“Two Redoubts on the Heights of Dorchester”

On 5 Mar 1776, the British military and their supporters inside Boston got their first look at the brand-new Continental fortification on Dorchester heights.

We have remarks on this sight from several British army officers. Capt. John Barker of the 4th Regiment wrote: “This Morning Works were perceived to be thrown up on Dorchester Heights, very strong ones tho’ only the labour of one night”.

Lt. Col. Stephen Kemble recorded:

Discovered the Rebels had raised two Redoubts on the Heights of Dorchester, at which they were at Work very hard, and had raised to the height of a Man’s head, and had as many Men as could be employed on them.

The 15 May Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser quoted a letter from “an Officer of Distinction at Boston” writing more hyperbolically:

This is, I believe, likely to prove as important a day to the British Empire as any in our annals. . . .

This morning at day-break we discovered two redoubts on the hills on Dorchester Point, and two smaller works on their flanks. They were all raised during the night, with an expedition equal to that of the Genii belonging to Aladin’s wonderful lamp. From these hills they commanded the whole town, so that we must drive them from their post, or desert the place.

Probably the most perceptive observations came from Capt.-Lt. Archibald Robertson (1745–1813, shown above), who focused an engineer’s eyes on the works:

About 10 o’clock at night [on 4 March] Lieutenant Colonel [John] Campbell reported to Brigadier [Francis] Smith that the Rebels were at work on Dorchester heights, and by day break we discovered that they had taken possession of the two highest hills, the Tableland between the necks, and run a Parapet across the two necks, besides a kind of Redout at the Bottom of Centry Box hill near the neck. The Materials for the whole Works must all have been carried, Chandeleers, fascines, Gabions, Trusses of hay pressed and Barrels, a most astonshing nights work must have Employ’d from 15 to 20,000 men.

The Continental force was large but not that large. Nonetheless, Robertson was right that fortifying the high points of the Dorchester peninsula was the most impressive logistical feat the New England army had carried off so far.

TOMORROW: Gen. William Howe’s response.

“He wished to reveal what the government wished to conceal”

John Frith was born in Westminster in 1752, according to Joanne Major and Sarah Murden’s All Things Georgian: Tales from the Long Eighteenth Century.

Frith was the younger son of a brandy merchant and veteran of the Life Guards, but by the end of 1771 his parents and older brother had died, so he inherited the family money.

Some reports say Frith dissipated that fortune, but he retained his genteel education and enough money that, with a push from Chelsea businessman David Burnsall, he bought the rank of ensign in the 37th Regiment of Foot in March 1774.

Frith was promoted to lieutenant the next year, and in 1776 the 37th was part of the Howe brothers’ invasion of New York. An item published in The British Mercury, or Annals of History in March 1790 stated:

The Major and Captain of this regiment, when in America, had, by retreating from the enemy, affixed some stains on their military character; and Mr. Frith, in a moment of irritation, or imprudence, was unguarded enough to reproach them for their dastardly behaviour. This gave rise to an implacable dislike, and brought on a series of ill treatment, which, as his feelings were exquisite, obliged him to quit the service on half-pay.

Lt. Frith retired from the army in March 1778, as noted in Gen. Sir William Howe’s orders. But four years later he rejoined as an officer of the 10th Regiment, which was posted to the West Indies. That stretch didn’t prove to be any more successful.

A man named Fuller later testified about hearing Frist complain about “his ill treatment by Major Amherst, and Ensign Steward, in the West Indies.” I believe these men appear in the 1791 Army List as Lt. Col. Jeffery Amherst (c. 1752–1815, illegitimate son of the field marshal who had led the British army at the end of the French and Indian War) and Lt. Thomas Stewart of the 10th.

As Fuller recalled:

[Frist] declared then the reason he was ill treated, was, that he wished to reveal what the government wished to conceal; for that he saw a cloud come down from Heaven, that it cemented into a rock, and out of that sprung a false island of Jamaica, and because he wished to reveal it, he had, he said, been confined one hundred and sixty-three days

According to Major and Murden, Frith’s commanders asked him to leave in 1786 because they thought he was going insane. He was officially listed on the half-pay roles as a lieutenant from the “1st Foot, 2d Bat.” among the “Additional Companies, reduced in 1783.”

In 1788 Frith went back to Hempstead, where his mother was buried. He commissioned a memorial for his family in that church, including his own name among them. Under the emblem of a sun in a double triangle beneath a rainbow were the words:

And there shall be a standard of Truth erected in the west, which shall overpower the enemy.—May 12, 1786, This glorious phaenomena in Sol of the Almighty came down for my protection in latitude 15, on the Bahama sandbanks, and where the spiritual cities of Sodom and Gomorrha came up in the West Indies. Vide Revelations.

Your dying embers shall again revive,
The phoenix souls of Friths are still alive.

One wonders what the stone carver and churchmen thought of those words, but Frith was paying the bill.

TOMORROW: Lt. Frith and the king.

(The photo above shows a recreated 37th Regiment active in the late twentieth century, courtesy of Flintlock and Tomahawk.)

Why Must Margaret Gage Be the “One Person Only”?

As I wrote a couple of days back, since 1881 authors have discussed whether Margaret Gage might have divulged her husband’s plan for the April 1775 march to Concord to the Patriots, allowing them to send alerts into the countryside.

And the strongest piece of evidence for that hypothesis has remained an anecdote published in 1794, about Gen. Thomas Gage saying he’d revealed his plan to “one person only” before Col. Percy.

Why did it take a century for authors to interpret that story as pointing to Mrs. Gage? Why did it take another century before a major author argued that the story was more than jealous army officers sniping unfairly at the general’s wife?

One factor in the rise of this hypothesis might be Henry W. Longfellow’s publication of “Paul Revere’s Ride” in 1860. That poem was an enormous success, turning Paul Revere into a household name and making a fictionalized version of his activity on 18-19 Apr 1775 into a national myth. Details of that ride, including who alerted the Patriots to Gage’s plan, came to appear more significant.

Another factor was a shift from celebrating collective action to spotlighting individuals. Earlier histories of the Revolution took groups as their heroes: the Tea Party (at first a set of men, not an event), the Minutemen on Lexington common and at the North Bridge, and so on. Thinking of dozens of anonymous Bostonians observing clues about the British troops and combining that information fit the picture of collective action. But when our stories focus on crucial individuals, people want to know the identity of those individuals.

Most important, I now think, was the effect of feminism. The model of the companionate marriage promoted the assumption that a husband and wife would discuss important matters, even if those fell within the traditional male or female sphere of action. As the push for women’s rights and suffrage gained steam over the 1800s, it became clear that women were interested in politics. Even people who opposed granting women the vote described them as able to express themselves through discussion with their husbands, whose vote represented the whole family.

That environment meant there seemed to be a clear answer to the question of who the “one person only” Gen. Gage had discussed his secret plan with. Who else would that be but his wife Margaret? Who else could Percy and Charles Stedman, the former army officer who recorded that story, have been implying it was? The general’s closest confidante in all things, even military and political, must have been Margaret Gage.

In fact, we know people can have close, loving marriages and yet avoid sharing professional secrets. Today hundreds of thousands of people are preserving the confidentiality of their clients and patients when they tell their spouses about their workday. Lots of people toil deep in national security and other sensitive fields and don’t discuss details of their work at home, their loved ones understanding that that’s part of the job. Why must the Gages have been different?

Indeed, given what we know about expectations of male and female roles in the eighteenth-century British society, it was probably quicker for Thomas Gage to assume he wouldn’t discuss military strategy with his wife, and easier for Margaret Gage to accept that, than it was for authors of the late nineteenth century and later to picture such a relationship.

Furthermore, assuming that Margaret Gage was the only person Thomas discussed his expedition with requires believing he developed that plan and made all the arrangements for it without any staff help. The march to Concord involved 800 soldiers from eleven different regiments, supplemented by over a dozen scouts on horseback, equipped and supplied for a full day’s march, moved out of Boston in coordination with the navy. Did Gen. Gage write all those orders by himself?

We know that Gage didn’t tell his second-in-command, Gen. Frederick Haldimand, about the upcoming march; Haldimand learned about it the next day while being shaved. We know Gage didn’t tell his third-in-command, Col. Percy, until the evening of 18 April. But what about his adjutant, or chief administrative officer, Maj. Stephen Kemble (shown above)? That man’s job was to help the general carry out his military plans. What about Gage’s personal secretary, Samuel Kemble?

If that surname looks familiar, that’s because the Kembles were Margaret Gage’s brothers. The fact that the general gave his brothers-in-law high positions was one thing junior army officers complained about. But for Gen. Gage, keeping those arrangements within the family probably felt more secure. Stephen Kemble had worked closely with Gage since 1772, even traveling with him to Britain the following year. It looks like Samuel Kemble was a more recent addition to the staff, having been a merchant in New York.

In Spies, Patriots, and Traitors, Kenneth Daigler argues that the Kemble brothers’ positions actually support the idea that Margaret Gage was the most likely leaker. Even if the general’s “one person only” was one of those aides, Daigler writes, that Kemble could have told his sister, who could have told the Patriots. I think that skips over the more obvious suspects.

Let’s line up the usual points that people use to accuse Margaret Gage and consider all the Kemble siblings in Boston at the time.

• Born and raised in America—Margaret, Stephen, Samuel
• Expressed regret at the strife in North America—Margaret
• Said to exercise too much influence over Gen. Gage—Margaret, Stephen, Samuel
• Involved in making military plans—Stephen, maybe Samuel
• Estranged from Gage after the war began—no one (Margaret had two children and a long married life with the retired general; Stephen remained on duty in America but maintained a very friendly correspondence with his former boss)
• Settled in the U.S. of A. after the war—Stephen

That’s four items pointing to Stephen versus three to Margaret.

To be clear, I think it’s likely that Gen. Gage worked with Lt. Col. Stephen Kemble to prepare the march to Concord, but I don’t think Kemble informed the Patriots about that planning. I doubt the Boston Patriots needed a high-level source in the general’s household. They had been on edge about army raids for weapons since September 1774, and that April they were also already worried about arrests. It was impossible for the army to hide all its preparations for an expedition inside the crowded town. And out in the countryside Gage’s advance scouts, army officers dispatched to prevent alarm riders from getting through, ended up actually alerting locals along the march route that something was up.

Nonetheless, I am going to identify someone described as a crucial intelligence source in 1775.

COMING UP: The earliest source.

Miles Sherbrook in the Flesh

Lately I’ve been noodling on John Singleton Copley’s portrait of the New York merchant Miles Sherbrook (1738-1815), now at the Chrysler Museum. As you can see above, Copley painted Sherbrook without a wig.

Copley made several other pictures of men not wearing wigs or powdered hair. The most famous are his portraits of the Boylston brothers. Other examples show Ebenezer Storer, Nathaniel Hurd, Thomas Hubbard, and Joseph Sherburne.

In all those pictures, however, the gentlemen wore nightcaps and banyans in a studious form of casual dress. Viewers could glimpse their shaved scalps, showing how the men kept themselves prepared for formal dress, but for their portraits they made a show of not being dressed for the world, of staying at home to do the work of wealthy scholars. (The Rev. Thomas Cary also posed in a banyan with no wig, but his head wasn’t shaved.)

In contrast, Sherbrook is dressed for a day at the counting-house. He holds a piece of correspondence dated 1771, not a scholarly book, architectural drawing, or artwork.

The pose and costuming are a lot like Copley’s 1764 painting of Benjamin Hallowell, but that Customs official wore carefully curled, “lightly powdered” hair, probably not his own. 

Another comparison is Copley’s portrait of John Bours, who also wore a gentleman’s suit and his own hair. But Bours’s pose, apparently lost in thought about the book he’s reading, seems more scholarly than mercantile.

Sherbrook displays his own receding, thinning, graying hair. Other details of the portrait eschew luxury as well: no gold buttons or trim, no watch or buckles. The jacket has “coattails that Copley made progressively slimmer in the course of painting—as pentimenti evidence,” according to John Singleton Copley in America. Another sign of lack of vanity: Copley included the pockmarks left on Sherbrook’s face by smallpox.

Why did Copley create such an unusual picture? I considered the possibility that Sherbrook’s aesthetic represented a different culture from his neighbors’. But he wasn’t Quaker like Thomas Mifflin, another gentleman Copley painted without a wig. Sherbrook had come to America from Britain as a young man and remained the agent of his London firm, so was he displaying a more progressive fashion from the imperial capital? By 1771, though, he had been in New York for fifteen years, enough time for to marry a local woman and assimilate to local manners.

We know that Sherbrook signed up for a portrait by Copley through Stephen Kemble even before the painter came to New York in 1771. Furthermore, in his house Sherbrook had what Copley called his portrait of “Capt. Richards”—most likely Sherbrook’s wife Elizabeth’s late uncle and guardian, Paul Richard, who was referred to with the rank of captain in a 1746 legislative act. Copley also painted Richard’s widow on his 1771 visit.

According to Copley, that Richard portrait was “so much admired that vast numbers went to see it.” Sherbrook even let the painter display it at his own rooms to attract more customers. That picture is lost, so we have no clue about how Richard was clothed or wigged, but we can be sure that Sherbrook knew and valued Copley’s work and that Copley was grateful to him.

Thus, Copley’s painting of Miles Sherbrook shows the man as he wanted to be preserved, pocks and all.

Hagist on Looting by the Hessians

At the first Battle of Trenton in December 1776, Gen. George Washington’s army surprised the king’s troops and took over 900 prisoners, as later detailed on this government document.

The three infantry regiments those men came from were designated by the names of their commanders, not by numbers in the British army. And those names were German, as the prisoners were.

According to Don Hagist’s new book, Noble Volunteers: The British Soldiers Who Fought the American Revolution, those “Hessians” were already gaining a poor reputation for looting, even among their own allies. Don writes:

…by late 1776, the army in America was no longer all British. Needing more professional, campaign-ready troops than could be spared from Britain or raised and trained rapidly, the British government augmented the army with regiments from German states. Collectively called Hessians even though regiments came not only from Hessen-Kassel and Hessen-Hanau but also Braunschweig-Lüneburg, Anspach-Bayreuth, Waldeck, and other states, these troops also had an appetite for plunder—and it was on them that many British officers laid the bulk of the blame.

Major Stephen Kemble, an American-born officer serving as deputy adjutant general, confided several complaints to his journal in 1776. “The Ravages committed by the Hessians, and all Ranks of the Army, on the poor Inhabitants of the Country, make their case deplorable; the Hessians destroy all the fruits of the Earth without regard to Loyalists or Rebels, the property of both being equally a prey to them, in which our Troops are too ready to follow their Example, and are but too much Licensed in it,” he wrote on October 3. A month later, he repeated the lament: “The Country all this time unmercifully Pillaged by our Troops, Hessians in particular, no wonder if the Country People refuse to join us.” . . .

The Germans, with no sense of attachment to America as their nation’s colony, behaved as European troops normally did in an enemy country, despite receiving the same orders and admonitions as their British allies.

Don Hagist’s book has a lot more to say about the men who made up the British army, and how they differed both from the Hessians and from common conceptions of them. For a taste, check out his recent online talk for the Old Barracks Museum in Trenton.

Capt. Gabriel Maturin’s “impenetrable Secrecy”

In late 2012, The Magazine Antiques [yes, I know] published an article by Christopher Bryant about a John Singleton Copley portrait he had recently identified.

In 1768, Gen. Thomas Gage came to Boston to oversee the arrival of troops patrolling the town, and while he was there Copley painted him. Evidently the general and his wife liked the result enough that they wanted the artist to visit New York in 1771 and paint her as well. So Gage’s officers went to work to make that happen, Bryant wrote:

While Captain John Small flattered and cajoled Copley to come to New York, Captain Stephen Kemble, Gage’s aide-de-camp and brother-in-law, went about the practical business of securing sufficient portrait commissions so that “Mr. Copely might be at a certainty” in making the trip. After friends and colleagues had been canvassed, Kemble sent Copley in April 1771 what survives as the only known contemporary list of Copley’s sitters, in this case fifteen indi­viduals who “subscribed” for a total of sixteen portraits of stated sizes.

Given its origins, the list naturally reflected the Anglo-American colonial administration centered in New York. Margaret Kemble Gage’s name appears first, while fourth down was the name “Captain Maturin.” Captain Gabriel Maturin, after having distinguished himself in action with his regiment at the Battle of Quebec, had been from 1760 General Gage’s military secretary and as such the general’s closest aide and effectively his chief of staff. As the grandson of a French Huguenot refugee to Ireland, Ga­briel Maturin had the requisite command of the French language required by Gage when he was appointed military governor of Montreal, but it was Maturin’s tact, charm, and discretion that made him an indispensible member of Gage’s command right up until Maturin’s death in Boston at the eve of the American Revolution.

Maturin had accompanied Gen. Gage to Massachusetts in 1774 (the same year that Copley left for Europe, never to return). The captain died on 15 December of a “throat distemper” or “Peripnenmony.” John Rowe described the funeral procession on the 17th:

first part of the 4th Regiment Under Arms
then the Band of Musick
then the Clergy—then the Corps
then the Generall & his Family
then the 4th Regiment without Arms
then the Officers of the Army & afterwards the Gentlemen of the Town.

The next month, Maturin’s New York obituary praised him as a military secretary: “eminent Abilities, unshaken Integrity, and impenetrable Secrecy.” Gage might have needed the last. That death notice also said, “a most amiable Wife is left to deplore her unspeakable Loss, in the Bereavement of the most affectionate, polite, tender and indulgent Husband.”

That wife was presumably back in New York, since Rowe hadn’t mentioned her, and presumably had the Copley portrait. But what happened to them then?

TOMORROW: Mr. Livingston, I presume?

The Truth about Thomas Machin

I’ve been discussing the early life of Thomas Machin, commissioned a lieutenant in the Continental Army artillery on 18 Jan 1776. But what had he been doing before then?

His family left an account that had Machin born to a distinguished British scientist, working for a duke, coming to America in 1772, and quickly joining the movement that led to independence. But there’s no evidence for any of that, and strong evidence against it.

And then there’s this 27 July 1775 entry from the journal of Lt. Richard Williams of His Majesty’s 23rd Regiment of Foot:

Last night Thos. Machin, soldier in our Regt. deserted when sentry on the fire boat in the river near the neck. he went off in the Canoe go to this float, he took the other man’s firelock with him, as it was that man’s turn to lay down, this fellow will give them good intelligence of our Works, for he was a pretty good Mechenik & knew a little of fortification. he invented a new carriage for guns on a pivot &c. his books & instruments were sent for to the General’s.

Lt. Col. Stephen Kemble also noted the desertion that night of a man from the 23rd, “a sensible intelligent fellow, some knowledge of fortification and Gunnery.”

The 23rd Regiment’s muster rolls record that Thomas Machin had enlisted in Maj. Harry Blunt’s company on 17 Feb 1773 and sailed to New York that spring. The regiment arrived in Boston in August 1774. Machin was thus in the army during the Battle of Bunker Hill—but in the British army.

Several people on the American side noted Machin’s arrival, though most didn’t record his name. Col. William T. Miller of Rhode Island wrote on 29 July that “it is thought [he] will prove a very serviceable man to our army, as he is able to give a plan of all the works and fortifications in Boston, and knows all their plans.” The old veteran Jedidiah Preble said he was “as sensible intelligent a fellow as I ever met with.”

Most important, Gen. George Washington wrote down “An Acct. of the Killed & Wounded in the Ministerial Army” based on a conversation with a man he recorded as “John Machin.” The commander-in-chief assigned the deserter to work with his young aide-de-camp, John Trumbull, to draw plans of the British fortifications. (One product of their collaboration appears above.) Later Machin worked for quartermaster general Thomas Mifflin and was most likely a scout during an 8 Jan 1776 raid on British positions at Charlestown.

Machin’s entry in American National Biography says nothing about that activity, accepting the family story of a genteel life in England and a respectable arrival in America. But Machin was a British army private, a deserter, and part of “Washington’s First Spy Ring” during the siege of Boston. I’ll divulge more secrets of the general’s early intelligence efforts this afternoon in Lincoln at an event sponsored by the Friends of Minute Man National Park.

(Thanks to Bob Vogler for posting the quote from Lt. Williams’s diary above to the Revlist in 2002. That sent me hunting for the elusive Thomas Machin.)

“Hung! Up by the Neck!”

A few days back I quoted Lt. Col. Stephen Kemble’s diary entry for 8 Sept 1775 about an American soldier who deserted into Boston:

another Rifle Man came in, a fine fellow, an Irishman, from Kings County, says…that a report has been spread that one of their Deserters, a Rifle Man, had been Hanged, which checked the spirit of their People coming over to us.

That report of a hanging body appears in the diary of Pvt. Samuel Bixby, stationed in Roxbury, on 2 August:

One of Genl. [George] Washington’s riflemen was killed by the regulars to day & then hung! up by the neck! His comrades seeing this were much enraged, & immediately asked leave of the Genl. to go down and attack them. He gave them permission to go and do as they pleased. The Riflemen marched immediately & began operations. The regulars fired at them from all parts with cannon and swivels, but the Riflemen skulked about, and kept up their sharp shooting all day. Many of the regulars fell, but the riflemen lost only one man.

Some authors, most notably David McCullough in 1776, have treated this report as true.

However, Bixby appears to be the only diarist or letter-writer on either side of the siege lines who reported a rifleman or his body being strung up this way. In fact, Lt. Paul Lunt wrote that the British “killed none upon our side” in skirmishing that day.

Most telling, less than two weeks later Washington complained to Gen. Thomas Gage about the treatment of American prisoners of war but said nothing of a man being hanged or a corpse displayed.

It therefore seems likely that Bixby heard an unfounded rumor. Americans may have deliberately spread the story to incite resentment against the British, or to discourage defections, or both. Or the report could have been a natural exaggeration of the Pennsylvania riflemen’s concern about a comrade captured on 29 July, Cpl. Walter Cruise.

Kemble wrote that the American soldier taken that evening was “an Irish Man from Virginia; says he was forced into the service.” But claiming coercion got Cruise nowhere. The royal authorities put him into the Boston jail, where on 1 August fellow prisoner Peter Edes wrote, “the rifle corporal, Cruise, kept close confined, and allowed nothing but bread and water.”

Cruise was shipped to Nova Scotia as a prisoner during the evacuation and not released until around the start of 1777 in New York. (The rest of his military career mentioned here.) But at least he wasn’t hanged.

Who Defected from the Continental Army in 1775?

Continuing British Lt. Col. Stephen Kemble’s diary entries mentioning deserters from the Continental lines during the siege of Boston from yesterday—

9 September: “One of the Virginia Rifle Men (an Irish Man) Deserted from the Enemy this morning by pretending to come out to take a Shot at our Sentries, but when at a proper Distance ran into our Post.”

10 September: “This Evening a French Lad Enlisted in the Rhode Island Troops Deserted to us; he set out from their Advanced Posts on a Run; had two Shot fired at him, but escaped. These frequent Desertions have occasioned the Rebel General to remove the Rifle Men to Cambridge.”

23 September: “A Rifle Man came in this Evening, from their Flech under the two Trees, on the Point, says the Minute Men of the Country is called in; supposed with some design, but does not know what; he’s an English Man born in the West of England, near Plymouth.”

24 September: “Nothing extraordinary, but a Deserter from the Rebels came in to General [William] Howe’s whose character appears to be doubtful.”

Out of twelve deserters Kemble described, seven were said to be born in the British Isles and one was “a French Lad.” The British officer described eight either as from Pennsylvania or Virginia or as riflemen, and all the rifle companies were from the Middle Colonies. Those companies, recruited on the frontiers, probably had a larger than average share of recent immigrants to North America. But they were just a small part of the army outside Boston.

The Americans who deserted to the British in those months were disproportionately soldiers far from home. Many had direct ties to the other side of the Atlantic. None was identified by Kemble as a native of New England. (Of course, homesick New Englanders probably deserted in the other direction, heading back to the farms they knew.)

Given those factors, it’s not surprising that the Continental riflemen would defect in larger numbers than troops from the region, but that came as a surprise to their commanders. When the rifle companies started to arrive on the siege lines in the summer of 1775, Gen. George Washington and others were delighted, thinking that they’d be the army’s decisive edge.

Instead, the riflemen turned out to be a disproportionate source of trouble. On top of these desertions, in early September a Pennsylvania company mutinied, and soldiers’ diaries mention lesser infractions. At first the newcomers were exempted from regular duties, which probably caused friction. In mid-September Washington reversed that rule, and at the end of the year stopped designating rifle companies differently from regular infantry.

Less easy to explain was why two of Kemble’s twelve deserters said they were named Johnson. Was that a common name, or a common alias?

Lt. Col. Kemble’s Catalogue of Deserters

I went through Lt. Col. Stephen Kemble’s diary in 1775 for mentions of Continental soldiers deserting to the royal forces. As Gen. Thomas Gage’s Deputy-Adjutant-General, he was in a good position to hear about them all. I found twelve men deserting to the Crown forces.

Here are Kemble’s entries, as published by the New-York Historical Society.

25 July: “A Deserter came in from the Virginia Rifle Men on Winter Hill, says he’s a Virginian born, that he was in a Vessel from Virginia to Salem, Coming out of which place about the 15th. June, She was taken by a King’s Ship, some of the Men Pressed, the rest got on Shore at Marblehead, where he was obliged to enter into the Rebel Service, his backwardness to which was the cause of his being confined; but, being released, he entered into their Artillery, having learnt a little of Gunnery, but finding his Situation more disagreeable every day, and having no liberty of speech, but what was most pleasing to the Rebels way of thinking. He deserted from them on the Night of the 24th. and got off by swimming down the Mystic River to General [William] Howe’s Post [in Charlestown].”

2 August: “On the Night of Tuesday the 1st. a Deserter from the Enemy, a Scotchman, came into General Howe’s.”

17 August: “One Turner, a Rifle Man, taken or Surrendered himself the 14th. suspected of an Intention to Desert the 16th. and Confined in the Provosts Guard.”

22 August: “Last Night a Deserter from the Virginia Rifle Men came in from Roxborough, by name Johnson, an Irish Man.”

2 September: “At 10 o’Clock a Rifle Man came in from them, by Name ———, Servant to Capt. [Michael] Cresap, Captain of the Company, they come from about Fort Pitt and are near 130 strong. He says the Rebels talk of starving us out, but is a Stupid Lad, an Englishman born in Oxfordshire.”

7 September: “A Rebel Artillery Serjeant, by name Johnson, Deserted this Evening from Roxborough, an Irish Man, a smart, sensible fellow.”

8 September: “This morning, very early, another Rifle Man came in, also an Active looking fellow, during the [day] nothing extraordinary; a few shots from our Lines returned by the Rebels. This Evening, about dusk, another Rifle Man came in, a fine fellow, an Irishman, from Kings County, says that General [Charles] Lee is reported to be in Arrest; that a report has been spread that one of their Deserters, a Rifle Man, had been Hanged, which checked the spirit of their People coming over to us.”

TOMORROW: But still the desertions continued.

Two Mysterious Frenchmen at the Siege of Boston

According to Lt. Col. Stephen Kemble of Gen. Thomas Gage’s military and marital family (shown here courtesy of Live Auctioneers), on 6 July 1775 a Frenchman came into Boston from the American lines.

He brought the news that another Frenchman, “one Dubue, is their [the enemy’s] Chief Engineer, as Gridley cannot Act from his Wound.” Col. Richard Gridley, head of the American artillery regiment, had been wounded at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Various volunteers, including Henry Knox and Rufus Putnam, were filling in.

[ADDENDUM: Continental Army private Nathaniel Ober wrote in his diary on 6 July: “This Day a french man Desarted from us and went to the Regelors.” So that’s confirmation but no additional information.]

Five days later, the Connecticut officer Samuel Blachley Webb wrote to Silas Deane, who was both one of his Continental Congress delegates and his stepfather:

a Frenchman, who came here in the character of a gentleman, was detected in stealing. The next day he deserted to the enemy; but he’s of no consequence, being simple, a foolish fellow.

That man might not have been reliable, but on 17 August Kemble stated:

The Capt. of the Man of War that Conveyed the Inhabitants to Salem returned, and brought with him Monsieur Dubuque, a French Man, who had been employed by the Rebels as an Engineer.

I can’t find any mention of this French engineer in American sources, however.

I do have accounts of a couple of minor French noblemen viewing the siege of Boston for a while before sailing to London. (One day I’ll trace their story.) But they weren’t named Dubuque—not that the engineer must have used his real name.

A man named Dubuque owned the Shirley-Eustis house sometime around 1800, but he was said to have come to America as a refugee from the French Revolution, not before. But you never know.

“Which is the side that I must go withal?”

Thomas Gage, British army officer and younger son of a baronet, and Margaret Kemble, daughter of a wealthy New Jersey merchant, married in 1758. He was in North America to fight in the French and Indian War.

In the course of that conflict, Thomas rose to the rank of general, and afterward became the commander-in-chief of all British army forces on the continent. Over fifteen years Margaret had six children (at least—those six survived to adulthood).

Gen. Gage was on his first trip back to England in early 1774 when news of the Boston Tea Party reached London, and was summoned to court to share his expertise on America. For years he had sent letters recommending how to change colonial laws or constitutions to make life easier for the army. George III and his ministers liked what Gage told them and offered him the post of royal governor of Massachusetts. The general promised that he’d bring the obstreperous province to order.

The new governor arrived in May 1774, accompanied by the first of many regiments to be stationed in town. Among his top aides were Maj. Stephen Kemble, a deputy adjutant-general, and Samuel Kemble, confidential secretary; they were Margaret’s brothers. Some of the Gage children were also in Boston, but the oldest appear to have been at boarding schools in England.

On 26 February and then 18 Apr 1775, Gage sent troops out from Boston to search for the defiant Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s artillery and supplies. The provincial forces responded by besieging Boston. On 17 June the two armies fought over the heights of Charlestown, with the British securing the high ground of Bunker Hill in a Pyrrhic victory.

On 1 November, one of Margaret Gage’s friends wrote to her from Perth Amboy (in a letter opened by the British post office seeking intelligence and preserved in government records):

I recollect with horror the bloody scene at Charlestown. Poor Jennet [Montgomery]! I have been told that she charged [Richard] Montgomery to avoid, at any rate, being taken prisoner. A cord, I suppose, she apprehended would finish his exploits. What a dreadful apprehension for a wife; let either side conquer, what heartfelt woe must it occasion! This puts me in mind of a conversation you and I had the day after that dreadful one, when you thought the lines so expressive:

The Sun’s o’ercast with blood; fair day, adieu!
Which is the side that I must go withal?
I am with both; each army hath a hand,
And in their rage,—I having hold of both,—
They whirl asunder, and dismember me.

And again:

Whoever wins, on that side shall I lose,
Assured loss, before the match be played.

Those are lines from Shakespeare’s King John, spoken by Lady Blanch as she feels torn between her husband and her family on opposite sides of a war. Evidently Margaret Gage also felt torn between the royal forces her husband led and the American colonists.

TOMORROW: Can this marriage be saved?