My Latest from the Journal of the American Revolution

Last month the Journal of the American Revolution published my article “Dr. Warren’s Critical Informant.”

Built from postings on this site over the years, this article proposed an identity for the “person kept in pay” by the Boston Patriots in early 1775.

Dr. Joseph Warren reportedly consulted that informant just before sending William Dawes and Paul Revere out to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock of a British march on 18 Apr 1775.

I also chatted about that article with Brady Crytzer in an episode of the Dispatches podcast.

In addition, this month I received my contributor copy of the 2024 collection of articles from the journal, shown above. This volume includes the print version of my article “The Return of Samuel Dyer,” which can be read on the website in two parts.

New Collection from the Journal of the American Revolution

Next month Westholme Publishing will issue The Journal of the American Revolution Annual Volume 2024, edited ably once again by Don N. Hagist.

This webpage about the book says it will contain two articles by me.

In fact, the book will have only one article from me. That’s because I combined my two web articles about the confounding Samuel Dyer into one complete study.

This volume offers many other articles about Revolutionary New England, including:

• Remember Baker: A Green Mountain Boy’s Controversial Death and Its Consequences by Mark R. Anderson
• John Hancock’s Politics and Personality in Ten Quotes by Brooke Barbier
• Mercy Otis Warren: Revolutionary Propagandist by Jonathan House
• Captain James Morris of the Connecticut Light Infantry by Chip Langston
• Smallpox Threatens an American Privateer at Sea by Christian McBurney
• John Adams and Nathanael Greene Debate the Role of the Military by Curtis F. Morgan, Jr.
• The Perfidious Benjamin Church and Paul Revere by Louis Arthur Norton
• The Highs and Lows of Ethan Allen’s Reputation as Reported by Revolutionary-Era Newspapers by Gene Procknow
• Captain Luke Day: A Forgotten Leader of “Shays’s Rebellion” by Scott M. Smith
• Engaging the Glasgow by Eric Sterner

(My apologies to the authors of any other relevant articles I missed.)

And there are of course lots of articles about the American Revolution in, you know, other places.

A Few More Tidbits from Along the Way

Here are a few more observations on the sources I examined in my hunt for traces of Dr. Samuel Prescott this month.

First, in 1835 Lemuel Shattuck, probably relying on local and family traditions in Concord, wrote that when Prescott met Paul Revere and William Dawes, he “had spent the evening at Lexington,…and having been alarmed, was hastening his return home.”

In other words, Dr. Prescott had left his fiancée, Lydia Mulliken, because he had heard about the approaching regulars. Given the timing, that news had probably reached Lexington when the Boston men arrived at the Lexington parsonage. By the time the riders met on the road, Revere and Dawes didn’t need to tell Prescott.

If Dr. Prescott had indeed already heard the alarm, that helps to explain two details:

• why he left the Mulliken house—because he wanted to get back to his home town and prepare for any necessary military or medical action. He may therefore have planned to spend the night.
• how Revere and Dawes quickly learned that Prescott was a “high Son of Liberty.” They were probably all talking about what the army might be up to.

Second, in The Road to Concord, I wrote that James Barrett’s family and friends probably took the four cannon stolen from Boston to Stow and hid them near the house of Henry Gardner, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s reciever-general (equivalent of treasurer).

I based that on a statement in a Bicentennial-era history of Stow citing a local tradition. I wished I had a stronger source, but I presented it only as a possibility.

In the 24 Apr 1824 Concord Gazette and Middlesex Yeoman article I quoted this month I spotted this sentence:

Five pieces of cannon, a quantity of ammunition had been previously conveyed to Stow, and put under the care of Mr. GARDNER.

That’s still an unsourced statement from a newspaper story published forty-nine years after the event. Nonetheless, it’s gratifying to find people in Concord believed that was true.


Finally, in the 14 Feb 1778 article from the Providence Gazette where I found Dr. Prescott’s name among the men who had died in Halifax prison, another name is “Samuel Dyre.”

Samuel Dyer (whose name was spelled other ways as well) was the subject of the two articles I wrote for the Journal of the American Revolution published earlier this month.

Early in those articles I noted how hard it is to trace that Samuel Dyer since he was a sailor, thus transient and unlikely to leave a mark on institutional records, and since there were other men with the same or similar names.

Therefore, I resist the temptation to say that sailor Samuel Dyer from 1774–75 was the same man who died in Halifax in late 1776 or early 1777, most likely after being captured on a privateer.

After all, the last time my Samuel Dyer definitely appears in the historical record, he had been working for the royal authorities as a trustie inside the Boston jail. Would he really have enlisted aboard an American privateer after that?

All I can say is, given my Samuel Dyer’s habit of switching sides and telling powerful men what they wanted to hear, I can’t rule out that possibility.

Exploring the Story of Samuel Dyer

This week I have two articles up on the Journal of the American Revolution:

• “The Return of Samuel Dyer: An Attempted Assassination in Revolutionary Boston”
• “The Secrets of Samuel Dyer”

These are two parts of the same research project. To borrow the summary from the second article:

in October 1774 a sailor named Samuel Dyer returned to Boston, accusing high officers of the British army of holding him captive, interrogating him about the Boston Tea Party, and shipping him off to London in irons. Unable to file a lawsuit for damages, Dyer attacked two army officers on the town’s main street, cutting one and nearly shooting another—the first gunshot aimed at royal authorities in Boston in the whole Revolution. Those actions alarmed both sides of the political divide, and Dyer was soon locked up in the Boston jail. Everyone seemed to agree the man was insane.

But there was a lot more going on than Bostonians could see. And Dyer resurfaced in an unexpected way.

Originally I wrote up this story for The Road to Concord, but it has only a passing connection to that book’s focus, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s cannon. Still, the events involved many of the same players and further raised tensions in October 1774. Dyer’s attack could even have started the war in a way quite different from how we remember it.

To spread the word about this project, I’ll do a couple of audio interviews in the next few days.

On the morning of Friday, 7 April, starting at 10:00 A.M., I’ll be Jimmy Mack’s guest on the Dave Nemo show on Sirius XM, discussing the months leading up to April 1775. This will be part of the show’s “Revolution Road” segment featuring writers from the Journal of the American Revolution.

On Sunday, I’ll discuss these articles with Brady Crytzer for the Dispatches podcast. That episode will drop later this month.

Talking About Revolutionary Massachusetts This Week

From midnight to 1:00 A.M. on Wednesday, 26 July, I’m scheduled to be interviewed by Bradley Jay on his radio show, Jay Talking. That will be on WBZ, 1030 AM.

[CORRECTION: It turns out that when I agreed to be on the show on 26 July, the producer was thinking that’s the date when I’d show up at the studio for a show to be broadcast on 27 July. So the conversation will actually happen early on Thursday.]

(Assuming, that is, that the U.S. Constitution is still operative and we haven’t stumbled into any wars that will preempt regular programming. Hard to be confident these days.)

I understand that Jay is a fan of Revolutionary history. I expect we’ll talk about The Road to Concord, Gen. Washington in Cambridge, and other gossip I’ve collected over the years. But this will be a new experience.

On Saturday, 29 July, I’ll be one of the many speakers at History Camp Pioneer Valley, to be held at the Kittredge Center at Holyoke Community College. This is the second annual gathering of history enthusiasts sharing their research to be organized by the Pioneer Valley History Network.

My presentation will be “An Assassin in Pre-Revolutionary Boston: The Strange Case of Samuel Dyer.” Other presentations on Revolutionary history include “Resurrecting the Memory of Major Joseph Hawley of Northampton: John Adams’s Campaign for a Forgotten Patriot” by Morgan E. Kolakowski, “A Forgotten ‘Hessian’ Prisoner in Brimfield during the Revolutionary War” by Larry and Kitty Lowenthal, “Early Black American Patriotism” by Adam McNeil, and “Pioneer Valley Gravestones (and some of the men who made them), c. 1650-1850” by Bob Drinkwater.

As of today there are still a few slots available for History Camp Pioneer Valley.

And It Looked Like It Was Going So Well for Him

From the Old Bailey court sessions in London, as made available by the London Lives website:

The Information of Samuel Dyer taken on Oath before me James Spagg one of his Majesty’s Justices of the Peace in and for the said County this 19th. day of July 1773

Who saith that on Saturday last the 17th of July instant about eleven o’Clock at Night two Girls Picked him up in swan Alley and carried him to the House of one Mrs Grear in Swan Alley where he gave a woman now present and says her name is Margaret White a Shilling to get some Liquor and also another Shilling for a Room and bed

that he then went up Stairs with [..] said two Girls and pulled of his Trousers and layed them on a chair at the foot of a Bed

That then one of the Girls Picked his Trousers Pocket of two Shillings

that he got out of Bed in order to prevent her from so doing but the Girls cried out Murther and [..] said they would have his brains beat out or words to that Effect and then run down Stairs

that he endeavoured to follow them but was prevented by the said Margaret White who seized him by the Cholar and held him till the said girls escapd—

That he then got [..] down stairs and into the street naked except his Shirt down Stairs—saith he doth [..] not know the names of either of the said Girls who picked his pocket

This is almost certainly not the American sailor Samuel Dyer whom I’ve researched. More’s the pity.

The Limits on Fatal Violence in Boston, 1765-1774

Though Boston earned a reputation as a riotous town in the ten years after the first public Stamp Act protests of 1765, those Boston rioters never killed anyone.

A mob did ruin Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson’s North End mansion in 1765, and damaged several other royal officials’ houses in the same months. In 1768, the Customs service’s seizure of John Hancock’s ship Liberty prompted another crowd to manhandle three Customs officials.

The next year, Bostonians learned the ritual of tarring and feathering, which they inflicted on several lower-level Customs employees over the next few years. But those actions all stopped short of killing people.

There are examples from elsewhere in New England of fatal, or nearly fatal, resistance to the Crown. In April 1769, as detailed here, sailors out of Marblehead resisting impressment into the Royal Navy killed Lt. Henry Panton at sea.

During the Gaspée seizure of 1772, the Rhode Islanders storming that Royal Navy vessel shot its commander, Lt. William Dudingston, in the chest—which sure sounds like he could have been killed. But he survived with medical care. Guns were also fired, though not hitting anyone, during some rural demonstrations against mandamus Council members in the fall of 1774.

One might argue that the lack of fatalities in Boston riots was only a matter of luck. There were some close calls:

• After Ebenezer Richardson shot Christopher Seider on 22 Feb 1770, he was nearly lynched by an angry crowd. The Whig leader William Molineux insisted on taking the unpopular Customs employee to a magistrate for indictment.
• Later that year, a crowd frightened importer Patrick McMaster with tar and feathers so badly he collapsed.
• In 1774, a mob attacked John Malcolm, yet another Customs employee, after he clubbed George Robert Twelves Hewes. That attack lasted for hours, and involved choking Malcolm with a noose as well as beating, whipping, and tarring and feathering him. But he survived.

In addition, Hutchinson felt that his nephew Nathaniel Rogers was hounded to an untimely death in 1770.

Nonetheless, the fact remains that during those tumultuous years no Crown official, soldier, or supporter was killed in political violence in Boston. In contrast, during a month-long stretch of early 1770 employees of the royal government shot dead four men and two boys, and wounded several more. A big reason for that difference was that Bostonians didn’t use guns in their conflicts, preferring to intimidate their opponents through numbers.

On 18 Oct 1774, an angry sailor named Samuel Dyer broke that pattern. He attacked two Royal Artillery officers at noon on Boston’s main street, firing pistols at their heads. Both his guns misfired, but the army naturally saw Dyer’s actions as an escalation.

I’ll talk about Dyer, his claims of mistreatment, what the record actually shows, and how his assault with deadly weapons might have started the American War off quite differently at this Saturday’s History Camp.

History Camp in Boston, 28 March

Boston’s second annual History Camp will take place on Saturday, 28 March, at the Harriet Tubman House of the United South End Settlements at 566 Columbus Avenue in Boston.

History Camp is a self-organizing conference for people interested in all sorts of history in all sorts of ways. That means the schedule of presentations and panels will be decided on the day of the event, with folks then choosing which sessions to attend.

Who’s going to be there? Paula Bagger, who put together the pieces of evidence about Prince Demah. Jason Rodriguez, editor of Colonial Comics. Elizabeth Sulock from the Newport Historical Society. Liz Covart from the Ben Franklin’s World podcast. Salem Witchcraft Trial experts Marilynne Roach and Emerson “Tad” Baker. Erik Bauer from the Peabody Library. Dr. Sam Forman, Judy Cataldo, and many more.

Including me. Here’s the presentation I’m preparing:

“How Would-Be Assassin Samuel Dyer Nearly Triggered the Revolutionary War”

In October 1774 an angry seaman named Samuel Dyer arrived in Newport, describing how the Royal Navy had kidnapped him from Boston to London, how high government ministers had interrogated him about the Boston Tea Party, and how the Lord Mayor of London had helped him to return to America. Rhode Island Patriots fêted Dyer and sent him back to Boston. Soon after arriving, Dyer confronted two Royal Artillery officers on the street and shot at them before escaping to the rebellious Provincial Congress in Cambridge—only for those Patriots to send him back to the royal authorities and the Boston jail. This talk digs into Dyer’s story: how he came close to setting off war in Massachusetts, what happened to him next, and how much of the outlandish story he told was true.

This is a story I haven’t told in full on this blog or anywhere else.

The Harriet Tubman House is five minutes by foot from the Mass. Ave. T stop and ten minutes by foot from a large covered parking garage that serves Jordan Hall. Here are directions.

Last year’s History Camp filled up in advance. There’s still time to register for this one.

“King Hancock” and Samuel Dyer

A few days back, I quoted two appearances of the phrase “King Hancock” from 1770, noting that it was written down only when one side of the political divide was attacking the other, usually sarcastically.

That makes it very hard to figure out the phrase’s original meaning—was it ever a sincere compliment to John Hancock? It’s also hard to know who in pre-Revolutionary America actually used the term, as opposed to who was accused of using the term by political opponents.

Take, for example, this appearance of the phrase in the 20 Oct 1774 Norwich (Connecticut) Herald, reporting news from Newport, Rhode Island:

Last Tuesday arrived…Mr. Samuel Dyre, of Boston; who gives this account of himself;---That on the 6th of July last, early in the morning, he was kidnapped by the soldiers in Boston, in consequence of orders from Col. [George] Maddison, and carried into the [army] camp, confined in irons, and kept so till early the next morning, when he was conveyed on board the Captain, Admiral [John] Montague, still in chains.

When he was first confined in the camp, Col. M-------n asked him who gave him orders to destroy the tea, to which he replied nobody; the Col. said he was a damned liar, it was King Hancock, and the damned sons of liberty, and if he did not tell he should be sent home in the ship Captain, where he should be hung like a dog; then told him to prepare a good story, that General [Thomas] Gage would come to examine him, &c. . . .

We must leave time to unfold this dark, very dark affair, of governmental kidnapping, which is a true spawn of hell, nursed up by the church of Rome!

We thus have another American describing how another Briton described other Americans. More specifically, another American Whig, quoted in Whig newspapers, accused a British military man of using the term “King Hancock” to suggest that was how Americans thought of John Hancock. [And I bet you didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition to show up at the end there.]

Adding to the confusion, Dyer is an unreliable witness. He told wild, and wildly different, stories to people on either side of the conflict. He tried to assassinate a British officer. He persecuted American prisoners. And yet he really was held captive and transported by the British military. (Someday I’ll trace Dyer’s whole twisted story.)

So I don’t think this newspaper story is solid evidence of what Lt. Col. Maddison actually said in 1774. But it is solid evidence that Americans of that time thought it was credible for a British officer to refer to one of their leaders sarcastically as “King Hancock.”

What Changed Terrorism Since the 1700s?

What shifted the label of “terrorism” from mob rule, as I described on Friday, to today’s image of it as sneak attacks on civilians by relatively small shadowy groups?

One major factor, I think, was the shift to democratic governance. When America’s Sons of Liberty used mob violence against royal Customs officials, they had little other power over those appointees. Colonists couldn’t vote on those men or their salaries, and they couldn’t vote for the men in London who appointed those men. For all of Boston’s reputation for lawlessness, the pre-Revolutionary period saw no attacks on the town’s elected officials or employees (except by British army officers who resented watchmen’s claims of authority).

In democracies the majority can express its desires through elections and therefore rarely sees a need for violence (with some exceptions, such as the race riots of the 1800s and early 1900s). That has generally left domestic political violence for smaller groups who feel they have no other way to affect the political system. Sometimes those are substantial ethnic or religious minorities who feel oppressed. Sometimes they’re small political minorities who justified in their cause, such as radical abolitionist John Brown in the 1850s or diehard segregationists a century later. Sometimes terrorism is a form of warfare between countries, of course, but even in those cases the terrorists often feel that their targets have oppressed them and occupied their land.

Alongside the change in political structures around the world came change in technology. Scientists like Alfred Nobel invented dynamite and other new explosives. Gunmakers produced machines that shot lots of bullets in a very short time. And we have more control over deadlier poisons, like sarin gas. That means individuals and small groups can produce as much destruction in a short time as an eighteenth-century mob.

When Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators wanted to blow up King James I and Parliament in 1605, they reportedly assembled thirty-six barrels of gunpowder in a cellar beneath the building. That took months. The first supply of powder decayed and had to be replaced. Eventually people noticed.

It took a Boston crowd all night to ruin Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson’s house in 1765, and the structure remained standing. Destroying the East India Company tea in 1773 required scores of men and boys working for hours and the collusion of hundreds of onlookers.

Similarly, at the Boston Massacre in 1770, seven threatened soldiers killed five people and wounded six. They did so by double-loading their muskets and in most cases firing straight into a densely packed crowd. But after all the soldiers but one had pulled their triggers, they had to reload before another shot. If the crowd hadn’t been too stunned to counterattack, the soldiers’ bayonets would have been their only defenses.

When a sailor named Samuel Dyer tried to shoot two Royal Artillery officers in Boston in October 1774, his pistols misfired, and he ended up chasing them around with one of their swords before running away.

Today’s guns are more efficient at shooting bullets. As last week’s news reminded us, a single person can shoot dozens of people in minutes. We worry that a single individual can conceal enough explosive to kill a bunch of people in a body cavity. Technology has made mass murder, and thus terrorism, much easier.

The eighteenth century provided only one way for an individual or small group to destroy a lot of property at once: arson. Of course, the spread of a fire depended on weather conditions and often wasn’t fast enough to kill people. But it could cause tremendous property damage and disrupt whole communities. Fire was what Americans feared when they traded rumors that rebellious slaves or British troops were “burning the town.”

On 21 Sept 1776 a fire destroyed five hundred buildings in New York City, just captured by the British military. That night, royal authorities arrested Nathan Hale as a rebel agent, and the next day they hanged him. Historians debate whether Hale had helped to set those fires, but the British probably suspected he had.

Fire is how James Aitken, alias John the Painter, attacked British shipyards and other sites as a secret and fairly freelance American agent during the war. Jessica Warner’s study of Aitken is titled The Incendiary: The Misadventures of John the Painter, First Modern Terrorist, but the little damage he produced shows how much more dangerous a small band of modern terrorists can be.

Captain Conner: Tea Party thief, scapegoat

You remember the moment in Johnny Tremain when the men of the Boston Tea Party discover Dove, Johnny’s lazy former bedmate, trying to steal some of the tea for himself? Esther Forbes based that incident on a real incident in the 16 Dec 1773 destruction of the tea.

As I quoted back here, merchant John Andrews identified the tea thief as “Captain Conner, a letter of horses in this place.” Shoemaker George R. T. Hewes remembered him as “Captain O’Connor,” and took credit for detecting his pilferage. (Hewes said that “a tall aged man, who wore a large cocked hat and white wig,” stole tea as well.)

I think that man was Charles Conner, an Irishman who owned an inn and stable in Boston. He had testified for the town about the Boston Massacre, having accompanied victim Patrick Carr to that event. I wrote more about his professional and political activity in Boston back in March. But in late 1773 and 1774 he was probably very unpopular in Boston for endangering the nobly disinterested image of the Tea Party.

I’ve come across Conner’s name in one more interesting place. On 30 July 1774, Adm. John Montagu was sailing home to England on the Royal Navy ship Captain (which name sounds like the start of an Abbot & Costello routine, but I digress). He took down a deposition from a sailor named Samuel Dyer, who incriminated three of Boston’s top leaders and “Captain Conner” in enticing British soldiers to desert:

And this Deponant further maketh Oath that Mr: Samuel Adams did promise him, at the House of Doctor [Thomas] Young in June last. that he this Deponant should, (if he could by any means prevail with any of the Soldiers to Desert.) Receive Four pounds sterling for every Soldier so deserting. and that every Soldier should receive the like sum of Four pounds, or three Hundred acres of Land, and a Quantity of Provision, so soon as they arrived at a certain part of the Country. provided they would cultivate the said Land.

and as a further encouragement he this Deponant was authorised by said Adams. to assure each Soldier he could Prevail upon to desert. that Cloaths to disguise them should be Lodged at proper places.

and this Deponant had Authority likewise to call upon Captain Conner Inn Holder near the Mill Bridge in Boston for what Horses he might have occasion for to carry the Soldiers off. and that a Boat should always be ready at Hancocks Wharf if that method of conveying them off. should be Judged the most Eligible, likewise that a Room, or Store belonging to said Conner was provided to conceal them in, until a proper opportunity offered for their leaving the Town, The Key of which this Deponant had in his possession.

Dyer signed this deposition with a mark.

However, there are reasons to find this document suspicious. First of all, putting an army deserter on horseback at Capt. Conner’s inn, near the center of Boston, would be a terrible way to sneak him out of town.

Furthermore, Dyer could sign his name when he wanted to. The day after this deposition, he signed a letter to the Earl of Dartmouth, Secretary of State, asking for protection and support since, he said, people from Boston were asking about what he’d told the admiral.

Finally, when he didn’t get what he wanted from the imperial government, Dyer began to complain loudly that he’d been kidnapped, shipped to England under cover of impressment, and harshly interrogated by high officials. He received support from the Lord Mayor of London (who opposed the party then in power), returned to America, and was warmly welcomed by the Whigs at Newport. Then over the next two years Dyer behaved so erratically that I have doubts about his sanity.

So what does this mean about Charles Conner? I think that Dyer told Adm. Montagu what he wanted to hear about Adams, Young, and Hancock. And I think he pointed the finger at Conner because he knew the Irishman was then an unpopular scapegoat back in Boston. But it’s really hard to guess what was in Samuel Dyer’s mind.

Making of America: Another Delightful Digital Database

Back in January, David Parker at Another History Blog described the value of the Making of America database. (Thanks also to Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub for laying the trail of crumbs.) And I’ve been meaning to express my gratitude to the University of Michigan for creating it.

Now this database doesn’t go all the way back to the 1700s. But it’s still valuable for folks studying eighteenth-century history because it archives:

• Some volumes of documents from the founding era that were transcribed and published in the mid- and late 1800s.
• Histories written around the Centennial, showing what Americans then thought of the Revolution.

Among the former, don’t miss the volumes mysteriously catalogued under the series title “John Watts DePeyster Publication Fund.” Those are the Collections of the New-York Historical Society. And the Making of America version provides both page views (like Google Book) and crude transcriptions.

Volume 14, for example, reprints the journals of Capt. John Montresor, the British army’s top engineer in North America. (That’s him above, as painted by John S. Copley.) Here are some of the captain’s notes on his Boston 1774-75 experience, apparently written as he sailed back to England (and perhaps prepared to make a claim for promotion or reward):

I attended Lord Percy from Boston towards the Battle of Lexington. My advancing some miles in front of his Corps with four volunteers, and securing the Bridge across Cambridge River, 19th April, 1775; which prevented his Body from going the Watertown Road, whereby the Light Infantry and Grenadiers were not cut off, my having sent one Volunteer back to his Lordship; the town of Cambridge in arms, and I galloped through them.

During part of Gen. Gage’s Command at Boston [i.e., in late 1774], the Garrison were distressed for want of Specie, and also Carpenters; which I undertook to remedy, by supplying it £6,ooo in gold, and got it sent on board the “Asia,” and so to us at Boston.—Government insuring it.

I was twice attempted to be assassinated for supporting the honor and credit of the Crown during my Command in the course of the Rebellion.—1st., near Brattle Square, at Boston, by means of Rebel Doctor [Samuel] Cooper; and, 2nd, near the South end of Boston, by Samuel Dyer, when I saved General [Samuel] Cleaveland’s Life, Commanding Officer of Artillery. This man was sent off by the Sheriffs of London, Messrs. [William] Lee and [Stephen] Sayre, to murther Lt.-Col. [George] Maddison of the 4th Regiment.

I know nothing about Montresor’s accusation of the Rev. Dr. Cooper, minister of the Brattle-Street Meeting, and this remark isn’t mentioned in Charles W. Akers’s modern biography.

Montresor is correct that he and Cleaveland were nearly killed by a sailor named Samuel Dyer on 18 October 1774. That was, as far as I can tell, the first time in the Revolutionary conflict that someone in Boston tried to fire a gunshot at someone from the royal government or military. And Montresor actually blamed American-born politicians back in London for it. Eighteenth-century paranoia is wonderful to behold.