“Paddocks Coach was shut out of Boston”

We left Sarah Deming and her family on the morning of 21 Apr 1775 at the house of the Rev. William Gordon in Roxbury, relieved that the British army had not attacked that site as feared.

Nevertheless, Deming and her female companions decided they had to get farther away from the siege lines. Her description of those efforts includes some more familiar names:

Miss Sarah Mason & I took our stand in turns, & sometimes together, at or without the door to try if we could get any conveyance to Dedham, which was six miles farther from Boston. At last we lit on a one horse Cart, & the driver was willing to take us all in, & carry us to [Dr. Nathaniel] Ames’s.

We toss’d in our bundles, & one of us had clim’d into the Cart, when Capt. [Lemuel] Child of the Peacock [tavern] came by, & told us that [Adino] Paddocks Coach was shut out of Boston, & he would engage it for us, to carry us as far as we would—that it was at but a quarter of a mile distant from us, & we should be more comfortable in that than in a cart—Out of which our things were then taken, & we began to see & acknowledge a kind providence.

“Paddocks Coach” wasn’t coachmaker Adino Paddock’s personal vehicle, I believe. Rather, in his yard near the Common he hosted a “genteel Berlin Coach, commodious for six Persons,” which Isaac Wendell offered to drive “in Town or out, on moderate terms” in a 9 Jan 1772 Boston News-Letter advertisment. That vehicle was now stuck outside the British lines, and the coachman was taking the best fares he could find.

Deming continued:

Mr. Gorden was abroad we knew not where—but he was coming for us. He knew we wish’d for nothing so much, in our deplorable circumstances as to be gone from his hospitable house. He had been to see, & comfort as well as he could, Mrs. [Josiah?] Waters & her children—He had found Paddocks Coach drawn by only two horses, & had agreed with his man to take us all in, together with Mrs. Gorden whom he was to call for at Mrs. Havens, & carry us to Providence for 12 Dollars. This agreement was made before Capt. Child came up to the Coach-man. But the business was done just as he appeared only Mr. Gorden had aded Mrs. Waters & her family to our company.

The minister gave Deming and her company midday dinner at his house before they set off for safety. At one point on the journey, Deming wrote, they

were now 12 in number; drawn by two horses; viz 9 within the Coach, consisting of Mrs. Gorden, Miss Mason, Mrs. Waters within two months of lying in (She is since delivered of a daughter) her three children, & fat maid, Sally & myself—without [i.e., outside] a man on the box with ye driver, & Lucinda behind

Lucinda, we recall, was Deming’s enslaved maid.

“I am not sure I needed this peice of forecast”

Earlier this week we followed Sarah Deming and her household out of Boston on 20 Apr 1775. British soldiers were questioning people about whether they were carrying any arms but not stopping them. The provincial forces outside town were just getting organized.

The Demings headed down the Boston Neck to Roxbury, where one of the town ministers was the Rev. William Gordon (shown here). Sarah Deming’s letter proceeds:

When we came near opposite Mr. Gordon’s house, he saw, knew, & sprung out to us. Where are ye going my friends?

I don’t know Sir, was my answer, I believe. Mr. D.g said at ye same time, to put this frighted woman (I remember he said that) into some house, I think Mr. Weld’s.

Come in, come in here, sd he, all things are in common now. I have sent Mrs. Gordon to Dedham, am moving my goods as fast as I can, but we have beds ’eno for us to night. Step out children, call’d he to the other chaise. Come Mrs D.g I’ll lift you out myself—come in from the rain. I rejoice to see you safe out. The Lord preserve the dear multitude that are left behind. Come in, God will appear for us. . . .

Mr. Gorden, whom I had never been but once in company with, (a little while at Col. [Joseph] Jacksons), behaved to me as to a friend of long acquaintance—spoke comfortably to me, but the agny of my soul, passes description—I sat down, because I could not stand

Deming valued Gordon’s support all the more because her husband (and “Jemmy Church”) had turned around and driven their carriages back into Boston to attend to property or other people.

Eventually Gordon got to the bad news.

In the evening, Mr. Gorden told me, that he expected Genl [Thomas] Gage would send out some parties of his Troops to drive off our men who by this time were assembled in great numbers in Roxbury. That it was probable they might plunder & burn as they came along. That he had been threatened with death (which I knew) for his sermon on Thanksgiving day—they would of course therefore, come to his house in search of him, & destroy all they could find.

That he tho’t it his duty to provid for the safety of us all, as well as he could, & intended on the first alarm, to take a small Trunk of mine that Mr. D. had told him was valuable, & some other matters of vallue belonging to himself, & some others of us, into his chaise, & as cariages were not to be got, he had provided a careful man to take us women under his convoy accross the fields, & some by roads wth which he was acquainted, & conduct us to Dedham; where we might all meet & consult farther for our common safety.

Two men were to sit up in his house, & two others were to be on horse back thro’ the night, to watch the enemy’s motion, & bring intelligence. He said we would commit ourselves & our cause to God, & take our rest the fore part of the night, for we might depend upon it, the Genl would not send out till the moon was up. I am not sure I needed this peice of forecast to keep us waking thro’ the whole of the night.

I saw the moon arise, & pursue her course. As soon as day light appear’d the drums began to beat; for there had been upward of fiffty men lying upon their arms [illegible] the meeting-house & school-house all the night.

That was the same alarm in Roxbury that Samuel Haws described in his diary.

As it turned out, the British army never launched a full attack on Roxbury, but Deming and her companions still thought they were too close to the war zone.

COMING UP: Catching a stage coach.

“Here are the cannon—Our cannon are coming”

Among the documents the Massachusetts Historical Society has made available in digital form is Sarah (Winslow) Deming’s letter detailing day by day her experience at the start of the Revolutionary War.

From a genteel family with relatives on both sides of the political divide, Deming was inside Boston when the fighting began on April 1775. And she wanted to get out. The letter is quite fraught with emotion about that, which may conceal the fact that her departure was in fact quite swift and early.

This is from Deming’s description of 20 April:

about 3 o’clock P.M. the Chaises return’d (for they both went to Jamaca plain wth Mr. Waters’s wife, children & maids he having first engag’d them, one of ’em being his brother Thomsons, which he Mr. Thomson offer’d to Mr. D.g while it was out, & promis’d we should have on its return). We set off immediately, Mr. D.g & I in one, Sally & Lucinda, with Jemmy Church to drive in the other.

Was “Mr. Waters” Josiah Waters? A father and son of that name helped to design the fortification at Roxbury. I see connections between them and a distiller named James Thompson, but I haven’t confirmed a familial relationship. Deming later reports that Waters got out of Boston on 21 April, with his parents having gone to Woburn and his own family headed to Providence.

Was “Jemmy Church” the eldest son of Dr. Benjamin Church, named James Miller Church? He was born in 1759 and worked as an assistant apothecary and surgeon’s mate during the siege. (There’s no evidence he knew of his father’s spying at this time.)

We were stop’d & enquir’d of wether we had any arms etc. by the First & Second [British army] centinals, but they treated us civilly, & did not search us. The third & last centinals did not chalenge us.—so we got safe thro’ ye lines. . . .

Which road will you take said Mr. Deming? Give the horse the rane; was my answer. The horse took thro’ Roxbury Street, ye way he had but a little before pass’d. When we were by the Gray-hown, a lad who came out of Boston wth us, & who generally kept by our side, tho’ sometimes before us, run up to our chaise wth a most joyful countenance & cry’d, Sir, Sir; Ma’m, here are the cannon—Our cannon are coming—just here upon the road, heres a man told me so, who has seen ’em. The matter of his joy was terror to me, I only said, to Lewis go home to your father, & let our horse go, so we parted.

Lewis? Who’s Lewis? The name never appears before in the document, and never again. He doesn’t seem to be the “lad.” I suspect Lewis was a family servant, possibly enslaved. Lucinda, mentioned above, definitely was enslaved.

The “Gray-hown” was the former Greyhound tavern, owned by John Greaton, at the corner of modern Washington and Vernon Streets. It became a provincial checkpoint during the siege.

Of course, what really caught my eye was that unnamed lad’s excitement about “Our cannon.” That reflects the Patriots’ pleasure at having artillery to fight the British army. The same guns made Sarah Deming worry about the damage they could do to the people and houses in Boston.

It seems worth noting that while Deming described meeting “little parties, old, young, & middle aged, some with fife & drum,” as she proceeded through Roxbury, she never described actually seeing those cannon. I suspect it took longer to deploy them, fully equipped and mounted, than the Patriots had thought.

A Look at Loyalist Ladies from Common-place

Common-place has a couple of new articles on Loyalists in the American Revolution. The first is from Prof. Kacy Tillman at the University of Tampa: “What is a Female Loyalist?”

Female Loyalists, like their male counterparts, are typically defined as being ideologically opposed to separating from Great Britain, but their inability to vote, fight, or legislate complicates how we understand their political affiliation. Many Loyalist women were persecuted because of familial ties to other Loyalists, and not because of their own political opinions, in part because eighteenth-century society did not view women as political creatures.

Early in the Revolution, women with Loyalist husbands could claim neutrality, since they could not own property or sign oaths of loyalty. Under coverture—the legal doctrine that held that a woman’s legal rights were subsumed by her husband’s upon marriage—husbands assumed a political position on their wives’ behalf, which rendered women politically invisible. Sometimes, this invisibility worked in their favor. Women (both Loyalists and Rebels) were allowed to take food, clothing, and letters across enemy lines—even into prisons—because they were not considered a threat.

Letters written by Loyalist women during the war show that such women were considered (and considered themselves) Loyalists not only if they verbally supported independence from or war with England, but also if they married a Loyalist, imported and sold British goods, resisted edicts from Committees of Safety or other local militias, delivered intelligence for the British, declared pacifism, and/or fled occupied cities to live with other Loyalist exiles.

Tillman discusses Elizabeth Inman (shown above), Christian Barnes, Sarah Deming (1722-1788), and Ann Hulton as Boston-area women whose lives were affected by their, or their families’, political loyalties. All were from the upper class, probably a reflection of which women left papers for us to read.

However, the article doesn’t make clear that Inman never left Massachusetts, even after Patriot newspapers had named her as suspicious. Her husband Ralph, older brother James Murray, and many friends like Christian Barnes and the Cumings sisters were definitely Loyalists, but was she? Or was she more wedded to her property than to any ideology?

And I don’t think Deming counts as a Loyalist at all, though some of her Winslow relatives were and she expressed concern for them. Tillman quotes two of Deming’s accounts of fleeing Boston in April 1775, but not the part of her journal that complains about more British troops arriving in the town and states her determination ”to git out of their reach.” All the more evidence that it’s hard to determine the political leanings of people whom society tried to keep out of politics.

“Brought in the talk of Whigs & Tories”

Another of the Bostonians who get their own pins in the “Mapping Revolutionary Boston” website/app is Anna Green Winslow (1759-1780). We know less about girls in late colonial Boston than we know about boys, and a lot of what we know about girls comes from Anna’s letters to her mother (published as a “diary”).

Here are two passages from Anna’s letters that show the beginning of a political consciousness, against the backdrop of her upper-class social life.

14 Apr 1772:

I went a visiting yesterday to Col. [Richard] Gridley’s with my aunt. After tea Miss Becky Gridley [the colonel’s youngest, b. 1741] sang a minuet. Miss Polly Deming [Anna’s cousin] & I danced to her musick, which when perform’d was approv’d of by Mrs [Sarah] Gridley, Mrs [Sarah] Deming, Mrs Thompson, Mrs [John] Avery, Miss Sally Hill, Miss Becky Gridley, Miss Polly Gridley & Miss Sally Winslow. Coln. Gridley was out o’ the room. Coln. brought in the talk of Whigs & Tories & taught me the difference between them.

31 May 1772:

Monday last I was at the factory to see a piece of cloth cousin Sally spun for a summer coat for unkle. After viewing the work we recollected the room we sat down in was Libberty Assembly Hall, otherwise called factory hall, so Miss Gridley & I did ourselves the Honour of dancing a minuet in it.

Spinning and weaving cloth, rather than importing it, had heavy political meaning at the time. Anna still hadn’t mastered spinning, so dancing was the best way she could honor the cloth being produced in the Manufactory.

I’m not sure Anna’s parents in Nova Scotia would have supported this awakening, though. Her father was a royal appointee, and the family became Loyalists.

Teachers’ Workshop on the Siege of Boston

This week I’m working with the Massachusetts Historical Society and Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site on a workshop for history teachers. (The workshop is funded in large part by the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati.)

Our topic is the siege of Boston, but the participants’ real task is developing ways to use primary-source documents in classroom lessons. I’m just there to distract them with facts and complications. There will be twelve teachers, divided into three teams. One of my early tasks was to choose documents from the many that the M.H.S. has preserved and digitized for the teams to study.

To start with, we’ll all use Henry Pelham’s map of Boston during the siege. It’s also available through the Boston Public Library and the Library of Congress.

For the team looking at military strategy and confrontations:

• Pvt. Peter Brown’s letter on the Battle of Bunker Hill from the provincial side.
• Lt. John Waller’s letter on the same battle from the British side.
• Col. Henry Knox’s diary of his trek to bring cannon from Lake Ticonderoga to the siege lines.
• Gen. John Thomas’s letter about fortifying Dorchester Heights.

For the team looking at life in besieged Boston:

• Sarah Deming’s diary as a refugee who left the town.
• William Cheever’s diary as a young merchant who went into town to look after family property.
• Gen. William Howe’s proclamation on Loyalist militia companies.
• Gen. John Sullivan’s letter to John Adams about the British evacuation.

For the team studying life in the American camps:

• Pvt. Nathaniel Ober’s diary, May-September 1775.
• Gen. Artemas Ward’s orderly book, 3-8 July 1775.
• Abigail Adams’s letter on 10 Dec 1775 about visiting Cambridge and the prices of goods.
• Pvt. Obadiah Brown’s diary, January-March 1776.

Follow along at home!

TOMORROW: What’s missing?