“Swelled to three times his size, black as bacon”

Here’s another account of anti-epidemic measures from the Adams family papers, this one a 17 Apr 1764 letter from John Adams to his fiancée, Abigail Smith.

John had gone into Boston to be inoculated with smallpox under the care of Dr. Nathaniel Perkins, and he reported:

Messrs. Quincy’s Samuel and Josiah, have the Distemper very lightly. I asked Dr. Perkins how they had it. The Dr. answerd in the style of the Faculty “Oh Lord sir; infinitely light!” It is extreamly pleasing, says he, wherever we go We see every Body passing thro this tremendous Distemper, in the lightest, easiest manner, conceivable.

The Dr. meaned, those who have the Distemper by Inoculation in the new Method, for those who have it in the natural Way, are Objects of as much Horror, as ever.

There is a poor Man, in this Neighbourhood, one Bass, now labouring with it, in the natural Way. He is in a good Way of Recovery, but is the most shocking sight, that can be seen. They say he is no more like a Man than he is like an Hog or an Horse—swelled to three times his size, black as bacon, blind as a stone. I had when I was first inoculated a great Curiosity to go and see him; but the Dr. said I had better not go out, and my Friends thought it would give me a disagreable Turn.

My Unkle [Dr. Zabdiel Boylston?] brought up one [John] Vinal who has just recoverd of it in the natural Way to see Us, and show Us. His face is torn all to Pieces, and is as rugged as Braintree Commons.

This Contrast is forever before the Eyes of the whole Town, Yet it is said there are 500 Persons, who continue to stand it out, in spight of Experience, the Expostulations of the Clergy, both in private and from the Desk, the unwearied Persuasions of the select Men, and the perpetual Clamour and astonishment of the People, and to expose themselves to this Distemper in the natural Way!—

Is Man a rational Creature think You?—Conscience, forsooth and scruples are the Cause.—I should think my self, a deliberate self Murderer, I mean that I incurred all the Guilt of deliberate self Murther, if I should only stay in this Town and run the Chance of having it in the natural Way.

Smallpox continued to spread well into the age of photography, so there’s graphic documentation of how victims look when the blisters break out. I don’t recommend it.

“Plundering of Houses &c. Increasing”

By 12 Mar 1776, the British military’s evacuation of Boston was dissolving into chaos in the eyes of merchant John Rowe, and the cannon were going off again:

A Continual Fire from Both sides this night

They are hurrying off all their Provisions & destroying & Mangling all Navigation

also Large Quantitys of Salt & other things they heave into the Sea & Scuttle the stores

I din’d & spent the Evening at home with—
The Revd. Mr. [Samuel] Parker Mr. [Jonathan] Warner & Richd. Green also Mrs. Rowe & Jack Rowe—

The Inhabitants are greatly terrifyed and Alarm’d for Fear of Greater Evils when the Troops Leave this distressed Place

I got Crean Brush Rect. for the Goods taken from Mee, but dont expect much Good from it tho severall Gentlemen Say they will be my Friend in this affair

By “be my Friend” Rowe meant those gentlemen would testify about his losses—though now he had a receipt as well.

Rowe dated his next entry “13 March Wednesday,” getting the date wrong—a sign of his distress:

I have Staid at home most part of this day—

The Confusion still Continues & Plundering of Houses &c. Increasing

Genl. [James] Robinson paid Me a Visit & Eat a Morsell of Provisions together with Richd. Green Mrs Rowe & Jack Rowe

The Sailors from the Ships have Broke Open my Stores on my Wharff & plunderd them— this was done at Noon this day—

This morning A house was burnt at the North End, whether Set on Fire on Purpose or from Accident Seems Uncertain—

a Considerable Number of Cannon fir’d in the night from Both Sides—

The Country People throwing up more Entrenchments &c on Dorchester Neck—

(I dind at home with Genl. Robertson—Mr. Richd. Green Mrs. Rowe & Jack—) and spent the Evening at home with the Revd. Mr. Saml. Parker Mr. Warner Mr. Richd Greene & Mrs. Rowe

On Thursday, 14 March, Rowe realized he’d made the dating error and corrected himself. This day brought “Snow & Sleet” and a cold wind:

This night much damage has been done to Many houses & stores in this Town & many valuable Articles stolen & Destroyed—

Stole out of Wm. Perrys Store a Quantity of Tea Rum & Sugar to the value of £120 Sterling

Mr. Saml. Quincys house broke & great Destruction The Revd. Mr. Wm. Walters also the Revd. Dr. [Henry] Caners & many others

Samuel Quincy had left Boston months before, so his house was vulnerable. But the ministers had stayed out the siege and presumably didn’t have mercantile goods to carry away.

The picture above shows the Rev. William Walter, Anglican minister at Boston’s Trinity Church (1767–1776) and Christ Church (1791–1800). It was sold at auction in 2021.

TOMORROW: The expected departure date.

New Movies about Arnold and Adams

A couple of films about the Revolutionary War debuted this month. I haven’t seen them, but I know and respect historians involved in these projects, so I’m passing on the news for folks who like to take in historical stories that way.

Benedict Arnold: Hero Betrayed is a docudrama available to rent or buy on YouTube, AppleTV, Amazon, and other platforms. It was directed by Chris Stearns and produced by Thomas Mercer and Anthony Vertucci, with co-producers Steve Letteri and Michael Camoin.

The main source was James Kirby Martin’s biography of Arnold. Martin was involved in the film as both an executive producer and an actor.

The trailer shows battle reenactments, enhanced with C.G.I., and dramatizations of important moments featuring Peter O’Meara as Arnold. The press release says the movie also “features insightful interviews with leading experts.” Martin Sheen supplied the narration.

The press material emphasizes how this movie gets beyond the caricature of Arnold as a treacherous villain. We probably haven’t seen authors offer such a one-sided portrayal in over a century, though. Dramas like the 2003 television movie Benedict Arnold: A Question of Honor with Aidan Quinn and the later seasons of Turn: Washington’s Spies with Owain Yeoman also tried to depict why an American battlefield hero came to plot with the enemy and defect.

That said, phrases in the press release like “self-serving political and military leaders” and “an arbitrary system of personal favoritism and cronyism” make me suspect this movie goes further in portraying the situation as Arnold himself saw it.

Folks can watch the trailer for Benedict Arnold: Hero Betrayed on YouTube or I.M.D.B.

Quincy 400 just celebrated the local premiere of a feature-length documentary titled Beyond the Bloody Massacre. It features interviews with several historians who have written on that event: Hiller B. Zobel, Serena Zabin, Robert Allison, Kerima Lewis, and Daniel Coquillette.

The announcement of this movie says:

Beyond the Bloody Massacre presents the intersecting histories of the Boston Massacre Trials through the words and experiences of John Adams, and Josiah Quincy Jr., the two Quincy (formerly Braintree) born lawyers who defended a British Captain and seven [eight] soldiers in two murder trials in the late fall of 1770.

In addition, another local boy, Josiah’s older brother Samuel Quincy, was one of the prosecutors. And Christopher Seider, the young boy killed in Boston eleven days before the confrontation on King Street, was also born in the part of Braintree that became Quincy after the war.

This documentary was filmed last fall during the 250th anniversary of the Rex v. Preston and Rex v. Wemms et al. trials. The pandemic made it impossible to reenact those trials as we’d hoped. But this film promises to explore some of the legal, political, and moral issues they raised.

Quincy 400 appears to be an initiative of the city of Quincy, and particularly of longtime mayor Thomas P. Koch. The name refers to the 400th anniversary of British settlement of the area that includes Quincy in 2025.

I can’t find any information on who made Beyond the Bloody Massacre or how people can see it now. It’s not yet viewable online, but the Quincy 400 Facebook page promises “age appropriate school curriculum materials, live roundtable discussions, collaborative programs and future public viewings.” Plenty to come in three more years before that quadricentennial.

The Forgotten Trial for the Boston Massacre

On 12 Dec 1770, 250 years ago today, the third trial for the Boston Massacre began.

This is the trial that later generations of Bostonians preferred to forget. In 1771 the Loyalist printer John Fleeming published a seven-page report including witness testimony as an appendix to the much longer record of the soldiers’ trial. But Harbottle Dorr didn’t buy that expanded edition and keep it with his collection of Whig newspapers.

In 1870, when Frederic Kidder assembled his History of the Boston Massacre, March 5, 1770; consisting of the narrative of the town, the trial of the soldiers: and a historical introduction, containing unpublished documents of John Adams, and explanatory notes, he reprinted John Hodgson’s transcript of the soldiers’ trial but not the appendix. He replaced those seven pages with a single paragraph on the verdict.

Because John Adams wasn’t involved in the third trial, its record also makes no appearance in his Legal Papers, the most complete source of documents on those proceedings.

When I started my Revolutionary research, the only way I could read about the third trial was to visit a library that owned a first edition, second state of The Trial of William Wemms… from 1771. But now Google has digitized that book, so everyone can find its account of the third trial starting at page 210.

The defendants on 12 December were:

• Edward Manwaring, a Customs officer assigned to Douglastown on the Gaspé peninsula in Canada, who was in Boston on 5 Mar 1770.
• John Munro, a notary public and friend of Manwaring who had the bad luck to be socializing with him that evening.
• Hammond Green, a boat builder whose family worked for the Boston Customs office.
• Thomas Greenwood, a low-level local Customs officer.

Those men were indicted on the evidence of one person: Charles Bourgate, a fourteen-year-old francophone servant of Manwaring. Earlier this year I traced the French boy’s evolving story starting here. Despite the forensic slipperiness of that account, a Boston grand jury indicted those four defendants for murder.

On 11 December, acting governor Thomas Hutchinson, who was still on leave as Chief Justice, had two other Superior Court justices visit him at the Province House. He urged them to “continue,” or postpone, those men’s trials till the spring session. That would have been a full year since the shooting on King Street. Perhaps he hoped the accusation would just go away. Senior justice Benjamin Lynde declined.

Thus, the third Massacre trial started on 12 December. Massachusetts advocate general Samuel Quincy prosecuted, though he considered the attempt to convict these defendants “another Windmill adventure” with himself as “poor Don Quixot.” The record doesn’t say who served as defense counsel, and legal historian Hiller B. Zobel suggests the defendants didn’t need one.

The first prosecution witness was Samuel Drowne, who said he had seen “two flashes from the Custom-house” behind the soldiers as they fired. Stationer Timothy White testified that he had hosted and employed Drowne for two years and “never observed any thing to impeach his veracity and understanding”—though “Some people thought him foolish.”

Charles Bourgate then told his story of being pulled into the Customs house and forced to fire out at the crowd by a “tall man” with a sword-cane—some suspected Customs Commissioner John Robinson, notorious for cutting James Otis’s scalp with his walking-stick. Charles said he’d seen his master Manwaring shoot a gun, too. The prosecution rested.

Four upper-class defense witnesses then testified that they had watched the confrontation on King Street and seen no shots from the Customs House. One of those gentlemen was Edward Payne, who had actually been wounded in the shooting and had no reason to protect any shooters.

Two women who lived in the Customs House said they had viewed the shooting from the very room that Charles described, and there had been no men with guns there.

Manwaring’s landlady, Elizabeth Hudson, stated that he and Munro had been at her house during the shooting along with the traveling entertainer Michael Angelo Warwell and young Charles.

The court brought the French boy back to the stand. He insisted that he’d told the truth and Hudson (and everyone else) had lied. The judges summoned four men known for speaking French well, including schoolmaster John Lovell and merchant Philip Dumaresque, and asked them to question the boy to make sure there was no language barrier. He stuck to his story.

At that point the defense lowered the boom. James Penny, a debtor who had been in the jail while Charles was housed there as a witness, stated that the teenager had admitted to him:

That what he testified to the Grand Jury and before the Justices…was in every particular false, and that he did swear in that manner by the persuasion of William Molineux, who told him he would take him from his master and provide for him, and that Mr. Molineux frightened him by telling him if he refused to swear against his master and Mr. Munro the mob in Boston would kill him: and farther that Mrs. [Elizabeth] Waldron, the wife of Mr. [Joseph] Waldron a taylor in Back-street, who sells ginger bread and drams, gave him the said Charles gingerbread and cheese, and desired him to swear against his master.

Charles “positively denied that he had ever made any such declaration.” He asked that another debtor, cabinetmaker William Page, be called to the stand. But Page testified that he’d seen the French boy in deep conversation with James Penny, who was taking notes, so that ended up bolstering Penny’s claim.

The case of Rex v. Manwaring et al. went to the jury. The record ends:

The Jury acquitted all the Prisoners, without going from their seats.

The third Boston Massacre trial thus ended within a day, as was usual in that period. But it also set up a fourth Boston Massacre trial: of Charles Bourgate on the charge of perjury.

Violence Beyond King Street on the Fifth of March

By modern standards, the judges overseeing the trial of the soldiers for the Boston Massacre should have limited the testimony to what happened in King Street or specifically involved the defendants.

However, prosecutors Robert Treat Paine and Samuel Quincy wanted to call witnesses to violence and threats from other soldiers that night. Or as acting governor Thomas Hutchinson later wrote: “The Counsel for the Crown urged to be admitted to prove the threats &ct. of the Soldiers preceding the Action.”

The judges were dubious, but defense attorneys John Adams and Josiah Quincy, Jr., were agreeable as long as they had the same leeway to introduce testimony about violence and threats by civilians.

That tactic actually split the defense team, again according to Hutchinson. Robert Auchmuty, senior attorney for Capt. Thomas Preston and a strong advocate for the Crown in other respects, didn’t like letting people testify about aggressive soldiers, but he wasn’t arguing this case.

Adams himself reportedly didn’t want to put too much testimony about aggressive townspeople on record. Hutchinson stated:

Quincy one of the Counsel for the prisoners was for giving very large Evidence against the Inhabitants to prove a premeditated design to drive out the Soldiers & frequent abuse as well as threats Adams was against it & [Sampson Salter] Blowers who acted as an Attony to prepare the Evidence told me that Adams said if they would go on with such Witnesses who only served to set the Town in a bad light he would leave the cause & not say a word more. So that a stop was put & many witnesses were not brought who otherwise would have been.

Some supporters of the Crown even feared Adams was sabotaging the soldiers’ case, but Hutchinson declined to replace him “as it would have been extremely irregular” and Auchmuty wasn’t ready to step in.

As a result, we have records from the trial of confrontations elsewhere in town that night. For instance, Sgt. William Davis of the 14th Regiment described running into a crowd he estimated as about 200 people near Wentworth’s wharf:

I saw no soldier in the street; I heard them saying damn the dogs knock them down, we will knock down the first officer, or bloody backed rascal we shall meet this night; some of them then said they would go to the southward, and join some of their friends there, and attack the damned scoundrels, and drive them out of the town, for they had no business here.

Apprehending danger if I should be in my regimentals, I went into a house at the North end and changed my dress, and in my return from the North-end, about nine, coming near Dock square, I heard a great noise a whistling and rattling of wood; I came near the Market place, and saw a great number of people there, knocking against the posts, and tearing up the stalls, saying damn the lobsters, where are they now; I heard several voices, some said let us kill that damned scoundrel of a Sentry, and then attack the Main guard; some said, let us go to Smith’s barracks [also called Murray’s barracks], others said let us go to the rope-walks;

they divided: The largest number went up Royal-exchange-lane, and another party up Fitch’s alley, and the rest through the main street, up Cornhill. I passed by the Golden-Ball, I saw no person there but a woman, persuading a man to stay at home; he said he would not, he would go amongst them, if he lost his life by it. . . .

It was past nine, for I heard bells ring before. One of them was loading his piece by Oliver’s dock, he said he would do for some of these scoundrels that night.

John Cox, brick-layer, testified to a different scene in the South End:

I saw three soldiers, two belonging to the Neck, and one to the Main Guard, by Liberty-tree, I was at Mr. [John] Gore [Jr.]’s shop opposite the Tree; one said to the other, bring half your guard, and we will bring half ours, and we will blow up this damned pole; I said, so sure as you offer ye scoundrels to blow up that pole, you will have your brains blown out.

Soldiers in New York had blown up the Liberty Pole there a few weeks earlier, prompting bigger fights.

Gregory Townshend, merchant:

Just after the bell rung nine, hearing the bell ring again, I went out thinking it was fire; I saw numbers of people running from the South-end some had buckets, the principal number had clubs in their hands. I asked where is the fire, I received for answer, at the Rope-walks and in King street. Numbers were coming with buckets, and the rest said Damn your bloods do not bring buckets, bring clubs.

Henry Bass, another merchant—and a member of the Loyall Nine:

I went down the main-street, and coming near Boylston’s alley, I saw a number of boys and children from twelve to fifteen years old, betwixt Mr. [William?] Jackson’s and the alley; some of them had walking canes. A number of soldiers, I think four, sallied out of the alley. . . .

I took the soldiers for grenadiers, all of them had cutlasses drawn. . . . They came out of the alley, and I imagine from the barracks; they fell on these boys, and every body else that came in their way, they struck them; they followed me and almost over took me, I had the advantage of them and run as far as Col. [Joseph] Jackson’s, there I made a stand, they came down as far as the stone shop. . . .

these lads came down, some of them came to the Market square, one got a stave, others pieces of pine, they were very small, I do not know whether any of the lads were cut. I turned and then saw an oyster-man, who said to me, damn it here is what I have got by going up; (showing his shoulder wounded) I put my finger into the wound and blooded it very much.

Each legal team thus tried to portray the other side as needlessly aggressive and their own clients as responding with reasonable force. Of course, that was the problem in the first place.

Why Was Samuel Emmons Called to Testify?

On 28 Nov 1770, the attorneys prosecuting eight soldiers for the Boston Massacre called Samuel Emmons to the witness stand.

According to defense counsel John Adams’s notes on the trial, Emmons’s testimony consisted entirely of:

I dont know any of the Prisoners. Nor anything.

Prosecutor Robert Treat Paine wrote Emmons’s name in his notes and then crossed it out. The published record of the trial, prepared from John Hodgson’s shorthand notes, didn’t mention Emmons at all.

Hiller B. Zobel’s The Boston Massacre quotes Emmons as adding, “I was not in King Street. My brother was.” However, those words don’t appear in the many documents transcribed in The Legal Papers of John Adams, co-edited by Zobel. I don’t see an Emmons brother among the other witnesses.

So why was Samuel Emmons on the witness list?

I think the answer appears in the 1 Jan 1764 Boston News-Letter, where Emmons advertised:

TAR-WATER,
MADE of Genuine Tar, to be sold by Samuel Emmons, Ropemaker, in Milk-Street, nigh the Foot of the Rope-Walks.

Bishop George Berkeley and other authorities promoted water infused with tar as a medicine. Tar was also used in preparing ropes for use on ships, so a ropemaker might well have a supply around. Emmons’s advertisement put him in the part of central Boston where John Gray’s ropewalk stood.

Thus, Emmons was almost certainly a witness to the big brawls between ropemakers and soldiers on 1 and 2 March, one of the events that raised tensions before the Massacre. Three of the soldiers on trial—Mathew Kilroy, William Warren, and John Carroll—were involved in those fights, as was victim Samuel Gray.

It looks like the prosecutors put Samuel Emmons on their list of possible witnesses as part of a plan to make the ropewalk fight a significant part of their case, just as it played a big role in the town’s Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre. Later on 28 November they called ropemaker Nicholas Feriter to the stand; he described being involved in the fight and seeing Kilroy and Warren on the other side.

In a modern trial, those prosecutors would have learned more about what Samuel Emmons did and didn’t have to say before calling him to the stand. But Samuel Quincy and Paine didn’t have the time and personnel that modern prosecutors command. Who knows what the jury made of his remark?

More about Samuel Emmons appears in Robert Love’s Warnings, by Cornelia H. Dayton and Sharon V. Salinger. In 1753 he married Rachel Love, daughter of town employee Robert Love. They had their children baptized in the West Meetinghouse. In the 1780s Samuel became disabled because of “several touches of the Palsey,” and Rachel supported the family by keeping a small shop with a liquor license.

The First Day of Testimony Against the Soldiers

The first witness in the trial of Capt. Thomas Preston for the Boston Massacre was a barber’s apprentice named Edward Garrick.

He testified about how Pvt. Hugh White conked him on the head for speaking rudely about a passing army captain.

Edward’s testimony might have been more useful in prosecuting White, showing he had was aggressive and violent toward locals before anyone threatened him. But the prosecutors at the soldiers’ trial never called the boy, and we have no indication why.

Instead, the Crown’s opening witness on 27 Nov 1770 was “Jonathan Williams Austin, clerk to John Adams, Esq.” Which is to say, an assistant and trainee of the senior defense counsel.

By modern standards, this is a clear conflict of interest. But Austin had already testified for the Crown at the Preston trial. Even though the captain was acquitted, prosecuting attorneys Robert Treat Paine and Samuel Quincy must have felt the law clerk was a solid witness because they brought him back.

“Do you know either of the prisoners at the bar?” Quincy asked as his first recorded question.

Austin replied that he recognized Pvt. William Macauley: “I was about four feet off: McCauley said ‘Damn you, stand off,’ and pushed his bayonet at me: I did so.” After the shots, Austin recalled, he saw Macauley reload.

The prosecutors asked the next two witnesses, merchant Ebenezer Bridgham and James Dodge, the same first question, and similar questions of town watchman Edward G. Langford and clerk Francis Archbald. The attorneys’ goal was to establish that the defendants were definitely among the soldiers on King Street, and hopefully among those who fired at the crowd. Thus:

• Bridgham said he saw a tall soldier he thought was Pvt. William Warren fire his gun, but didn’t see Cpl. William Wemms do so.
• Dodge named Warren and White as present, and said the first shot came from the left side of the squad.
• Langford identified White and Pvt. Mathew Kilroy, also said the first shot came from the left side, and testified that “immediately after Kilroy’s firing” ropemaker Samuel Gray fell dead, and “there was no other gun discharged at that time.”
• Archbald also testified to Kilroy’s presence.

Determining which soldiers were present and fired was crucial because on the morning after the shooting people had examined the eight muskets and found that one hadn’t been discharged. One of the soldiers therefore hadn’t killed or wounded anybody. But which one? The prosecution had to prove each shooter’s guilt.

Here are some vivid details from the exchanges.

Q. Was you looking at the person who fired the last gun?
A [from Bridgham]. Yes, I saw him aim at a lad that was running down the middle of the street, and kept the motion of his gun after him a considerable time, and then fired.
Q. Did the lad fall?
A. He did not, I kept my eye on him a considerable time.

Q. Was the snow trodden down, or melted away by the Custom-House?
A [from Dodge]. No, the street was all covered like a cake.

A [from Langford]. Samuel Gray…came and struck me on the shoulder, and said, Langford, what’s here to pay.
Q. What said you to Gray then?
A. I said I did not know what was to pay, but I believed something would come of it by and bye. He made no reply. Immediately a gun went off. . . . I looked this man (pointing to Killroy) in the face, and bid him not fire; but he immediately fired, and Samuel Gray fell at my feet.

A [from Archbald]: I saw a soldier, and a mean looking fellow with him, with a cutlass in his hand: they came up to me: somebody said, put up your cutlass, it is not right to carry it at this time of night. He said, damn you ye Yankee bougers, what’s your business:

At five o’clock, the judges adjourned until the next morning. Since most trials of the time were over in a day, that was unusual, but—after Capt. Preston’s trial—not unprecedented.

The Case against Capt. Preston

In 1770, 28 October was a Sunday—the Sunday right in the middle of Capt. Thomas Preston’s trial for murder.

The fact that this criminal trial stretched over multiple days was unprecedented in Massachusetts. Courts always got through seating a jury, hearing testimony, and summations by the attorneys and judges within a day.

Sometimes a jury had to deliberate late into the night, as at the murder trial of Ebenezer Richardson earlier in 1770. But common-law rules dictated that no food or firewood could be delivered to the jurors, prodding them to quicker decisions.

Everyone knew Capt. Preston’s trial was exceptional and had to be handled with rigorous fairness. The jury selection involved a lot of challenges, and there were dozens of witnesses called to testify.

On 24 October Samuel Quincy, Advocate-General but younger than and thus junior to special prosecutor Robert Treat Paine, opened for the Crown. The first prosecution witness was a child, probably in his teens: barber’s apprentice Edward Garrick, described how he had argued with the sentry outside the Customs office, Pvt. Hugh White. But the boy said nothing about Preston.

Next came Thomas Marshall, tailor and colonel of the Boston militia regiment. Deploying his military experience, Marshall declared, “Between the firing the first and second Gun there was time enough for an Officer to step forward and to give the word Recover if he was so minded.” That was the sort of testimony the prosecution needed to establish Preston’s responsibility for the deaths.

Among the six other witnesses that day, Peter Cunningham said, “I am pretty positive the Capt. bid ’em Prime and load. I stood about 4 feet off him. Heard no Order given to fire.”

According to Paine’s notes, ship’s captain William Wyatt testified that Preston “Stampt and said damn your blood fire let the consequence be what it will.” However, the next witness, John Cox, quoted Preston saying the same thing after the soldiers had fired, apparently threatening them with retribution if they fired a second time. An unsigned summary of the testimony sent to London quoted that line from Cox but not from Wyatt.

In sum, the night of the shooting on King Street was often a confusing mess, and so are our inexact sources on what the witnesses said.

The next day, the prosecutors called fifteen more witnesses, including town watchmen Benjamin Burdick and Edward Langford, selectman Jonathan Mason, blacksmith Obadiah Whiston, bookseller Henry Knox, and Jonathan Williams Austin, law clerk to John Adams, one of the defense attorneys. Several of those men testified that they hadn’t seen or heard Capt. Preston give an order to fire; some were sure he hadn’t.

Only one man, Robert Goddard, stated that Capt. Preston definitely did tell the soldiers to shoot:

The Capt. was behind the Soldiers. The Captain told them to fire. One Gun went off. A Sailor or Townsman struck the Captain. He thereupon said damn your bloods fire think I’ll be treated in this manner. This Man that struck the Captain came from among the People who were seven feet off and were round on one wing. I saw no person speak to him. I was so near I should have seen it. After the Capt. said Damn your bloods fire they all fired one after another about 7 or 8 in all, and then the officer bid Prime and load again. He stood behind all the time.

Goddard had said the same thing at a coroner’s inquest, even going to the Boston jail to identify Preston. He had said the same thing in a deposition for Boston’s Short Narrative report. He was clearly the most dangerous witness for the defense.

TOMORROW: The captain’s argument.

“The Commissioners seemd rather inclined to Ad”

The Colonial Society of Massachusetts’s publication of the correspondence of Francis Bernard and Thomas Hutchinson, royal governor and lieutenant governor of Massachusetts in the 1760s, lets us cross-check John Adams’s recollection of being recruited to be advocate general.

Adams wrote in the early 1800s that his friend Jonathan Sewall came to him sometime in 1768 and said he was about to leave that post. According to Adams’s memory, Sewall said that Gov. Bernard wanted to offer it to Adams, despite their political differences. Furthermore, “one of great Authority,” which Adams took to mean Hutchinson, had recommended him as the best qualified candidate.

The Bernard and Hutchinson papers tell a different story. As Bernard recalled the situation in early 1769, Sewall first offered his resignation as advocate general the preceding July. At the time he was enmeshed in a dispute with the Customs Commissioners which only grew worse after the Liberty seizure and riot.

At that time, Bernard wasn’t interested in accepting Sewall’s resignation. Instead, the governor put his energy toward patching up the differences between the Commissioners and the attorney general. Eventually, it appears, all the principals decided to agree that the problem was the Commissioners’ secretary, Samuel Venner, stirring up trouble. He was removed in January 1769, and everyone made nice.

Late in 1768, however, word had arrived that the London government had reorganized the Vice Admiralty courts in North America and made Sewall a judge in Halifax. That gave Sewall a higher salary, but he had to leave Boston for court sessions. Bernard may have been pleased not to have Sewall around so much, but he wanted someone doing the job of advocate general in Massachusetts.

In early 1769, therefore, Bernard got serious about recruiting someone to replace Sewall. But there’s no indication in the governor's papers that he wanted John Adams. In fact, in a 15 March letter to an Admiralty official in London, Bernard explained that he definitely didn’t want a lawyer connected to the province’s Whigs:

at present I am not ready to name fit Persons for either of the Offices: such has been the prevalence of the popular Party in this Government, that some of the Lawyers, whom I should have been glad to have engaged in his Majesty’s Service, have by their abetting the Factious party rendered themselves unfit Objects of the favor of Government. . . .

For these Reasons it will be most advisable that Mr Sewall should continue to act in these Offices till the Causes in which he is now engaged shall be concluded & his Places can be properly filled.

Bernard asked the Admiralty to allow Sewall to appoint a local deputy in Halifax to do his job while he remained at work in Massachusetts.

Gov. Bernard himself sailed out of Boston harbor in early August 1769, to much rejoicing. That left Lt. Gov. Hutchinson in charge. On 20 September, he wrote to Bernard that Sewall had tendered his resignation at last.

Mr. Sewall has sent me his resignation of the place of Advocate, in form, and I have made the appointment of Mr [Samuel] Fitch until His M[ajesty’s]. pleasure shall be signified. The Commissioners seemd rather inclined to Ad[ams] but I think it very dangerous appointing a man to any post who avows principles inconsistent with a state of government let his talents otherwise be ever so considerable. Until this post & that of Attorney general have salaries annexed they will never be of very great use.

Bernard wrote back from London on 17 November:

I will certainly take Care to introduce the Subject of the Advocate & Attorney general by the first Opportunity, & will urge the Necessity of their being supported from hence. The Appointment of Mr. Fitch I will not neglect. . . .

I don’t see how you could possibly appoint or recommend the Person proposed to you under the present Notoriety of his Connections. I was asked by one of the Ministry to day who that John Adams was. I gave as favourable an Answer as I could, but not such as would have justified the Appointment of him to an Office of Trust.

Thus, there’s no evidence in Bernard’s papers that he wanted to name John Adams as advocate general, and no evidence in Hutchinson’s papers that he would have recommended him for a post in the royal government.

Bernard’s remark about “Lawyers, whom I should have been glad to have engaged in his Majesty’s Service” before they joined the political opposition suggests he may have been interested in Adams earlier in his career. That could fit with the story that Samuel Quincy later told Hutchinson about Sewall’s attempt to entice Adams with an appointment as justice of the peace.

It’s plausible that Sewall talked to his friend Adams in 1768 or 1769 about his thoughts of resigning, and the professional opportunity that would create, and in his memory Adams amalgamated that conversation with one in the early 1760s about the governor being ready to appoint him to a lower post. But if Sewall really did tell Adams that Bernard wanted to make him advocate general in 1768, he was getting way ahead of himself.

More mysterious is Hutchinson’s statement that “The Commissioners seemd rather inclined to Ad[ams]” for the post in late 1769. That was after Adams had argued in print against the Stamp Act and in court against the Liberty seizure. Perhaps the Commissioners thought that the appointment would bring a skilled lawyer to their side and muzzle a political opponent all at once. But it’s impossible to imagine Adams becoming a Customs Department protégé.

John Adams as a Justice of the Peace?

Jonathan Sewall’s attitude toward politics might seem cynical to us.

Sewall played the eighteenth-century patronage game, angling for appointments from powerful officials rather than elective office. In the eighteenth-century British Empire, many gentlemen did the same. It was how the imperial government operated. And there was a certain logic to it.

In the early 1760s, Sewall privately sniped at the leaders of both of Massachusetts’s political factions, Thomas Hutchinson and James Otis, Jr., while watching for opportunities. He stayed clear of ideology.

Then in 1762 Gov. Francis Bernard (shown here) appointed Sewall to be a justice of the peace. Seeing an opening on the side of the court party, in February 1763 Sewall published the first of many pseudonymous newspaper essays supporting Bernard and Hutchinson.

Eventually that worked. In March 1767, Bernard made Sewall a “special attorney general,” in line to succeed Jeremiah Gridley. Since that wasn’t strictly legal, Bernard created a new position called solicitor general and named Sewall to that post in June. In November, Sewall became attorney general and advocate general, though he also retained the solicitor general title.

At some point in the mid-1760s, according to some fellow Loyalists over a decade later, Sewall tried to entice his friend John Adams to start climbing the same path.

This is the story that Hutchinson recorded in his diary on 22 Oct 1778, while he was in exile in London:

Mr. [Richard] Clarke and [Samuel] Quincy in the evening. They both agreed in an anecdote, which I never heard before—That when the dispute between the Kingdom and the Colonies began to grow serious, John Adams said to Sewall that he was at a loss which side to take, but it was time to determine.

Sewall advised to the side of Government, and proposed to Governor Bernard to make Adams a Justice of Peace, as the first step to importance. Bernard made a difficulty on account of something personal between him and Adams, but Sewall urged him to consider of it a week, or some short time, and acquainted Adams the Governor had it under consideration, but Adams disliked the delay, and observed, that it must be from some prejudice against him, and resolved to take the other side.

Sewall was superior to Adams, and soon became Attorney-General and, one of the Superior Judges of Admiralty. Adams is now Ambassador from the United States to the Court of France, and Sewall a Refugee in England, and dependent upon Government for temporary support. Such is the instability of all human affairs.

Clarke and Quincy dated Sewall’s attempt to before 1767 and his appointment as Massachusetts attorney general. Quincy was friendly with both Adams and Sewall, and related to both of their wives, so he seems like a reliable source on how Sewall saw the affair.

At the same time, this version of the anecdote reflects a Tory perspective on the Massachusetts Whigs—that their opposition was driven by thwarted ambition and perceived slights rather than political principles. The patronage system was founded, after all, on interpersonal relations and loyalties.

In fact, Adams’s distaste for Sewall’s politics, even as he liked the man, went back to 1763. Weeks after Sewall’s first newspaper essay, Adams published his own first letter as the rustic “Humphrey Ploughjogger” to complain about “grate men [who] dus nothin but quaril with one anuther and put peces in the nues paper.”

When Sewall defended Bernard and Hutchinson as “J,” Adams responded as “U” to say:

Mr. J inlisted himself under the banners of a faction, and employed his agreable pen, in the propagation of the principles and prejudices of a party: and for this purpose he found himself obliged to exalt some characters and depress others, equally beyond the truth— . . . Many of the ablest tongues and pens, have in every age been employ’d in the foolish, deluded, and pernicious flattery of one set of partisans; and in furious, prostitute invectives against another:

Then in late 1765 Adams came out firmly against the Stamp Act in another “Ploughjogger” letter, the instructions he drafted for Braintree’s representatives in the Massachusetts General Court, and the essays eventually titled A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law. So it wasn’t hard to see what side of the political divide he was on by then.

Nonetheless, Sewall tried again to win Adams over to the court party.

COMING UP: Another job offer for John Adams.

The Trial of Ebenezer Richardson

On 20 Apr 1770, 250 years ago today, Ebenezer Richardson went on trial for the killing of young Christopher Seider.

This was just short of two months after the fatal confrontation at Richardson’s house in the North End, but for the Boston Whigs that was too long.

They suspected that the judges and attorneys who leaned toward the Crown had delayed the trial to cool the passions aroused by the violent death of a child. The Crown was definitely trying to delay the Boston Massacre trials.

At various times the provincial Attorney General, the appointed defense attorney, and some judges didn’t show up for procedures in Rex v. Richardson and Wilmot. But at last on 20 April everyone was present.

Justice Benjamin Lynde presided, with Edmund Trowbridge, Peter Oliver, and William Cushing on the bench with him. The prosecutors were Massachusetts solicitor general Samuel Quincy and Robert Treat Paine, hired by the town of Boston. The newly appointed defense attorney was Josiah Quincy, Jr.

The two sides agreed on the basic facts of the case. After Richardson had tried to break up a boys’ protest outside of importer Theophilus Lillie’s shop, the boys attacked his house. The violence and damage escalated. Eventually Richardson fired a musket full of birdshot out of his window. Christopher Seider fell, mortally wounded.

The question was whether Richardson was rightfully defending his home and family from attack. Did the boys’ actions justify a lethal response? Was Christopher participating in illegal activity? Did Richardson aim at the child? Possible verdicts included guilty of murder, guilty of manslaughter, and not guilty entirely.

(Of course there was also the sailor George Wilmot, who had gone into Richardson’s house to help but hadn’t fired a gun.)

Samuel Quincy opened by questioning the prosecution witnesses, as his partner’s notes show. They played down the danger from the riotous boys and talked about Richardson’s anger. Among those witnesses were the Whig activists Edward Procter, David Bradlee, and Dr. Thomas Young.

Josiah Quincy’s notes preserve his strategy to win over the jurors:

1st. To open the Defence with a proper Address to the Jury to remove all popular Prejudices and Passions and engage them to make a fair, candid and impartial Enquiry and to give their Verdict agreeable to Law and the Evidence, uninfluenc’d by any other Motive; to mention the manner of my becoming engaged as Council for the Prisoners, explain my Duty and the Part I ought and am determin’d to act.

2d. The Witnesses for the Crown having been carefully and thoroughly cross-examined, to produce those for the Prisoners, and endeavour to find out what the Nature and Degree of Provocation offered; how far the Attack upon the house was carried; Whether and to what Degree the Windows were demolished before the firing, and whether the Door was broke open, and any Attempt made upon it; whether any actual Attempt was made to enter; or any Evidence of such Design from threatning Words; Whether Men as well as Boys were not concerned in that Attack; What Weapons were used or thrown into the house; and whether any One within was wounded; and upon the whole whether this is not to be consider’d as an Attack upon the Persons of the Prisoners.

3d. To sum up the Evidence and state the Facts as they shall appear upon Evidence.

4thly. To explain the Nature of the Crime of Murder and the different Kinds of Homicide, as justifiable, excusable (as se defendendo) and felonious: and to shew the Distinction between felonious Homicide of Malice prepense, which is properly Murder, and without such Malice, which is Manslaughter.

The defense witnesses included Richardson’s daughters Sarah and Kezia, possibly Harvard student William Eustis, schoolmaster Elias Dupee, and one of the Dr. Perkins. The witness testimony and then the legal arguments of Paine and Josiah Quincy lasted well past dark.

An unofficial factor in the courtroom were the many people who had come to see the trial. So many, in fact, that there were complaints of pickpocketing afterward. Judge Oliver called this audience “a vast Concourse of Rabble.”

Today we expect a judge to sum up legal issues and options for the jury but to leave the decisions to them. At this time, however, the multiple judges also advised on guilt and innocence. A report sent to Gov. Francis Bernard said that all those gentlemen felt the facts favored Richardson’s case:

They said it appeared by the Evidence that the prisoner was attacked in his own house by a number of tumultuous people. That what he had done was in his own defence. That self-defence was a right inherent in every man. . . . they were convinced the jury could find him guilty of nothing more than manslaughter.

According to acting governor Thomas Hutchinson, his friend and relation on the bench went even further:

Mr. Just. Oliver doubted whether it could amount to that and with great spirit charged the death of the Boy upon the Promoters of the Effigies and the Exhibitions which had drawn the people together and caused unlawful and tumultuous assemblies and he did not excuse such as had neglected suppressing these Assemblies as the Civil Magistrate had done.

At that, Oliver heard someone in the audience shout, “Damn that Judge, if I was nigh him, I would give it to him!” Other Crown informants said they heard people call, “Remember, jury, you are upon Oath”; “Blood requires blood!” and “Damn him, hang him! Murder, no manslaughter!”

At 11:00 P.M. the jurors went into a private room to deliberate. The defendants were supposed to be taken back to the jail, but the judges had heard that some spectators had brought “an Halter, ready at the Door of the Court Room,” to hang Richardson. (People had nearly lynched him on the day of the shooting.) Sheriff Stephen Greenleaf locked the defendants inside the courthouse instead.

The judges also waited in the building for most of the crowd to disperse. They finally ventured out at midnight. Even so, one Crown informant said, “The judges were hissed and abused in a most shameful manner in passing from the bench to their carriages.”

Meanwhile, the jury was still deliberating.

TOMORROW: The verdicts.

Ebenezer Richardson’s New Attorney

On 17 Apr 1770, 250 years ago today, the Massachusetts Superior Court convened to try Ebenezer Richardson and George Wilmot for murdering young Christopher Seider.

At least, the court tried to. The attorney whom the judges had ordered to represent Richardson, Samuel Fitch, didn’t appear. He was apparently home sick.

The judges therefore assigned the principal defendant a new lawyer: Josiah Quincy, Jr. (shown here in a posthumous portrait by Gilbert Stuart).

Already, back in late March, Quincy had agreed to help defend Capt. Thomas Preston and the eight soldiers charged with murder for the Boston Massacre. He explained his decision in a firmly worded letter to his father, which I quoted here.

That letter also said the top Boston Whigs supported young Quincy’s choice. They wanted the military men to receive what all of Britain would have to acknowledge was a fair trial. It’s not so clear that they felt the same about representing Richardson, but for Quincy the principle had been established.

Josiah Quincy would have to argue against his older brother, Massachusetts solicitor general Samuel Quincy, on the prosecution team with Robert Treat Paine. But the brothers didn’t have the most curious conflict in the case.

One of the judges overseeing the trial was Edmund Trowbridge, attorney general of Massachusetts from 1749 to 1767. Back in the early 1750s, he had also represented the Rev. Edward Jackson of Woburn in his defamation case against Roland and Josiah Cotton. Just when it looked like Jackson had lost his suit, another man admitted that he had fathered the illegitimate child that the Cotton brothers had blamed on Jackson.

That now-admitted real father was none other than Ebenezer Richardson. He had had to move out of Woburn into Boston. And he had to find a new form of employment—which involved serving Trowbridge as a confidential informant. In a document sent to London in the early 1760s, Trowbridge even cited Richardson for being “very serviceable to me in detecting a conspiracy to father a bastard child on the parson of a parish.” But in the small world of the colonial Massachusetts bar, that wasn’t enough of a conflict to take Trowbridge off the bench for this trial.

The judges rescheduled Richardson and Wilmot’s case for 20 April. In other words, Josiah Quincy had three days to prepare.

The Disappearance of Jonathan Sewall

In the mid-1760s, Jonathan Sewall allied with Gov. Francis Bernard, writing pseudonymous newspaper essays lampooning James Otis and favoring the Crown. The governor appointed Sewall to be attorney general of Massachusetts in 1767.

Sometime in March 1770, Attorney General Sewall wrote out the indictment of Capt. Thomas Preston and eight soldiers for multiple counts of murder—the Boston Massacre. This document used old British legal formulas: “not having the Fear of God before their eyes, but being moved and seduced by the Instigation of the devil and their own wicked Hearts…”

After 27 March, Sewall expanded that indictment to include three Customs service employees and notary John Munro, caught up in young Charles Bourgate’s accusations. It’s highly unlikely he believed in those charges, but he didn’t fight them.

Ordinarily Sewall would have prosecuted all those defendants, as well as the murder charges against Ebenezer Richardson and George Wilmot. He had personally argued all previous criminal cases since his appointment. Because people knew Sewall was a friend of the royal government, on 13 March the town of Boston voted to hire an attorney to assist him—an unusual move to ensure there was an aggressive prosecution.

Instead, the indictment turned out to be Sewall’s last official act in the Massacre trials. He never appeared in the Boston courthouse again that term. In 1816 defense counsel John Adams recalled: “Mr. Sewall, the Attorney General, who ought, at the hazard of his existence, to have conducted those prosecutions, disappeared.” Solicitor general Samuel Quincy wrote that Sewall couldn’t appear “by reason of Ill health.”

According to Thomas Hutchinson, the problem was the Boston Whigs’ visit to the court on 22 March to demand that the judges proceed to those murder trials. The acting governor wrote, “Sewall tells me he never will appear at any other court in that town, after the present, as Attorney General, and the whole court say they do not sit there with freedom.”

Yet the judges continued to sit. To prosecute the big murder cases, they appointed Robert Treat Paine, a private lawyer in Taunton, and Samuel Quincy. Adams wondered if Sewall was involved in those choices, but there’s no surviving evidence that he was.

Samuel Phillips Savage of Weston complained that Sewall didn’t stop all legal work. In his almanac diary Savage wrote that the attorney general continued to appear “with the jurys of the Inferior Courts at Charlston and Ipswich in the petty Concerns cognizable before the General Sessions of the Peace.” But he never went into Boston.

I suspect there was another factor in Sewall’s action, or lack of it: he was prone to depression. During the war he had a breakdown and spent more than a year in his bedroom. He had other spells of depression later in life, and his son suffered from the same spells while serving as chief justice of Upper Canada.

Even before the war, I think Sewall’s public writing shows a pattern of bursts of energy and silence. He published series of lively and often verbose essays from February to June 1763 (as “J,” “Jehosaphat Smoothingplain,” and “J. Philanthrop”), December 1766 to August 1767 (“Philanthrop”), December 1770 to February 1771 (Philanthrop” reviewing the Massacre trials he’d stayed away from), and June to August 1773 (“Philalethes”).

But in late 1774, after the Powder Alarm drove him into Boston, Sewall went silent. To argue for the Crown, “several of the principal gentlemen” turned to Daniel Leonard and Sewall’s law clerk Ward Chipman to deliver the “Massachusettensis” essays. Sewall may have supported the project, but he couldn’t do the work.

Historians are reluctant to apply psychiatric diagnoses like bipolar disorder to figures of the past. They’re beyond the reach of psychologists. And more than anyone historians know how concepts of mental illness change over time.

But in Sewall’s case, I think attributing his refusal after March 1770 to try the Massacre cases solely to his politics or to Whig pressure might miss a crucial internal force. The attorney general couldn’t bring himself to prosecute the big cases, nor to refuse to prosecute. He just stayed away.

The Great 1770 Quiz Answers, Part 4

Here are answers to the final questions from the Great 1770 Quiz.

X. Match the following men to their experience of tarring and feathering in 1770.

1) John Adams
2) Robert Auchmuty
3) Henry Barnes
4) Theophilus Lillie
5) Patrick McMaster
6) William Molineux
7) Owen Richards
8) Jesse Savil

A) tarred and feathered by a mob in Gloucester
B) tarred and feathered by a mob led by a Connecticut captain
C) found his horse tarred and feathered
D) threatened in writing with tar and feathers while visiting Salem
E) found the outside of his shop tarred
F) carted around by a mob with tar and feathers but not tarred and feathered
G) filed suit against half a dozen people for tarring and feathering someone
H) defended a man accused of tarring and feathering someone

I discussed George Gailer’s lawsuit against the people who attacked him with tar and feathers in October 1769 back here. Robert Auchmuty was his lawyer (thus G) while John Adams defended David Bradlee (thus H).

Ben Irvin’s 2003 New England Quarterly article “Tar, Feathers, and the Enemies of American Liberties, 1768-1776” lists all the other incidents in its appendix. Other historians mention them as well. Owen Richards and Jesse Savil were low-level Customs officers. Henry Barnes, Theophilus Lillie, and Patrick McMaster were businessmen who defied the non-importation movement.

The threat to tar and feather William Molineux was an anomaly. Instead of enforcing the Customs laws or defying non-importation, he defied Customs laws and enforced non-importation. But that threat is recorded on the front page of the 20 Aug 1770 Boston Gazette, as shown here, right under a mention of tar and feathers being readied for importers in Woodbridge, New Jersey. By the sestercentennial of that news item, I hope to understand it a little better.

The correct answers are thus Adams (H), Auchmuty (G), Barnes (C), Lillie (E), McMaster (F), Molineux (D), Richards (B), and Savil (A). Once again, both Kathy and John got all the answers right.

XI. One of the most famous men in the British Empire visited Massachusetts in August and September 1770 and never left. Who was he?

This question offers so few specifics that I don’t think it’s Googlable. It’s a test of knowledge of the British Empire in 1770 and Massachusetts trivia.

The man was the Rev. George Whitefield. The popular British evangelist made many preaching tours through America. According to his 1877 biography and the 1903 edition of John Rowe’s diary, Whitefield’s final New England tour saw him preaching at:

• Rhode Island: Newport (4-8 Aug), Providence (9-12 Aug).
• Massachusetts: Attleboro (13 Aug), Wrentham (14 Aug), Boston at various churches (15-18 Aug), Malden (19 Aug), Boston again (20-24 Aug), Medford (26 Aug), Charlestown (27 Aug), Cambridge (28 Aug), Boston again (29-30 Aug), Jamaica Plain in Roxbury (31 Aug), Milton (1 Sept), Roxbury again (2 Sept), Boston again (3 Sept), Salem (5 Sept), Marblehead (6 Sept), Salem again (7 Sept), Cape Ann (8 Sept), Ipswich (9 Sept), Newburyport (10-11 Sept), Rowley (12-13 Sept), [laid low by diarrhea, 14-16 Sept], Boston again (17-19 Sept), Newton (20 Sept), [ill again, 21-22 Sept].
• New Hampshire: Portsmouth (23-25 Sept).
• Maine: Kittery (26 Sept), York (27 Sept).
• New Hampshire: Portsmouth again (28 Sept), Exeter (29 Sept).

Whitefield returned to Newburyport, but he died at 6:00 A.M. on 30 September. Per his wish, the minister was buried in the crypt of the Newburyport meetinghouse, shown above.

Both John and Kathy answered this question correctly.

XII. Young servant Charles Bourgate accused his master Edward Manwaring, a Customs official, of shooting at the crowd during the Boston Massacre. At Manwaring’s trial in December, however, a jailhouse informant testified to hearing Bourgate say that Elizabeth Waldron had induced him to tell that lie. What did Waldron allegedly offer Bourgate for his testimony?

This question helpfully pointed to a specific moment of testimony, but of course the challenge is finding a record of that moment. A report on Edward Manwaring’s trial was printed alongside the transcript of the Rex v. Wemms et al. trial of the soldiers for the Boston Massacre—but not in every copy.

The copy of the trial record that Harbottle Dorr must have bought early and bound with his newspapers ends with an index of witnesses. But later copies like this one on archive.org have an appendix reporting on Manwaring’s acquittal.

I’ll discuss Charles Bourgate’s accusations next month. For now, I’ll just quote what a debtor named James Penny testified that the French boy had told him:

That what he testified to the Grand Jury and before the Justices…was in every particular false, and that he did swear in that manner by the persuasion of William Molineux, who told him he would take him from his master and provide for him, and that Mr. Molineux frightened him by telling him if he refused to swear against his master and Mr. Munro the mob in Boston would kill him: and farther that Mrs. Waldron, the wife of Mr. Waldron a taylor in Back-street, who sells ginger bread and drams, gave him the said Charles gingerbread and cheese, and desired him to swear against his master.

The answer to this question is thus “gingerbread and cheese.”

And it’s further evidence that William Molineux was everywhere in 1770 Boston.

Once again, Kathy and John both knew the putative bribe.

XIII. Three brothers from Massachusetts, two of them prominent in one of 1770’s most famous events, are said to have died at the same place, yet they were thousands of miles apart. Who were they, and how is this possible?

One of 1770’s most famous events was the Boston Massacre trial, and reports of that proceeding often note that Samuel Quincy (1735-1789) was one of the prosecutors while his younger brother Josiah Quincy, Jr. (1744-1775), was one of the defense attorneys.

Did they have a third brother? Yes, Edmund Quincy (1733-1768), who was a merchant rather than a lawyer.

And where did the three men die? They all died “at sea,” but in different corners of the north Atlantic. Edmund was on a voyage to the Caribbean for his health. Josiah was returning to Massachusetts after meeting with British Whigs in the crucial winter of 1774-75. And Samuel, having become a Loyalist and taken a Customs service job in Antigua, was sailing to Britain with his second wife, again in hopes of restoring his health, and died off the African coast.

The Quincy brothers’ deaths was the tricky bit of trivia that got me thinking about making another quiz. I’m pleased that fact wasn’t too obscure for people to find. Or at least not too obscure for both John and Kathy.

By the narrow margin of a single question, John provided the most correct answers. Congratulations to him, to Kathy for an impressive performance, and to everyone else who puzzled over this quiz.

(John, please comment on this posting with your mailing address, which I’ll keep private, and I’ll send you a copy of The Atlas of Boston History provided by the University Press of Chicago.)

Edward Oxnard’s Theatrical Reviews

Edward Oxnard (1747-1803) was a Harvard graduate who became a merchant in Falmouth (now Portland), Maine. He was an Anglican, and his brother Thomas worked for the Customs service, so it was natural for him to become a Loyalist when the war broke out. He sailed for London in the summer of 1775.

In the capital of the British Empire, Oxnard experienced something he couldn’t have seen in post-Puritan New England: theater. But lack of broad experience with plays didn’t stop him from expressing strong opinions. Here are some extracts from Oxnard’s journal about what he saw, starting on 20 Sept 1775:

In the evening went to the Haymarket to see [Samuel] Foote. The play was called the Commissary; the entertainment, cross questions.

Their majesties were there. The King entered first, and the plaudit was universal: the Queen entered some time after. His majesty is a very good figure of a man. He seemed to be much dejected. Her majesty appears to be a small woman; her countenance carries such a sweetness, as attracts the esteem of all. She was dressed in white, with a diamond stomacher; a black cap with lustres of diamonds. A maid of honor stood behind her chair the whole time, as well as a Lord behind his majesty’s. I observed the King & Queen conversed as familiarly together, as we in general do in public company. Two beefeaters stood on each side of their majesties the whole of the play.

I take Foote to have been a good actor, but to have lost much of his humor and drollery by age. I dislike much his entertainments, as they are pointed at particular persons, remarkable for some peculiarity.

After a brief career in the law, Samuel Foote (1720-1777) had made himself into London’s most popular comedian. He was known, as Oxnard noted, for mimicking famous people. After a career of financial ups and downs, he had gained control of the Haymarket Theater, probably as compensation for the leg he’d lost in a carriage accident with the Prince Edward, the Duke of York.

The engraving above shows Foote in his Commissary role as the newly wealthy Zachary Fungus. He wrote that play for himself in 1765. At the time Oxnard visited the Haymarket, Foote was working on a play based on bigamy allegations against the Duchess of Kingston. She and her friends attacked the playwright, insinuating that he was gay. In 1776 the duchess was indeed convicted of bigamy. Foote was acquitted of sodomy, on the other hand, but he died the next year.

Back to Oxnard on 11 October:

In the evening Mr. [Samuel] Quincey, Col. [Benjamin] Pickman, Mr. [William] Cabut & myself went to Covent Garden, but could not get in, the house being so exceedingly full, owing to their majesties being there.

From thence went to Drury Lane, the play, “Win a wife & rule her.” The pantomime, “Harlequin’s Jacket,” the scenery was beyond anything I have ever imagined & was shifted with the greatest dexterity. The house has been lately fitted up in a most elegant manner.

The main play that day was actually titled Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, by Beaumont and Fletcher, somewhat adapted by David Garrick. It was standard for a full-length comedy to be performed alongside a shorter “entertainment” or “pantomime,” as Oxnard saw.

And 20 October:

In company with Mr. [John or Edward] Berry went to Covent Garden Theatre to see the Tragedy of Cato played. The celebrated Mr. Sheridan performed the part of Cato to admiration. He justly merits the applause which his treatise on Elocution gives him, as an author. The Commonality take on themselves to determine the merits of a performance, and if it does not suit their taste, they express it by hissing; should that prove ineffectual, they pelt the actors with apples till they drive them from the stage or make some apology.

Cato was an immensely popular tragedy by Joseph Addison. The star that night, Thomas Sheridan, was an Irish actor, teacher, and author of the A Course of Lectures on Elocution (1762). He was also the father of playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Presumably the star had not been driven from the stage with apples.