of Loyalty
• changing Liberty from female to male
• shifting the background scenes
• adding a urinating dog

Artistically, Copley’s composition was more unified, but as propaganda his image is harder to read. The grouping of the figures and the heavy hatching mean nobody stands out. The word balloons (“Labels”) are smaller and not framed by white space for easy reading. Copley would almost certainly have improved if he’d kept making political cartoons, but we’ll never know.

Copley left no writing about this cartoon, so we don’t know why he made it. Was he expressing his own political belief at the time? Did Nathaniel Hurd, an established engraver and goldsmith, commission the picture from him? Neither man was politically active, though Copley found himself dragged into the tea crisis. Did they make this print in late 1765 because at that time they were in agreement with the great majority of anti-Stamp Act Bostonians, or because they saw an eager market for it? Again, we don’t know.

TOMORROW: What else did that British cartoon inspire?

The Devil and George Gailer

Here’s a final note on the riotous events of 28 Oct 1769—the merchants’ confrontation with printer John Mein and the tarring and feathering of sailor George Gailer.

In 2011 Dr. Caitlin G. D. Hopkins shared a passage from a letter by Elizabeth Cumings, a shopkeeper who witnessed both events from inside nearby buildings. Cumings, from a Concord family, hadn’t had much formal education, so her spelling offers a fun challenge.

Here’s what Cumings had to say about the attack on Gailer:

it was Dark our house shut up & we alon trimbling lick Courds [“trembling like curds,” I think], when a larg Mob of ful a thousand Man & boys aranged themselves befor our Dorr & on a Kart a Man was Exibited as we thought in a Gore of Blod; & poor meen [John Mein] we was shure was the sufrer but we was happyly mistaken it was an informer they had caught the moment Meen found Shalter, & instintly posted him on a kart tard him all over the town then fathered him all under our windo thin carid him threu the town obliging him to carry the lantren in his hand & calling to all the inhabitince to put Candles in their Windoes

Elizabeth Cumings and her older sister Ame were becoming unpopular for defying the non-importation movement. Hopkins has also shared her analysis of the Cumings sisters’ situation in “Enemies to Their Country”:

After Mein’s escape, the crowd had caught a suspected customs informer, George Gailer, who was beaten, tossed into a cart, and jostled through the streets. At strategic points along the route, men poured buckets of tar over Gailer’s bare skin, scalding his flesh and filling his wounds with hot, gummy resin. When the torturers “aranged themselves befor [the Cumings’] Dorr,” they applied this treatment once more, this time finishing it off with feathers. As they moved away, down Cornhill, someone thrust a lantern into Gailer’s hand, obliging him to stay conscious, lest he drop the flame and set himself afire.

In his legal filing, Gailer didn’t mention the lantern or any fear of being set on fire. Instead, he emphasized how the crowd beat him. And I’m not convinced that the purpose of the lantern was to threaten Gailer with being burned.

Indeed, the crowd could simply have held a flame to the feathers. The Customs officer Owen Richards later testified that in 1770 a mob “put him into a Cart, Tarr’d and Feathered him, then set the Feathers on Fire on his Back.”

Richards’s account was probably the source for the “Recipe” for tar and feathers in Peter Oliver’s Origin and Progress of the American Rebellion including the lines: “Then hold a lighted Candle to the Feathers, & try to set it all on Fire; if it will burn so much the better. But as the Experiment is often made in cold Weather; it will not then succeed.”

My immediate thought of seeing Cumings’s description of Gailer being made to hold a lantern was the Pope Night wagons. In 1767 Pierre Eugène du Simitière sketched three wagons in Boston. In the back of all three was an oversized effigy of the devil, and all three devils held lanterns out in one hand. Du Simitière’s image of the North End gang’s devil appears above, dangling his lantern off the back of the wagon.

Judge Oliver, Isaiah Thomas, and other witnesses also wrote of those devil figures being covered with tar and feathers. In other words, the 29 October mob turned George Gailer into a living preview of one of the effigies that would roll around town on 6 November, a little over a week away.

[Incidentally, this month I got to see Caitlin Hopkins speak about the extended Vassall family and their slaveholding at Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters in Cambridge. She has also turned in a report to the Harvard University administration about the college’s links to slavery, which seems like it should be issued as part of the newly announced initiative.]

“Description of the POPE, 1769.”

The Fifth of November was a festival of misrule for eighteenth-century colonial Boston, which locals called “Pope Night.” But the celebration actually followed many strict traditions.

One was that when 5 November fell on a Sunday, as it did in 1769, the holiday was put off until the following day. Thus, Boston’s youth remembered the Fifth of November exactly 250 years ago today.

Another tradition was that the Pope Night wagons would feature effigies of the Devil, the Pope, and one or two hanged men whose identities changed from year to year to keep up with the biggest political enemies.

In 1769 the obvious choice was printer and bookseller John Mein. Since August he had been angering the town’s mercantile and political community. On 28 October he had, in a confrontation with some of those merchants, drawn a pistol and reportedly fired it in the center of town. He then went into hiding, refusing to answer a lawful warrant.

The Pope Night wagons rolled out ten days later. The newspapers and this broadside reported that the following text appeared on the big “lanthorn” (basically a small tent with sides of oiled paper, lit from within) of a main wagon:

Toasts on the Front of the large Lanthorn.
Love and Unity. — The American Whig. —
Confusion to the Torries, and a total Banishment to Bribery and Corruption.

On the right side of the same. —An Acrostick.
J nsulting Wretch, well him expose,
O ’er the whole World his Deeds disclose,
H ell now gaups wide to take him in,
N ow he is ripe, Oh Lump of Sin.
M ean is the Man, M[ei]N is his Name,
E nough he’s spread his hellish Fame,
I nfernal Furies hurl his Soul,
N ine Million Times from Pole to Pole.

Labels of the Left Side.
Now shake, ye Torries! see the Rogue behind,
Hung up a Scarecrow, to correct Mankind.
Oh had the Villain but receiv’d his Due,
Himself in Person would here swing in View
But let the Traitor mend within the Year,
Or by the next he shall be hanging here.
Ye Slaves! ye Torries who infest the Land,
And scatter num’rous Plagues on ev’ry Hand,
Now we’ll be free, or bathe in honest Blood;
We’ll nobly perish for our Country’s Good,
We’ll purge the Land of the infernal Crew,
And at one Stroke we’ll give the Devil his Due.

Labels on each Side the Small Lanthorn.
WILKES and LIBERTY, No. 45.

See the Informer how he stands, If any one now takes his Part,
An Enemy to all the Land, He’ll go to Hell without a Cart

May Discord cease, in Hell be jam’d,
And factious fellows all be dam’d.

From B------- [Bernard?], the veriest monster on earth,
The fell production of some baneful birth,
These ills proceed,—from him they took their birth,
The Source supreme, and Center of all Hate.
If I forgive him, then forget me Heaven,
Or like a WILKES may I from Right be driven.
Here stands the Devil for a Show,
With the I--p---rs [Importers?] in a row,
All bound to Hell, and that we know.
Go M[ei]n lade deep with Curses on thy head,
To some dark Corner of the World repair,
Where the bright Sun no pleasant beams can shed,
And spend thy Life in Horror and Despair.

Effigies,—M[ei]n, his Servant, &c.—A Bunch of TOM-CODS.

I take “his Servant” to mean the “young Lad (belonging to the Office)” who had fired out of Mein’s print shop at the previous procession. How nice that his fellow teenagers remembered him.

The celebrants also made sure to mention George Gailer (“the Informer”) and the departed royal governor, Francis Bernard.

With this holiday coming so soon after the busy 28th of October, town authorities feared that it would be especially rowdy. But channeling public anger at those vanquished political enemies made the holiday a little more orderly than it had been before the Stamp Act.

TOMORROW: Naming names.

[The picture above is a sketch of the South End’s Pope in 1767 by Pierre Eugène du Simitière, now in the collection of the Library Company of Philadelphia.]

A Thanksgiving Dinner Gone Wrong

I’m looking at Charles Adams’s disciplinary record as a student at Harvard College in the late 1780s.

In the spring of 1787, Charles was fined six shillings for hosting a noisy gathering in his dormitory room. A year before, John Adams had warned his second son about such socializing:

You have in your nature a sociability, Charles, which is amiable, but may mislead you, a schollar is always made alone. Studies can only be pursued to good purpose, by yourself—dont let your Companions then, nor your Amusements take up too much of your time.

John and Abigail Adams agreed that Charles was the most charming and outgoing of their three boys, but they valued studiousness.

That fall, Charles once again got into trouble in company. The college faculty met on 5 and 7-8 December to consider trouble at the end of the previous month:

It appeared that a number of the Students, who dined in the Hall on the 29th ult. [i.e., of last month] being the day of the public Thanksgiving, were after dinner extremely disorderly and riotous, making tumultuous and indecent noises, breaking the windows of the Hall, throwing the benches out of the windows into the yard &ca. which conduct was greatly to the damage and to the dishonor of the College: Whereupon

Voted, that Adams 1st, Gardner, Gordon, Grosvenor, Hill and Wier, Senior Sophisters——Adams 3d, Blake 2d, Churchill, Coffin, Cutts 1st, Emerson, Fayerweather, Moody, Pierpont, Procter, Shapleigh and Waterman, Junior Sophisters——Clarke 2d, Cutts 2d, Denny, Grout, Ingalls, Moody 2d, Sullivan 1st, Sullivan 2d, Sullivan 3d, Trapier, Ware and Warren, Sophimores, and Tucker a Freshman, who were all of the above company and did not prove themselves to have left the Hall before the riotous proceedings, be charged in their quarterly bill to repair the damage done in the Hall.

Voted, that Adams 1st, Churchill, Emerson and Waterman who were waiters, but upon examination did not give such evidence concerning the disorders as the Governors were convinced they might have given, be dismissed from their waiterships.

Voted, that all who are assessed to repair the damages done in the Hall, those who are dismissed from waiterships only excepted, be punished by pecuniary mulct, ten shillings each.

The minutes also listed nine students by name who had been at the dinner but “left it before disorders arose to a great height.”

The four waiters were working their way through college. The faculty recognized that they didn’t have extra money to pay a fine, but they still took a financial hit in losing their jobs. They maintained student solidarity by not identifying any leaders of the disturbance.

Charles Adams was on that list as “Adams 3d.” In the middle of thirty other boys, there’s no reason to blame him alone for the trouble. Still, it wasn’t a good sign that he was resisting “Amusements.”

COMING UP: A protest from the sophomore class.

“The great Seal should on one side have…”

As discussed yesterday, in the summer of 1776 a committee of Continental Congress heavyweights—Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson—asked the Swiss-born artist and historical collector Pierre Eugène du Simitière to design a seal for the new United States of America.

Of course, each of those gentlemen also gave the artist a helpful, and contradictory, suggestion of what the seal should look like. And Du Simitière had his own ideas.

Jefferson reported the result of that committee discussion to the Congress on 20 August:

The great Seal should on one side have the arms of the United States of America which arms should be as follows. The Shield has six Quarters, parti one, coupe two. The 1st. Or, a Rose enammelled gules and argent for England: the 2d Argent, a Thistle proper, for Scotland: the 3d. Verd, a Harp Or, for Ireland: the 4th. Azure a Flower de Luce Or for France: the 5th. Or the Imperial Eagle Sable for Germany: and the 6th. Or the Belgic Lion Gules for Holland, pointing out the Countries from which the States have been peopled.

The Shield within a Border Gules entwind of thirteen Scutcheons Argent linked together by a Chain Or, each charged with initial Letters Sable as follows: 1st. NH. 2d M.B. 3d RI. 4th C. 5th NY. 6th NJ. 7th P. 8th DC. 9 M. 10th V. 11th NC. 12th. SC. 13 G. for each of the thirteen independent States of America.

Supporters, dexter the Goddess Liberty in a corselet of Armour alluding to the present Times [i.e., the ongoing war], holding in her right Hand the Spear and Cap and with her left supporting the Shield of the States; sinister, the Goddess Justice bearing a Sword in her right hand, and in her left a Balance.

Crest. The Eye of Providence in a radiant Triangle whose Glory extends over the Shield and beyond the Figures.

Motto e pluribus unum.

Legend round the whole Atchievement. Seal of the United States of America mdcclxxvi.

On the other side of the said Great Seal should be the following Device. Pharoah sitting in an open Chariot a Crown on his head and a Sword in his hand passing through the divided Waters of the Red Sea in Pursuit of the Israelites: Rays from a Pillar of Fire in the Cloud, expressive of the divine Presence and Comman[d] beaming on Moses who stands on the Shore and extending his hand over the Sea causes it to overwhe[lm] Pharoah.

Motto Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.

The shields showing the countries where most European-Americans had come from was Du Simitière’s idea. He was, after all, an immigrant—though not from any of the nations represented. Du Simitière had originally pictured an American rifleman standing opposite Liberty, but Justice made a better pairing.

The Biblical scene on the reverse side was Franklin’s suggestion, with the addition of the “Pillar of Fire” from Jefferson. The motto “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God” also came from Franklin, though it had an older history (which I’ll discuss at some point). Jefferson liked that saying so much he added it to a seal for Virginia that he commissioned from Du Simitière in this same summer. None of Adams’s ideas made it to the final proposal.

The committee presented this proposal to the Congress. With the British army about to attack New York City, the delegates tabled that symbolic matter till later. And they didn’t return to the question of a national seal until four years later, when Franklin and Adams were in Europe and Jefferson was in Virginia. And then the Congress tossed out their 1776 report and started over.

The U.S. of A. had to get along without a seal for another couple of years as more committees discussed the question. Finally in 1782 the Congress’s secretary, Charles Thomson, got sick of waiting and drew one himself. Only two elements from the 1776 proposals survived to the final seal: the “Eye of Providence in a radiant Triangle” and the motto “E pluribus unum.” There’s no positive evidence about who came up with either.

Thomson adopted the latest committee’s suggestion of a heraldic eagle but chose the bald or “American Eagle” because that species was American, he later explained to James Madison. The idea of an eagle definitely didn’t come from John Adams, whatever the 1776 musical depicts.

TOMORROW: And how did the turkey and the dove come in?

[The picture above shows a nineteenth-century recreation of the seal that Du Simitière described, courtesy of Mental Floss; no drawings from 1776 survive.]

A Turkey of a Great Seal

In the musical 1776, the characters of Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson debate which bird would be the best symbol for the new United States: turkey, eagle, or dove.

I saw the movie version of that show during the Bicentennial. My class even performed that scene’s song, “The Egg,” as a chorus. But now I know it was all bunk.

The Continental Congress did assign those three members to design an official seal for the new union on 4 July 1776, the same day it sent a certain Declaration they had drafted to the printer. However, those guys didn’t come up with any ideas involving birds.

As Adams explained the process in a 14 August letter to Abigail, the three politicians consulted with the Swiss artist Pierre Eugène du Simitière on the seal design. That put Du Simitière in the role of the professional graphic designer trying to please three clients who all fancy their own ideas, haven’t decided priorities among themselves, and have to go back to their bosses for final approval anyway.

Every man had a different concept, Adams wrote. Du Simitière:

For the Seal he proposes. The Arms of the several Nations from whence America has been peopled, as English, Scotch, Irish, Dutch, German &c. each in a Shield. On one side of them Liberty, with her Pileus, on the other a Rifler, in his Uniform, with his Rifled Gun in one Hand, and his Tomahauk, in the other. This Dress and these Troops with this Kind of Armour, being peculiar to America…

Franklin:

Moses lifting up his Wand, and dividing the Red Sea, and Pharaoh, in his Chariot overwhelmed with the Waters.—This Motto. Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.

Jefferson:

The Children of Israel in the Wilderness, led by a Cloud by day, and a Pillar of Fire by night, and on the other Side Hengist and Horsa, the Saxon Chiefs, from whom We claim the Honour of being descended and whose Political Principles and Form of Government We have assumed.

Adams:

I proposed the Choice of Hercules, as engraved by Gribeline in some Editions of Lord Shaftsburys Works. The Hero resting on his Clubb. Virtue pointing to her rugged Mountain, on one Hand, and perswading him to ascend. Sloth, glancing at her flowery Paths of Pleasure, wantonly reclining on the Ground, displaying the Charms both of her Eloquence and Person, to seduce him into Vice.

That meant Simon Gribelin’s engraving of “Hercules at the Crossroad,” shown above, based on a painting by Paolo de Matteis. Adams had the self-awareness to add, “But this is too complicated a Group for a Seal or Medal, and it is not original.”

TOMORROW: The result of that committee process.

Hunter on Dighton Rock in Middleboro, 19 May

On Saturday, 19 May, the Massachusetts Archaeological Society will host a special lecture by Douglas Hunter on “The Place of Stone: Dighton Rock and the Erasure of America’s Indigenous Past.”

Drawing on his book of the same name, Dr. Hunter will discuss the legacy and mythology behind a petroglyph-covered boulder found in the area that became Berkley:

First noticed by colonists in 1680, Dighton Rock in Massachusetts by the nineteenth century was one of the most famous and contested artifacts of American antiquity. This forty-ton boulder covered in petroglyphs has been the subject of endless speculation that defies its Native American origins. Hunter dissects almost four centuries of Dighton Rock’s misinterpretation, to reveal its larger role in colonization and the conceptualization of Indigenous peoples.

Among the many New England scholars who studied the rock was the Rev. Dr. Ezra Stiles. In 1766, while living in Newport, Rhode Island, he saw a copy of a broadside about the boulder written by the Rev. Dr. Cotton Mather. (Other men who had written about the rock included Prof. John Winthrop of Harvard and Dr. William Douglass, best known for opposing smallpox inoculation and Mather’s other ideas.)

In June 1767 Stiles went to visit a man who lived half a mile from the rock. He used chalk to make the markings more distinct and then drew them in his journal, stating on 6 June: “Spent the forenoon in Decyphering about Two Thirds the Inscription, which I take to be in phoenician Letters & 3000 years old.”

Stiles returned in July for more investigation. He “washed & skrubbed the Rock with a Broom,” fighting the water level, before drawing more surfaces. The next month, two local men did the minister the favor of going out and collecting more drawings, measurements, and even what seems to be a casting of the scrapes in “the Phœnitian rock.”

Here’s one of Stiles’s drawings, courtesy of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts.

In 1768 the Swiss artist Pierre Eugène du Simitière visited Stiles on his way to settle in Philadelphia. He studied the material that the minister had collected. He looked at the characters on Mather’s broadside and and observed, “They are also totally different from the copy taken by Dr. Stiles.” Indeed, most or all of those researchers were seeing what they wanted to see.

Hunter’s talk about this history and what it shows about colonial New Englanders’ attitude toward the Natives around them will take place at the Robbins Museum of Archaeology, 17 Jackson Street in Middleboro, starting at 1:00 P.M. The program is free, but the society suggests a donation of $5 per person.

“Poor Charles the batchelor that was once master of the ceremonies”

When I say that Customs official Charles Paxton was “queer,” I’m not claiming to know whom he had sex with, or wanted to have sex with. I’m saying that Bostonians saw something odd in Paxton’s lifestyle and manners, and they teased him for supposedly lacking masculinity. From 1761 on, Whig newspapers referred to Paxton as “Charles Froth, Esq.,” bubbly and insubstantial.

Paxton never married. That stood out in New England society, which encouraged men to find a wife and have lots of children. Of course, there were other lifelong bachelors in Revolutionary Boston, such as the Boylston brothers and Dr. Joseph Gardner.

But Bostonians made a big deal out of Paxton not marrying. During the 1767 Pope Night processions, one of the signs recorded by the artist Pierre Eugene du Simitière in the drawing above read, “poor charles the bachelor.” (Those drawings are in the collection of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.)

That label continued, “…that was once master of the ceremonies.” Another sign read, “everybody’s humble servant & nobody’s friend.” Locals evidently knew what those lines alluded to without needing to read anything more.

For those of us from farther away, we have an explanatory anecdote printed in the 6 Nov 1769 Boston Gazette:

one day, after having fleeced a very worthy gentleman, [Paxton] met him, and with the impudence of Beau Nash and Tobit’s Dog, but in the antique, aukward air of the last century, accosted him with “Mr —, your most obedient humble servant, Sir!”

Yes, yes, answered the other, “every man’s humble servant, but no man’s friend.”

Lots of people must have repeated that story because as late as 1809 Bostonians still remembered Paxton as “no man’s friend.”

Beau Nash meant Richard Nash, noted dandy and master of ceremonies at Bath in the early and mid-1700s. As for “Tobit’s Dog,” it looks like eighteenth-century authors used that Biblical figure as an emblem of slavish devotion. According to Samuel Johnson, “impudence” meant shamelessness.

Thus, Bostonians looked at Paxton and saw a fawning courtier with overly elaborate manners and the “antique, aukward air of the last century.”

TOMORROW: A cross-dressing anecdote from 1769.

“The union was established in a very ceremonial manner”

So what did the “Union” of North End and South End gangs on the fifth of November 1765 look like?

As the Massachusetts Historical Society quoted in 2009, chronicler James Freeman described the day this way:

the disorders which had been committed from time to time induced several gentlemen to try a reconciliation between the 2 parties; accordingly the chiefs met on the 1st of this inst. [i.e., of November], & conducted the affair in a very orderly manner. In ye even’g the commander of ye N. & [S.] after making general overtures they reciprocally engaged in an Union, & the former distinctions to subside, at the same time the chiefs with their assistants engaged their honour no mischief should arise by their means, & that they would prevent any disorders on ye 5th.

When the day arrived about noon the pageantry representing the Pope, the Devil, & several other effigies signifying tyranny, oppression, slavery, &c. were brought on stages from the N. & S. & met in Kings Str. where the union was established in a very ceremonial manner, & having given three huzzas, they interchanged ground, the S. marched to ye N. & the N. to the S. parading thro’ ye streets until they again met near ye Court House.

The whole then proceeded to Liberty tree, under the shadow of which they refreshed themselves for a while, & then returned to ye Northward agreeably to their plan. They reached Cop’s hill before 6 o’clock, where they halted, & having enkindled a fire, the whole pageantry was committed to the flames & consumed.

That was actually a lot like the way smaller New England ports celebrated Pope Night every year: with a single procession, a big bonfire, and public refreshments. So in 1765 the Boston gangs got to enjoy those things without the violence, while getting extra praise and other goodies.

In 2011 the M.H.S. added some remarks from the merchant Isaac Winslow (1743-1793): “There were no disguises of visages, but the two leaders, [Ebenezer] M’cIntosh of the South, and [Henry] Swift of the North, (the same who was so badly wounded last year[)], were dress’d out in a very gay manner”.

Those men’s outfits were military-style coats that town gentlemen had given to the “chiefs with their assistants” of the two gangs—reflecting their self-conferred titles of “captains and lieutenants.” A couple of years later, the artist Pierre Eugéne du Simitière sketched those coats on gang leaders, as shown above. (Du Simitière’s notes preserve the detail that the coats were blue with red trim.) I suspect that by that year Mackintosh and Swift had passed their roles, and those coats, on to younger men.

TOMORROW: The military discipline of the “mob.”

William Cunningham, Son of Liberty

Historians of British prison reform and genealogists seem to be doing a good job at filling in the details of William Cunningham’s life after he served as provost martial (or marshal) for the Crown forces throughout the war. Which leaves his life before the war as the big mystery.

The Loyalist judge Thomas Jones (1731-1792) used his exile in Britain in the 1780s to write a History of New York During the Revolutionary War. In it he called Cunningham “a Son of Liberty who had become disaffected.” That manuscript was published by the New-York Historical Society in 1879.

In the meantime, Henry B. Dawson’s Reminiscences of the City of New York (1855) also described Cunningham as a Son of Liberty before becoming a Crown supporter by 1775. In narrating the brawls between royal soldiers and New Yorkers over the Liberty Pole in early 1770, Ferdinand S. Bartram’s Retrographs (1888) said:

Two members of the Sons of Liberty, John Lamb and William Cunningham, the latter afterward known as the notorious Marshal Cunningham of the Revolution, were appointed to purchase a plot of land, which they selected, adjoining the common, where, upon the 6th [Mar 1770], the pole was raised in the presence of about four thousand spectators. It was of immense proportions, banded with iron hoops and braced with rods, imbedded in the earth between rocks, and secured with masonry. Thus was the fifth pole raised by the Liberty Boys.

Unfortunately, those books don’t cite any documentary sources for their statements about Cunningham.

Exactly five years after that fifth pole was erected, on 6 Mar 1775, Cunningham and a man named John Hill got into a fight with Patriots near Liberty Pole. The crowd roughed up both men badly. Newspapers published conflicting stories of what happened, depending on which side of the political divide they stood. The only thing clear was that Cunningham was now on the side of the Crown.

Indeed, the royal government was soon employing Cunningham, if it didn’t already. Authorities sent him to arrest the Patriot activist Isaac Sears the next month, and a crowd assaulted Cunningham again.

When the war broke out, Cunningham and Hill took off for Boston. Hill was eventually an assistant to Crean Brush, a Loyalist given a job by the military authorities. Cunningham became provost martial and held that position again in New York, Philadelphia during the winter of 1777-78, and New York until the end of the war. I’ve found a hint of romance between Hill’s daughter Mary and Cunningham’s son Ralph, but I’ll save that gossip for later.

I don’t know the historical sources in New York, and perhaps there’s more documentation of Cunningham’s life before the war. We do know that the 1792 “Dying Confession” ascribed to him is unreliable. But was he born in America or an immigrant (which seems more likely)? What caused him to join the Sons of Liberty in 1770 and to turn against them by 1775?

(The sketch above is Pierre Eugène du Simitière’s sketch of one of New York’s Liberty Poles in 1770, courtesy of Wikipedia.)