Seminars at the Massachusetts Historical Society

As I was trying to sort out the accounts of the New York Tea Party, one of my biggest questions was how the New York Whigs got advance word that James Chambers was bringing in tea. First another merchant captain told the Philadelphia Whigs, who sent word to New York. Then a third captain showed up with nearly the same information, which he had copied from Chambers’s Customs filings.

And literally that tea was nobody’s business but Capt. Chambers’s—he had bought it himself, he was transporting it, and he would presumably pay the duty on it.

Now the American tea boycott made tea everybody’s business for a while. But no one seems to have found it remarkable for information on Capt. Chambers’s cargo to reach New York before he did. Today companies operate on the assumption that most such commercial information is proprietary, not public.

On Friday I attended a seminar at the Massachusetts Historical Society, where research fellow Hannah Tucker helped make sense of that question for me. A graduate student at the University of Virginia, she’s working on the patterns and practices of merchant captains in the eighteenth-century British Empire.

In that period, I grasped from Tucker’s remarks, the uncertainty of Atlantic crossings, the difficulty of communication, and merchants’ and ship owners’ inability to supervise sea captains closely meant that they preferred an open information system to a closed one. It was in nearly everyone’s interest to know about other people’s business. If you tried to keep information within your firm, you could easily find yourself cut off with no information at all.

Thus, sea captains sent their merchant employers signed copies of their bills of lading via two or three other captains—rival mariners working for rival merchants. Captains shared news with others they met at sea. After landing, captains were debriefed for news they had about other ships out of the same port. And apparently it wasn’t that odd for one captain to view the Customs documents of another.

The Massachusetts Historical Society hosts many such insightful seminars on different topics and in different formats, all free and open to the public. (Some require reserving a spot in advance so the society can be sure it has enough seats and sandwiches.)

The session with Hannah Tucker was a “brown-bag seminar,” scheduled at noon (attendees can eat lunch during it); researchers early in their research discuss their current projects and what nearby documents they plan to examine. There are more formal evening series, including the Boston Area Early American History Seminar, when scholars share essays farther along toward publication.

The M.H.S. just announced its schedule of events for the fall and beyond, and here are seminars that caught my eye because of their links to Revolutionary America.

Friday, 7 Sept 2018, 12:00 noon
American Silver, Chinese Silverwares, and the Global Circulation of Value
Susan Eberhard, University of California, Berkeley

Silver coin was the primary commodity shipped to China from the United States in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, some of which was reworked into silverwares by Chinese craftsmen for British and American buyers. This talk explores the different silver conduits of the American trade relationship with China. Far from a neutral medium, how were understandings of its materiality mobilized in cross-cultural transactions?

Friday, 14 Sept 2018, 12:00 noon
A Possible Connection between a Scandal and Susanna Rowson’s Last Novel
Steven Epley, Samford University

The talk will describe evidence in letters and public records suggesting that best-selling author Susanna Rowson may have based her last novel, Lucy Temple, at least in part on a scandal in which she was innocently but indirectly involved in Medford, Mass., in 1799.

Wednesday, 17 Oct 2018, 12:00 noon
“Watering of the Olive Plant”: Catechisms and Catechizing in Early New England
Roberto Flores de Apodaca, University of South Carolina

Early New Englanders produced and used an unusually large number of catechisms. These catechisms shaped relations of faith for church membership, provided content for missions to the Indians, and empowered lay persons theologically to critique their ministers. This talk explores the content and the function of these unique, question and answer documents.

Monday, 22 Oct 2018, 5:15-7:30 P.M.
Paul Revere’s Ride through Digital History
Joseph M. Adelman, Framingham State University; Liz Covart and Karin Wulf, Omohundro Institute

This seminar examines components of the Omohundro Institute’s multi-platform digital project and podcast series, Doing History: To the Revolution. It explores Episode 130, “Paul Revere’s Ride through History,” and the ways the topic was constructed through narrative and audio effects, as well as the content in the complementary reader app.

Tuesday, 6 Nov 2018, 5:15-7:30 P.M.
“A Rotten-Hearted Fellow”: The Rise of Alexander McDougall
Christopher Minty, the Adams Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society
Comment: Brendan McConville, Boston University

Historians have often grouped the DeLanceys of New York as self-interested opportunists who were destined to become loyalists. By focusing on the rise of Alexander McDougall, this paper offers a new interpretation, demonstrating how the DeLanceys and McDougall mobilized groups with competing visions of New York’s political economy. These prewar factions stayed in opposition until the Revolutionary War, thus shedding new light on the coming of the American Revolution.

Tuesday, 8 Jan 2019, 5:15-7:30 P.M.
The Consecration of Samuel Seabury and the Crisis of Atlantic Episcopacy, 1782-1807
Brent Sirota, North Carolina State University
Comment: Chris Beneke, Bentley University

Samuel Seabury’s consecration in 1784 signaled a transformation in the organization of American Protestantism. After more than a century of resistance to the office of bishops, American Methodists and Episcopalians and Canadian Anglicans all established some form of episcopal superintendency after the Peace of Paris. This paper considers how the making of American episcopacy and the controversies surrounding it betrayed a lack of consensus regarding the relationship between church, state and civil society in the Protestant Atlantic.

Tuesday, 5 Mar 2019, 5:15-7:30 P.M.
Parson Weems: Maker and Remaker
Steven C. Bullock, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Comment: Elizabeth Maddock-Dillon, Northeastern University

This paper argues that Mason Locke Weems’s biography of George Washington built a bridge between Washington and the world of Abraham Lincoln and Ellen Montgomery. Weems’s stories were not just expressing early-19th century cultural commonplaces, but helping to create them. The paper connects these transformations with Weems’s work to recover Weems’s importance within his own time.

Tuesday, 7 May 2019, 5:15-7:30 P.M.
Panel: After the Fighting: The Struggle for Revolutionary Settlement
Eliga Gould, University of New Hampshire; Katherine Grandjean, Wellesley College; Stephen Marini, Wellesley College; Brendan McConville, Boston University

In the ten years after the American victory at Yorktown in 1781, the nation faced myriad problems and challenges. This panel examines how the revolutionary generation confronted issues of diplomacy, governance and economic growth, and how the legacies of warfare and political convulsion shaped spiritual and social behaviors in those troubled years.

Check out the M.H.S. Events page for other sessions about other historical periods, subjects, and approaches.

When Did Susanna Rowson First Come to America?

Susanna Rowson’s biographers, from Elias Nason to R. W. G. Vail in the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society in 1932, state that she first arrived in America in January 1767. That reflects a date stated in her novel Rebecca, or The Fille de Chambre.

Many of the details in that book chapter do match contemporaneous accounts of Rowson’s passage across the Atlantic Ocean as a young girl. As dramatic as the hardships described in Rebecca are, they closely echo what the Boston press reported in early 1768.

The first reports appeared on 1 Feb 1768, saying that the brig Abigail under Capt. James Harding Stevens had reached Boston harbor the preceding Thursday, 28 January. “Capt. Stevens left England the 9th November,” said the Boston Chronicle; “he met with contrary winds the whole passage.” The Boston Evening-Post added: “He has been from London 14 weeks, but last from the Downs [off the English coast] in 10 Weeks; they had very bad Weather on the Coast, and most the People on board, (35 in Number) are more or less Frost-bitten.”

The 4 February Boston News-Letter agreed: “most of the People belonging to the Vessel had their Hands and Feet froze.” Also, “the Ship’s Company were at a short Allowance for 5 Weeks before their Arrival, being 36 Persons in Number Passengers included.” That confirms Rowson’s memory of the food shortage, though the newspapers didn’t print anecdotes about her own family.

And then the Abigail ran aground. It was “in a snow storm, drove ashore on Lovel’s-island, and can’t be got off without unloading part of her cargo,” said the Chronicle. The Evening-Post was optimistic, saying, “’tis thought [it] will be got off without much Damage.”

By 4 February, the News-Letter could say, “they are taking out the Goods.” And on 8 February the Evening-Post updated its readers: “The Brig Abigail, Capt. Stevens, from London, mentioned in our last to be drove ashore at Lovell’s island, is since got off and is come up to Town.”

Newspapers and Boston town records confirm that Lt. William Haswell, late of the Royal Navy (and known to Bostonians since he’d helped to patrol their harbor in the early 1760s), and his family were aboard the Abigail. They don’t describe how he lowered his little daughter over the ship’s rail on a rope so a sailor could carry her to shore, but it seems certain that Susanna Rowson didn’t invent that experience.

When Rowson set the landing of the ship in Rebecca in January 1767, she might have been quietly fictionalizing her experience. Or she might have been genuinely confused about what year she arrived in Boston—after all, she was only five years old at the time. But because her ship’s passage was so awful, we have the documentation to say for certain that Rowson first touched land in America on the morning of 29 Jan 1768.

(In the image above, Lovell’s Island isn’t labeled but lies to the right of the words “Ship Channel.”)

A Stormy Voyage from Fiction to Biography

Susanna Rowson died in 1824, having spent the last half of her life writing and teaching in greater Boston. Her novel Charlotte Temple was still selling, and her sequel Charlotte’s Daughter, or The Three Orphans came out posthumously in 1828.

In 1870 the Rev. Elias Nason wrote a biography of Rowson. He took up her invitation to read passages from Rebecca as first-hand accounts of her own experiences. Thus, Nason described the author’s passage to America this way, citing the novel:

The voyage was long and perilous. The brig encountered the fearful storms and contrary winds of that inclement season, and the provisions failing, each passenger was finally put upon an allowance of a single biscuit, and a half a pint of water per day. Mrs. Rowson often spoke in after life of the intense thirst she then experienced, and of her bitter disappointment, when her father, with a tearful eye, presented her a cup of wine instead of water. Her faithful nurse subsisted many days on half of her own scanty allowance, affectionately reserving the other portion for her beloved Susanna, should they be reduced to a more terrible necessity.

Having thus been driven to and fro by wintry storms for many weeks, and having endured the pangs of famine to the last extremity, their hearts were overwhelmed with joy when the sweet cry of “Land ahead!” was heard late in the afternoon of the 28th of January, 1767. They were approaching Boston harbor, and anticipating quick relief from their protracted sufferings; but a severer trial yet awaited them. The wind rose suddenly; the night fell darkling over the ill-fated vessel; the sleet encased the ropes in ice; the sailors were benumbed with cold; the brig became unmanageable; and to add to their dismay, they lost sight of the beacon at the entrance of the harbor, and were drifting hopelessly in amongst the rocks and breakers.

At ten o’clock that dreadful night, their fears were realized. Suddenly the vessel struck a rock. It proved to be upon that long, low point running out north-westwardly from Lovell’s island, opposite Ram’s head, in Boston harbor. The floods came beating violently over deck, and there, all through that long, cold, dreary, stormy night, the little weather-beaten company remained in agony, anticipating instant death.

But the good brig held together; and when the tide receded in the morning, the kind people of the island wading into the sea and placing a ladder against the side of the vessel, received the passengers and conducted them safely to the land; the rounds of the ladder, however, being soon covered with ice, Lieut. [William] Haswell did not dare to risk his little daughter on them; and so, fastening a strong cord round her waist, he swung her out over the bulwarks of the brig into the arms of a stout old sailor, standing up to his waist in the water to receive her.

Nason recognized that not every detail in the novel applied to little Susanna Haswell. The young girl in the novel was seven years old; Susanna was only five. The girl traveled with two older brothers as well as her widowed father; Susanna’s only family at this time was her father, a retired naval lieutenant.

In other details, however, Nason was too quick to accept the novel’s details. Rebecca describes the girl traveling with a “nurse,” and that word also appears in the biography. But in Boston’s records of who came ashore, the Haswells are listed as bringing a “Maid,” which isn’t quite so genteel.

Most significant, Mason adopted the date that appeared in Rebecca. The novel stated that its heroine reached mainland Boston on “the thirtieth of January, 1767.” Nason therefore calculated that the crew had sighted land “late in the afternoon of the 28th of January, 1767.” But both dates were off.

TOMORROW: When the Haswells really arrived.

“In a situation similar to the one described here”

In 1814 Susanna Rowson had her novel The Fille de Chambre republished in Boston, giving it the new title Rebecca. She added an introductory chapter and footnotes that highlighted the autobiographical aspects of the story because she, like every good fiction writer, had stolen from real life.

In the chapter relating Rebecca’s passage to America, Rowson’s notes make clear that she was the model not of the heroine but of a young girl along for the ride. Describing how provisions ran low while the ship was at sea, she wrote:

Mr. Seward had on board the ship with him, besides two fine boys, the one fourteen, the other twelve years old, a charming little girl scarcely seven. Mrs Seward had been dead some years, and the child was accompanied by her nurse. The chief anguish this faithful servant felt was in contemplating her little charge, and thinking how she was to be preserved; indeed, to such a height did her affection rise, that she voluntarily deprived herself of part of the very small portion allotted her, that she might lay it by against a time of more eminent necessity for this darling of her heart.

The footnote to that paragraph stated:

This was a fact, the dear woman who accompanied the author in her first voyage across the Atlantic actually lived, for many days, on half a biscuit a day, to reserve the other moiety [half] for her.

After describing a similar kindness from a seaman, the third-person narration breaks into this paean:

Exalted humanity, noble, disinterested sailor, may you ever experience from your fellow creatures the same benevolence that expands and elevates your own heart. May your days be many, and your prosperity equal to your deserts.

And as if that didn’t break the spell of the fictional world enough, a footnote added:

This apostrophe is the genuine emotion of gratitude, the author having, in a situation similar to the one described here, experienced relief bestowed in the same disinterested manner.

Rowson thus argued for the genuineness of her fiction—even if not all the details were accurate.

TOMORROW: The passage from fiction to nonfiction.

“A new world was now opened to Rebecca…”

Susanna Rowson was America’s first blockbuster novelist, achieving lasting success with her fourth fiction, Charlotte: a Tale of Truth (1790), later retitled Charlotte Temple.

In 1792 Rowson published The Fille de Chambre (chambermaid), later retitled Rebecca, or The Fille de Chambre. It features a detailed and dramatic description of a voyage to America in the 1760s:

The day after Rebecca entered Miss Abthorpe’s service she set off for London, where she was to join Mr Seward’s family, who were to embark on board the same ship with her, and under whose protection she was to proceed to New-England. It was late in September when they arrived in town, and a variety of incidents detained them till the middle of October, so that they had but an untoward prospect before them, when so late in the season they embarked at Deal, on board a brig bound for Boston.

A fair wind presently took them out of the channel, and they flattered themselves with a prosperous voyage; but these flattering appearances were soon reversed, for the wind suddenly changed, rising almost to a hurricane, so that it was impossible to pursue their intended course, or return to port, and they continued tossing about in the Atlantic till the latter end of December, and then had not half made their passage, though their provisions
were so exhausted that they were obliged to live on a very small allowance of bread; of the water and salt meat which they had, together with a few pease, they were extremely careful.

After some anecdotes about the crossing (which I’ll return to), the ship finally reaches Massachusetts Bay. But by now it’s in the middle of winter.

The port of Boston is situated in such a manner, that, after having made land, six or seven hours good sailing will take a vessel into safe harbor, so that our weary voyagers began to think of landing that evening, however late it might be when they arrived;—but as the night came on, the wind increased, accompanied by snow and sleet; the cold at the same time being intense, it froze as it fell, and in a very short period the ropes about the ship were so incased in ice that they became immovable; the darkness increased, and to add to their distress, they lost sight of the light-house at the entrance of the harbor.

Their situation now was imminently dangerous; driving before the wind, among a multitude of rocks and breakers, without the least chance of avoiding them; to be shipwrecked in the very sight of home, was a painful trial indeed, yet this was what all expected, and for which all endeavored to prepare themselves with patient resignation.

About ten o’clock all their fears were realized, and a sudden shock convinced them they had struck on some rocks. The ensuing scene from that time till seven the next morning is better imagined than described, for till that time they had no prospect of relief, but continued beating on the rocks, the waves washing over them, and expecting momentary dissolution.

As the day-light advanced they discovered the island, from which the reef ran, to be inhabited. Several muskets were immediately discharged, and signals hung out, and about eight o’clock they discovered people coming to their assistance. It was impossible to bring a boat near the vessel, but the tide beginning to leave her, the men waded into the water, and placed a ladder against her side, down which the fear of immediate death gave Miss Abthorpe and Rebecca courage to descend; but what were the feelings of Mr. Seward, when he found the impossibility of his little daughter’s going down, so dangerous was it rendered by the ice that enveloped the steps of the ladder, and whence, if she fell, she must have been dashed to pieces, or lost among the rocks; nor did he dare to venture to descend himself with her in his arms, lest a false step or slip might destroy them both. But there was not time for much deliberation, as it was absolutely necessary to leave the ship before the tide returned.

At length an old sailor offered an expedient which was thought feasible; and the agitated parent fastened a strong cord round the waist of his child, by which he lowered her down the side of the vessel; the old sailor caught her in his arms, and bore her exultingly to the shore.

A new world was now opened to Rebecca, who, when she was a little recovered, beheld with astonishment how every object was bound in the frigid chains of winter.—The harbor which she could see from the house on the island, was one continued sheet of ice. The face of the country was entirely covered with snow, and from the appearance of all around she could form no probable hope of getting to colonel Abthorpe’s till the genial influence of spring should unbind their fetters; but in this she was agreeably mistaken, for the inhabitants of those cold climes being accustomed to the weather, were quick in expedients to facilitate their conveyance from one place to another.

The very next morning a boat was procured, and men placed at the head to break the ice as they proceeded. By two o’clock on the thirtieth of January, 1767, our heroine found herself once more on terra firma, comfortably seated at a large fire, in colonel Abthorpe’s parlor; for during the voyage Miss Abthorpe had conceived such an esteem for her, that she insisted on her being considered as a friend and sister, and her parents had too high a respect for their daughter, to wish to contradict so laudable a desire.

The Abthorpe family was no doubt inspired by the Apthorps, probably the wealthiest family in pre-Revolutionary Boston.

The Apthorps were even more an inspiration for America’s very first fiction blockbuster, William Hill Brown’s one-off The Power of Sympathy (1789). The young lawyer Perez Morton married Susan Wentworth Apthorp in 1781, then seduced her younger sister Frances. After becoming pregnant, Frances Apthorp committed suicide in 1788. That situation just cried out for a roman à clef. But unlike Rowson, Brown never published another novel.

TOMORROW: How Rowson drew on her own memories.

What Prompted Reconsideration of the Circular Letter?

As I described here, on 21 Jan 1768 a legislative committee steered by James Otis, Jr., and Samuel Adams proposed that the Massachusetts House send a circular letter to the other colonial legislatures.

And the House voted that down.

But then on 4 February, the legislators voted to reconsider. And a week later, on 11 February, they approved the text of a letter that quickly went out to the other capitals.

What changed representatives’ minds before 4 February? I have a theory.

The Massachusetts House records tell us that two letters from London were presented to the chamber at the beginning of that month. On 1 February, speaker of the house Thomas Cushing shared a dispatch from Dennis DeBerdt, the body’s new lobbyist. And on the 3rd, province secretary Andrew Oliver read aloud a letter that the Earl of Shelburne, Secretary of State, had written to Gov. Francis Bernard.

The newspapers and Boston town records report that the brigantine Abigail, captained by James Harding Stevens, arrived late that January. That was the only ship that those sources reported had come from London since the start of the year, and possibly the only one since November.

(I must acknowledge that the 1 February Boston Chronicle also reported that two ships had arrived from Plymouth, England: the brigantine Commerce under Edward Sears and the schooner Nancy under John Choate. But I think those were less likely to have carried important mail from London politicians. In addition, some mail went to New York on the regular packet to that city and was then shipped up the coast. But the timing of the letters in question points strongly to the Abigail.)

Capt. Stevens and the Abigail carried, among other things:

• an honorary diploma from the University of Edinburgh for the Rev. Samuel Cooper, according to the 8 February Boston Evening-Post.
• “two beautiful Brass Field Pieces” for the Boston militia’s train of artillery. [In 1774, those two cannon were stolen from an armory under redcoat guard and eventually smuggled out to Concord. They survive today at local national parks as the “Hancock” and the “Adams.” Read all about them in The Road to Concord.]
• Lt. William Haswell, retired from the Royal Navy, and his daughter, who would grow up to become the actress and novelist Susanna Rowson.
• Thomas Irving (called “Robert Irvine” in the newspapers), Inspector of Imports and Exports for North America, a Customs officer.
• three sea captains and three other mariners who worked out of Boston or the Piscataqua harbor.
• various craftspeople, including a saddler, a joiner, a farmer, and a spinster. The 4 February Boston News-Letter said the passengers included “a number of weavers, wool-combers, cloathiers, and other manufacturers and mechanics,” but those don’t appear on the town’s official list of arrivals.

Usually a trip across the Atlantic took six weeks. The 22 Oct 1767 Boston News-Letter made special note when Capt. James Bruce “had but 4 Weeks Passage” from London. Capt. Stevens was not so lucky.

The Abigail left London in late October 1767, according to Boston newspapers of 1 Feb 1768. As of 9 November, it was still within sight of “the Downs” in southeastern England. The Boston Chronicle reported that Stevens “met with contrary winds the whole passage, and with such severe cold weather on this coast, that several of his ship’s company were frost-bitten.” The Boston Post-Boy added: “the Ship’s Company were at a short Allowance [of food] for 5 Weeks before their Arrival, being 36 Persons in Number Passengers Included.”

The Abigail entered Boston harbor on the night of 28 Jan 1768 during a snowstorm. And it wasn’t safe yet. As the Post-Boy reported, “by the Violence of the Wind, and the Weather being extreme cold, the Vessel drove ashore on Lovel’s Island.” The ship had to be partially unloaded before it could be floated again.

On that luckless brigantine, I hypothesize, came the two letters from London that were brought into the Representatives’ Chamber of the Town House early the following week.

TOMORROW: Looking at the letters.

“ADAMS, greater far than he, Took rigid honour for his guide”

A few days back I shared Susanna Rowson’s paean to George Washington in honor of his birthday in February 1798—an early indication that America would keep celebrating that day even though the man was no longer President.

In October 1799, Rowson got around to writing a similar ode to President John Adams. She was a Massachusetts Federalist, after all. And to make up for missing earlier birthdays, it seems, she made her “On the Birth Day of John Adams, Esquire, President of the United States of America, 1799” extra long.

The poem starts in heroic blank verse:

WHEN great ALCIDES, JOVE’s immortal son,
Attain’d the dawn of manhood, life’s spring tide,
Rushing impetuous through his agile frame,
Light bade his spirits dance, whilst health and joy
Crimson’d his cheek and revel’d in his eye;
And yet restraint the youth had never known.

And it goes on like that for four pages, all about Alcides (a variation on another name for Heracles) rejecting Vice and choosing Virtue. That story finishes, leaving you to wonder what any of it had to do with John Adams, Esquire, and then the poet herself enters the scene.

“Blest was the choice he made,” I eager cried,
As rapt I lay; the volume by my side,
And mus’d on what I had read. It was the hour
“When church yards yawn,” and fancy has the power,
To raise incongruous phantoms to our view,
And almost make us think her airy visions true.
“But where in these degenerate ages,
Can we a mortal find,
Like this recorded by the sages;
Who, when vice tempts and passion rages,
With an unshaken mind,
Will boldly quit without a sigh,
Pleasure’s enamel’d meads;
To mount the path, rugged and high,
Where virtue points, and honour leads?[”]

“Peace,” cried a voice, “ungrateful mortal, peace.”
I rais’d my eyes, a vision stood beside me;
Fair as the tints of opening day,
Her eye was chaste as DIAN’s ray,
Her smile so soft, I knew no evil could betide me.
A cæstus bound her lovely waist,
On which was INDEPENDENCE graven;
Bare were her arms, or only brac’d
By circlets, where these words I trac’d:
WE TRUST IN UNITY AND HEAVEN.
In her right hand she held a spear,
And from her left an iron chain depended.
By which, more bound by guilt and servile fear,
Hung lawless ANARCHY and SHAME,
AMBITION, who usurp’d a patriot’s name,
And ENVY slyly seeking to defame
The WARRIOR, by whose arm, her children were defended.

“And who art thou, bright vision?” I enquired;
“My name,” she smiling cried, “is LIBERTY;”
“Oh nymph, by all beloved, by all desired,
And art thou come,” I cried, “to dwell with me?”
“No,” said the goddess, “I am come to chide.”
“Why dost thou wonder at ALCIDES’ worth?
Columbia boasts, and she may boast with pride,
An equal hero’s birth.
The morn which dapples in the east,
And makes all nature gay,
Speaks what should be by all exprest;
Let every face in smiles be drest,
For ’tis his natal day.

“ALICIDES mighty feats has done,
Wonders perform’d and conquests won;
But ADAMS, greater far than he,
Took rigid honour for his guide;
Stern truth and virtue on his side;
And soaring on superior worth,
Trod base detraction to the earth;
Firm to her cause,
Enforc’d the laws,
That made his country free.

“Then rise, and tune the vocal lay,
Invoke the Muse’s aid;
Small is the tribute thou canst pay,
Yet be that tribute paid,
And thousands in that tribute will bear part,
For all conspire to raise the festive lay,
And as they joyful hail his natal day,
Pour forth the offerings of a grateful heart.”

So Rowson’s message was that President Adams was greater than Heracles because he was no fun at all.

And thus Boston 1775 wishes John Adams a happy birthday.

Susanna Rowson’s Birthday Song for Washington

February 1798 was the U.S. of A.’s first February for eight years without George Washington as head of state. As described in recent postings, his birthday the previous year, coming near the end of his second term as President, served as a national send-off.

But in 1798 John Adams was President, and he didn’t think such birthday celebrations were appropriate for a republic. So that February passed quietly, right?

Nope. Americans went on celebrating Washington’s birthday in many ways, as if he were the most important and respected person in the country or something.

Among those celebrants was Susanna Rowson, born in Portsmouth, England, and raised in Hull. After publishing the blockbuster novel Charlotte Temple, she had gone on the stage as an actress and playwright. She made the Federal Street Theatre in Boston her base in 1796, but that business failed the next year. After a brief tour to Rhode Island, Rowson decided to change professions again and start a school for girls.

Thus, it was as a respectable Boston schoolmistress that Susanna Rowson published her “Song. Written for the Celebration of the Birth Day of George Washington, Esq., and Sung on That Occasion, in Boston, February 11th, 1798.” That was the date on the calendar when Washington was born. He’d taken to celebrating the equivalent on the Gregorian calendar, 22 February, but not everyone followed suit.

The song went:

WHEN rising from ocean Columbia appear’d,
MINERVA to JOVE, humbly kneeling, requested
That she, as its patroness, might be rever’d,
And the pow’r to protect it, in her be invested.
Jove nodded assent, pleasure glow’d in her breast,
As rising, the goddess: her will thus exprest
“The sons of Columbia forever shall be
From oppression secure, and from anarchy free.”

Rapture flash’d through the spheres as the mandate went forth,
When MARS and APOLLO, together uniting,
Cried, Sister, thy sons shall be fam’d for their worth,
Their wisdom in peace, and their valour in fighting;
Besides, from among them a chief shall arise,
As a soldier, or statesman, undaunted and wise;
Who would shed his best blood, that Columbia might be,
From oppression secure, and from anarchy free.

Jove, pleas’d with the prospect, majestic arose,
And said, “By ourself, they shall not be neglected;
But ever secure, tho’ surrounded by foes,
By WASHINGTON bravely upheld and protected.
And while Peace and Plenty preside o’er their plains,
While mem’ry exists, or while gratitude reigns,
His name ever lov’d, and remember’d shall be,
While Columbians remain INDEPENDENT and FREE.”

Rowson had written those words to the well-known air “Anacreon in Heaven”—which we’re more familiar with as “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

COMING UP: Meanwhile, in Philadelphia…

James Otis in Hull

Back in October I left James Otis, Jr., “non compos mentis” in 1772, with Boston’s voters finally concluding that he lacked the mental stability to remain in office.

Otis’s family sent him out to the South Shore town of Hull. In 1866 someone writing in the Historical Magazine under the pseudonym “Shawmut” described what he had heard about Otis from his father, who grew up in that town:

He occupied a front chamber of the mansion of Captain Daniel Souther [1727-1797], formerly of the Royal Navy. . . . Being a restless person, and disturbed with sleepless nights, he would, for exercise, gather, at twilight, large flat blue stones from the beach, and pave the yard around the house. Vestiges of this labor, partly overgrown with grass, and an embankment of stones, which, with his own hands, he erected at the foot of the elevation behind the mansion, are yet remaining, and are preserved unaltered, with peculiar veneration, by the occupants.

James Otis often wandered to adjoining towns. One time, Captain Souther found him on the five-mile beach that leads to Hingham. On dismounting from his horse, Otis jumped upon it, and returned to the village with lightning speed, leaving the naval veteran to find his way home on foot. Being lame and infirm, on his arrival home he remonstrated with Otis at such conduct, who replied, with a smile, that the horse raced as if he had a thousand legs. At another period, Otis fired a gun up the old-fashioned chimney, making a tremendous racket, which he regarded as a very amusing act.

The father of the writer of this article has often related that when he was about ten years of age, his birth-place being on the estate adjoining Captain Souther’s mansion, our patriot, who was fond of children, instructed him in the polite art of dancing in the captain’s yard; and, often imagining himself a military officer, Otis would gather the boys of Hull in a body to march around the village, and many were the youthful games in which he would initiate them, which made him a great favorite with young people.

Among those young people of Hull was Susanna Haswell, ten-year-old daughter of another Royal Navy retiree. When she died in 1824, having become the best-selling novelist Susanna Rowson (shown above), the Port-folio reported about her childhood:

While she resided in Massachusetts, she had frequent opportunities of seeing that great orator, and lawyer, James Otis, then one of the most influential men in America. Much pains had been bestowed on her education, and this learned and enthusiastic scholar was delighted with her early display of talents, and called her his little pupil. This intimacy she recollected with pleasure and pride, in every period of her life.

In later retellings of this story, “little pupil” changed into “little scholar,” but the sentiment remained.

TOMORROW: More Otis anecdotes from Hull.

The North American Premiere of the Celebrity Actor

The latest issue of Common-Place includes Jason Shaffer’s article “Unveiling the American Actor”, about the rise of theatrical celebrities in late colonial and early republican America. Of course, Boston was late to that game because of the Puritan prohibitions against theater.

Shaffer notes that it took a while for the faces of celebrities from any field to become known:

As Wendy Wick Reaves of the National Portrait Gallery has pointed out, even Washington’s image took time to gain common currency: she documents an engraving of the British poet John Dryden from a 1773 New England almanac that is recycled as an image of Sam Adams in a children’s primer in 1777, then again as an image of Washington in another primer in 1799.

One of the first star actresses in America, Susanna Rowson (thumbnail portrait above, courtesy of Explore PA History), was also its bestselling novelist:

Better known as the author of popular sentimental novels such as Charlotte Temple, Rowson was raised partly in Massachusetts by her father, a British naval officer who was eventually seized by the Continentals, deported, and repatriated in a prisoner exchange. She returned to the United States along with her husband, moved more by economic need than artistic ambition.

While performing with Wignell’s company in Philadelphia in 1794, at which point Charlotte was already available from Philadelphia booksellers, Rowson wrote Slaves in Algiers, a heroic play about Americans held captive by Barbary pirates. The controversy that attended this production illustrates the inherent difficulty of reintroducing British actors to the American stage and the specific difficulties that faced women onstage in the early republic.

While Rowson’s overwhelming emphasis in the play is on the generically American ideal of “liberty,” one of her characters, an Algerian girl named Fetnah who has been sold by her father into the Dey of Algiers's harem, expresses the desire that women should be as free as men.

Meanwhile, Rowson delivered the play’s epilogue not in her starring role of Olivia, a captive of mixed English and American parentage, but as the author of the play. “Disguised” as herself, she comically turned the tables on eighteenth-century gender relations by informing the audience that “Women were born for universal sway, / Men to adore, be silent, and obey.”

Rowson awakened the wrath of the arch-conservative (and fellow immigrant) newspaper editor William Cobbett, who in a pamphlet painted her as an aspiring petticoat tyrant and ally of French radicals while also questioning the sincerity of her conversion to the cause of American patriotism since her emigration from Britain. The controversy was brief, and Rowson went on to enjoy a successful, if short, theatrical career before retiring in 1797 to focus on writing books and opening a school for young women in Boston.

Rowson located her academy in Medford, Newton, and Roxbury at different times. Her school’s curriculum included learning to embroider this map of Boston harbor, featured in a Bostonian Society online exhibit.

Scraps of Women’s Lives Online

The Bostonian Society’s online exhibit of “From Baby Caps to Mourning Rings: The Material Culture of Boston’s Eighteenth Century Girls and Women” is now open for virtual visitors. It has a snazzy opening interface. My favorite item is this embroidered map of Boston harbor, sewn by Lydia Withington at the school of actress-novelist Susanna Rowson.

Another new online resource on eighteenth-century women is this biographical website about Martha Washington, created by the Center for History and New Media and sponsored by Mount Vernon. This is designed for educators to use, with lots of teaching materials.

Lastly, the Massachusetts Historical Society has posted a letter from Rachel Revere to her husband, Paul, dated 2 May 1775. It says in part:

I cannot say I was please’d at hearing you aplyed to Capt Irvin for a pass as I shou’d rather confer 50 obligations on them then recive one from them

I am almost sure of one as soon as they are given out

I was at mr Scolays yesterday and his son has been here to day and told me he went to the room and gave mine and Deacon Jeffers name to this [sic] father when no other person was admited

Okay, what’s going on here? Paul was outside besieged Boston, and Rachel wanted to get herself and the kids out, too. I think “Capt Irvin” refers to George Erving, son of John Erving, a former militia colonel who leaned toward the royal government. Rachel then went to John Scollay, a selectman who was closer to the Whigs. “Deacon Jeffers” is probably David Jeffries, the town treasurer and deacon at Old South.

TOMORROW: Was someone else secretly working to get Rachel Revere a pass out of town?

Teaching All the Malignity of Vice

Carnivalesque, a blog carnival from Denmark, recently took note of Boston 1775's entry on Josiah Quincy, Jr., and in turn alerted me to a discussion on Earmarks of Early Modern Culture of what one British critic had to say about novels in 1778:

Every corner of the kingdom is abundantly supplied with them. In vain is youth secluded from the corruptions of the living world. Books are commonly allowed them with little restriction, as innocent amusements; yet these often pollute the heart in the recesses of the closet, inflame the passions at a distance from temptation, and teach all the malignity of vice in solitude.

That sort of rhetoric would have resonated in Revolutionary Boston, with its Puritan roots, but the war and the coming of the republic seems to have shaken up the culture. The town got its first (underground) theater in 1792, and it had connections with many of America's earliest novels:

• The Power of Sympathy (1789), by Bostonian William Hill Brown, based on a Boston sex scandal
• Charlotte Temple (1790), by Susanna Rowson, who settled in Boston in 1797 to teach school
• The Algerine Captive (1797), by Boston native Royall Tyler