Grand Union Flag Raising Commemoration in Somerville, 1 Jan.

On Wednesday, 1 Jan 2025, the city of Somerville will observe its annual Grand Union Flag Raising, 249 years after Gen. George Washington had a new flag flown in the fortifications atop Prospect Hill.

The program will begin at 11:30 A.M. with a procession from the City Hall to Prospect Hill. The public is invited to participate in this walk along with city officials and guests.

From noon to 1:00 P.M. there will be a ceremony on the hill in the shadow of the present monument. It will feature:

• A reenactment of George III’s message to the rebellious colonies delivered by gentlemen from His Majesty’s 10th Regiment of Foot. This will presumably be part of the king’s speech to Parliament in the fall of 1775, which arrived in Massachusetts around the same time as the flag-raising.
• Remarks from people interpreting Martha Washington, wife of the Continental commander-in-chief, and the poet Phillis Wheatley, who several weeks before had sent Washington a complimentary poem.
• Members of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company.
• A portrayal of Gen. Washington leading the ceremony to raise the new flag, usually interpreted to be the new Continental Navy flag: thirteen red and white stripes for the thirteen colonies at the Continental Congress with the Union Jack in the canton.

Attendees should be prepared for cold weather; this event takes place on a hill during the New England winter. Hot drinks will be available. Participants will also have a choice between small Grand Union flags to wave or blank flags to decorate.

If the weather cooperates, the tower on Prospect Hill will be open to the public following the ceremony. The Somerville Museum will be on hand with souvenirs representing the city’s historic assets.

“Powder Alarm” Commemorations in Somerville & Cambridge, 1–4 Sept.

I’m participating in a series of free events at the start of September to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the “Powder Alarm” and the start of Massachusetts’ political independence from Britain.

For the people of Massachusetts, that independence began to coalesce more than a year and a half before the Declaration of Independence.

On September 1, 1774, the royal governor sent soldiers to Somerville and Cambridge to seize gunpowder and other militia supplies.

In response, on September 2 thousands of Middlesex County farmers marched into Cambridge and demanded resignations from all royal appointees in town. By the end of that day, it was clear that the governor no longer commanded any authority in most of Massachusetts. In the fall, towns set up an independent legislature and started to prepare for war.

Sunday, 1 September, 9:30 A.M.
Spark of the Revolution
Nathan Tufts Park, Broadway and College Avenue, Somerville

The Somerville Museum is partnering with the City of Somerville to produce a reenactment of the 1774 events at the Powder House, with remarks by Gen. Thomas Gage and other royal appointees, followed by a living history fair. The fair will include docent tours of the Powder House, activity tables, and even a scavenger hunt of the park! More information to be posted here.

Monday, 2 September, 1:00–5:00 P.M.
Rebellion along Tory Row
Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, 105 Brattle Street, Cambridge
History Cambridge, 159 Brattle Street, Cambridge

Two of the mansions where Loyalist families lived in 1774 are hosting a range of events, indoors and out, for different ages and interests. People could, for example, enjoy what’s happening on the Longfellow–Washington grounds, join the first leg of my walking tour, and then sit down for a talk or two at History Cambridge.

• 1:00–5:00: Family games and activities at Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site.
• 1:45: J. L. Bell leads a walking tour of the colonial estates along Brattle Street, starting at Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site.
• 2:30: Prof. Robert J. Allison lays out the political situation in Massachusetts in 1774 at History Cambridge.
• 3:30: Michele Gabrielson speaks on Revolutionary printers and 18th-century media literacy at History Cambridge.

One more enticing detail: Because this Monday is Labor Day, Cambridge parking rules will not be in force.
Wednesday, 4 September, 6:30 P.M.
The Powder Alarm and Political Change
Cambridge Public Library

In the library auditorium, four historians discuss the history and significance of the 1774 Powder Alarm, including its political context, how it affected Cambridge’s Loyalist families, and the most basic fight for liberty along Tory Row. Here are the panelists:

• Dan Breen is a professor of Legal Studies at Brandeis University. He received is Ph.D. in American History from Boston College, and is now putting the finishing touches on a book about the public monuments of Boston.
• Caitlin G. DeAngelis, Ph.D., served as the head Research Associate for the Harvard and Slavery Project and as a Lecturer in History and Literature at Harvard University. In addition to articles about individuals from eighteenth-century New England, she is the author of The Caretakers: War Graves Gardeners and the Secret Battle to Rescue Allied Airmen in World War II.
• MaryKate Smolenski is a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies at Boston University. She studies the memory of the American Revolution through print and material culture, and is particularly interested in how descendants of Revolutionary-era Loyalists remember their ancestors.
• myself. My book The Road to Concord: How Four Stolen Cannon Ignited the Revolutionary War recounts the Powder Alarm as the launch of a month of seizing and stealing artillery.

End the summer with the start of independence!

Heading into Patriot’s Day 2024

With yesterday’s posting, Boston 1775 has entered the Patriot’s Day season for 2024.

It’s hard to find a complete posting of Patriot’s Day events because so many towns and organizations have their own celebrations. But a good place to start is the calendar on the front page of Revolution 250.

Among the new commemorations this year is Tavern Week in Arlington, known as West Cambridge or Menotomy in 1775. The Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s committee on safety and supplies met in the Black Horse Tavern on what’s now Massachusetts Avenue on 18 April. Three members planned to spend the night but bolted out the back door when the redcoat column approached.

The Arlington Historical Society is also offering tours of the Jason Russell House, site of the bloodiest fighting of the day, on Saturday, 13 April, and Monday, 15 April, noon to 4 P.M.

Also on 13 April, Michael Lepage will portray Paul Revere at the Paul Revere House in Boston while the Minute Man National Historical Park hosts its annual big tactical demonstration and reenactment of events along the Battle Road.

Some of the towns planning local Patriot’s Day remembrance events include Billerica, Danvers, Somerville, Hanover, and Lynnfield. Others will send traditional contingents to the event in Minute Man Park.

All outdoor events of course depend on welcoming weather. We had snow last week, and flooding forced the cancellation of an event at James Barrett’s farm in Concord today. So let’s hope for sunshine and cool breezes for the next two weeks!

A January 1776 Sketch of the Flag on Prospect Hill

We have two remarks from British observers inside besieged Boston about the flag the Continentals raised on Prospect Hill in what’s now Somerville in January 1776.

Peter Force’s American Archives included a letter from the captain of a British ship to his employers in London, dated 17 January, which says:

I can see the rebels’ camp very plain, whose colors, a little while ago, were entirely red; but on the receipt of the king’s speech, which they burnt, they hoisted the union flag, which is here supposed to intimate the union of the provinces.

Richard Frothingham’s History of the Siege of Boston quoted a British officer:

Lieut. [William] Carter...was on Charlestown Heights, and says, January 26: “The king’s speech was sent by a flag to them on the 1st instant [i.e., of this month]. In a short time after they received it, they hoisted an union flag (above the continental with the thirteen stripes) at Mount Pisgah; their citadel fired thirteen guns, and gave the like number of cheers.”

Back in 2006 in the vexillogical journal Raven Peter Ansoff argued that if the “union flag” meant the British flag, then perhaps “the continental with the thirteen stripes” was a second banner flown below it.

In 2013 Byron DeLear responded in favor of the traditional understanding that the army was flying the new Continental Navy banner, including examples of “union flag” as a blanket term for many banners with a Union Jack canton.

Fortunately, we also have an image from a British officer of the flag flying over the Continental fortification. It’s dated 4 Jan 1776—the same day that Gen. George Washington wrote about the flag to his former military secretary, Joseph Reed.

That image was sketched by Lt. Archibald Robertson as part of a multi-page panorama view from his posting on Bunker’s Hill. His notebook is now owned by the New-York Public Library, which digitized those pages. Back in 2015 Boston 1775 reader Marc Shelikoff pointed out how Robertson had shown Prospect Hill.

And here is the sketch:

That’s a detail from this page.

No wonder the British in Boston thought the Continentals were ready to surrender—they were flying a white flag!

Well, not really. Obviously Robertson simply sketched the outline of the union flag that others mentioned. He was an engineer, interested in topography and fortifications rather than flag design.

But Robertson’s drawing still contributes to our understanding of the Prospect Hill flag. First of all, this strongly suggests it was a single banner, not one over another. Second, it was big! That’s probably what Washington meant when he referred to a “great Union Flag.”

TOMORROW: The Pennsylvania Packet sources.

“Authentic advices from the Camp at Cambridge”

On 15 Jan 1776, John Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet newspaper in Philadelphia published a round-up of war news for its readers.

Here are some selections:

By authentic advices from the Camp at Cambridge, of the 3d and 4th instant [i.e., written on the third and fourth of this month], we learn, that the bay and harbour of Boston yet continue open; that a man of war is so stationed as to command the entrance of Salem, Beverly and Marblehead harbours.— . . .

An intellligent person got out of Boston on the 3d instant, who informed General [George] Washington that a fleet consisting of 9 transports, containing 360 men, were ready to sail under convoy of the Scarborough and Fowey men of war, with two bomb vessels and some flat bottomed boats; their avowed destination in Boston was to Newport, but it was generally supposed to be Long-Island or Virginia— . . .

This person also informs, that they have not the least idea in Boston of attacking our lines, but will be very thankful to be permitted to remain quiet—That before General [John] Burgoyne’s departure it was circulated thro’ the army, in order to keep the soldiery quiet under their distresses, that the disputes would soon be settled, and that he was going to England for that purpose— . . .

Our advices conclude with the following anecdote:—That upon the King’s Speech arriving at Boston, a great number of them were reprinted and sent out to our lines on the 2d of January, which being also the day of forming the new army, the great Union Flag was hoisted on Prospect Hill, in compliment to the United Colonies—

this happening soon after the Speeches were delivered at Roxbury, but before they were received at Cambridge, the Boston gentry supposed it to be a token of the deep impression the Speech had made, and a signal of submission—That they were much disappointed at finding several days elapse without some formal measure leading to a surrender, with which they had begun to flatter themselves.——

When these accounts came away the army were all in barracks, in good health and spirits—That 5000 Militia had taken the places of those soldiers who would not stay beyond their time of service; that they were good troops, and the whole army impatient for an opportunity of action.

This newspaper article is a crucial piece of evidence for the raising of the “Grand Union Flag” in Somerville each New Year’s Day, as shown above. No other source names Prospect Hill as the high point where that banner flew.

The British lieutenant William Carter wrote that the flag appeared on “Mount Pisga.” This hand-drawn map of the siege at the Massachusetts Historical Society shows that was the British officers’ term for the Continental fort on Prospect Hill.

One curious detail is that the Pennsylvania Packet article says the flag went up on 2 January, not New Year’s, when Somerville celebrates it.

The American commander-in-chief’s general orders seem clear that he considered New Year’s Day to be the launch of the new army—“new” in the sense that the men were enlisted and organized into regiments to serve for all of 1776.

Most historians have therefore concluded that the flag went up on the first of January, and somehow a dating error was introduced in the chain of communication from Cambridge to Dunlap’s print shop.

I’m going to do more analysis of this article over the next few days.

TOMORROW: From “great Union Flag” to “Grand Union Flag.”

What Towns Fought in the Battle of Lexington and Concord?

Twice in the past few weeks I’ve found myself discussing the question of which towns’ militia companies were actually in the fighting on 19 Apr 1775.

That’s not the same question as which towns saw fighting. There were fatal exchanges of fire in (west to east) Concord, Lincoln, Lexington, Cambridge, and Charlestown.

Later the west Cambridge village of Menotomy became the town of Arlington, and the west Charlestown area formed Somerville, so those modern municipalities are also on the Battle Road, but they didn’t exist as legal entities in 1775.

Scores of other towns mobilized their militia companies that day. Indeed, the “Lexington Alarm” continued to spread, so even more towns got the word the day after, and the day after that. Within a week there were men from western Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut on the siege lines around Boston.

But because of geography, timing, and the way Lt. Col. Francis Smith and Col. Percy directed the British army column as it withdrew to the east, only some militia companies came close enough to exchange fire with the redcoats.

All the militia companies that turned out in April 1775 could apply to the Massachusetts government for pay for the days they were active. The surviving pay records, now in the state archives, offer data on the companies, commanders, and men. They’re often reprinted in local histories. But those documents don’t differentiate between the units that saw combat and those that were ready to but didn’t.

To identify the towns that did exchange fire, therefore, we have to turn to news accounts (especially casualties), memoirs, anecdotes, and lore. Frank Warren Coburn set out to do this in The Battle of April 19, 1775 (1912), particularly the special edition with a long appendix of muster rolls, digitized here. Derek W. Beck retraced that research in Igniting the American Revolution, 1773-1775 (2015), appendix 14.

The towns with men killed or wounded were, in alphabetical order: Acton, Bedford, Beverly, Billerica, Brookline, Cambridge, Concord, Charlestown, Chelmsford, Danvers, Dedham, Framingham, Lexington, Lincoln, Lynn, Medford, Needham, Newton, Roxbury, Salem, Sudbury, Stow, Watertown, and Woburn.

However, the man from Salem who died, Benjamin Peirce, appears not to have marched with the Salem companies. The commander of that regiment, Col. Timothy Pickering, was bitterly criticized for not moving fast enough to engage the British. Peirce died in the fighting at Menotomy along with several men from Danvers and Lynn, so he had probably mustered in the company of a neighboring town.

Likewise, although two people from Charlestown were shot and killed—septuagenarian James Miller and teenager Edward Barber—that town’s militia company may never have officially mustered and entered the fight. According to Jacob Rogers:

In the afternoon Mr. James Russell [a town official and appointee to the mandamus Council] received a letter from General [Thomas] Gage, importing that he was informed the people of Charlestown had gone out armed to oppose his majesty’s troops, and that if one single man more went out armed, we might expect the most disagreeable consequences.

Since the most populated part of Charlestown was well within range of British army and naval artillery, town leaders had good reason to keep the militia company out of action. Miller and a friend were apparently shooting at the redcoats on their own in west Charlestown. Barber was a non-combatant looking out a window of his family home.

Thus, while the list of towns that suffered casualties is a good guide to which towns’ companies were in combat, it’s not the same.

TOMORROW: Coburn and his honorable mentions.

EXTRA: Celebrating “Grand Union Flag” Day in Somerville

Somerville usually celebrates the flag-raising on Prospect Hill on the anniversary of that event. Unfortunately, that’s on 1 January—not always the most comfortable time to be outside on a New England hilltop. So this year the city is celebrating that event on the Saturday after Flag Day, or 17 June.

Now that date happens to be the anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, the major historical event in neighboring Charlestown. Which Somerville split off from 175 years ago—an event the city is celebrating all this year. But Charlestown had its Bunker Hill parade last weekend because that ceremony is always on the Sunday before the exact anniversary. So 17 June was up for grabs.

The Somerville celebration is scheduled to take place from 10:00 A.M. until 12:00 noon. Vexillologist Byron DeLear will speak about the significance of the “Grand Union Flag.” There will be tours of Prospect Hill Tower, colonial-era music, and other happenings. The event is sponsored by the Somerville Historic Preservation Commission and Historic Somerville.

[ADDENDUM: In addition, DeLear will speak in more detail about his research and conclusions on Sunday, 18 June, at the Somerville Museum. That event will start at 2:00 P.M., and a reception will follow at 3:00. The museum’s address is 1 Westwood Road.]

Byron DeLear also spoke about the flag on Prospect Hill a few years back, but that was, you know, in January. He argues that the “Grand Union Flag,” more formally the American naval flag, was not only “flown atop Somerville’s Prospect Hill in 1776” but was also “not just the first flag of the united colonies, but the first flag of the United States.”

Another vexillologist, Peter Ansoff, has expressed doubts about the standard [get it?] story of the “Grand Union Flag,” noting that contemporary accounts are far from clear that it was a single banner with a new design. Supporting that hypothesis is the lack of any document from the Continental Congress informing Gen. George Washington about the naval ensign it had just adopted or enclosing a flag for him to fly near Boston.

One of the most likely candidates for sending that flag to Washington was Joseph Reed, the Philadelphia lawyer who had served as his first military secretary. Reed had shown an interest in flags, proposing that the army schooners fly the “Appeal to Heaven” banner. On 4 Jan 1776 Washington wrote back to Reed about how the army had “hoisted the Union Flag in compliment to the United Colonies.” So should we look for evidence of the Congress’s new flag in Reed’s letters to Washington?

Unfortunately, those letters don’t survive. For late 1775 and early 1776, we have only Washington’s side of the correspondence. He alluded to many letters from Reed that must have been mislaid or destroyed sometime after their falling-out at the end of 1776. So what, if anything, the Congress told its commanding general about a new flag remains a mystery.

The Powderhouse: Public Resource or Private Property?

One of the places that plays a significant role in “The End of Tory Row,” as I’ve entitled my free public lecture on Thursday evening, is the gunpowder storehouse that still stands on a hill in Somerville.

Originally that spot was in Charlestown, and in 1703 John Mallet bought the hilltop and built the cylindrical stone structure that still stands there. In A Century of Town Life, James F. Hunnewell wrote:

Its walls, built of rough broken stones, perhaps 30 ft. high, form, as measured by the writer (April 15, 1886), a nearly exact circle 60 3/4 feet in circumference on the outside. At the one door (towards the north) they are 2 1/3 feet thick, and the diameter of the interior directly thence is 14 ft., 2 in. Both outside and inside they curve slightly inward towards the top, which is covered by a tall conical wooden and shingled roof with curved outlines. Across the interior, until recently, there were heavy beams, and flooring, all of late broken, but these have been removed, leaving the whole space clear; the floor is the earth; the doorway unclosed, as also is a window opposite; and the interior is dirty. Otherwise the structure is in tolerably good condition. Its roof was painted, and its walls were whitewashed on the outside, a few years ago.

The structure Mallet built was a windmill for grinding grain. It had four big sails and a roof that turned to face the wind. According to Wikipedia, it’s the oldest stone building in Massachusetts.

In 1747 the province of Massachusetts bought the “stone edifice, formerly a windmill,” and the quarter-acre of surrounding land from Mallet’s heirs. The government converted the structure into a gunpowder storehouse, replacing the windmill and grinding apparatus with a relatively light wooden roof. If the gunpowder inside ever blew up, the thick walls would direct most of the explosion up into the air, away from nearby buildings or people.

The powderhouse remained part of Massachusetts’s militia infrastructure until 1818. At that point, New England culture was probably less excited about military readiness. Massachusetts no longer faced the danger of invasion from inland. The region had soured quickly on the last war and wouldn’t get excited about another one for almost forty years.

The state therefore sold the quarter-acre and the powderhouse to Peter Tufts, a local farmer. He kept the building, probably because it was too solid to tear down and possibly because he could use it. The Tufts family eventually became merchants and professionals. In the 1870s, according to a brochure from the city of Somerville, they leased the stone tower to pickle maker George Emerson, who used it as a storehouse and marketed an “Old Powder House Brand.”

Hunnewell’s description above indicates the building was deteriorating by 1886. Four years later, it once again become government property as the Tufts family donated the land and building to Somerville. The city officially named the site Nathan Tufts Park, landscaped it with paths and plantings, and added benches and statuary. And everyone calls the neighborhood Powder House Square.

Annual Flag-Raising in Somerville, 1 Jan.

The new year can’t start without Somerville’s annual commemoration of the raising of the “Grand Union flag” at Prospect Hill Park. That will start on 11:30 A.M. on Wednesday as an actor on horseback portraying Gen. George Washington leads a procession from Somerville City Hall to Prospect Hill Park, just north of Union Square.

This year’s ceremony will feature a presentation by Byron DeLear of the North American Vexillological Association. He’s found evidence that the phrase “United States of America” was first written in Washington’s Cambridge headquarters early in 1776, soon after that flag-raising.

Back on 4 July 1775, the new commander-in-chief had told the army that “They are now the Troops of the UNITED PROVINCES of North America.” That was still the Continental Congress’s official term for the entities it represented. The shift to calling those entities “states” was a step toward thinking of them as independent of Britain. Ironically, the first man on record to do so was an immigrant to America.

The Somerville ceremony will also feature songs, readings, and His Majesty’s 10th Regiment of Foot representing the British Army. A Grand Union flag will be raised atop the Prospect Hill Tower.

Of course, the term “Grand Union flag” was coined by George Preble in 1872, an error for what Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet called “the great Union Flag” in its 15 Jan 1776 issue. (The Pennsylvania Gazette used the same phrase on 17 January.) Gen. Washington had termed that banner a “Union flag” in his letter to Joseph Reed on 4 January.

Another vexillologist, Peter Ansoff, has argued that “Union flag” was the standard term for the British standard, showing how the Congress and Washington were not yet ready to break with Britain but still fighting for British rights within the Empire. Byron believes that the evidence supports the tradition that the Prospect Hill flag was a new design of the Union Jack with thirteen stripes. Unfortunately, a definite answer to that question harder to pin down than the phrase “United States of America” in a letter.

The Royal Irish Artillery at the Revere House, 29 June

On Saturday, 29 June, from 1:00 to 4:00 P.M., the Paul Revere House in the North End will host Fred Lawson, a founder of the Royal Irish Artillery reenacting group. He will show off sample artillery tools and discuss the use of those weapons in battle (though the chance of setting off cannon in downtown Boston is very small).

Revere was an artillerist, eventually commanding Massachusetts’s regiment during the 1779 expedition to Maine. He was never in the Royal Irish Artillery, of course. Instead, the site reports, “The Royal Artillery fought against Paul Revere at the Siege of Castine in Penobscot Bay.”

Histories of the Royal Irish Artillery, including David Dooks’s article on the reenacting unit’s site, say that most of the unit remained in Ireland throughout the war. Seventy men were drafted (i.e., transferred) into the Royal Artillery to accompany Gen. John Burgoyne’s thrust down from Canada in 1777. Those artillerists were captured after Saratoga.

William L. Calver’s 1922 article “The British Army Button in the American Revolution” reported that a Royal Irish Artillery button had been found in Somerville, where some of the prisoners of war from Burgoyne’s army were housed. Dooks quotes a letter saying the Irish artillerists, unlike many of their fellow captives, were to be exchanged by the end of the year. So were those men among the British forces in Maine?

Wikipedia says another Royal Irish Artillery button was found at Fort George in Castine, Maine. However, Calver wrote that such a button was found at the Fort George out on the Niagara River, so that might be a false lead.

Regardless, Lawson’s demonstration of artillery tools and tactics will be technically correct. Artillerists who don’t know their craft don’t last as long as his unit has.

And there are many more summer events at the Paul Revere House. Saturdays in July will feature music, including fife and drum, dulcimer, Benjamin Franklin’s glass harmonica, and colonial dance tunes. In August, experts will demonstrate weaving, tailoring, tinsmithing, penmanship, and other useful arts.

These events are free with admission to the museum: adults for $3.50, seniors and college students $3.00, children aged 5 to 17 $1.00. (Members and North End residents get admitted free.) For more information, check the house’s website.

(For the record, the Military Campaign dates the Royal Irish Artillery button shown above to after 1785.)

“Powder Alarm” Talk in Sudbury Tonight

On the morning of 1 Sept 1774, the Boston merchant John Andrews wrote this in a letter to a relative in Philadelphia:

Yesterday in the afternoon two hundred and eighty men were draughted from the severall regiments in the common, furnish’d with a day’s provision each, to be in readiness to march early in the morning.

Various were the conjectures respecting their destination, but this morning the mystery is unravell’d, for a sufficient number of boats from the Men of War and transports took ’em on board between 4 and 5 o’clock this morning, and proceeding up Mistick river landed them at the back of Bob Temple’s house, from whence they proceeded to the magazine (situated between that town [Charlestown] and Cambridge [now in Somerville and shown here]) conducted by judge Oliver, Sheriff Phips, and Joseph Goldthwait, and are now at this time (8 o’clock) taking away the powder from thence, being near three hundred barrells, belonging to the Province, which they are lodging in Temple’s barn, for conveniency to be transported to the Castle, I suppose.

Andrews was reporting what he’d heard inside Boston, which shows how quickly people were bringing in this news.

Which is not to say those reports were accurate. Andrews’s reference to “judge Oliver” probably meant Lt. Gov. Thomas Oliver, a Cambridge Loyalist, magistrate, and militia officer. But Oliver’s detailed accounts of what followed say nothing about helping the royal troops collected the gunpowder in that early morning. (The reference could also be to Chief Justice Peter Oliver, but he didn’t live nearby.)

In contrast, Sheriff David Phips (1724-1811) acknowledged helping those British soldiers on their mission, pointing out that he was following the governor’s orders. Joseph Goldthwait (1730-1779) was a former provincial officer appointed commissary to the royal troops in 1768 and barrack master during the siege.

Gen. Thomas Gage’s move to take control of the provincial gunpowder supply, along with two cannon assigned to the Middlesex County militia, set off the reaction known as the “Powder Alarm.” I’ll speak about that important event tonight at Longfellow’s Wayside Inn in Sudbury, at the invitation of the Sudbury Minutemen. I’ll light up my slides a little after 8:00 P.M.

I also wrote about the “Powder Alarm” and its newspaper coverage in Reporting the Revolutionary War, the new illustrated book assembled by Todd Andrlik of Rag Linen. Barnes & Noble is selling a special limited edition of that book that comes with reproductions of four front pages of American newspapers published during the war.

A Hurry of Hoofs in a Village Street

To be honest, Somerville doesn’t even have to offer activities on Patriots’ Day to catch my attention with that poster.

But in fact the city plans a Colonial Fair for families in Foss Park, Fellsway West and Broadway, from 10:00 to 11:30 A.M. Paul Revere and his horse will come through. Try to behave yourselves.

Lecture on Lafayette’s Return to Massachusetts, 11 March

On Sunday, 11 March, the Somerville Museum will host a talk and book signing by Alan Hoffman on “Lafayette and the Farewell Tour: Odyssey of an American Idol.”

Hoffman has translated and published an unabridged edition of Lafayette en Amérique en 1824 et 1825, the journal of the marquis’s long return trip to the U.S. of A. as kept by his secretary. That trip brought the veteran to these parts, as the event description explains:

Lafayette came to Charlestown (later Somerville) during his tour of America…to lay the cornerstone of the Bunker Hill monument. He was greeted by Col. Samuel Jacques, one of the most colorful gentleman farmers of his time and dined with him at his home on Bow Street.

Actually, I understand Lafayette was happy to go almost anywhere in America as long as there was a dinner waiting.

Though the museum webpage doesn’t say anything about a cost for this event, I’ve also received a flyer that says it’s free to members of Historic Somerville but costs $8 for nonmembers.

The image above, courtesy of Dave Martucci’s Midcoast.com, shows the flag of the Kennebec Guards, a Portland, Maine, militia company organized in 1825. Charles Codman painted Lafayette standing in front of the planned monument, which wasn’t actually completed until 1843.

TOMORROW: A hidden irony during Lafayette’s visit.

General Lee Slept Here

As I described back here, when Gen. Charles Lee first came to Cambridge, he and Gen. George Washington shared the Wadsworth House near Harvard College for about a week. On 7 July, a Massachusetts Provincial Congress committee talked with Lee alone about housekeeping needs, suggesting he was about to set up his own quarters.

Lee probably didn’t need much. Since landing in America in October 1773, he had lived as if he were on a permanent campaign, traveling from one colony to another with his dogs, books, and Italian manservant, Guiseppi Minghini.

Lee’s letters in early July came from “Head-Quarters,” and on 20 July he wrote to Dr. Benjamin Rush from “Cambridge.” Washington split his army into brigades two days later, assigning Lee to command the northern wing.

Lee’s next surviving letter, dated 27 July, went to Robert Morris from “Winter Hill.” From 12 August to 9 December, he datelined his letters from the “Camp on Winter Hill.” Is that change significant? It might suggest a move closer to camp, or it might mean nothing.

Our best clue about where Lee lived in late 1775 actually comes from after he left Massachusetts to design defenses for New York. On 19 Feb 1776, Washington wrote to Gen. John Sullivan, one of Lee’s brigadiers:

I am a little surprizd, and concern’d to hear of your Moving to Colo. [Isaac] Royals House. I thought you knew, that I had made a point of bringing General Lee from thence on Acct. of the distance from his Line of Command, at least that he should not Sleep there. The same reasons holding good with respect to yourself, I should be glad if you could get some place nearer, as I think it too hazardous to trust the left Wing of our Army without a General Officer upon the spot in cases of immergency. I do not wish you to return to your old House, any other tolerably convenient will satisfy me, and I am sure be pleasing to yourself, as I know you would not easily forgive yourself if anything wrong shd. happen for want of your presence on any sudden call.

Unfortunately, there’s no documentation of when Lee moved out of the Royall House in Medford, or where he moved next. Instead, we have tradition and guesswork.

Lee didn’t help by referring to his quarters only with a facetious nickname. In October, the Rev. Dr. Jeremy Belknap recorded hearing about a letter the general had written from “Hobgoblin Hall.” On 10 December, Lee invited Abigail Adams to dine with him at that “Hobgoblin Hall.” (She declined.) And on 21 Jan 1776, Lee’s other brigadier, Gen. Nathanael Greene, wrote to him that

Mr. Eustace lodges at Hobgoblin Hall, he says by your Order—should be glad to know your pleasure in the matter.

(Someday I’ll write more about young John Skey Eustace, and what brought him to Cambridge.)

Nineteenth-century authors said that Lee’s “Hobgoblin Hall” was the Royall House. If so, the general must have continued to use that mansion for work and dinner parties, perhaps because of “the distance from his Line of Command,” but he slept closer to the front. Alternatively, the house where Lee moved after the Royall House might have been his “Hobgoblin Hall,” and the historians guessed wrong.

That building closer to Winter Hill, nineteenth-century histories said, was the old farmhouse now called the Oliver Tufts House in Somerville. During the Revolution, it was reportedly the home of John Tufts (1754-1839) or his father Peter (1728-1791). The old photograph above shows that building about a century ago, after it had been expanded and moved “a few rods” from its original location. Charles Bahne alerted me to this new photograph. And here’s a whole website about the house, based on those later histories.

Similarly, Greene was said to have used the house of Samuel Tufts (1737-1828) as his headquarters. (That man’s wife was, incidentally, a half-sister of little Joel Adams.) That building doesn’t survive. I don’t think anyone’s identified where Sullivan lived before he moved into the Royall House so briefly.

I wish I could find contemporaneous documents confirming that the Tufts men arranged for the generals, the Provincial Congress, or the Continental Army to use their houses. But the best information available suggests that Gen. Lee slept in, in turn, the Wadsworth House in Cambridge, the Royall House in Medford, and the Oliver Tufts House in Somerville.