“The Arms Race of 1774” in Worcester, 4 Oct.

This Tuesday, 4 October, I’ll speak at the American Antiquarian Society about “The Arms Race of 1774.” Our program description:

Starting in September 1774, Massachusetts patriots and royal governor Thomas Gage raced for the province’s most powerful military resources—cannon and other artillery pieces. That competition cost the royal government control of most of Massachusetts, spread to neighboring colonies, and led to war the following spring. 

This is another of my talks based on The Road to Concord, and as usual I’m shaping my remarks around what happened in the area where I’ll speak. The A.A.S. is in Worcester, and that town was the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s principal storage depot for military supplies.

We know this from the congress’s records. Gen. Gage knew it too. On 8 Mar 1775 he wrote down in his intelligence files:

By the Books of the Committee of Safety it appears that the greatest magazine of provisions & ammunition is at Worcester & that their whole stock of provisions part of which is at Concord amounts to about 600 Barrels of flour 300 Barrels of Beef 300 Barrells of Pork 150 Bushels Peas & 150 Bushels of Beans

How did Gage know what “the Books of the Committee of Safety” said? Because he had a man on the inside, Dr. Benjamin Church.

Gage had another source out in the countryside as well. Most of that person’s dispatches came from Concord, but one described a trip to Worcester. Translated from the poor French, this spy wrote on 11 March:

There are at least fifteen tons of gunpowder in Worcester County (about 30,000 pounds in all[?]) distributed in different places and houses. The two houses occupied by a certain Salisbury (merchant) and by Bigelow (a big chief) at Worcester contain considerable quantities of munitions and arms. The deposits of powder are not yet well known.

There are three iron cannon (of three- or four-pound caliber) mounted on wheels rather badly in from of the church at the center of Worcester village.

The big chief was Timothy Bigelow, blacksmith, political organizer, and militia officer. The merchant was Stephen Salisbury, shown above in 1789. Salisbury’s 1772 mansion, where he once stored “considerable quantities” weapons, has been owned by various Worcester cultural institutions and moved around the center of town. It’s now maintained by the Worcester Historical Museum.

My talk is scheduled to begin at 7:00 P.M. It is free to the public, and the A.A.S. recommends that people arrive before 6:45 to get seats. Parking is available along Salisbury Street.

ADDENDUM: C-SPAN3 will air my talk at the Anderson House museum and library in Washington, D.C., today at 4:45 P.M., and it will then be available online at this link.

At the Salisbury Mansion

This is the Salisbury Mansion in Worcester, where I’ll be speaking today at noon about “The Breakdown of Royal Rule in Massachusetts, September 1774.” This is one of many events in the city commemorating the local events of that month.

Back in 1919 a book called Some Historic Houses of Worcester said:

Of all the notable dwellings in this vicinity of a century past the old Salisbury Mansion alone remains,—a watchful sentinel since the year 1772, when Stephen Salisbury [1746-1829] erected it for his home. Mr. Salisbury, of the commercial house of Samuel and Stephen Salisbury, was a merchant and one of the leading importers of Boston. In order to expand their business, the brothers opened a store in Worcester, Stephen Salisbury coming here for that purpose in 1767 and beginning business in a small building that then stood north of Lincoln Square. For three years Mr. Salisbury boarded at Timothy Paine’s first home on Lincoln Street. Not long after this the young merchant built the mansion in Lincoln Square, where he lived for many years with his mother, to whom he was most devoted.

The store was closed in the 1810s and that part of the building heavily remodeled, so the original Georgian mansion became more Federal.

To-day the mansion of the first Salisbury fronts the steady traffic in Lincoln Square and the streets that branch from it. It is in full view of the site of the school-house where taught John Adams, second President of the United States; of the site of the Timothy Bigelow House, from which Colonel Bigelow departed to join the minutemen at Lexington; of the site of the old Hancock Arms, where occurred Revolutionary events; of Lincoln Street and the old Boston Road, over which have passed so many noted men; and of the equally famous Main Street, down which the old mansion witnessed the march of Washington when he passed through Worcester to take command of the troops at Cambridge in 1775.

Note that all those “sites” no longer have the buildings on them. And that in 1929 the Salisbury Mansion was moved away from Lincoln Square to its present location, 40 Highland Street. It has sequentially been the property of the American Antiquarian Society, the Worcester Art Museum, the Worcester Employment Society, the Salisbury Mansion Associates, and now the Worcester Historical Museum.

Touring Revolutionary Worcester, 21 June

Preservation Worcester is offering a ninety-minute bus tour of the city’s Revolutionary sites on the afternoon of Saturday, 21 June. This is part of Worcester’s commemoration of the role it played in breaking down royal rule in Massachusetts in 1774, months before the Revolutionary War began (though after the similar closing of courts in western counties and shortly after the Powder Alarm).

The event’s description says:

In September of 1774, when the closing of the Worcester County Court House ousted British rule forever, Worcester looked nothing like it does today. Let this tour introduce you to historical sites and figures of the period (both famous and little known) and recreate in your mind’s eye the spirit of that long-ago era.

Visit the monument to Revolutionary Patriot Timothy Bigelow on Worcester Common [shown here]. See the site of the 1774 ousting of Crown-appointed officials from the Worcester County Court House. View the reconstructed building where those historic events took place. Visit the Georgian style home of Patriot Stephen Salisbury. View the ample Paine farmhouse, “The Oaks,” which Loyalist Judge Timothy Paine was building at the time of the 1774 closing of the courts. Enjoy lemonade and cookies served by the Daughters of the American Revolution while visiting its gardens and grounds. Finally, at Rural Cemetery, view the Paine and Salisbury family plots and the tomb of Patriot printer Isaiah Thomas.

This tour is recommended for adults only. Tickets are $10 apiece, and reservations are required. The bus will begin at 2:30 P.M. at Preservation Worcester at 10 Cedar Street; there is parking available nearby. Contact the organization for more information.