Whatever Happened to Spado?

Longtime Boston 1775 readers may recall when Gen. Charles Lee’s dog Spado (sometimes spelled Spada) first came to public attention.

John Adams wrote a letter to his wife mentioning some of the British general’s eccentricities: “He is a queer Creature—But you must love his Dogs if you love him…” Through the poor choices of Benjamin Hitchborn, that letter fell into the hands of the royal authorities, who gleefully published it to embarrass their enemies.

Abigail Adams therefore went to Medford Cambridge to mend fences with Gen. Lee. As part of that cordial visit, the general had Spado jump up on a chair and present his paw for Mrs. Adams to shake.

About a year later, Lee was captured in New Jersey. Spado wasn’t with the general at the time—or if he was, the British raiders knew enough not to bring Spado along.

Evidently Lee’s friends undertook to send Spado to the estate that the general had purchased in Virginia (now eastern West Virginia). I don’t think the dog had spent much time there, but it was the peripatetic Lee’s only home in North America.

But something went wrong. On 11 Feb 1777 this advertisement appeared in Dunlap’s Maryland Gazette, published in Baltimore:

TWENTY DOLLARS REWARD.

LOST or STOLEN, a very remarkable black shaggy dog of the Pomerania breed, called SPADO. He belongs to our brave but unfortunate GENERAL LEE, and was seen in the possession of a person who called himself JOSEPH BLOCK, at Wright’s Ferry, on Susquehanna, about the 25th of December last.

It is supposed that BLOCK who pretended to have undertaken to carry him to Berkeley county, Virginia, has parted with him for a trifling consideration, or lost him on the road.

Whoever gives information where the said dog may be had, or will bring him to the persons hereafter named, shall on the dog’s being produced, receive the above reward and no questions asked.

Robert Morris, Esq; Philadelphia; Jo. Nourse, at the War-Office in Baltimore; or James Nourse, Berkeley county, Virginia.

The same ad appeared in the Maryland Journal a week later and in several more issues of John Dunlap’s newspaper.

For a financial comparison, the same page of the Maryland Journal offered a $20 reward for each of three Continental Army deserters. For animals, the promised rewards included $4 for three head of cattle, $3 for an eight-year-old horse, and $8 for a colt. So the reward for Spado was unusually high.

Some of those Maryland newspapers made their way north because on 9 March Abigail Adams wrote to her husband:

I see by the news papers you sent me that Spado is lost. I mourn for him. If you know any thing of His Master pray Let me hear, what treatment he meets with, where he is confined &c.

On 7 March and for a couple of weeks thereafter, Alexander Purdie’s Virginia Gazette published the same advertising notice with slight punctuation differences, this one asking people with the dog to contact William Finnie in Williamsburg. Finnie (1739–1804) was a quartermaster during the war and the city’s mayor shortly afterward.

But evidently Spado was gone for good. When Gen. Lee was finally released from captivity in the spring of 1778, his best companion was not there to greet him. And he was never as cheerful afterward.

In Captivity with Gen. Charles Lee

Gen. Charles Lee was captured in New Jersey on 13 Dec 1776.

On 28 Jan 1777 he wrote from British-occupied New York to Robert Morris in Philadelphia:

I am extremely obliged to you for your kindness and attention—the money for the bill I am told I shall get to-day—I have nothing to request at present but that you will write to Mr. Nourse to take care of what belongs to me—and if that my servant Guiseppe is well enough you will send him and desire him to bring the Dogs with him as I am much in want of their Company—God bless you My respects to Mrs. Morris

“Guiseppe” was Giuseppe Minghini, an Italian whom Lee had hired as a personal servant while he was traveling in Europe. The general was asking Minghini to join him in captivity—and to bring the dogs as well.

It might not be surprising that Minghini didn’t immediately set out. Lee was still in New York on 4 April, and he renewed his instructions directly to the Italian:

If your health permits I desire you will without a moments delay set out for this place—your establishment & fortune depend on your compliance—bring with you as many summer cloaths as you can silk stockings, linnen wastecoats and breeches tights, boots and a new hat—some books likewise particularly Ainsworth’s [Latin] Dictionary & the six french books, l’histoire politique—if any of the Dogs are with you bring them. Mr. Rob Morris will furnish you with the necessary money. Addio—come immediately

Minghini brought one dog to keep Lee company until the trio was finally released on 21 Apr 1778. By then the general had also picked up a mistress whom Elias Boudinot called “a miserable dirty hussy…(a British Sergeants Wife).”

One might think that Minghini brought the general’s his favorite pet, Mr. Spado, but that dog wasn’t available.

TOMORROW: What happened to Spado?

President Jefferson’s Flock

Thomas Jefferson was always interested in improving American agriculture, and his own farming enterprises, though he wasn’t always successful.

In 1794, after stepping down as Secretary of State, Jefferson had his managers at Monticello buy a flock of forty ewes. Robert Morris gave him a ram smuggled from Spain. On becoming President, Jefferson gained access to other exotic sheep—a Bengal ewe in 1805, a Barbary Broadtail ram and ewe in 1806.

In June 1807 a man named James D. Barry offered the President a ram of the Shetland breed (also found in other parts of northern Europe). Jefferson replied:

Th: Jefferson presents his compliments and thanks to mr Barry for his offer of the ram which he accepts, not from personal motives, but merely with a view to secure the breed to our country, of which another chance might not happen in a century.

he is sending off the ram which runs at present with his ewes, and is engaging a person to attend the flock constantly as a shepherd, to secure them against accident, and he counts on producing the breed of the ram pure & full-blooded in four generations, according to the common estimation.

should mr Barry hereafter wish for the breed Th:J. will feel a duty & pleasure in furnishing him. he will send for him tomorrow morning with mr Barry’s permission.

Barry replied on 25 June:

James D Barry presents his compliments to the President of the U.S.

it has been his wish ever since he got the ram to give him to some gentleman who would attend to propagatg. the breed which he thinks will be a useful one and will suit the soil & Climate of this Country.

it is with pleasure he sends him by the bearer, Knowing that there is no person in this Country who would be more disposed or who has it more in his power to secure the breed than the President—

Four days later, President Jefferson wrote to his granddaughter Ellen Wayles Randolph, then ten years old, about his growing flock:

I am now possessed of individuals of four of the most remarkeable varieties of the race of the sheep. if you turn to your books of natural history, you will find among these
1. the Spanish sheep or Marino.
2. the Iceland sheep, or Ovis Polycerata.
3. the Barbary sheep, or Ovis laticunda &
4. the Senegal sheep, or that of Bengal which is the same.

I have lately recieved a ram of the 2d. kind, who has 4. horns, a round & beautiful animal, rather small.

the 3d. or broadtailed is remarkable for it’s flavor. I lately had a quarter sent me which I found the highest flavored lamb I had ever tasted. the 4th. or Senegal is supposed to be the original stock of the sheep. it’s flavor is said to be equal to that of Venison.

tho’ I possess individuals of one sex only of the 2d. 3d. & 4th. kinds, yet 4. crossings are understood by naturalists to produce the true breed. I mean to pay great attention to them, pro bono publico. (call on [your older brother] Jefferson to translate your Latin)

While Jefferson talked about breeding these sheep for the public good, he accepted the gifts as his own property. He expected to make money from his flock first and ultimately to benefit the country by providing a stock of well-bred sheep and an example for other farmers.

He didn’t know that his new ram would be a killer.

TOMORROW: “The concise history of a monster.”

Are You Ready for a Cabinet Meeting?

For Presidents Day, we look in on George Washington’s meetings with his cabinet on 1-2 Aug 1793.

The issue on the table was what to do about Edmond-Charles Genet, the French diplomat who was stirring up support of Revolutionary France, resentment of Britain, and friction within the U.S. of A.

The cabinet members—Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of War Henry Knox, and Attorney General Edmund Randolph—all agreed to ask France to recall Genet. They differed on how peremptorily to do so. They really differed on whether to report the decision and the reasons for it to the American public.

Hamilton liked the idea of an official “appeal to the people,” despite not usually being interested in public opinion, because it offered an opening for a full-throated critique of Revolutionary France. According to Jefferson’s notes:

Hamilton made a jury speech of 3/4 of an hour as inflammatory and declamatory as if he had been speaking to a jury. E.R. opposed it. I chose to leave the contest between them.

The President adjourned that meeting until the next day. “Hamilton spoke again 3/4 of an hour,” Jefferson wrote then. “I answered on these topics.” He kept minimal notes on Hamilton’s remarks and detailed notes on his own, indicating that he didn’t write those notes at the time but afterwards, and he really didn’t care about Hamilton’s opinion.

Eventually it became clear which way Washington was leaning:

The President manifestly inclined to the appeal to the people. He said that Mr. [Robert] Morris, taking a family dinner with him the other day went largely and of his own accord into this subject, advised this appeal and promised if the Presidt. adopted it that he would support it himself, and engage for all his connections.—The Presidt. repeated this twice, and with an air of importance.—

Now Mr. Morris has no family connections. He engaged then for his political friends.—This shews that the President has not confidence enough in the virtue and good sense of mankind to confide in a government bottomed on them, and thinks other props necessary.

Jefferson distrusted campaigns for public opinion by his political opponents. He was, of course, promoting his own ideas with allies like James Madison. He had also recruited Philip Freneau to come to Philadelphia and start the anti-Federalist National Gazette, giving the writer a sinecure in the State Department.

Then the meeting took an awkward turn.

Knox in a foolish incoherent sort of a speech introduced the Pasquinade lately printed, called the funeral of George W—n and James W[ilso]n, king and judge &c. where the President was placed on a Guillotin.

The Presidt. was much inflamed, got into one of those passions when he cannot command himself. Run on much on the personal abuse which had been bestowed on him. Defied any man on earth to produce one single act of his since he had been in the government which was not done on the purest motives. That he had never repented but once the having slipped the moment of resigning his office, and that was every moment since. That by god he had rather be in his grave than in his present situation. That he had rather be on his farm than to be made emperor of the world and yet that they were charging him with wanting to be a king. That that rascal Freneau sent him 3. of his papers every day, as if he thought he would become the distributor of his papers, that he could see in this nothing but an impudent design to insult him. He ended in this high tone.

There was a pause. Some difficulty in resuming our question—it was however after a little while presented again, and he said there seemed to be no necessity for deciding it now: the propositions before agreed on might be put into a train of execution, and perhaps events would shew whether the appeal would be necessary or not.

It took another three weeks for the cabinet to complete their dispatch to the American minister in Paris, Gouverneur Morris, telling him to ask the French government to withdraw Genet. Meanwhile, it became clear to Washington that most informed Americans disapproved of the French diplomat’s behavior, so he no longer saw any need for a public appeal.

Getting the Job Done

Signers of the Declaration of Independence not born in the thirteen colonies (out of 56):

• Button Gwinnett
• Francis Lewis
• Robert Morris (shown here)
• James Smith
• George Taylor
• Matthew Thornton
• James Wilson
• Rev. John Witherspoon

Signers of the Articles of Confederation not born in the thirteen colonies (out of 48):

• William Duer
• Francis Lewis
• James Lovell
• Robert Morris
• Daniel Roberdeau
• Edward Telfair
• Rev. John Witherspoon

Framers of the Constitution not born in the thirteen colonies (out of 55):

• Pierce Butler
• William R. Davie
• Thomas Fitzsimons
• Alexander Hamilton
• James McHenry
• Robert Morris
• William Paterson
• James Wilson

Members of the first federal Congress not born in the thirteen colonies (out of 95):

• Aedanus Burke
• Pierce Butler
• Thomas Fitzsimons
• James Jackson
• Samuel Johnston
• John Laurance
• Robert Morris
• William Paterson
• Thomas Tudor Tucker

John Barker Church: “the mere man of business”?

So was the marriage of Angelica Schuyler (shown here) and John Carter/John Barker Church happy? We don’t have a body of correspondence between them as we have for, say, John and Abigail Adams. But their marriage lasted until their deaths, and they certainly enjoyed good circumstances.

In 1780 Carter became partners with former Continental Army commissary general Jeremiah Wadsworth (1743-1804) of Connecticut as the main supplier for Gen. Rochambeau’s troops in North America. The French needed food and supplies for thousands of men.

Unlike the Continental Congress, whose paper money was rapidly losing value, France could pay in specie. Wadsworth and Carter got a cut of everything they supplied. They also gained excellent credit they could use for their other ventures, and money they could lend other businessmen. As a result, by the end of the war, Wadsworth and Carter were very rich.

In August 1782 James McHenry wrote to Alexander Hamilton from Baltimore:

Mr. Carter is the mere man of business, and I am informed has riches enough, with common management, to make the longest life very comfortable. Mrs. Carter is a fine woman. She charms in all companies. No one has seen her, of either sex, who has not been pleased with her, and she has pleased every one, chiefly by means of those qualities which make you the husband of her Sister.

The next July, the Carters and Wadsworth headed to France to collect their final payments. Sometime in 1783, Carter revealed his real name: John Barker Church. There’s no evidence of when he told his wife about that part of his past. By that fall, Benjamin Franklin and John Jay knew about it, though the couple still went by “Carter” for a few months longer.

Finally, the family headed to Britain, and at that point they came out permanently as the Churches. At the end of 1784, Abigail Adams wrote to a sister from London, “Mr. and Mrs. Church are here too, alias Cartar. Mrs. Church is a delicate little woman. As to him, his character is enough known in America.”

Back in Britain, Church quickly paid off the debts that he had left behind in 1774 and reestablished himself in business. He bought a house on Sackville Street in London. He bought a country house near Windsor. The couple entertained widely, not just among the American community—one of John Barker Church’s gambling friends was the Prince of Wales.

We might think that a rather boring, aristocratic life compared to the drama of nation-building that brother-in-law Hamilton threw himself into in America, but John Barker Church was also interested in politics. He was part of the radical Whig faction, causing George III to call his principles “avowedly enemical.” In 1787 he ran for Parliament and lost. The following year, Church took another approach: he bought a rural estate which came with a parliamentary seat, and put himself up for that seat in 1790.

By then the French Revolution was roiling Europe, and Church was decidedly on the side of reform. He opposed Britain’s war measures and hosted French exiles at the height of the Terror. In addition, he:

• financed Charles James Fox, leader of the Whig left, with big loans he was never able to collect on.
• bankrolled an attempt to break Lafayette out of a Prussian prison on 1792. (One of these days I’ll tell that story.)
• helped Talleyrand sail to America in 1794 after Britain suddenly expelled him.

After six years in Parliament, Church gave up his seat, sold his estate, and headed back to the U.S. of A.

In 1797 Robert Morris went bankrupt. Church was one of his creditors, and to settle the debts he took over a great many of Morris’s western land claims. A few years later, the Churches’ oldest son Philip went to a tract in western New York and founded the town of Angelica, named after his mother. John Barker Church himself commissioned a mansion in Belmont called Belvidere.

Meanwhile, Church kept busy in the New York business world. He underwrote loans and was a director of the Manhattan Company and the Bank of North America. The Churches had eight children between 1778 and 1800, most of them living a long time. And still their life was full of drama. John Barker Church fought a duel with Aaron Burr five years before Hamilton did. In fact, Church was the family expert on affairs of honor, supplying the pair of pistols that his nephew Philip Hamilton and his brother-in-law used in their fatal confrontations.

Angelica Church died in 1814. John Barker Church returned to his native Britain and died four years later. He wasn’t a brilliant writer or political theorist, but he certainly wasn’t boring.

TOMORROW: A last word, and comma, from Hamilton.

Lucy Knox, Mistress of the Chess Board

On 24 Aug 1788, Lucy Knox wrote to her husband Henry from Trenton about having recently beaten Gouverneur Morris at chess.

That game might have been good preparation for Morris’s travel later that year to France, where chess could mean so much more. He wrote of calling on “Mme. [Sophie le Couteulx] Dumolley, who is at chess” before they embarked on an affair; of the Vicomte de Ségur, who declares “the pursuit of a woman is like a game of chess, when in consequence of a certain set of moves the success is certain”; and of the bishop of Autun, whose “passion for play has become extreme,” claiming to have won “in the society of chess-clubs, about thirty thousand francs.”

But for Lucy Knox, that chess game might have been just another day at the board. In 1804 Anna Cutts wrote to her sister, Dolley Madison, about visiting Lucy Knox in Boston:

We have very pleasant lodgings, and for my companion, the famous Madame Knox, who although very haughty, I find pleasant and sensible. Chess is now her mania which she plays extremely well, only too often for my fancy, who am not of late so partial to it. Every morning after breakfast there is a summons from her ladyship, which if I attend, pins me to her apron-string until time to dress for dinner, after which she retires, again inviting me to battle. Out of twenty-one games, in only two, and a drawn game, has she shown me any mercy; she is certainly the most successful player I have ever encountered.

The image here is the only known portrait of Lucy Knox. It’s a caricature in silhouette created by one of Robert Morris’s sons, supposedly showing how her high hair-do made wearing a hat difficult. I think it could make a good chess-piece.

When “Clamours run very high” in Philadelphia

As of 8 Sept 1765, the stamp agent for Pennsylvania, John Hughes, had heard demands for his resignation, but he brushed them off. Then on 12 September, he reported to the man who had secured that appointment for him:

Our Clamours run very high, and I am told my House shall be pull’d down and the Stamps burnt. To which I give no other Answer than that I will defend my House at the Risque of my Life. I must say, that all the sensible Quakers behave prudently.

The irony is that Hughes and the man he was writing to, Benjamin Franklin, were leaders of the political alliance that had broken down the Quaker dominance of the Pennsylvania legislature.

On 15 September, Philadelphia received news of the change in government in London: George Grenville, who had sponsored the Stamp Act, was no longer prime minister. That news caused celebrations in the city, which soon turned into actions against the men seen as supporting or carrying out the unpopular law.

Hughes wrote out periodic reports to Franklin about what followed:

Sept. 16. in the Evening. Common Report threat[ens] my House this Night, as there are Bonfires and Rejoicings for the Change of Ministry. The sober and sensible Part of the People are doing every thing towards being in Readiness to suppress a Mob if there should be any Intention of Rising. I for my Part am well-arm’d with Fire-Arms, and am determin’d to stand a Siege. If I live till tomorrow morning I shall give you a farther Account; but as it is now about 8 aClock, I am on my Guard, and only write this between whiles, as every Noise or Bustle of the People calls me off.

9 aClock. Several Friends that patroll between my House and the Coffee House, come in just now, and say, the Collection of Rabble begins to decrease visibly in the Streets, and the Appearance of Danger seems a good deal less than it did.

12 aClock. There are now several Hundreds of our Friends about Street, ready to suppress any Mob, if it should attempt to rise, and the Rabble are dispersing.

Sept. 17. 5 in the morning. We are all yet in the Land of the Living, and our Property safe. Thank God.

In those same days, crowds visited Franklin’s house—though they knew he was three thousand miles away in London. It was up to his wife Deborah (shown above) and their friends to dissuade the crowd from causing any damage.

The stamped paper for the Middle Colonies arrived in the Delaware River on 5 October. With it came Hughes’s official commission as stamp agent. A large crowd gathered outside the State House and chose a committee that included James Allen (1742-1778), Robert Morris, and Charles Thomson to call on Hughes and find out what he planned to do with the paper now.

Hughes was sick in bed, but he received the committee. He told them that he wouldn’t enforce the Stamp Act unless the law was generally accepted in the colonies—which was not looking likely. Hughes refused to formally resign, however. The crowd visited again two days later, but he stuck to his position, and his bed. The people went away, figuring that was the best they could do until November, when the law was to take effect.

TOMORROW: To the south.

Did Gouverneur Morris Slap Washington on the Shoulder?

A footnote in Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington, written largely by George Washington Parke Custis and edited by Benson J. Lossing in 1861, passes on this story:

It is related of the Honorable Gouverneur Morris, who was remarkable for his freedom of deportment toward his friends, that on one occasion he offered a wager that he could treat General [George] Washington with the same familiarity as he did others. This challenge was accepted, and the performance tried. Mr. Morris slapped Washington familiarly on the shoulder, and said, “How are you, this morning, general?” Washington made no reply, but turned his eyes upon Mr. Morris with a glance that fairly withered him. He afterward acknowledged, that nothing could induce him to attempt the same thing again.

No source is stated, and both Custis and Lossing were “print the legend” guys, often unreliable on both details and broad strokes. However, in this case there seems to be a stronger basis for the tale.

In Inquiry into the Origin and Course of Political Parties in the United States, written by Martin Van Buren and published after his death by his sons in 1867, a letter dated 1857 passes on a story that Jacob Burnet (1770-1853) told in 1852:

He related an anecdote of Washington which he had from the lips of Alexander Hamilton.

When the Convention to form a Constitution was sitting in Philadelphia in 1787, of which General Washington was President, he had stated evenings to receive the calls of his friends. At an interview between Hamilton, the Morrises, and others, the former remarked that Washington was reserved and aristocratic even to his intimate friends, and allowed no one to be familiar with him. Gouverneur Morris said that was a mere fancy, and he could be as familiar with Washington as with any of his other friends. Hamilton replied, “If you will, at the next reception evening, gently slap him on the shoulder and say, ‘My dear General, how happy I am to see you look so well!’ a supper and wine shall be provided for you and a dozen of your friends.”

The challenge was accepted. On the evening appointed a large number attended, and at an early hour Gouverneur Morris entered, bowed, shook hands, laid his left hand on Washington’s shoulder, and said: “My dear General, I am very happy to see you look so well!” Washington withdrew his hand, stepped suddenly back, fixed his eye on Morris for several minutes with an angry frown, until the latter retreated abashed and sought refuge in the crowd. The company looked on in silence.

At the supper which was provided by Hamilton, Morris said: “I have won the bet but paid dearly for it, and nothing could induce me to repeat it.”

That story went into James Parton’s Life of Thomas Jefferson (1874), and from there into Max Farrand’s Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 (1911). That’s one of the most authoritative sources in American historiography, which might mean it deserves more scrutiny.

Farrand also noted another version of the same anecdote. In his Life and Correspondence of George Read (1870), William Thompson Read said he’d received the same story from “Mrs. Susan[ne] Eckard [1776-1861], of Philadelphia, daughter of Colonel James Read [1743-1822],” who administered the Continental Congress’s Marine department in the 1780s:

Gouverneur Morris, a very handsome, bold, and—I have heard the ladies say—very impudent man. His talents and services are part of American history. He wore a wooden leg. He was not related to the great financier, who was said to be a natural child. The office of Mr. [Robert] Morris was only divided from papa’s by a small entry, and was constantly visited by Mr. Gouverneur Morris, and papa’s also.

One day the latter entered, and papa was so struck by his crest-fallen appearance that he asked, “Are you not well?”

He replied, “I am not,—the devil got possession of me last night.”

“I have often cautioned you against him,” said papa, playfully, “but what has happened to disturb you?”

“I was at the President’s last night; several members of the Cabinet were there. The then absorbing question, (‘I forget,’ Mrs. E. writes, ‘what it was’) was brought up. The President was standing with his arms behind him,—his usual position,—his back to the fire, listening. Hamilton made a speech I did not like. I started up and spoke, stamping, as I walked up and down, with my wooden leg; and, as I was certain I had the best of the argument, as I finished I stalked up to the President, slapped him on the back, and said, ‘Ain’t I right, general?’ The President did not speak, but the majesty of the American people was before me. Oh, his look! How I wished the floor would open and I could descend to the cellar!

“You know me,” continued Mr. Morris, “and you know my eye would never quail before any other mortal.”

In fact, Gouverneur Morris wasn’t in the U.S. of A. during Washington’s terms as President, so that version of the story could not be true. But it’s quite plausible that Eckard misunderstood a reference to Washington as president of the Constitutional Convention, as in the Burnet version of the tale.

We thus have what appear to be three strands of an oral tradition, one put to paper in 1857, another printed in 1860, and a third, independent version written down before 1861. Each of the two letters describes a short chain of storytellers leading back to Hamilton and Morris. So even though this incident didn’t get set down in any form until seven decades after it supposedly happened, it looks credible.

George Washington and the Fish House Punch

Yesterday’s rerun of Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! on N.P.R. reminded me that I wanted to look into a story its host had told about George Washington: that he went on a “three-day bender” on Fish House Punch, the favored drink of the Philadelphia gentlemen’s club variously known as the Schuylkill Fishing Company and the State in Schuylkill. Well, that’s the way that comedy game show put it. The Philadelphia Inquirer stated the case this way in 1992:

In 1787, George Washington was an honored guest at the club and no doubt sampled the punch. After he made an entry in his diary that he was en route to dine at the Fish House, his diary remains suspiciously blank for the next three days.

I’ve found references to that story as early as 1974. The 9 June 1975 New Yorker quoted a member of the club telling the same story, complete with the three-day gap in his diary—but no specific dates.

The club’s own History of the Schuylkill Fishing Company, published in 1889, states that members invited Washington to dine with them on 14 June 1787. They might have chosen that date because it was twelve years after the Continental Congress had voted to form the Continental Army. Or it might just have been convenient.

Washington was in Philadelphia that summer for the Constitutional Convention, and he kept a sparely-written diary of how he spent his time. The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography published a transcript of that journal in 1889. Back at home in Mount Vernon, Washington copied those entries with a little editing into his main series of diaries, which can be read at Founders Online. Neither version shows any gap at all in the June entries, or in any other summer month.

Furthermore, Washington’s diary suggests he didn’t accept the Schuylkill Fishing Company’s invitation. His entry for 14 June says:

Dined at Major Moores (after being in Convention) and spent the evening at my own lodgings.

The editors posit that was Thomas Lloyd Moore, a major in the Continental Army. He wasn’t a member of the Schuylkill club.

On 30 June, Washington recorded that he:

Dined with a Club at Springsbury—consisting of several associated families of the City—the Gentlemen of which meet every Saturday accompanied by the females of the families every other Saturday.

This was the Cold Spring Club at Springettsbury. He went there again on 11 and 25 August and 8 September. The journal shows Washington dined out with other local social groups as well.

From 30 July through 4 August, Washington took two out-of-town fishing trips with Robert Morris, Gouverneur Morris, and others. (He also went back to Valley Forge to look around: “Visited all the Works, wch. were in Ruins; and the Incampments in woods where the ground had not been cultivated.”) So Washington did fish. But I don’t see any record confirming the story that Washington visited with the Schuylkill Fishing Company in 1787 or sampled its Fish House Punch, much less felt under the weather for three days afterward.

Usually the burden of proof for historical stories rests on those telling them: they should provide evidence that events happened as they describe. Because of all the gaps in the historical record, skeptics needn’t prove something didn’t happen. But in this case the very records that proponents of the Fish House Punch story point to—Washington’s diaries for 1787—actually appear to disprove that legend.

Boston 1775 Twitter Feed, 15-29 Jan 2010

• Ray Soller seeks root of myth that George Washington added "So help me God" to Presidential oath of office: bit.ly/af9qUt #
• Past Is Present looks at evidence of how Abigail Adams REALLY observed July 4: bit.ly/c8rZSx #
• Boston middle school students make videogame about Chelsea Creek skirmish early in American Revolution: bit.ly/cr1P4o #
• Salinger/Zinn mashup at Hilobrow – Holden's History of the US: "Boston seems to have been full of class anger…" bit.ly/dvsedc #
• Doubts about overly optimistic identifcation of sankofa symbol on 18th-c coffin in NY's African Burying Ground: bit.ly/aYEaAB #
• The plaque stolen from the site of the belfry on Lexington common in 1775 has been found: bit.ly/a5kOOX #
• RT @Jurretta: Latest vol. in Papers of Jefferson includes "wall of separation" letter—and that Mammoth Cheese: bit.ly/9DvtOe #
• @universalhub But Julianne Moore's accent is SUPPOSED to be awful. Beautiful woman + grating sound = comedy. #
• Luxury British baby walker from 1710: bit.ly/by3VZ7 #
• RT @bostonathenaeum: From Quincy's History of the Boston Athenæum.... bit.ly/bnnwgt #
• Who shot the Elisha Jones house in Concord, Mass? bit.ly/9Qeh19 #
• Boston Looking Backward links to online repositories of historic photos: bit.ly/bBHoMt #
• RT @TJMonticello: Another Jefferson letter discovered, this one at American Legion Post 24 in Old Town Alexandria: bit.ly/7bYAqj #
• Flash! RT @bostonhistory: National Archives bans photos by tourists in an effort to protect historic documents tinyurl.com/y87ug5u #
• RT @TJMonticello: "the more ignorant we become the less value we set on science, & the less inclination we shall have to seek it."—Jefferson #
• RT @dancohen: .@robotnik wonders which t-shirt designs could be hi story's answer to those "Science!" t-shirts: bit.ly/5LFpXX #
• RT @dancohen: Rather obvious way for Obama to regain momentum at State of the Union speech on Wed: unveil revolutionary tablet computer. #
• Percentages in first survey of voters after Massachusetts special Senate elections: bit.ly/67uZGU (PDF) #
• Studying Hannah Mather Crocker, early American feminist, and her unpublished history of Boston: bit.ly/7xSQQg #
• RT @TJMonticello: By way of our Jefferson Library, Top 10 Misconceptions abt Tho Jefferson. bit.ly/4zArFF Do you have your own fave? #
• Just watched 30 ROCK. Didn't hear a single misstatement about John Hancock that I needed to grumble about! #
• RT @odnb: Whig and wings: Life of the Day bit.ly/8XXWFH // Lived 1751–1833, and I'd never heard of her. #
• Prediction: The Roberts Supreme Court next recognizes corporations' 2nd Amendment rights. Coke-Pepsi rivalry really heats up. #
• A criminal gang in Philadelphia, 1750: bit.ly/5DNYbN #
• RT @universalhub: How Jamaica Plain got its name bit.ly/8EoLVt #
• RT @Classicbookmags: 'Inbound 4: A Comic Book History of Boston' is available now. bit.ly/7NCVRc #
• Enjoyed hearing Emily Murphy on privateering to Friends of MMNHP; even more enjoyed hearing her refer to Derbies of Salem by first names. #
• RT @history_book: Thomas Paine: A Collection of Unknown Writings - Palgrave Macmillan. bit.ly/6aq3Hg #
• @GardenKeeper Part of John Hancock's political success is that he avoided hard choices. Managed not to be governor during Shays crisis. #
• For an Election Day in Massachusetts, colonial election cake at Boston Looking Backward: bit.ly/6AJNGc #
• RT @history_book: Songs of Protest, Songs of Love: Popular Ballads in Eighteenth-Century Britain - by Robin Ganev j.mp/2AOH2 #
• RT @wceberly: 246 yrs today, Jan 19, 1764, Parliament expels John Wilkes for insulting G eorge III in newspaper bit.ly/8e1s3a #
• Discussion seminar on Boston in the 1850s to take place on Wednesday evenings, Feb. 24-Mar. 31: bit.ly/6zo9ut #ushistory #
• RT @amhistorymuseum: Today in 1706: Benjamin Franklin born. Podcast on his legacy, technology, and democracy: ow.ly/Xnz8 #
• RT @archives_gov: Jefferson's Secret Message to Congress: bit.ly/6O9ROT // SPOILER: need $$ for trip west. #
• RT @TheHistoryPress: First written reference to Isaac Newton's apple story [1752] goes online: bit.ly/8UWZGC #
• For very, very special fans of financier Robert Morris: bit.ly/5VlqiE #
• Foundation garments of the Georgian Empire // RT @lucyinglis: A peep up the skirts of Georgian London post.ly/J8Cb #
• Upcoming comic about escaped slaves in American Revolution with martial-arts powers: bit.ly/8xUIDN (Real war not exciting enough?) #

Seven Founders

Last week guest blogger Ray Raphael laid out a challenge: Choose seven people to follow through the entire American Revolution whose stories, when combined, would tell the whole of that political, military, and social change.

I shared my thoughts, and Boston 1775 readers rose to the challenge with many more suggestions. I also promised to reveal the folks whom Ray chose to follow in Founders: The People Who Brought You a Nation, and here they are:

• George Washington. Virginia planter. Delegate to the House of Burgesses and the Continental Congress. Generalissimo. Chairman of the Constitutional Convention. President. You’ve heard of him, right?
• Joseph Plumb Martin. Native of Massachusetts raised in Connecticut. Private soldier from 1775 to 1783, reaching rank of sergeant. Settled in Maine. Published a lively account of his military career, most likely edited from his contemporaneous journals because of all the detail, in 1830.
  
• Mercy Otis Warren. Political writer. Sister of James Otis, Jr., wife of James Warren, friend of John and Abigail Adams. Active Whig, Anti-federalist, and Jeffersonian. The Woman Who Did Everything More Beautifully Than You.
  
• Robert Morris. British-born Pennsylvania merchant. Delegate to the Congress. Financier and financial manager of the U.S. of A., founder of the Bank of North America, lender of large sums to the new republic. Delegate to the Constitutional Convention and Senator. Land speculator and debtor.
  
• Timothy Bigelow. Blacksmith from Worcester. Local political organizer. Colonel of a Massachusetts regiment in the Continental Army. Developer of Montpelier, Vermont. Debtor.
  
• Henry Laurens. South Carolina planter. President of the Continental Congress after John Hancock. Diplomat and eventually one negotiator of the Treaty of Paris. Father of John Laurens. Highest-ranking U.S. government official ever captured by the enemy.
  
• Dr. Thomas Young. A New York country doctor, deist, and poet. Helped found the Albany Sons of Liberty before moving to Boston. Soon one of the town’s top Whig organizers. Fleeing the troops in Boston in September 1774, he joined the Patriots in Rhode Island. Then he moved on to Philadelphia, becoming a leader of the state’s radical party and an army surgeon. Coined the name “Vermont.”

Choosing these particular people allowed Ray to play them off each other. For example, Dr. Young was one of the most radical and democratic politicians of the period while Laurens was fundamentally conservative. Warren strenuously opposed Morris, who in turn distrusted Young.

Washington, Martin, and Bigelow were all in the army at Valley Forge and Yorktown, but, holding different ranks, experienced the war in different ways. Morris and Laurens were very important figures in the civil government while Warren and Young wrote political essays and exercised behind-the-scenes influence. Washington, Morris, and Bigelow all invested in land development after the war; Martin was one of the small farmers who settled on such newly developed land. Only one of these people didn’t live to see Britain acknowledge American independence.