Seeing London with Nathaniel Balch

I’ve long puzzled over why hatter Nathaniel Balch chose to sail to Britain in May 1775, a month after war broke out in Massachusetts.

Balch may have been planning the trip for a while for business or personal reasons and just didn’t want to cancel, even in wartime.

But John Andrews’s letter (quoted yesterday) suggests that the price of the passage was unusually high. Passengers paid Capt. John Callahan extra to sail the Minerva across the Atlantic without a full cargo.

Like a lot of Bostonians, Balch had good reason to get out of the besieged town before it came under attack. But he didn’t take his wife and five children with him. He also still owned real estate in Providence, so he probably could have found refuge for the whole family in America.

Balch doesn’t appear to have been so deeply involved in politics that he would need to go to London to lobby for a patronage job, like his fellow traveler Samuel Quincy, or to talk with British opposition politicians on behalf of the Boston Whigs, as his friend Josiah Quincy had just done.

I know of no documents from Balch explaining his motives for the voyage—no letters, diary, business accounts, memoir.

We have a few glances of what Balch actually did in London after arriving on that ship full of Loyalists. They come from the diary of Samuel Curwen, a Loyalist from Salem who had crossed the ocean after a visit to Philadelphia. On 31 July, Curwen wrote:

Went in company with Messrs. I[saac]. Smith, N. Balch, J[oseph]. Greene Esq. and Berry [or was this John Barrell?], Colburn Barrell, a Mr. Peacock, a Glass Dealer in Fleetmarket Street, our Guide and young Oliver, to the [word?] Flintglass house over blackfryar’s bridge where we saw a drinking glass formed, completely made, ink bottles and smelling bottles, from which place returning we proceeded through a paved ally so called on this Side the Bridge to a glass grinder and polisher, whom we saw work. Dined at Kingshead Jury Lane, the glass grinder worked in a loft up 50 or 60 stairs. From dinner we repaired to St. Paul’s…

(A rumor was going around London that day that Lord North had shot himself. It was false.)

Three of those men and one more got together on 22 August:

Went to Bow with Nathaniel Balch, lying beyond White Chappell, from whence we took Coach, 2 Miles in order to see the China Manufacture, but the clerk received and dismissed us very cavalierly, with an abrupt answer, that he should not show it to us.

We met J. Berry and Mr. Silsbee at the door having trudged it afoot, returned by Bromley, stopping at Mile End, we took a bowl of punch and some bread and cheese, and from thence walked together to the Exchange, where J.B. and Mr. S. departed together.

Mr. B. and myself entered Lamp Chop House in Bartholomew Lane, took each a porringer of broth, and after taking a Survey of different rooms in the Bank, departed each for his lodgings, I being weary and lame.

Those expeditions might indicate that Balch was studying English manufactures. Then again, that might just have been a sort of sightseeing that businessmen from the provinces did.

On 24 August, Curwen, Balch, Silsbee, Isaac Smith, “John Berry and his Brother,” and “Capt. Martin” took a boat up the river to Barnes, then hiked through Kew Gardens and Richmond to Hampton Court Palace. Curwen thought the royal family should get out there more often. “Out of hatred to his grandfather the last excellent Geo. 2, the present King seems to make it a point to hate every object of his worthy grandfather’s approbation,” he wrote. The next day the men took a coach on to Windsor Castle as well.

Finally, on 28 August Balch called on Curwen “to go to Mr. Gilbert Harrison’s to dine from whence we went to puddledock.” Curwen visited the “Herald’s office” to inquire about his coat of arms, and there the men had tea.

The diary of former governor Thomas Hutchinson shows that in those same months he often saw people that Balch had sailed with, but he never mentioned meeting Balch. That might indicate a political gap between them, or perhaps just a social gap between a hatter and a governor.

The genial hatter’s reason to be in London that summer remains a mystery.

TOMORROW: Home again.

“Dashed the Body of the Sulky all to Pieces”

So what did John Adams have to say about the Massachusetts delegates’ entrance into New York on 7 May 1775? Unlike John Hancock and Silas Deane, he didn’t write home about how the crowd had tried to honor those men by unhitching their horses and pulling their carriages along.

For one thing, Adams didn’t have a carriage, only a “sulky,” or two-wheeled cart, borrowed from his father-in-law, the Rev. William Smith. For another, his servant Joseph Bass seems to have been riding in it alone; Adams was apparently in another delegate’s carriage. But most important, things hadn’t gone so well for him.

On 8 May 1775, John told his wife Abigail:

Jose Bass met with a Misfortune, in the Midst of some of the unnecessary Parade that was made about us. My Mare, being galled with an ugly Buckle in the Tackling, suddenly flinched and started in turning short round a Rock, in a shocking bad Road, overset the sulky which frightened her still more. She ran, and dashed the Body of the Sulky all to Pieces. I was obliged to leave my sulky, ship my Bagage on board Mr. [Thomas] Cushings Carriage, buy me a Saddle and mount on Horse back. I am thankfull that Bass was not kill'd. He was in the utmost danger, but not materially hurt.

I am sorry for this Accident, both on Account of the Trouble and Expence, occasioned by it. I must pay your Father for his sulky. But in Times like these, such Little Accidents should not affect us.

When the delegates entered Philadelphia a few days later, the Loyalist Samuel Curwen noted “John Hancock and Samuel Adams in a phaeton and pair,...John Adams and Thomas Cushing in a single horse chaise; behind followed Robert Treat Paine, and after him the New York delegation and some from the Province of Connecticut etc. etc.”

(The thumbnail above is Carl Rakeman’s vision of the Boston Post Road in 1763, painted for the Bureau of Public Roads sometime between 1921 and 1952. The man in the chaise is supposed to be Benjamin Franklin, the woman on horseback his daughter.)