“The Body of Michael Johnson then and there being Dead”

Revolutionary Spaces preserves what might be the first piece of legal paperwork arising from the Boston Massacre: the report of an inquest convened the day after the shooting.

This document a printed form filled out with specific details on the deceased and the names and signatures of the coroner and his jury. I’ve transcribed it with the printed words in boldface:

Suffolk, ss.

AN Inquisition Indented, taken at Boston within the said County of Suffolk the Sixth Day of March in the tenth Year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord George the third by the Grace of God, of Great-Britain, France and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, &c. Before Robert Pierpont Gentm. one of the Coroners of our said Lord the King, within the County of Suffolk aforesaid;

upon the View of the Body of Michael Johnson then and there being Dead, by the Oaths of Benjamin Waldo Foreman Jacob Emmons John McLane William Fleet John Wise John How Nathaniel Hurd William Baker junior William Flagg William Crafts Enoch Rust Robert Duncan William Palfrey & Samuel Danforth good and lawful Men of Boston aforesaid, within the County aforesaid; who being Charged and Sworn to enquire for our said Lord the King, When and by what Means, and how the said Michael Johnson came to his Death: Upon their Oaths do say,

That the said Michael Johnson was wilfully and feloniously murdered at King Street in Boston in the County aforesaid on the Evening of the 5th. instant between the hours of nine & ten by the discharge of a Musket or Muskets loaded with Bullets, two of which were shot thro’ his body, by a party of Soldiers to us unknown, then and there headed and commanded by Captain Thomas Preston of his Majesty’s 29th. Regiment of foot against the peace of our Sovereign Lord the King his Crown and dignity and so by that means he came by his death as appears by evidence.

In Witness whereof, as well I the Coroner aforesaid, as the Jurors aforesaid, to this Inquisition have interchangeably put our Hands and Seals, the Day and Year aforesaid.

This document was made so early that Bostonians hadn’t realized that “Michael Johnson” was really named Crispus Attucks.

Revolutionary Spaces shared an essay about this document’s history as a museum artifact and the work that’s been done to conserve it.

Tonight I’ll speak online to the American Revolution Round Table of New Jersey about how Massachusetts’s legal system responded to the Boston Massacre. Four criminal trials followed that event, though we usually hear about only one or two (so I might end up talking more about the others). 

Reading the Middlesex Resolves

On 30–31 Aug 1774 delegates from “every town and district in the county of Middlesex” met at Concord to discuss the political situation in Massachusetts.

The body chose a committee headed by Jonathan Williams Austin of Chelmsford to draft its response to Parliament’s recent Coercive Acts. Austin was a young lawyer, raised in Boston, educated at Harvard, and trained by John Adams.

At the end of that convention, the body voted 146 to 4 to adopt the Austin committee’s report offering nineteen resolutions. Here’s the preface, as printed in a broadside:

IT is evident to every attentive Mind, that this Province is in a very dangerous and alarming Situation. We are obliged to say, however painful it may be to us, that the Question now is, Whether by a Submission to some late Acts of the Parliament of Great Britain, we are contented to be the most abject Slaves, and entail that Slavery on Posterity after us, or by a manly, joint and virtuous Opposition assert & support our Freedom.

There is a Mode of Conduct, which in our very critical Circumstances we wou’d wish to adopt, a Conduct, on the one Hand, never tamely submissive to Tyranny and Oppression, on the other, never degenerating into Rage, Passion and Confusion. This is a Spirit, which, we revere as we find it exhibited in former Ages, and will command Applause to latest Posterity.

The late Acts of Parliament pervade the whole System of Jurisprudence, by which Means, we think, the Fountains of Justice are fatally corrupted. Our Defence must therefore be immediate in Proportion to the Suddenness of the Attack, and vigorous in Proportion to the Danger.

We must NOW exert ourselves, or all those Efforts, which for ten Years past, have brightened the Annals of this Country, will be totally frustrated. LIFE & DEATH, or what is more, FREEDOM & SLAVERY are in a peculiar Sense now before us, and the Choice and Success, under God, depend greatly upon ourselves. We are therefore bound, as struggling not only for ourselves, but future Generations, to express our Sentiments in the following Resolves; Sentiments, which we think, are founded in Truth and Justice, and therefore Sentiments we are determined to abide by.

The Middlesex County resolutions complained about three acts of Parliament: the Boston Port Bill, the Massachusetts Government Act (in detail), and the Administration of Justice Act. This convention said nothing about the revised Quartering Act or the Quebec Act, often grouped with those others.

Resolution 17 called out Samuel Danforth and Joseph Lee by name as “judges of the Inferior Court of Common Pleas for this county, [who] have accepted commissions under the new act by being sworn members of his Majesty’s Council.” It’s no surprise, therefore, that those two men were the first targets of the “Powder Alarm” two days after the convention ended. They indeed had enough warning to write out their resignations from the Council.

TOMORROW: A question of style.

“You have heard of the taking ye. Windmill”

In The Road to Concord I quoted a lot from accounts of the “Powder Alarm” that Dr. Joseph Warren and Dr. Thomas Young sent to Samuel Adams on 4 Sept 1774. (Warren’s letter is undated, so that date is a guess based on context.)

Both those physicians had gone out to Cambridge common on 2 September along with other genteel Boston Whig leaders, hoping to calm the crowd and prevent violence. They could therefore share eyewitness details with Adams.

(In fact, the crowd was already calm, though determined. It didn’t verge on violence until later in the afternoon when Customs Commissioner Benjamin Hallowell, Jr., happened to roll by. And the inland farmers wouldn’t have recognized Hallowell if Bostonians like printer Isaiah Thomas hadn’t pointed him out, calling, “Dam you how doe you like us now, you Tory Son of a Bitch[?]” Needless to say, Thomas wasn’t part of the Boston committee.)

Adams also received a 5 September letter from the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper describing the “Powder Alarm.” That minister was not an eyewitness, so all his information was second-hand at best and inaccurate in some details. But that letter offers a look at what the Whigs were telling each other about the event.

You have heard of the taking ye. Windmill, at Cambridg [sic—Charlestown] with the Province Powder there by a Detachment.

The next Morning three thousand assembled at Cambridg. They conducted with Order & great Firmness. [Samuel] Danforth & [Joseph] Lee, expecting a Storm had resign’d the Day before. Sheriff [David] Phips has promis’d not to act upon ye. new Laws. Even the Lt. Governor [Thomas Oliver] resign’d his Seat at ye. Board [i.e., the Council].

The Assembly having done their Business, retir’d.

Hallowell pass’d on that Day thro Cambridg from Salem. When he had got a little Way fro the Assembly, one or two Horsemen follow’d him. He gallop’d with all the Speed he could make thro the blazing Heat to Boston.

When he got upon ye. Neck, as if all the Sons of Liberty in the Province had been at his Heels, He scream’d for the Guard: They ran from their Station to meet him. The Alarm was soon given to the Camp—and an apprehension instantly propagated of a Visit from Cambridg. The Soldiers lay on their arms thro the Night.

They have since doubled their Guard at the Fortification, and planted four Pieces of Cannon there.

Dr. Cooper had other things to say about the mandamus Councilors and what Gen. Thomas Gage was writing to his superiors in London. (How could the minister know?)

Cooper signed this letter “Amicus,” adding, “If you are at a Loss, Mr. [Thomas] Cushing will explain my Signature—conceal my name.”

“The breach of a most essential privilege of this Board”

On 12 Oct 1770, eight members of the Massachusetts Council delivered their depositions about what had happened on 6 March, the day after the Boston Massacre.

Harrison Gray, who was also the provincial treasurer, dated his testimony 9 October while the other depositions were all dated on the 12th. Samuel Danforth, the senior Councilor present, and Royall Tyler provided solo accounts. Three men signed one deposition and two another, very similar, which doesn’t really add up to independent evidence.

The focus of controversy was provincial secretary Andrew Oliver’s report that Tyler had said of prominent men in Massachusetts, “they had formed their plan, and that this was a part of it to remove the Troops out of town, and after that the Commissioners.” And the main issues were—

1) Did Tyler really refer to the Customs Commissioners? Witnesses saying he did included Capt. Benjamin Caldwell, R.N.; deputy secretary John Cotton; and clerk Francis Skinner. Lt. Col. William Dalrymple said, “Something of that kind was mentioned by some Gentleman of the Council during the debates; but I cannot say whether it was by Mr. Tyler.” All eight Councilors said they had no recollection of that remark, some said they would definitely have remembered such a thing, and some argued that mentioning the Commissioners made no logical sense.

2) When Tyler spoke of a ”plan,” did he mean a plan formed before the shooting on 5 March or in the twelve to eighteen hours that had elapsed since it? Again, all the Councilors agreed that they didn’t see how anyone would take Tyler’s words to mean the first. To be sure, they had to work through some logical and semantic brambles to get there, as the scholarly Samuel Danforth showed:

whereas the mention made by Mr. Tyler of a plan that had been formed, (considering that the interval of time between those outrages and Mr. Tyler’s narration was scarce sufficient wherein to form such a plan and the knowledge of it to reach Mr. Tyler) may by some be understood to refer to a plan formed before those outrages were committed, this deponent testifies that nothing said by Mr. Tyler, in his hearing, did convey to him any idea of such a plan formed previous to those outrages; and how incautiously and madly so ever some individuals highly incensed, might have expressed themselves, and what apprehensions so ever Mr. Tyler (thro’ misinformation or otherwise) might then have of a plan formed for removing the troops from the town, in any other way than by prevailing with their officers to remove them, this deponent verily believes that no combination had ever been formed, or plan concerted for the purpose of removing the troops, either in the town of Boston or elsewhere; having never heard it suggested by any other person then Mr. Tyler either then or at any time since

On this point, witnesses Cotton and Skinner agreed that Tyler hadn’t appeared to mean a plan made before the Massacre. However, no one disputed that Tyler had spoken of a “plan.” 

3) Was Oliver wrong to send to London a description of the Council meeting that went beyond the official minutes? The secretary declared that he could, and indeed should, provide a full report on the Council to Sir Francis Bernard, still the official royal governor. The Councilors felt Oliver had broken a norm and cast the province in a bad light just like Bernard’s letters to London, exposed the year before.

That bad light was the real issue, of course. Especially since Bernard had Oliver’s account printed (not unlike how the Boston Whigs had published his letters). Massachusetts politicians had been trying to portray Boston as a peaceful, loyal British town unfairly maligned by royal officials and subjected to an unnecessary military presence. That argument was harder to make if the Council—the governor’s top local advisors—had been close to threatening armed rebellion.

After collecting all the statements, on 16 October the Council named a committee to report on the matter. This consisted of five Councilors not present on 6 March: William Brattle; James Bowdoin (shown above); James Otis, Sr.; John Bradbury; and Stephen Hall.

According to acting governor Thomas Hutchinson, Bowdoin had already revealed his response to Oliver’s account by telling Thomas Flucker, “Why this Deposition of the Secretary has defeated every thing we aimed at by the Narrative & Deposition sent home.”

Sure enough, on 24 October the Council adopted a detailed report, penned by Bowdoin, that went over every disputed detail and ended in four resolutions:

I. RESOLVED unanimously, That Andrew Oliver, Esq; Secretary of this Province, by secretly taking minutes at Council, of what was said by the members of Council, in their debates, also by signing a paper containing those minutes, and further by giving his deposition to the truth of it, has in each and all those instances acted inconsistent with the duty of his office, and thereby is guilty of a breach of trust.

II. RESOLVED unanimously, That the said Andrew Oliver, Esq; inasmuch as such proceedings are destructive of all freedom of debate, is guilty of the breach of a most essential privilege of this Board.

III. WHEREAS the said Andrew Oliver, Esq; has suggested in his said deposition, that because his draft was allowed strictly to express the truth, it would not stand well on the Council records, and was therefore rejected by the Council; RESOLVED unanimously, That by such suggestion he has injured and abused the members composing that Council, and by so doing has reflected great dishonor on this Board.

IV. RESOLVED, That an attested copy of this report, and the petitions and depositions, to which it relates, be sent to Mr. Agent [William] Bollan, in order that he may make the best use of them he can, for the benefit of this Province.

Oliver responded with a letter protesting his honor and repeating that he’d reported the truth. The Council sent back a letter rejecting that claim and had the whole collection of documents printed as Proceedings of His Majesty's Council of the Province on Massachusetts-Bay, Relative to the Deposition of Andrew Oliver, Esq. Just one more dispute between the Massachusetts Whigs and the royal authorities with no resolution, just a feeling of grievance on both sides.

TOMORROW: A family feud?

Jonas Obscow, Natick Indian and Continental Soldier

Jonas Obscow (also spelled Obsco and Obscho) was born in Natick on 5 June 1739. The town’s vital records don’t identify his parents, but a man of the same name—presumably this baby’s father—died in 1745. His probate file, approved by Judge Samuel Danforth, said the most valuable part of his estate was 27 acres of land.

Four years later, in June 1749, Thaddeus Mason of Cambridge put young Jonas’s name on a list of Indians in Natick, “old and young,” separate from all other family groups.

On 27 Apr 1764, Jonas Obscow married Mary Speen, born to Abraham and Rachel Speen in 1738. “Abram Speen, wife and one child” had also appeared on the Mason list, and some of the late Jonas Obscow’s land bordered on Abraham Speen’s land, so the couple no doubt knew each other well.

The Obscows had three children recorded in the Natick record over the next few years:

• Mary, born 18 Nov 1765
• Abraham Speen, born in Walpole, 22 Dec 1767
• Zurvia, born 4 Feb 1770 and dying exactly two months later

In May 1772, the Obscows petitioned the Massachusetts General Court to permit the sale of some of their property. Their plea said that they had “for several years past, been exercised with Sickness in their family, of long continuance, which several of their Children have died.” Now “indebted to Physicians and others who relieved them in times of their affliction,” they wanted to sell “a lot of land at ye. West part of Natick four miles distant from their home lot, and four miles from the meeting house, Containing thirty seven acres.”

The Obscows had to petition the legislature before selling any land because, as Natick Indians, they needed the approval of guardians for the tribe appointed by the province. This provision was no doubt instituted with the goal of protecting Native people from being gouged. Of course, it made them dependent on the good will of the white men appointed as their guardians. The Obscows signed their petition with their marks. Three guardians of the Natick Indians signed as well. The General Court approved the sale.

In May 1775, Jonas Obscow joined the Massachusetts army, enlisting in the company of Capt. Joseph Morse within Col. John Paterson’s regiment. Obscow served in the siege of Boston at least through November, when he received a bounty coat. Military service meant income and food, but it also meant leaving Mary and whatever children were still alive back in Natick.

Jonas Obscow also enlisted for a 1777 campaign against the British in Rhode Island. Around that time his marriage with Mary was ending.

In 1783 Mary Obscow petitioned for state approval to sell her own land. That petition said she and Jonas had had four children, “But one now living about 15 years of age”—probably Abraham Speen Obscow. Mary went on to say that Jonas “Left your Petitinor & Child about 7 years ago & married unbenone to your Petitioner.” Mary had suffered from from “great Sickness & other misfortune of Broken Bones &c.,” putting her in debt to “doctr’s & Nursing &c.” The legislature granted that petition.

As of October 1788, Mary Obscow was dead, though the guardians for the Natick Indians were still selling her land “for the purpose of paying her Just Debts, & for the benifit of her Heir at Law.” One guardian held £5.12s.9d. from that estate in 1790, when Abraham Speen Obscow had presumably come of age.

In 1789 a man named Abel Perry petitioned the state to allow the guardians to look into and approve Jonas Obscow’s sale of twelve acres to him. Many Natives in New England’s “praying towns” lost the land assigned to them in just this gradual way, as debts forced them to sell off their property.

In 1796, the selectmen of Natick described Jonas Obscow as “an Indian man who is blind and is also wholly unable to go by reason of the Rheumatism and has not Estate to support him.” They were petitioning for state money to feed and house Obscow and other poor people, including Caesar Ferrit. The Natick officials argued that their town, originally founded for Indians who had converted to Christianity, deserved special consideration since Natives were exempt from local taxes but still sent their children to town schools.

The Natick selectmen also pointed out that Indians “have taken in negros…with whom they marry and have children,” and then “Said children when of age suppose them selves Exempted from all Taxes.” In other words, they would have preferred for those people of both Native and African ancestry to be classified as Negro so they were taxable. If, however, the state hinged special grants to Natick based on its large Native population, the selectmen would no doubt have wanted those same people counted as Indian.

Jonas Obscow died in Natick on 13 Nov 1805, at the age of sixty-six.

Samuel Danforth’s Independence Day

In 1788 Samuel Danforth was a seventeen-year-old apprentice carpenter living in Providence, Rhode Island.

The previous year he had started to keep a diary—fitfully at first and then more regularly. This was connected with his education since he recorded signing up for a school and kept track of what library books he borrowed and read.

On 3 July 1788, Samuel recorded a job with a deadline:

Work over on Camp hill to build Benches for to Dine upon Independence Day.

However, the next entry makes the holiday sounds like a disappointment:

a scanty meal for such a numerous train of people

Young Samuel Danforth’s diary is now in the collection of the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester.

Government Finance of Health Care, 18th-Century Style

Today Boston 1775 welcomes Dr. Sam Forman as a guest blogger. He is the author of the new book Dr. Joseph Warren: The Boston Tea Party, Bunker Hill, and the Birth of American Liberty. This is only the third full biography of Warren, a central figure in the beginning of the Revolutionary War, and the first in decades. Sam is also an expert in health management, and in this essay looks at that side of Warren’s work.

My new biography of Dr. Joseph Warren is the rousing story of one involved citizen who made a big impact in troubled times. Once famous and broadly admired, he is now barely remembered as the Patriot who sent Paul Revere on that legendary ride, and as the hero of the Battle of Bunker Hill, where he was killed in action.

A sidelight to Warren’s tale is interesting relative to a current controversy. Some conservative Republicans and modern Tea Partyers are calling for the repeal of President Obama’s health care financial reforms. They appear to argue that our Revolutionary-Era leaders never countenanced government involvement in health care finance. Such originalist assertions are Libertarian staples on which calls for reductions and elimination of such programs are based.

The notion that American Founders were not involved in government finance of health care is not borne out by the experience of Boston Patriots. Some, like Joseph Warren, were heavily involved in such programs. Politicians on all sides of the modern controversy do not seem to realize this.

All shades on the political spectrum of Warren’s day judged finance of health care of vulnerable populations as a fitting role for government, even as Whigs opposed taxation without representation within the British Empire. The issue was not whether this was an appropriate role of government, but who should hold the government contract and provide the services.

Dr. Joseph Warren held that Massachusetts province contract to provide health care to needy and elderly residents served by the almshouse and workhouse public institutions from 1769 into 1772. Physician services to people served by these institutions was on a fee-for-service basis to the designated physician, payable one or more times yearly, by a committee of Boston overseers. Designation of the physician and his reimbursement were handled separately from the staffing and administration of the almshouse and workhouse.

Dr. Benjamin Church served prior to Warren. Making his clinical rounds on October 20th at the workhouse at the outset of the 1768 British army occupation of Boston, Dr. Church was refused entry at point of bayonet. As a large crowd gathered, only the intercession of Sheriff Stephen Greanleaf gained Church access to his patient and avoided a riot.

This episode and Church’s clinical services to the poor doubtless reinforced his cache as a popular Whig, and may have helped to immunize him against suspicions of disloyalty for years.

Joseph Warren succeeded Benjamin Church as the province-designated physician to provide charity care from about May 1769 through April 1772. Appointments are recorded in the minutes of the Governor’s Council, whose originals are at the Massachusetts Archives. Government reimbursement and charity care patient volume for 1770/71 come from surviving Governor’s Council records and a Town of Boston tabulation approved by a committee headed by John Hancock.

Government reimbursed fee-for-service care for the indigent constituted about 42% of Warren’s practice, based on volume. As a portion of total revenue, estimates range from 64 to 68% for the three years Warren held the post.

Estimates of Government Reimbursed Care by Dr. Joseph Warren to Massachusetts Almshouse Poor as a Portion of His Medical Practice, May 1769 through April 1772

In 1772 Dr. Samuel Danforth, a Loyalist, displaced Joseph Warren. The new appointment may have had political overtones during a period of Whig quiescence and Tory resurgence. Despite his suspect politics, Dr. Danforth later practiced medicine in Boston and went on to become a founder of the Massachusetts Medical Society.

The closest modern equivalent to Massachusetts Province’s provision of health services to the almshouse and workhouse poor, would be a state Medicaid plan or Medicare, if it had a recipient means test.

Dr. Joseph Warren is a favorite Revolutionary figure among modern Republicans, and was idolized by their favorite American president of modern times, Ronald Reagan. The notion that fighting American founder Dr. Warren—very probably an organizer of the historical Boston Tea Party—aggressively pursued governmental finance of health care for the needy, is an important observation for modern observers of all persuasions. The extent of Warren’s provision of government reimbursed care during 1769-1772, and the widespread support that such government involvement enjoyed in Massachusetts by both Patriots and Tories in the Revolutionary era, are noteworthy. They constitute a humanitarian legacy predating the creation of the United States and its Constitution.

Nevertheless, I would not venture to assert that the compelling history of the American Revolutionary era confers originalist clout to any particular modern agenda regarding health care. To do so would be to commit the sin of presentism, the transgression of asserting a modern agenda in the guise of past events.

Thanks, Sam! For more on the care of the poor in colonial Boston, see the published town records The Eighteenth-Century Records of the Boston Overseers of the Poor, edited by Eric Nellis and Ann Decker Cecere and published by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. Visit Sam’s website for more on Joseph Warren and his compatriots, with weekly updates of primary-source documents.

Sam will speak on Dr. Warren, the early Revolutionary era, and his new biography at the Brookline Booksmith tonight at 7:00 P.M.; at Newtonville Books on Wednesday, 11 January, at 7:00 P.M.; and at Old South Meeting House on Thursday, 19 January, at noon (admission $6, free to Old South members).

Militiamen Rise Up Against Gen. Gage—in 1774

Yesterday’s posting described how on 1 Sept 1774 Gen. Thomas Gage, using his authority as governor of Massachusetts, ordered British soldiers to empty the provincial gunpowder storehouse in Charlestown (a part that’s now Somerville) and collect two small brass cannons from the militia in Cambridge.

Local people noticed. (It’s hard for over 200 redcoated soldiers to roll cannons and gunpowder wagons through a town without people noticing.) They started asking questions. And then, according to merchant John Andrews, this happened in Boston:

The Governor walking up the main street to dine with Brigadier [Robert] Pigot of the 43d, who improves a house just above Liberty tree, by chance or design, in pulling out his handkerchief, dropt a letter from Brigadier [William] Brattle of Cambridge

Andrews thought Gage deliberately dropped that letter “to exculpate himself from being thought to take such a measure of his own head”—i.e., to let people know that he’d acted only after a note from Brattle, their own militia general (shown above). Some historians have suggested that a Whig stole this note and made up a cover story about it falling from Gage’s pocket. And, of course, the general could truly have lost it by accident.

In any event, Cambridge quickly learned what Brattle had done. On 2 September, Andrews wrote that the people of that town “did not fail to visit Brattle and [Attorney General Jonathan] Sewall’s house last evening, but not finding either of ’em at home, they quietly went off.” Actually, these local crowds made a lot of noise, broke windows, and then went off. Even before they came, Brattle had hurried into Boston and taken refuge in the army camp, knowing how upset his neighbors would be.

And that was just the beginning of the provincial reaction. As word of the removal of the powder and cannons spread out from Cambridge, the rumors became more dire. Eventually people were hearing that the army had attacked a crowd of people, set fire to the town. (Which town? Rumors disagreed.) Men mustered in their militia companies and marched toward Charlestown.

That was how the militia system was supposed to work in a world before electronic communication. A military emergency allowed no time to wait for commanders to gather, confer, and bring back orders. The companies in each town prepared themselves to march to where it seemed they were needed.

And they marched with notable speed. Andrews later wrote:

Though they had an account at Marlborough of the powder’s being remov’d, last Thursday night, yet they were down to Cambridge (which is thirty miles) by eight o’clock Fryday morning, with a troop of horse and another of foot.

These two companies from Marlborough joined a crowd of 3,000, then 4,000 men from Middlesex County massing on Cambridge common early on 2 September. The town itself contained only 1,582 people according to the census of 1765. The militiamen had stacked their muskets somewhere along the way when it became clear that there was no imminent danger. Nevertheless, their numbers were enough to intimidate anyone in Cambridge who supported Gen. Gage’s actions. Even Boston’s Patriot leaders—men like Dr. Joseph Warren, Dr. Thomas Young, and town clerk William Cooper—were alarmed by this crowd, and hurried out to Cambridge to urge the crowd not to do anything violent or rash.

The government in London had appointed three Cambridge gentlemen to the new Council under the Massachusetts Government Act: Lt. Gov. Thomas Oliver, Samuel Danforth, and Joseph Lee. The crowd insisted that all three publicly resign their seats, and they did. Sheriff David Phipps had to apologize for helping the army remove the powder and cannons, and promise not to enforce as writs under the new act. By that evening Attorney General Sewall and Lt. Gov. Oliver joined Brattle in Boston, and over the next couple of weeks most other Loyalist families in Cambridge left their homes as well.

That night, William Tudor of Boston wrote in his diary: “at 5 P.m. came on hard Thunder & Lightning with a great Shower.” And the next morning: “It Rain’d plentifully all last Night.” The storm encouraged the crowd to disperse and return to their homes. But those militiamen had already shown Gen. Gage, the province’s Whig activists, and themselves that they would oppose any further changes to their ability to defend or govern themselves. On 2 Sept 1774, months before the Battle of Lexington and Concord, it was also clear that the royal government’s power no longer extended farther than the gates of Boston.

Samuel Danforth and the Philosopher's Stone

In June I wrote about Dr. Samuel Danforth, a Loyalist suspected of supplying hay for the British military from his farm in Chelsea. Dr. Danforth’s father was also named Samuel and was also interested in medicine, of a sort.

According to this article in Alchemy Journal by Mark Stavish, Samuel Danforth (1696-1777) probably became intrigued by alchemy as a student at Harvard College in his teens. In its library was

the curious manuscript Compendium Physicae by Charles Morton. Morton, a Puritan, received his M.A. from Oxford in 1652, and emigrated to Massachusetts in 1686. His Compendium was a strange blend of the science of the period with Aristotle. A lengthy section was devoted to the “Artifice of Gold by Alchymy” or “the finding of the Phylosophers stone”, even stating, “Some have done it, such are cal’d the Adepti”. He listed among them, Lully, Paracelsus, and his disciple, van Helmont.

Danforth settled in Cambridge, just a few blocks from the college. At that time, learned gentlemen often dabbled in many fields. Danforth not only became a probate judge but read enough about medicine to try offering the smallpox inoculation in 1730, only eight years after the Rev. Dr. Cotton Mather and his enslaved man Onesimus introduced the practice into Massachusetts. Cambridge voted its disapproval and asked Danforth to remove his patients to where they couldn’t infect anyone else. However, he kept enough respect in the community to be elected to the Council, the upper house of the Massachusetts colonial legislature, in 1739; he remained a member of that body for over thirty years.

Meanwhile, Samuel Danforth was collecting alchemical books and making extensive notes inside them. In 1773 he wrote to an old acquaintance, Benjamin Franklin, with news of discovering the philosopher’s stone; as Harry Potter fans know, that substance was supposed to confer immortality. Franklin wrote back on 25 July 1773:

I rejoice, therefore, in your kind intentions of including me in the benefits of that inestimable stone, which curing all diseases (even old age itself), will enable us to see the future glorious state of our America, enjoying in full security her own liberties, and offering in her bosom a participation of them to all the oppressed of other nations.

I anticipate the jolly conversation we and twenty more of our friends may have a hundred years hence on this subject, over that well replenished bowl at Cambridge commencement.

It’s disappointing to report that Danforth died four years later, in 1777. The Rev. Dr. Ezra Stiles of Newport, who was interested in many fields and many secrets (however outlandish), had this to say in his diary.
(I’m reproducing the image since I can’t reproduce the Hebrew.)

Dr. Samuel Danforth inherited his father’s library, and in 1812 he donated twenty-one volumes on alchemy to the Boston Athenaeum.

Was Dr. Samuel Danforth Smuggling Hay?

Boston selectman Timothy Newell recorded yet another skirmish over hay in Boston harbor on 9 June 1775, this time with no casualties:

Last night several Gundaloes went to Noddle’s Island for hay—two hundred and thirty Regulars went off soon after sunrise to support them. Upon the appearance of our people they tho’t proper to retire and arrived safe back here.

Here’s another document from that spring showing the fight to control natural resources early in the siege:

Malden, May 8th, 1775. The joint Committee of Malden and Chelsea, Voted, Capt. John Dexter, Thomas Hills, and Jonathan Williams be a Committee to wait on Gen. [Artemas] Ward, and inform him that Doct. Sam: Danforth, of Boston, passes backwards and forwards to that place, and from his well-known Conduct and Behaviour, we have reason to suspect his Attachment to our most Righteous Cause, likewise his securing Hay and moving it down to Winnisimmet ferry in order to be removed to Boston: and that the Committee has taken care that said Hay shall be removed to some more secure place.

Dr. Samuel Danforth (1740-1827) owned farmland in Chelsea. His brother Thomas was a lawyer in Charlestown. And both Danforth brothers were known to favor the royal government. It looks like they went into Boston in June and stayed there, though Dr. Danforth’s wife and family remained with her father in Chelsea.

Interestingly, while Thomas evacuated with the British military in 1776, Samuel remained in Massachusetts. He weathered a long period of suspicion and unpopularity through the war, then regained people’s trust as a physician. In 1781 he joined medical colleagues, most of them Patriot, in founding the Massachusetts Medical Society, and in the late 1790s served as the group’s president.