Josiah Waters, “very serviceable in this line”

Josiah Waters (1721–1784) was a painter by training who became a respected merchant in pre-Revolutionary Boston.

Waters joined the Old South congregation at age twenty. He was elected to several town offices, including constable, fence viewer, clerk of the market, and finally warden, one of the most prestigious. In 1747 he joined the Ancient & Honorable Artillery Company and filled many roles in that organization.

Also in 1747, Josiah and his wife Abigail had a son, Josiah, Jr. He grew up to work with his father in the firm of “Josiah Waters and Son” on Ann Street. In fact, it’s difficult to distinguish the two, but fortunately they seem to have acted as a unit, so that task isn’t so important. Josiah, Jr., also became a member of Old South and the Ancient & Honorables, and in 1770 he joined the St. Andrew’s Lodge of Freemasons.

In 1768, Josiah Waters invested in land in Maine, buying out partners to become the main proprietor of the Massabesick Plantation. That area included the modern towns of Alfred, Sanford, and what the family would modestly name Waterboro. The Maine Historical Society has digitized the Waters account book and map.

As of 1770, Josiah Waters, Sr., was a captain in the Boston militia regiment. By 1772, Josiah, Jr., was his lieutenant. (I told you they came as a unit.) According to Mills and Hicks’s British and American Register for the Year 1775, as war approached Capt. Waters’s brother-in-law Thomas Dawes was the regiment’s major, and the adjutant, or administrative officer, was their nephew William Dawes, Jr.

When war broke out in April 1775, it looks like the elder Waters quickly got his family out of town and followed by the 22nd. Then as a gentleman volunteer he took on the job of laying out the fort in Roxbury that was to keep the British army from marching over the Neck. In his memoirs Gen. William Heath listed Capt. Waters among the men “very serviceable in this line.” And of course Josiah, Jr., helped his father with those fortifications.

In October, Gen. George Washington and the Continental Congress started organizing an army for the coming year, with revamping the artillery regiment a big priority. John Adams was a fan of the Waters family. On 21 October, he sent James Warren a letter introducing a couple of Pennsylvanians visiting Massachusetts:

I could wish them as well as other Strangers introduced to H[enry]. Knox and young Josiah Waters, if they are any where about the Camp. These young Fellows if I am not mistaken would give strangers no contemptible Idea of the military Knowledge of Massachusetts in the sublimest Chapters of the Art of War.

Earlier in the same month he wrote to Gen. John Thomas asking about Josiah, Sr.’s work as a military engineer, among other men.

Gen. Thomas didn’t have good things to say, however. He wrote back to Adams that Waters

I Apprehend has no great Understanding, in Either [gunnery or fortifications], any further than Executing or overseeing works, when Trased out, and by my Observations, we have Several Officers that are Equal or exceed him…

Likewise, by 2 November Gen. Washington was writing candidly to Gov. Jonathan Trumbull of Connecticut:

I sincerely wish this Camp could furnish a good Engineer—The Commisary Genl [i.e., the governor’s son, Joseph Trumbull] can inform you how excedingly deficient the Army is of Gentlemen skilled in that branch of business; and that most of the works which have been thrown up for the defence of our several Encampments have been planned by a few of the principal Officers of this Army, assisted by Mr Knox a Gentleman of Worcester

Washington was impressed by Knox, whom he helped to maneuver into the artillery command, but not by Josiah Waters, father or son.

By that fall of 1775 it probably became clear to the Waterses that they hadn’t won over the commander-in-chief. They were unlikely to get appointments in the new army being organized for 1776, at least at the ranks they wanted. But they still had the respect of some New Englanders like Heath and Adams. They took on a new assignment helping to fortify New London, Connecticut. Based on how the state calculated the older man’s pay, he started that work on 25 November. Josiah, Jr., was his assistant, of course.

Before heading south, I posit, Josiah, Jr., traveled north to take stock of the family property in Maine. The Massabesick Plantation sat on the western side of that district. Just over the border in New Hampshire was the town of Dover. And the minister of Dover was the Rev. Jeremy Belknap.

I thus think the “Mr. Waters” who talked to Belknap on 25 October about how the war had started was Josiah Waters, Jr. (1747-1805). We know from Belknap’s later correspondence, preserved at and published by the Massachusetts Historical Society, that the two men were friends in the 1780s and ’90s. Waters collected orders for Belknap’s history of New Hampshire, for example. (By then everyone knew Waters as “Colonel Waters” for his highest militia rank.)

If Josiah Waters, Jr., told Belknap about how the Boston Patriots had learned of Gen. Thomas Gage’s plans, he wasn’t speaking as just some random guy in Dover. He came from Boston, where he had close connections with the town’s militia establishment. Even beyond that, his first cousin, William Dawes, was a key figure in both smuggling artillery out of occupied Boston and Dr. Joseph Warren’s alarm system.

The account Belknap wrote down in October 1775 is looking more reliable.

TOMORROW: More details from Mr. Waters?

“Mr. Adjutant Daws & the Sergeants”

In Paul Revere’s Ride, David Hackett Fischer made an impressive case that Paul Revere had a social network among the Boston Whigs second only to Dr. Joseph Warren.

As I’ve delved into the sources myself, I came to see the data that went into that analysis as seriously flawed. Nonetheless, I think the conclusion about about the importance of those two men’s social networks is sound.

One of the main themes of my talk last weekend about William Dawes, Jr., was that he, too, enjoyed a broad and buzzing social network.

Dawes got off too a good start as first cousin to the builder Thomas Dawes (1731-1809), who hosted a political caucus in the early 1760s, later rose to be colonel of the Boston militia regiment, and eventually was a deacon at Old South.

In the early 1770s, William Dawes began to climb in Boston society by those same routes. He was elected to office in town meetings, starting as an “Informer of Deer”—basically a game warden. Provincial law required all towns to elect such deer-reeves. Boston was unlikely to have had many deer being hunted out of season, and I can’t tell if Dawes got this job as a sinecure or because as a leather-dresser he was actually in touch with deer poachers.

Dawes also rose within the militia, being designated as the regiment’s adjutant with the rank of lieutenant in 1772. (In The Road to Concord I said he was “junior adjutant” because I was misled by old typography and didn’t think through old prose with new knowledge. The “Junr.” was part of Dawes’s name, not his rank.) As adjutant, he helped organize the militia drills and therefore must have gotten to know all the officers and most of the men.

On 4 Nov 1772, for example, the selectmen of Boston (including John Hancock) met at Faneuil Hall to consider a request for the use of that building. According to the official town records:

Mr. Adjutant Dows, has desired on behalf of a milatary chore [i.e. corps] to have the use of Faneuil Hall three Monday Nights in a Month which was granted accordingly.

Dawes’s crowd used the hall through that winter. On 10 Mar 1773, another militia officer came to the selectmen with a competing request:

The Selectmen having heard Capt. Waters and Mr. Adjutant Dows relative to the Hall, it was determined that they should each have the Hall two Nights, in a Month. the Adjutant to have the first Monday Night.

I believe “Capt. Waters” was Josiah Waters, Sr. (1721-1784), listed with that rank in the militia in 1774. He was also William Dawes’s uncle by marriage.

A few weeks later, on 28 April, Waters was back at the selectmen’s office:

Capt. Waters attended, and desired the use of the Hall for his Company every Monday Evening, as Capt. Waters informs that Mr. Adjutant Daws & the Sergeants have done with it.

It would be nice to know how “Mr. Adjutant Daws & the Sergeants” used Faneuil Hall. Were they training themselves in the standard drill so they could train the men, training some of those men, or just socializing?

That winter the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company met in Faneuil Hall every first Wednesday evening before shifting to Fridays. Dawes was also a member of that organization from 1768, and he served as a sergeant in 1770. In 1772, however, he was fined a shilling for not appearing at a meeting. After the war, Dawes helped to revive the company by signing up a large class of new members, several related to him—more networking.

Since Dawes knew so many men in Boston, it makes sense that the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s committee of safety went to him in early 1775 when they needed to connect with the militiamen hiding two brass cannon. Likewise, he made a good messenger for Dr. Warren. Col. John Hancock of the Company of Cadets must have recognized Adjutant Dawes in Lexington in the early morning of April 19, 1775, just as he recognized Paul Revere.

Finding Revolutionary Massachusetts Legislative Records Online

Back in 2014 I wrote about finally finding online copies of the journals of the Massachusetts House through the HathiTrust.

Though the books themselves were online at long last, it wasn’t that easy to find particular volumes. But HathiTrust is a vast, changing resources. Here are some updated pages to start from.

For the bulk of eighteenth-century Massachusetts House records, volumes 1-50 and 52-55 covering 1715 to 1779, start at this page. Be aware that the system still has trouble searching those volumes because they’re facsimiles of surviving eighteenth-century books, complete with damaged type, lots of italics, and the long s. The indexes are often good entrance points.

What about volume 51? That volume records the legislative year 1775-76, so it’s kind of crucial. Fortunately, the three installments of that year’s journal can be accessed from this page.

From late 1774 to early 1776, there were two rival governments in Massachusetts:

• royal governor Thomas Gage and the mandamus Council in Salem and then Boston, and then Gen. William Howe as military commander of Boston, with the mandamus Council meeting briefly under Lt. Gov. Thomas Oliver.
• the Massachusetts Provincial Congress convened outside of Boston, its executive function exercised between sessions by the Committee of Safety, until a new General Court was elected in the summer of 1775.

Each of those governments maintained records in the usual manner to uphold its claim to be legitimate, and those records are also available online.

For the Provincial Congress and its committees, as well as county conventions, the standard source is William Lincoln’s Journals of Each Provincial Congress of Massachusetts, published in 1838. Here’s a portal to that volume. It’s also available in full on Google Books.

As for the royal Council, the Colonial Society of Massachusetts published a transcription of its records in the 1930s, and recently made all its publications available online. Here’s the volume with “Documents Relating to the Last Meetings of the Massachusetts Royal Council, 1774–1776” starting at page 460.

(The picture above also comes courtesy of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, sharing this article by the late Abbott Lowell Cummings. It’s a 1751 engraving produced by Thomas Dawes and Nathaniel Hurd of the building where the Massachusetts legislature met for most of the eighteenth century, now called the Old State House.)

Lanterns on Liberty Tree

On the night of Monday, 19 May 1766, with fireworks going off all over Boston Common to celebrate the repeal of the Stamp Act, Whigs hung forty-five lanterns on Liberty Tree in the South End.

That number had plenty of political symbolism. The royal government had tried to suppress the 45th issue of John Wilkes’s magazine The North Briton in April 1763 for coming too close to criticizing King George III. That blew up into a controversy over freedom of the press, general warrants, and parliamentary privilege.

“No. 45” had thus become Whig shorthand for resisting oppressive measures by the royal government, even for people who were also proclaiming their loyalty to the king.

However, in the midst of all the other illumination in Boston that night, a mere forty-five lanterns evidently got lost in the branches of the big elm. Plus, once their obelisk burned up, the Loyall Nine needed another way to keep the party going at Liberty Tree.

It’s conceivable that other Boston politicians thought a Wilkesite number was too radical, but I’m not convinced. The town’s genteel Whigs tried to forge a long-distance alliance with Wilkes in the following years, and they continued to use “No. 45” symbolism; one famous example is the silver bowl that Paul Revere made and engraved in 1767.

I’m therefore inclined to take this Boston Gazette report at face value:

On Tuesday Evening some of the Sons of Liberty apprehending the Lanthorns hung on the Tree of Liberty, which the Night before amounted only to the ever memorable No 45, would have made a more loyal and striking Appearance if increased to the glorious Majority of 108, met and procuring that Number, disposed them on the Tree in a very agreeable picturesque Manner.

The “glorious Majority of 108” was the difference between the number of Members of Parliament who had voted to repeal the Stamp Act and the number who had wanted to retain it. As far as I can tell, American Whigs never celebrated a vote margin like that any other time. They probably chose that number because it was closest to how many lanterns they figured they could collect.

And that wasn’t all the decorating they did down in “Hanover Square”:

The Houses next adjoining and opposite were decorated with Figures characteristic of Those to whom we bear the deepest Loyalty and Gratitude: Here, an imperfect Portrait of their Majesties, our most gracious King and Queen—there, the Royal Arms;—here, the illustrious Campden, Pitt, Conway, Barre, and others of late so conspicuous in the Cause of Liberty and their Country:

Another report printed in the same newspaper said that on Tuesday Liberty Tree had been hung with lanterns “till the Boughs could hold no more,” and that the windows of nearby houses “were covered with illustrated Figures as large as the Life, the Colours all in a glow with the Lights behind them.”

In particular, the front windows of Thomas Dawes and Thomas Symmes displayed “An elegant Portrait of Mr. [William] PITT” with the inscription:

Hail, PITT! Hail, Patrons! Pride of GEORGE’s Days.
How round the Globe expand your Patriot Rays!
And the NEW WORLD is brighten’d with the Blaze.

Pitt was immensely popular in America, and he had strongly advocated repealing the Stamp Act. However, he wasn’t otherwise offering much help to the the Marquess of Rockingham’s Whig ministry. He refused to accept a cabinet post, but he would jump at the job of prime minister in July.

TOMORROW: Looking at a lantern.

[The photo above shows the Disney version of hanging lanterns on Liberty Tree from Johnny Tremain.]

Under the Cornerstone of the State House

The big Boston historical news this week was the discovery of a time capsule sealed in the cornerstone of the State House, laid in 1795. Or rather, the rediscovery of the eighteenth-century artifacts inside that capsule because they were previously found in 1855.

But let’s start at the beginning. The first news reports, such as this C.N.N. dispatch referred to “a time capsule believed buried by Samuel Adams and Paul Revere.” My first guess was that a whole bunch of prominent Bostonians had attended the cornerstone-laying in 1795 and journalists scanning the list of attendees simply pulled out the two men who had become brand names.

But no, Adams and Revere really were the two most prominent dignitaries at the event on Independence Day in 1795. Adams was seventy-two years old and the governor of Massachusetts, having succeeded John Hancock two years earlier. Revere, for his part, had recently become Grand Master of Massachusetts’s Freemasons. Even though few of those Masons were really masons, they participated in a lot of stone-laying then.

Other notables at the event included the Rev. Peter Thacher, chaplain of the state senate; architect Charles Bulfinch; and builder/politician Thomas Dawes. Fifteen white horses, representing the fifteen states then in the U.S. of A., drew the cornerstone through the streets and up to Beacon Hill.

The 8 July 1795 Columbian Centinel reported that Adams and Revere placed a silver plate under the stone which said:

This Corner Stone of a Building, intended for the use of the Legislature, and Executive Branches of Government of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, was laid by his Excellency Samuel Adams, Esq., Governor of said Commonwealth.

Assisted by the Most Worshipful Paul Revere, Gr. Master, And Right Worshipful William Scollay, Dp. G. Master, The Grand Wardens and Brethren of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts.

On the 4th day of July, AN. DOM., 1795. A. L. 5795.

Being the XXth Anniversary of American Independence.

Note that the twentieth anniversary of independence would actually come a year later.

The main speaker that day was a young lawyer named George Blake (1769-1841), whose speech was printed and sold by Benjamin Edes. A Jeffersonian, Blake spoke about how Royal Navy ships were once again preying on American crews. He went on to serve in both houses of the Massachusetts legislature and as U.S. Attorney for the district from 1802 to 1829.

Gov. Adams’s brief remarks on the new building included:

May the superstructure be raised even to the top stone without any untoward accident and remain permanent as the everlasting mountains. May the principles of our excellent Constitution founded in nature and in the rights of man, be ably defended here. And may the same principles be deeply engraven on the hearts of all citizens and there be fixed unimpaired and in full vigor till time shall be no more.

I think the constitution Adams referred to was the state’s, not the federal; the state’s was more explicit about natural rights. As to “permanent as the everlasting mountains,” less than two decades later developers began to cut down the crest of Beacon Hill, as shown above. And then in August 1855 a construction crew dug up that corner of the State House to repair the foundation.

They discovered the silver plate set between two sheets of lead—along with some other objects that the 1795 newspaper hadn’t mentioned.

TOMORROW: An expanded time capsule.

Richard Palmes’s Inquest Testimony

Richard Palmes had a front-row view of the Boston Massacre. He was close enough to Capt. Thomas Preston that, as he later said, “my left hand was on his right shoulder.” At Preston’s trial Palmes said, “The Gun which went off first had scorched the nap of my Surtout at the elbow.” He then laid about him with a “heavy [walking] stick,” knocking one soldier’s hand off his gun, before realizing it would be wise to run away.

The next day, Palmes provided a deposition for coroner Thomas Dawes’s inquest on the death of Samuel Gray. I’ve added paragraph breaks and included all interpolated text to make it easier to read, but there’s only so much I can do:

I Richd. Palmes of Boston Apoth’y [?] of Lawfull Age Testafieth & Sayeth, that about 9 oClock Last evening I heard one of the Bells Ring, which I Suppos’d was for fier, upon which I Went towards ware I supposed it was, I ask what the matter was, I was told that the Soldgers was abusing the Inhabetents, I ask ware the Soldgers was, and was told in King Street & that there was a Rumpus at the Custom-house Door,

assoon [sic] as I got their, I saw one Capt. Preson at the head of Six or Eight Soldgers, the Soldgers had their Guns Brest high, I went ameadiatly to the Sd. Capt Preson, I ask him if the Soldgers guns were Loaded his Reply was that they ware Loaded with Powder & Ball I then ask him if he intended they should fire his Answer was by no Means, but I Did not here him tell the men not to fire

I saw apice [sic] of Ice fall among the Soldgers Ameadiatly upon this the Soldger at his right hand fired his Gun that Instant I herd the word fire, but who said it I know Not; the Soldgers at his Left fired Next, and the others as fast as they Could one after the other, I turned my Self as Soon as I could & Saw one Lay Dead at my Left, upon wich I struck at the Soldger that fird the first Gun I hit his Left hand which maid his Gun fall, at which I made a Stroke at the offiser, & Struck him on the Arm at him, and thought I hitt his head, but sd. officer Preson Says I hitt his Arm, on my makg. the Strook I fell on my Right knee, the I then saw the Soldger that first fird, agoing to push his Bayanett at me, upon which I threw my Stick at his head, so he gave Back—and Gave me an Opportunity to Jump frome him, or I must Ben Run threw my Bodey,

Directly I past threw Exchange Lane, and so up the Next Lane by Mr. Kents office, & Saw the Bodey of three persons Laying on the Ground I followd the [body] of Capt. Mortons apprentice Carrg By [?] I followd it up to the parson house, and Saw he had a Ball, shot threw his Breast &c and further Sayeth not.

“Capt. Mortons apprentice” was victim James Caldwell; there’s a discussion of his body’s travels here. I tried to nail down Morton’s identity here. “Mr. Kent” was the Whig lawyer Benjamin Kent.

Palmes’s inquest testimony is preserved in the Boston Public Library’s Mellen Chamberlain collection.

TOMORROW: Richard Palmes gets the last word.

Henry Knox and the Boston Tea Party

An email from a Boston 1775 reader after yesterday’s posting made me look into Henry Knox’s actions during the tea crisis of 1773. That political event occurred between when Knox badly injured his hand in a shooting accident and when he paid his doctors, both attached to the royal military. [Unlike two of his fingers, which weren’t attached to anything anymore.]

When the tea meeting called for volunteers to patrol the docks and ensure that no tea was unloaded, among the first to sign up was “Joseph Peirce, Jr.” You can see the notes of that meeting here, courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

That was Joseph Peirce (1745-1828, shown here about 1800), commander of the Boston militia regiment’s grenadier company. In 1771 Peirce married Ann Dawes, daughter of Thomas Dawes, a politically active housewright and at one point commander of the entire regiment.

According to family tradition set down in The Pickering Genealogy (1897), Peirce was “never a robust man,” and “his hair was as white at twenty as it was at eighty.” Would a frail man really be the best candidate to lead a company of grenadiers? Perhaps that part of the tradition was tinged by memories of Peirce late in life; perhaps the family played it up to excuse him not fighting in the Revolutionary War.

Knox had helped Peirce launch that grenadier company in 1772 and became its second-in-command with the rank of lieutenant. Unlike Peirce, however, Knox doesn’t appear on any of the surviving lists of volunteers to patrol the docks. The first biography of him, published in 1873, states that the company’s “members, Knox included, had volunteered as a guard over the tea ships.” That book cites no source for that information, but its author had access to early-1800s reminiscences from people who had known or served with Knox.

The Pickering Genealogy further says of Peirce:

He is said to have been one of those in charge of the tea ship, as guard, on the night before the appearance of the “Indians,” of whom his brother John was one.

Actually, I can’t find any list of Tea Party participants that includes John Peirce (or Pierce). I’ve found a source for that statement from 1849, but it comes with its own problems; I’ll discuss that tomorrow.

Recollections from Ebenezer Stevens and his family offer some confirmation that by December 1773 the dock patrols were being recruited from militia companies. Volunteers from the artillery company in which Stevens served happened to be on patrol when the tea was destroyed.

So I think it’s plausible that Peirce, Knox, and others from the grenadier company participated in patrolling the docks, perhaps taking the previous night’s shift. But the only person I can reliably document as volunteering for that duty is Peirce.

TOMORROW: The end of the grenadier company?

Bluster about the Boston Caucus

It’s still caucus season (at least in Nevada), so I’m returning to the topic of the original caucus—the somewhat mysterious gathering of politically-minded gentlemen in advance of Boston’s town meeting elections.

After my posting on the “Caucas Club” that builder Thomas Dawes hosted in 1763, architect Frederic C. Detwiler alerted me to an article he wrote about Dawes in Old-Time New England, the magazine Historic New England used to publish when it used to be the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities. Click here for a PDF download of Rick’s article, and here for his follow-up on Dawes’s design of the Brattle Square Church.

Rick’s article about Dawes alerted me in turn to another odd source on the caucus in 1763, which seems to have been the first year it became an open political issue. I quoted a complaint about the “Corkass” from the 21 Mar 1763 issue of the Boston Evening-Post. That same newspaper carried this little advertisement:

THIS AFTERNOON will be published,
And to be had of the Printers hereof.
[Price Five Coppers.]
PROPOSALS
For Printing by Subscription, the History of Adjutant Trowel and Bluster, together with a Specimen of the Work.—

In the eighteenth century, authors would often advertise such “proposals” and “specimens” (or advance peeks) of books they were working on as a way to drum up advance orders and pay for printing the whole book.

In this case, however, the proposal was just an excuse for publishing an eight-page pamphlet attacking a couple of Boston Whigs. A copy of that pamphlet at the Boston Athenaeum has handwritten notes identifying its author as Samuel Waterhouse, “Adjutant Trowel” as Dawes, and “Bluster” as James, Otis, Jr. The major reference guide to colonial publications tentatively dates this pamphlet to 1766, when Waterhouse wrote newspaper articles calling Otis “Bluster,” but the Evening-Post ad shows it appeared three years earlier.

Even in the midst of Waterhouse’s allegory and satire, we can spot details that match other accounts of the caucus meetings in Dawes’s large attic. Highlighted phrases like “General court” and camouflaged phrases like “g——l a———y” make the link to contemporary Massachusetts politics. Here’s an extract that takes up when “Adjutant Trowel” is serving with the army.

Chap. VII. He assembles a number of Malcontents at a large tent, prepared by him for that purpose, to endeavour to obtain their votes, in order to carry a favourite point at the next General court martial, which, partly by their assistance, and partly by stratagem, he effects.

Chap. VIII. Flush’d with success, he forms a plan to new model the army & cashier all those who he imagin’d might oppose any of his future schemes, for which purpose he collects all the discontented officers of the regiment, at the great tent, endeavours to stir them up to sedition, and mutiny against the new General.

Chap. IX. The great increase of his levee—he is look’d upon as an officer of consequence, by the ignorant and illiterate part of his brother officers—applications are made to him instead of the General.—

Chap. X. He boasts of his consequence—takes upon himself the state of a general officer—the army repairs to winter-quarters—he builds himself a stately house, superior to the General’s, with a large hall in the upper story, appropriated to the same use as his large tent.

Chap. XI. He cabals with the inhabitants of the city were [sic] he is quartered, against the mayor and aldermen who from their being men of probity and honor are caress’s by the General quarter’d in the same city.

The “new General” was probably Gov. Francis Bernard, who took office in 1760.

Then “Bluster” comes on the scene, a lawyer upset that a friend has been passed over for the office of “C—f J——e.” In real life, James Otis, Sr., thought he was in line to be Chief Justice; when Bernard appointed Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson to that post instead, his son broke with the royal party and took up popular politics. And so did “Bluster”:

Chap. XIX. Finding every other method fail, he applies to Trowel—is admitted into his junto, or nocturnal assembly—a specimen of his low artifice and cunning—he is look’d upon by the whole herd of fools, tools, and sycophants, as a fit person to represent them, at the next g[enera]l a[ssembl]y—it it publickly declar’d at the junto—he is chose at the g[enera]l e—l[ectio]n.— . . . .

Chap. XXVI. He becomes the darling of Trowel’s Junto, and presides at the head of their affairs—a specimen of his oratory—with his smooth tongue he persuades the junto into an implicit obedience to his will in every respect.—

Chap. XXVII. According to a previous resolution of the junto, he is advanced to a higher post of honor than ever he aspired after—unmerited and unsolicited favors heap’d on him in abundance, for which he thanks the people at their an[nua]l as[sembl]y with the wheedling epithets of F-th-rs, Fr—nds, F-ll-w C-t-z-ns & C—ntrym-n.

Chap;. XXVIII. The transactions of the an[nua]l as[sembl]y,—business postpon’d in order to facilitate some private views of the junto, contrary to the usual and constant custom—partiality to voters, junto officers allow’d to count their own votes without being sworn to the faithful discharge of their office.—

Waterhouse’s pamphlet strikes me as another example of how Loyalists didn’t even try to adapt their rhetoric to the new, popular politics. Imputing that Otis was wrong to call his supporters “Friends, Fellow Citizens & Countrymen” was hardly the way to win support from those very men.

[UPDATE: Article links restored, thanks to Boston 1775 reader Charles Bahne.]

Colonial Boston Vocabulary: "caucus"

As the U.S. of A. digests the results of the 2008 Iowa caucuses, it seems timely to discuss the term “caucus,” which first surfaced in pre-Revolutionary Boston. The earliest appearance of the word that anyone can find, by about one month, is in John Adams’s diary:

Boston Feby. 1763. This day learned that the Caucas Clubb meets at certain Times in the Garret of Tom Daws, the Adjutant of the Boston Regiment. He has a large House, and he has a moveable Partition in his Garrett, which he takes down and the whole Clubb meets in one Room.

There they smoke tobacco till you cannot see from one End of the Garrett to the other. There they drink Phlip I suppose, and there they choose a Moderator, who puts Questions to the Vote regularly, and select Men, Assessors, Collectors, Wardens, Fire Wards, and Representatives are Regularly chosen before they are chosen in the Town.

Uncle Fairfield, [William] Story, [John] Ruddock, [Samuel] Adams, [William] Cooper, and a rudis indigestaque Moles of others are Members. They send Committees to wait on the Merchants Clubb and to propose, and join, in the Choice of Men and Measures. Captn. [James] Cunningham says they have often solicited him to go to these Caucas, they have assured him Benefit in his Business, &c.

The Latin phrase rudis indigestaque moles means “rude and undigested mass.” It sounds like John Adams might have been a little miffed at not having been let in on the secret of this smoke-filled room before. Of course, at the time he was still living in Braintree.

Thomas Dawes (1731-1809), host of this caucus club, was a Boston builder who was successful enough to eventually be deemed an architect. He was serving as elected coroner at the time of the Boston Massacre, and achieved the rank of colonel in the Massachusetts militia. His son of the same name became a judge in the early republic. Dawes’s nephew William Dawes, Jr., succeeded him as adjutant of the Boston regiment. In 1806 Gilbert Stuart painted Dawes’s portrait, shown above courtesy of Historic New England.

Most of the other men preparing for Boston’s big March 1763 town meeting were office-holders themselves:

• William Story was Deputy Register of the Vice Admiralty Court, and as such became a target of the Stamp Act rioters in 1765. A couple of years later, his career in the royal government stalled. Story moved to Ipswich and sided with the Patriots.
• John Ruddock was a shipyard owner, militia officer, and justice of the peace in the North End. He became a selectman in 1764. Ruddock was also amazingly fat, and died suddenly in 1772.
• Samuel Adams was John’s second cousin, then serving as elected tax collector.
• William Cooper was Boston’s town clerk for decades both before and after the Revolution.

I haven’t identified “Uncle Fairfield,” who was presumably one of John Adams’s uncles. [How’s that for historical detective work?] Capt. Cunningham was another uncle, and Adams often stayed with him while visiting Boston.

TOMORROW: How far back did the Boston caucus go?

Charles Conner Testifies About Patrick Carr

On 15 March 1770, the day after Patrick Carr became the fifth death from the Boston Massacre, coroner Thomas Dawes took this deposition from a man who had been with Carr on the night of the 5th:

I Charles Conner of Boston, of lawful Age being duly sworn to Testify and Say; that on the evening of the fifth of March, between the hours of nine and ten of the Clock in the evening: I was in Kingstreet with Mr. Patrick Carr, the occasion of my going, was the Cry of Fire and bells ringing:

we was their but a few minutes before several Small Arms was fired from a Detachment of Regiment soldiers drawn up near the Custom house

instantly upon the guns firg., the said Patrick Carr, who stood next to me and who had no Stick or any sort of weapon whatever about him, said to me, Conner; that was he wounded

I told him I hoped not, but asisted in carrying said Carr to a House in Fitch’s Alley and imeadiatly went for a Doctor for said Carr; seing of him badly wounded: the said wounds was received by the ball or balls that was fired by said detachment.

It was not the first gun that was fired, by which said Patrick received his wound. but a Second or Third;

The coroner then apparently asked Conner about the size of the crowd because he then wrote, “and semingly not more than 50 or 60 people there,” followed by a footnote:

Almost every one that have given Evidence agree that there was but a few persons in Kingstreet when the Guns were fired Some say about 50 Some 60—Some that there may be thereabouts &c.

This document is in the Chamberlain collection of the Boston Public Library’s manuscripts department, along with many others that seem to have been either rescued or liberated from legal files in the late 1800s.

TOMORROW: Who was this Charles Conner?

The Boston Regiment in late 1774

After last week's posting about war games on Boston Common, Alfred F. Young wrote to ask, “Do you have any idea of how many militia companies there were in Boston?” So I looked it up in Mills and Hicks’s British and American Register for the Year 1775.

These were the officers of the “BOSTON REGIMENT” when that little reference book was printed in late 1774:

Col. John Erving (shown here in a postcard from Smith College)
Lt. Col. John Leverett
Maj. Thomas Dawes
Captains
Richard Boynton (with the rank of major)
Jeremiah Stimpson
Josiah Waters
Martin Gay
Samuel Ridgway
Samuel Barrett
John Haskins
Ephraim May
David Spear
Andrew Symmes
Edward Procter
Job Wheelwright
Adjutant William Dawes, Jr. (with the rank of lieutenant)

There were twelve captains in all, one for each company. After each captain’s name the Register listed his lieutenant and ensign (the equivalent of a second lieutenant).

There’s a similar rundown of the Boston regiment’s officers as of 1 Apr 1772 in young printer John Boyle’s “Journal of Occurrences in Boston,” printed in volumes 84 and 85 of the New England Historical & Genealogical Register. A close look shows why Boyle was so pleased to record this information: he'd just been commissioned as an ensign in one company. (By late 1774, he was a lieutenant.)

Comparing the two lists show that the captains and all superior officers remained the same, but three lieutenants had been succeeded by men who had been ensigns and one by an entirely new name. Of the twelve ensigns in 1774, only five had held that rank in 1772.

Boston also had some specialized militia units, which Mills & Hicks listed in this order:

• The grenadier company, founded in 1772. Maj. Dawes of the main regiment was also captain of this company (which might have been why blacksmith Capt. Boynton got the brevet rank of major).
• The train, or artillery company, under Maj. Adino Paddock. According to an inside source, however, this company had basically dissolved in Sept 1774 when its cannons disappeared.
• The South Battery company, under Maj. Jeremiah Green, which staffed the fort overlooking the southern end of the wharfs; by late 1774, British army units were using that battery.
• The North Battery company, under Maj. Nathaniel Barber, still overseeing the smaller battery in the North End.

In addition, Boston was home to the Ancient & Honorable Artillery Company, then functioning as a private training organization for militia officers; the governor’s troop of horse-guards, fourteen strong and probably no more than ceremonial; and the Independent Company of Cadets, in flux after most members had resigned when Gen. Thomas Gage dismissed John Hancock from his role as company captain.

All told, that’s seventeen functioning companies, though the two battery companies might have needed fewer men than the rest. The 1765 census found 2,941 white men over the age of sixteen in Boston. The law exempted some of those men (sexagenarians, clergymen, etc.) from militia service, but the mystery for me is what informal customs militia officers followed in running the regiment.

Did Samuel Adams, whose hands shook with palsy, carry a musket alongside his neighbors? (Would you want to drill in front of him?) We know African-American men served in militia units outside of Boston. Did they also drill in the big town’s musters? How easy was it to skip militia training by paying a small fine or simply not showing up? How did the system deal with illnesses or absences for, say, going out on a fishing boat? In sum, the law said nearly every white male inhabitant between sixteen and sixty was supposed to turn out for militia training, but how many actually did?