“Dr. F. with a number of boys of his age”

Last year I discussed how the experiences of Pvt. Jacob Frost had inspired and informed the Rev. W. B. O. Peabody’s 1829 sketch “The Young Provincial”—though that account changed significant details for dramatic effect.

Peabody heard about Jacob Frost through the veteran’s younger brother, Dr. Joshua Frost, according to an article in the 25 Nov 1829 Springfield Republican.

That same newspaper also put into print Dr. Frost’s own anecdote about the beginning of the war. Jacob was then “about nine years old” and living in Tewksbury:

We cannot help here adding an anecdote related to us by Dr. F. as it illustrates so well the feeling which prevailed even among children at the time to which the story relates. His parents lived not many miles [actually fifteen] from Lexington, and on the morning of the memorable 19th of April, when every person capable of bearing arms had gone to the theatre of action, it was feared by the women and small boys that a certain “old tory” in the neighborhood would communicate such information to the enemy, as would injure the cause of liberty, or bring destruction upon their heads. Accordingly Dr. F. with a number of boys of his age, went to the house of this tory, and pinioned him down in his bed.

I haven’t found any other version of this tale or identified a notorious “old tory” in Tewksbury. But I can’t help but sympathize with a man who, simply because of political differences, was suddenly attacked in his own bedroom by a riled-up bunch of ten-year-olds.

[The picture above doesn’t actually illustrate this anecdote. It’s from Bill Nye’s History of the United States (1894) and reflects that humorist’s version of the moment in January 1775 when Boston schoolboys protested to Gen. Frederick Haldimand about not being able to sled outside his house on School Street.]

A Few More Local Patriots’ Day Events

Yesterday I listed the events surrounding Patriots’ Day that are scheduled to take place in Minute Man National Historical Park. I also linked to Battleroad.org, a website listing other events in the area.

But there are yet more local commemorations, some of which may not appear on either list. I’ve come to see that pattern as emblematic of deep New England culture. Even though the militia mobilizations of 1774-1777 were by definition mass evens, our communities often like to maintain our own traditions independent from coordinating authorities.

This afternoon, for example, the town of Tewksbury commemorates its response to the 1775 alarm with the “Tewksbury Line of March” starting at 1:30 P.M. The Tewksbury Militia and Minutemen, Billerica Colonial Minutemen, and Second Massachusetts Regiment will participate. Former Tewksbury Historical Society president David Marcus will narrate the event.

Attendees are invited to walk behind the reenactors along the militia companies’ original route along East Street, Lee Street, and Chandler Street to the town library, where there will be a musket salute. At around 2:45 P.M. guest speaker will then provide a Loyalist perspective on events.

On Sunday, 15 April, Arlington will be the scene of “The Fight at the Jason Russell House,” reenacting the skirmish that cost more than a dozen lives in 1775. Participating reenacting groups include the Menotomy Minutemen, the Danvers Alarum Company, Gardner’s Regiment, and the Acton Minutemen. The Jason Russell House is at 7 Jason Street (just off Massachusetts Avenue), and this event is due to start at noon.

That fight is scheduled to finish by 2:00 P.M. when the Arlington Patriots’ Day Parade will begin, starting at Massachusetts Avenue and Brattle Street and proceeding east along Mass. Ave. to the Walgreen’s in East Arlington. Expect bands, fire engines, reenacting units, and community groups to march by.

Finally, that Sunday evening in Lexington, History At Play will present “The House of Hancock,” a “fun-filled, Hamilton-style musical” about the rise of the Hancock family. John Hancock’s grandfather was the minister in Lexington for decades, and he spent some years of his youth there before returning for his fateful visit in 1775.

“Join John and Dolly Hancock, Sam Adams, and more as they plan a revolution,” says the show notice. This chamber musical will be performed in the Lexington Depot starting at 7:00 P.M. Tickets are $20 for Lexington Historical Society members, $25 for non-members, and $15 for children.

Capt. John Trull: “Stand trim, men.”

In 1888 Edward W. Pride’s Tewksbury: A Short History recounted the town’s response to the Lexington Alarm and added:

One of the Tewksbury men was Eliphalet Manning. One of Captain [John] Trull’s grandsons, Mr. Herbert Trull, often related that when a boy, on his way to Salem, he used to pass Manning’s door. Eliphalet would call out: “I fought with your grandfather from Concord to Charlestown. He would cry out to us as we sheltered ourselves behind the trees: ‘Stand trim, men; or the rascals will shoot your elbows off.’”

Solid advice for soldiers behind trees, but the habitual past tense means I can’t help but imagine this:

“Oh, lord, it’s old man Manning again. Quick, let’s cross over—too late, he’s seen us! Yes, good morning, sir! Yes, I remember. You tell me every—uh-huh. Uh-huh. ‘Elbows’! Haha. Yes, that’s a good one, sir. We have to be getting along…”

An Aged Veteran and “The Young Provincial”

I’ve been discussing the Rev. W. B. O. Peabody’s sketch “The Young Provincial,” published in 1829, and Jacob Frost’s 1832 claim for a pension as a Revolutionary War veteran. Together they raise interesting questions.

First, looking just at the pension file, Jacob Frost’s wound on Breed’s Hill was bad enough to disable him but not to kill him, even with months in prisons and eighteenth-century medicine and hygiene. He must have had one hell of an immune system.

That wound also wasn’t bad enough to keep Frost from reenlisting for a short stint in 1780. Probably his experience as a soldier in battle and a prisoner of war was a reason the company made him its orderly sergeant. Yet that same wound was enough to earn Frost an invalid pension after the war. I suspect it was awarded in recognition of his suffering as a prisoner as much as for actual disability.

Next the bigger question of how Frost’s experiences relate to “The Young Provincial.” Dave Marcus of the Tewksbury Historical Society spotted the strong parallels between “The Young Provincial” and Jacob Frost’s experiences, as this article from the Tewksbury Town Crier in 2014 reported.

The Springfield Republican article from 1829 confirms that connection: “all the narrative parts of it are facts, in the life of a Mr. FROST, now living in Norway, Maine.” Even more clearly it made a connection between that literary sketch and “Dr. JOSHUA FROST of this town,” the veteran’s little brother.

Tewksbury vital records confirm that Jacob Frost, born 9 July 1753, had a little brother named Joshua, born 2 Dec 1765 and thus nine years old at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, just as the newspaper stated. Dr. Joshua Frost graduated from Harvard in 1793.

(Curiously, Sketches of the Old Inhabitants and Other Citizens of Old Springfield from 1893 says that Dr. Frost was “born in Fryeburg, Me., in 1767.” Fryeburg wasn’t even formed into a town until 1777. It’s about thirty miles from Norway, where Jacob settled, but perhaps the two communities were more closely linked in the eighteenth century. But there’s some mix-up there.)

Given the Springfield newspaper’s hints, it seems likely that the Rev. W. B. O. Peabody heard stories about Jacob Frost from the old soldier himself during a visit, or from Dr. Frost, talking about his big brother.

The next question is whether “The Young Provincial” is a reliable source on Jacob Frost’s military experiences, filling out the bare-bones account that he submitted to the federal government. And on that question I’m skeptical. I think Peabody took so much literary license that we can’t accept any particular detail as reflecting Frost’s own story unless it also appears in his own account.

It’s not just a matter of how much dramatic detail “The Young Provincial” has but also how details contradict Frost’s own statement:

• Frost stated that after the Battle of Lexington and Concord “he immediately enlisted at Cambridge near Boston for a term of eight months.” The narrator of “The Young Provincial” says he went home after the battle, joined a company in Tewksbury, and “arrived at the camp the evening before the battle of Bunker Hill.”
• Frost was quite clear that he “was employed on the night previous to the battle of Bunker Hill on the 17th. Day of June 1775, in throwing up breast works.” The “Young Provincial” narrator describes other men doing that work; he “happened to reach the spot just as the morning was breaking in the sky.” (Veterans who worked all night digging and then had to fight the battle tended not to let anyone forget.)
• Frost was “severely wounded in the hip” during that battle. For the narrator, “the ball entered my side,” and he also “was beaten with muskets on the head.”
• The “Young Provincial” arrives home “on a clear summer afternoon.” Frost stated it was “the last of September.”
• The final scene of “The Young Provincial” turns on the soldier’s family believing him to be dead, based on a report from a companion on the battlefield. In 1775 and 1776, Massachusetts newspapers published lists of provincial prisoners from the Battle of Bunker Hill which told everyone that Frost was still alive. His return home was a surprise, but not that much of a surprise.

Thus, I think we have to say “The Young Provincial” was inspired by a true story of a young soldier being wounded, imprisoned, and transported before escaping back home. But we can’t say the sketch is a true story.

(Thanks once again to Boston National Historical Park’s Jocelyn Gould for setting me off on this investigation. The photo above is the headquarters of Norway, Maine’s historical society; Jacob Frost would have known that 1828 building in its original location.)

“The Young Provincial” on Bunker Hill

At the end of 1829 the writer and editor Samuel G. Goodrich published an anthology of short stories and literary sketches by various authors titled The Token, for 1830.

One of those pieces was titled “The Young Provincial,” and it began:

“Now, father, tell us all about the old gun,” were the words of one of a number of children, who were seated around the hearth of a New England cottage. The old man sat in an arm-chair at one side of the fireplace, and his wife was installed in one of smaller dimensions on the other. The boys, that they might not disturb the old man’s meditations, seemed to keep as much silence as was possible for individuals of their age; the fire burned high, with a sound like that of a trumpet, and its blaze occasionally shone on an old rifle which was suspended horizontally above the mantel.

Of course, the Revolutionary-era gun above a mantel in a New England cottage wouldn’t have been a rifle but a musket.

The story the old man tells those boys begins with him as a youth in “Tewksbury, a small town in Middlesex county.” He and the other “younger men of our village” formed a minuteman company. The story says: “Perhaps if you accent the last syllable of that word minute, it would better describe a considerable portion of our number, of whom I was one.”

The narrator of the “Young Provincial” describes experiences that closely parallel those of Jacob Frost, quoted yesterday, except in a much more elevated language. This is how Frost’s pension application of 1832 discussed the Battle of Bunker Hill:

[He] was in the battle and was then severely wounded in the hip, and entirely disabled, and he laid among the wounded until the day after the battle—when he was taken up by the British & carried to Boston & there kept a prisoner

The Token story says:

As soon as Boston was invested, we heard that our services were called for, and nothing more was wanted to fill the ranks of the army. I arrived at the camp the evening before the battle of Bunker Hill. Though weary with the march of the day, I went to the hill upon which our men were throwing up the breastwork in silence, and happened to reach the spot just as the morning was breaking in the sky. It was clear and calm; the sky was like pearl, the mist rolled lightly from the still water, and the large vessels of the enemy lay quiet as the islands.

Never shall I forget the earthquake-voice with which that silence was broken. A smoke like that of a conflagration burst from the sides of the ships, and the first thunders of the revolutionary storm rolled over our heads. The bells of the city spread the alarm, the lights flashed in a thousand windows, the drums and trumpets mustered their several bands, and the sounds, in their confusion, seemed like an articulate voice foretelling the strife of that day.

We took our places mechanically, side by side, behind the breastwork, and waited for the struggle to begin. We waited long and in silence. There was no noise but of the men at the breastwork strengthening their rude fortifications. We saw the boats put off from the city, and land the forces on the shore beneath our station. Still there was silence, except when the tall figure of our commander moved along our line, directing us not to fire until the word was given.

For my part, as I saw those gallant forces march up the hill in well ordered ranks, with the easy confidence of those who had been used to victory, I was motionless with astonishment and delight. I thought only on their danger, and the steady courage with which they advanced to meet it, the older officers moving with mechanical indifference, the younger with impatient daring. Then a fire blazed along their ranks, but the shot struck in the redoubt or passed harmlessly over our heads. Not a solitary musket answered, and if you had seen the redoubt, you would have said that some mighty charm had turned all its inmates to stone.

But when they stood so near us that every shot would tell, a single gun from the right was the signal for us to begin, and we poured upon them a fire, under which a single glance, before the smoke covered all, showed us their columns reeling like some mighty wall which the elements are striving to overthrow. As the vapor passed away, their line appeared as if a scythe of destruction had cut it down, for one long line of dead and dying marked the spot where their ranks had stood.

Again they returned to the charge; again they were cut down; and then the heavy masses of smoke from the burning town added magnificence to the scene. By this time my powder-horn was empty, and most of those around me had but a single charge remaining. It was evident that our post must be abandoned, but I resolved to resist them once again.

They came upon us with double fury. An officer happened to be near me; raising my musket, and putting all my strength into the blow, I laid him dead at my feet. But, meantime, the British line passed me in pursuit of the flying Americans, and thus cut off my retreat; one of their soldiers fired, and the ball entered my side. I fell, and was beaten with muskets on the head until they left me for dead upon the field.

When I recovered, the soldiers were employed in burying their dead. An officer inquired if I could walk; but finding me unable, he directed his men to drag me by the feet to their boats, where I was thrown in, fainting with agony, and carried with the rest of the prisoners to Boston. One of my comrades, who saw me fallen, returned with the news to my parents. They heard nothing more concerning me, but had no doubt that I was slain.

Like Jacob Frost, the “Young Provincial” narrator is kept in the Boston jail for months, then transported to Nova Scotia in March 1776. He and five other men break out of their new prison on a night that’s literally described as “dark and stormy.” He struggles through the wilderness toward Massachusetts, benefiting from strangers’ kindness. At last he arrives in Tewksbury on a Sunday.

I went to my father’s door, and entered it softly. My mother was sitting in her usual place by the fireside, though there were green boughs instead of fagots in the chimney before her. When she saw me, she gave a wild look, grew deadly pale, and making an ineffectual effort to speak to me, fainted away. With much difficulty I restored her, but it was long before I could make her understand that the supposed apparition was in truth her son whom she had so long mourned for as dead.

My little brother had also caught a glimpse of me, and with that superstition which was in that day so much more common than it is in this, he was sadly alarmed. In his fright he ran to the meeting-house to give the alarm; when he reached that place, the service had ended, and the congregation were just coming from its doors. Breathless with fear, he gave them his tidings, losing even his dread, in that moment, for the venerable minister and the snowy wigs of the deacons.

Having told them what he had seen, they turned, with the whole assembly after them, towards my father's house; and such was their impatience to arrive at the spot, that minister, deacons, old men and matrons, young men and maidens, quickened their steps to a run.

Never was there such a confusion in our village. The young were eloquent in their amazement, and the old put on their spectacles to see the strange being who had thus returned as from the dead.

Again, Jacob Frost’s 1832 account said simply that “he finally arrived at his residence in said Tewksbury the last of September 1776”—which was in fact a Monday.

“The Young Provincial” thus seems to be an elevated version of Jacob Frost’s experiences. But did the author really hear about those events from Frost? Might the story’s hero be a composite of Frost and other men with similar war records? Can we use the story’s details to fill out Frost’s bare-bones pension application, or must we assume that the author used a lot of literary license? Those were questions that Jocelyn Gould of Boston National Historical Park and I started discussing earlier this month.

The easiest place to find “The Young Provincial” now is at the end of this volume of The Complete Writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in 1900. The picture above shows Hawthorne in 1841, or about eleven years after “The Young Provincial” was published. By then he had become locally known for his short stories, many based on New England history.

TOMORROW: But this story is not actually by Hawthorne.

Jacob Frost’s Revolutionary War

On 13 Sept 1832, an eighty-year-old man from Norway, Maine, named Jacob Frost signed an affidavit describing his experiences during the Revolutionary War.

Frost’s statement, part of his plea for a federal government pension, said:

on the 19th day of April 1775, on the alarm of the enemys being on their march from Boston to Lexington, at Tewksbury in the State of Massachusetts, his then residence, he then being a minute man, he marched to Concord in the company commanded by Capt. John Trull of the Massachusetts militia and pursued the enemy to Boston and he immediately enlisted at Cambridge near Boston for a term of eight months, in the company commanded by Capt. Benjamin Walker, in the regiment commanded by Col. Ebenezer Bridge,

and was employed on the night previous to the battle of Bunker Hill on the 17th. Day of June 1775, in throwing up breast works—was in the battle and was then severely wounded in the hip, and entirely disabled, and he laid among the wounded until the day after the battle—when he was taken up by the British & carried to Boston & there kept a prisoner until March 1776, at which time the British evacuated Boston—when he was put on board a British man of war ship, called the Centurian—& carried in Irons to Halifax in Nova Scotia—

The Nova Scotia diarist Simeon Perkins wrote on 1 April that “The Centurion man of war is off the harbour.”

and there kept in prison untill the 21st. of June 1776, when he with some others found means to escape from prison, & wandered almost without clothes & entirely without money through the woods, till he finally arrived at his residence in said Tewksbury the last of September 1776, being one year & five months absent from his enlistment aforesaid until his return to his home.

In the month of July 1779 [actually 1780] he again enlisted at Tewksbury aforesaid for the term of three months, as a private in the company commanded by Capt Amos Foster, and was immediately appointed a sergeant, said company was attached to the regiment commanded by Colo. [John] Jacobs, and was marched to Rhode Island where he served said three months—and was there verbally discharged—

He further represents that he is an Invalid Pensioner, as will appear by the certificate hereunto annexed—

That certificate, dated 29 Aug 1788, stated that Frost, then aged thirty-five, had been disabled by “one Musket ball, through his left hip bone.” He was awarded a pension of 15 shillings per month.

In a separate 1832 document, Frost added:

during the period of three months, that I served as orderly sargeant in the Company commanded by Capt. Amos Foster in Col. Jacobs regiment, on Rhode Island in the year A.D. 1779—the orderly Sargeant was appointed to act as a Lieut. in consequence of the absence of one of the Lieuts—and I was thereupon appointed to fill the vacancy and served the term of three months in that capacity—and I further declare that I did not receive a warrant from any officer, but acted without one.

Other veterans attested to Frost’s work as the company’s orderly sergeant.

TOMORROW: The literary version.

(The photograph above, courtesy of Classic New England, shows the Brown Tavern on Main Street in Tewksbury, built in 1740. The prominent porch is a later addition, as is the bank branch inside.)

“A Letter from the Mr. J— C— the Grocer”

On 15 August 1775 Lt. Col. Loammi Baldwin sent Gen. George Washington some intriguing news from Chelsea:

I hope to be able tomorrow to forward to your Excellency a letter from the Mr. J— C— the Grocer

I heard from him yesterday Informing that he Expected to git further Information by tomorrow if it comes to hand shall forward it with all Convenient Speed

And the next day Baldwin wrote:

I have received a Letter which I supose came from Mr. J. C. by the Hand of the Gentleman Expected who says he is going to Headquarters in the morning to see about the sheep that was brought off from Puding Point which I have wrote to the adjutant General about

At the time Baldwin was dealing with the puzzle of what to do with sheep that his troops had driven out of reach of British raising parties, but which then had nowhere to graze. The people of Point Shirley, evidently including the man named Tewksbury who was part of the communication chain to “Mr. J. C.,” wanted to keep some of that livestock. Baldwin was writing not only to Gen. Horatio Gates, the adjutant general, but also quartermaster general Joseph Trumbull.

Baldwin referred to the American agent inside Boston only by his initials, but the letter he had received from Joseph Reed a couple of weeks before spells out the man’s full name: John Carnes. And as a confirmation that this was the same John Carnes who had been a minister, four days later a refugee from Boston named Ezekiel Price recorded a rumor in his diary:

in the afternoon, Mr. Hill, of Providence, was here, who left Cambridge this forenoon, and says, that this morning a woman got out of Boston, who brought a letter from Parson Carnes, which mentioned that the Regulars in Boston intended to come out this night or tomorrow night,—in consequence of which, preparations were making in the several American encampments to receive them

I’m not sure who “Mr. Hill” from Rhode Island was. Price had been a court clerk, registrar of deeds, notary, and insurance broker in Boston before the war, and was plugged into a lot of information networks.

Richard Frothingham’s History of the Siege of Boston states, “On the 20th, the British, it was thought, were about to sally out of Charlestown, when the camp was alarmed, and the men ordered to lie on their arms,” in order to be ready for any attack. Nothing happened, and at the end of that week the American forces preemptively attacked Ploughed Hill, as described back here.

TOMORROW: Another message from John Carnes inside Boston?

“One Dewksbury Who Lives about 4 Miles from You”

As I quoted yesterday, on 28 July 1775 Gen. George Washington’s secretary Joseph Reed sent a letter to Lt. Col. Loammi Baldwin (shown here) in Chelsea ordering him to join a communications chain for an intelligence network.

Baldwin was supposed to locate “one Dewksbury who lives about 4 Miles from you towards Shirly Point” and give him an enclosed letter. Reed then went on to tell Baldwin what Dewksbury was supposed to do with that letter, and who the ultimate contact in Boston was.

I went looking for “one Dewksbury,” and found three. They were brothers, all raised locally so they knew the area:

• John Tewksbury (c. 1735-1816).
• Andrew Tewksbury (1739-1814). Both he and John are noted as living at Shirley Point with their father in 1750.
• James Tewksbury (1744-1800). His youngest son, born in 1784, got the first name Washington.

This genealogical information comes from William R. Cutter’s Genealogical and Personal Memoirs Relating to the Families of Boston and Eastern Massachusetts.

All three Tewksbury brothers appear on “A Rool of the men that keept Guard att Pullin Point in Chelsea by order of Capt. Saml. Sprague from April 19, 1775, till Discharged by there officer” after a month.

As of 19 August, according to a document signed by Capt. William Rogers of Baldwin’s regiment, Andrew, James, and John “Duksbury” were all still at Pulling Point. (“Pulling Point” and “Point Shirley” were the traditional and formal names for the same place. Like today, New Englanders enjoyed using the old place names that outsiders like Reed couldn’t find on maps.)

Those two documents were published in A Documentary History of Chelsea, by Jenny Chamberlain Watts and Cutter. The Tewksbury family name is spelled various ways in town and county records.

I’m not sure how Baldwin was supposed to know which Tewksbury to approach with his secret letter. Maybe only one was “about 4 Miles from you,” and maybe they were all in on the scheme.

TOMORROW: Getting into Boston by water.