Riot at the Richardson House

By 22 Feb 1770, 250 years ago today, the anonymous informant reporting events in Boston to Customs Collector Joseph Harrison judged that the Sons of Liberty had “seemed greatly to gain ground” over the previous week.

One piece of evidence was that “a subscription was sett on foot amongst the females in town to discontinue to Drinking of Tea.” The newspapers also featured a spinning meeting in the North End. (I’ll get back to that.) On the night of 21 February, another anonymous letter said, someone “besmeared…the Importers windows with feathers & tar & feathers.”

In another sign of Whig strength, on 22 February the boys doubled their picket lines enforcing non-importation. According to the letter to Harrison: “The Exhibition at [William] Jacksons [was] the same as Last week—there was likewise an Exhibition at Theopiluis Lillie.” Jackson’s Brazen Head hardware store was in the center of town, but Lillie’s dry-goods shop was up in the North End on Middle Street (now Hanover Street).

Another person living in that neighborhood, “about fifty or sixty paces away,” was Ebenezer Richardson, a Customs service land-waiter. Richardson was a notorious outcast. While living in Woburn in the 1750s, he’d gotten his wife’s sister pregnant, then kept quiet for over a year as people blamed one of the town’s ministers. Once the truth came out, Richardson, now widowed, and his sister-in-law had to move to Boston, where they married at King’s Chapel.

In Boston, Richardson began to supply confidential information to the province’s attorney general, Edmund Trowbridge, and then to Customs official Charles Paxton. That work stopped being confidential after some documents leaked from London in the early 1760s. The Customs office then hired Richardson officially, but Bostonians continued to refer to him as “the Informer.”

During the anti-Stamp Act riots of 24 Aug 1765, a crowd attacked the Richardsons’ house, and a few days later the Overseers of the Poor paid to have the family removed back to Woburn, perhaps for their own safety. By 1766 Richardson was back in Boston. After Capt. Daniel Malcom defied Customs officials, boys went over to Richardson’s house to taunt him for not gaining a reward—and it’s not even clear he was involved in that case.

Not that Richardson was quietly minding his own business in the political disputes of the period. According to William Gray, “Some mention of Effigies” had come up on 21 February, and Richardson said “he hoped if these was before Importers Doors there be a Dust beat up, wish’d the 14. Regiment there. They would Cut up the d——d Yankees.” (Richardson came from an old Puritan family himself, so here “Yankees” was a political epithet.)

According to the next week’s Boston Evening-Post:

Soon after it [the non-importation pageantry] was set up, Ebenezer Richardson, the famous Informer, came by and endeavored to persuade a countryman to overturn it with his wagon; which he refusing, he applied to a charcoal man to drive his cart against it; but he said he had no business with it, and would not concern himself about it.

Richardson (as the boys say) pressed him to it, saying he was a magistrate in the town and would bear him out in it. The man still denying to meddle therewith, Richardson laid hold on the horses and endeavored to shove them upon the pole which supported the pageantry; the cart, however, passed without disturbing it.

Frustrated, Richardson started to stomp off. But by this point some Whig men had arrived “to see Pagentry before Lilly’s Door,” as one of them, Edward Procter, later testified. Richardson saw them, perhaps laughing at him, and shouted, “Perjury! Perjury!”

Nobody’s sure what Richardson meant by that. Was he saying that calling Lillie an enemy of the country was perjury? Was he accusing those men of having perjured themselves in the past? Was he denying what they might have shouted at him (and, as shown above, Bostonians had a lot of stories to tell)? The men challenged Richardson to explain, and he replied that he was directing his comment not at Procter but at another man, Thomas Knox—which doesn’t help.

A neighbor named Deborah Warner said Richardson “Went into his house, and then…he came out in a great Rage, doubling his Fists and challenged the Gentlemen to the Door. Said it should be hot enough before night.” Sarah Richardson, one of the land-waiter’s daughters, testified that Knox and Capt. John Matchet responded, “come out you damn Son of Bitch, I’ll have your Heart out your Liver out.”

The yelling outside of Richardson’s door caught the attention of the boys. They left the signs and shoppers in front of Lillie’s shop and ran over to Richardson’s to “call him Informer,” in the Evening-Post’s words. Richardson and his wife Kezia—the woman who had once been his sister-in-law—tried to shoo the boys away, “flourishing their arms and advancing out into the street, with high threatenings.” That didn’t work. As the newspaper reported, “the children would retreat and on their return, advance, with the squealing and noise they usually make on such occasions.”

Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson later wrote that he “gave express directions to the Sheriff [Stephen Greenleaf] to go and suppress this unlawful assembly…but he did not think it safe to attempt it nor is there a J[ustice]. of P[eace]. in the town who will appear upon such an occasion.”

Outside the Richardsons’ house, the young mob started throwing “light rubbish.” Ebenezer came out “with a stick” and ordered the boys to go away. Invoking traditional British liberty, the children “said they would not, Kings high Way”—i.e., they had the right to be in the street. They threw more garbage. Kezia Richardson threw some back and was in return struck by an egg.

At some point a sailor who worked for the Customs service named George Wilmot came to the Richardsons’ house and offered to help his colleague. According to Sarah Richardson, “Wilmot said he would stand by him as Long as he had breath. Wilmot asked if he had any Gun. R[ichardson]. said he must get his Gun.”

Becoming desperate, “Richardson opened the door and snapped a gun” at the crowd—showing that he had a working musket but not firing anything. He reportedly threatened, “if you dont go away I’ll blow a hole thro you enough to Drive a Cart and Oxen” or “as sure as there was a G— in heaven, he’d blow a Lane thro ’em.” After a moment of fright, the young mob just started flinging things more ferociously.

Multiple witnesses said that someone threw a stick or brickbat out of the house and hit a passing soldier. He threw it back, smashing a window. That got the boys even more excited. Witness Andrew Tewksbury stated, “They threw Limon Peels then Stones. Some Men looked on Boys and they threw faster. Men shew’d no signs of Approbation but laughing.” Ebenezer, Kezia, and Sarah Richardson were all hit by stones.

Soon most of the windows in the house were broken. Sarah Richardson testified, “I staid till no Lead, no Frame, and then went away.” Ebenezer Richardson and George Wilmot retreated to an upper story. The active Whig tailor David Bradlee testified, “I saw one or two Men in the Room with Guns in their hands. R[ichardson] put a Gun on edge of Window.”

Finally, Richardson fired his musket. This time it was loaded.

TOMORROW: Rough justice.

Sarah Richardson: “she prefers to live with…”

This is the first of an occasional “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” series, gossiping about couples having difficulties in Revolutionary New England.

As I described yesterday, Sarah Wyman of Woburn married Ichabod Richardson in 1770. Six years later, Ichabod was captured while serving on a privateer and disappeared into the British prisoner-of-war system. In 1782, Josiah Richardson, a survivor of the skirmish at Lexington, proposed marriage to Sarah, then living as a widow with a ten-year-old son. And then her first husband came home.

A document about Americans held in Britain’s Forton Prison indicates that at some point Ichabod Richardson escaped. Woburn authors say he was “pressed into the British service,” serving in the British army or navy. As the war wound down (though it didn’t end until late 1783), Ichabod made his way home. And found his wife newly remarried.

Unfortunately, the historical record is silent on how everyone reacted emotionally to the situation. Ichabod and Josiah Richardson were probably related but not closely; there were a lot of Richardsons (and Wymans) in Woburn.

The whole awkwardly extended family appears to have sat down and come to an agreement about what to do next. Legally, the result was a contract between the men, but it reflects the choice that Sarah made for the sake of her son, young Ichabod. Abram E. Brown published the document in Beneath Old Roof-Trees (1896):

Ichabod Richardson and Josiah Richardson Stipulation

Whereas Ichabod Richardson of Woburn in the County of Middlesex, Commonwealth of Massachusetts shop joiner [i.e., cabinetmaker], about six or seven years since, (during the unhappy Difference between Great Brittian and America), the Colonies Inlisted him on board one of the American Privateers, leaving behind his wife Sarah, by which, he had Issue, one son, in which unlucky voyage he was taken Prisoner by the Brittians and was carried to Great Brittian and from thence to the East Indies, which occasioned him six or seven years absence; without any the least notice to his said wife Sarah, of his being in the land of the living.

During this uncertain interim the said Sarah in a desolate state, Josiah Richardson of said Woburn, blacksmith, being left a widower, married the said Sarah.

But so it happens at this present time, the said Ichabod is now returned and puts in his claim to his said wife Sarah, which by reason of their said son she preferres to live with in the future…and they the said Ichabod and Josiah, for the amicable settlement of the unhappy affair between them, stipulate as follows, namely the said Ichabod on his part, on the penalty of one hundred pounds, lawful money, stipulates with the said Josiah, his heirs and executors to pay discharge, and Indemnify him and them from all demands of what nature so ever against the said Sarah, at and until the time of her intermarriage with the said Josiah, and from all for the future, and that he the said Josiah shall Retain all the goods by him, the said Josiah and the said Sarah, Procured since the time of their intermarriage, during life.

And he the said Josiah, on his part stipulates with the said Ichabod, his heirs and executors, on the penalty of one hundred pounds like money, to discharge the said Sarah from the obligations of such marriage, and to Restore all the goods she brought with her at that time.

In confirmation of all above written, they have hereunto interchangably set their hands and seals, this fifteenth day of February, one thousand seven hundred eighty three.

Josiah agreed to walk away from the marriage, and Ichabod to resume it. Josiah took his stuff and left Sarah with hers, and the men agreed that whoever sued first would have to pay £100. Both Richardson men signed the document, and men named William Fox and Josiah Johnson witnessed it. And that was the end of Josiah and Sarah Richardson’s marriage.

Young Ichabod grew up and married Ruth Baldwin in 1791. His father died the following year, said to be age fifty. I can’t trace his mother.

The gravestone above is that of Deacon Josiah Richardson (1747-1795) of Woburn, husband of Jerusha Brooks. Yes, it’s yet another man named Josiah Richardson! But I don’t know what happened to the blacksmith who was so briefly married to Sarah.

The Marriage of Josiah Richardson

Back when I introduced Asahel Porter, killed at Lexington on 19 Apr 1775, I mentioned that there were two Josiah Richardsons in his story:

• A man, reportedly from Salem, who got married in Seabrook, New Hampshire, on the same day.
• The Woburn blacksmith and farmer who accompanied Porter into Lexington on that morning in 1775.

We know there are two Josiah Richardsons because the one who married Ruth Brooks went on to have children with her at least through 1788, and they both lived into the nineteenth century, according to The Brooks Memorial. In contrast, the Josiah Richardson who worked as a blacksmith in Woburn was a widower in 1782.

In that year the blacksmith wooed a Woburn widow named Sarah Richardson. (Richardson was a very common surname in Woburn because a lot of people from one English family had settled there; I previously wrote about Ebenezer Richardson marrying Rebecca Richardson.)

Sarah Wyman had married Ichabod Richardson in June 1770, and their son Ichabod arrived in January 1771. When the war began, the grown-up Ichabod Richardson enlisted in the provincial army for eight months during the siege of Boston, then signed onto a privateer named Warren. The Royal Navy captured that ship on 18 Nov 1776.

In 1879 the New England Historical and Genealogical Register published a table of American prisoners at Forton Prison in England that included “Icho’d Richardson” as one of five men captured while serving under “John Hammon / P. Master”; they were “Committed to Prison the 26th of June, 1777.”

Another column in the same table lists the fates of various prisoners: “Dead,” “Shot,” and “Enter’d”—which I believe means enlisted in the British military. Next to Hammon and Richardson’s names is “Run.” Apparently those two men escaped, at least for a while. But that’s the last trace of Ichabod Richardson from the 1770s, and even that news may not have made it back to Massachusetts.

In 1782, Sarah Richardson had been raising her son without a father for more than six years. I have no idea how she supported herself, but she was probably pleased to receive a proposal of marriage from an established craftsman. Josiah Richardson and Sarah Richardson married in Woburn on 19 Mar 1782.

And then Ichabod Richardson came back.

TOMORROW: Can this marriage be saved?