The Flight of the Cambridge Loyalists, part 2

One direct target of the “Powder Alarm” protest in Cambridge on 2 Sept 1774 was Joseph Lee, a judge and appointee to the mandamus Council.

He tried to get ahead of the crowd’s demands by writing out a resignation from that Council in the morning, then reading it aloud on Cambridge common at midday.

But Lee and his wife Rebecca were still nervous. Her brother, Sheriff David Phips, and her niece’s husband, Lt. Gov. Thomas Oliver, took refuge in Boston, as recounted yesterday. Toward the middle of the month, the Lees decided to leave town, too.

Instead of seeking the protection of the troops, the Lees headed south. To make their journey secure, they obtained this certificate from Isaac Foster, Jr., on 16 September:

To our Bretheren the Friends of Liberty

Whereas the honourable Joseph Lee Esqr has proposed to take a Tour through the Country for his [insert: Ladys] health, and it is possible that some Persons unacquainted with the Transactions at Cambridge on the 2d. instant, (when so great a Part of this County were collected there) may still be uneasy at his having taken the Oath as Councellor, on the intended new and unconstitutional Plan; these may certify that the said honourable Joseph Lee Esqr. had voluntarily, before he was called upon, and as we trust from a Conviction of the unconstitutionality of his Appointments, resigned his seat at the Council Board; which resignation he publickly and politely declared to the respectable Inhabitants of this County, with a promise that in future he would accept of no Office inconsistent with the Charter of this Province; and that the said Declaration and Promise was by the People assembled as aforesaid, unanimously voted satisfactory, having given such ample Satisfaction, we doubt not he will be treated by all the Friends of our happy Constitution, with such Civility and Respect, as shall do honour to our common Cause.

By order of the Committee of Correspondence for Charlstown

That’s another document from the Massachusetts Historical Society’s Miscellaneous Bound Manuscripts collection.

During Monday’s commemoration of the “Powder Alarm” in Charlestown, Karen Falb alerted me to a glimpse of Joseph and Rebecca Lee on their journey south. It appears in a letter from Henry Pelham to his half-brother John Singleton Copley, dated 2 November from Philadelphia. Pelham wrote:

I wish I had a more satisfactory account to give than that I have taken this Journey in search of lost Health; but still Happy should I be could I say I had entirely recovered it. I have been for near 10 Months [i.e., pretty much since the Tea Party] past very subject to nervous complaints which shewed themselves in an almost continued Dizziness, Headack, Loss of Appetite, Trembling of the Nerves, and Lowness of Spiritts. for these I early put myself under the Care of Doct’r [William Lee or Nathaniel] Perkins, who ordered me a course of Steel and frequent Riding, and recommended a long journey in the fall which my friends much advised too.

Mr. and Mrs. [Charles and Sarah] Startin [Susanna Copley’s sister and her husband] returning home, I thought it a favourable time for the excursion, and have come thus far in Company with them and Judge Lee and Lady, our Cambridge Friends, who propose passing the winter here. In a few days I intend to sett out for home, stoping for about a fortnight at New Haven, where Mr. [Adam] Babcock has engaged me to do two or three minature Pictures.

This letter shows that Pelham was friendly with the Lees before he drew his monumental map of the siege of Boston. (Another letter in the collection shows that Copley had visited Judge Lee at his home.) That has a bearing on the question of how much accuracy we can assign to Pelham’s rendering of the “Tory Row” estates, shown above.

Joseph and Rebecca Lee sat out the first years of the war in New Jersey and returned to their Cambridge home in 1777. Since they were no longer ”absentees,” Massachusetts did not confiscate that property.

The next mansion west from the Lees belonged to George and Susanna Ruggles. She was a Vassall by birth, thus a paternal aunt to Elizabeth Oliver.

George Ruggles made a unique arrangement for leaving the neighborhood: he swapped houses with the Boston merchant Thomas Fayerweather. On 31 October, Fayerweather deeded his house on Summer Street to Ruggles, and Ruggles deeded his estate on the Watertown road to Fayerweather. That estate included more than fifty acres of land, and Fayerweather paid Ruggles £2,000 to make an even swap.

That’s why Henry Pelham’s map of the siege of Boston labels that property as belonging to “Mr. Fairwather”—the one “Tory Row” estate no longer legally owned by a Loyalist at the start of the war.

TOMORROW: John Vassall’s secret.

“I can never give any thing but general accounts of conversations”

Last fall, I discussed a moment when John Quincy Adams discovered that his younger brother Charles had been reading his diary without permission.

At the time, the Adams brothers were students at Harvard College. John Quincy was about to turn twenty and increasingly interested in young women. Charles was in his mid-teens and increasingly getting into trouble with the college authorities.

John Quincy was still worried about prying eyes the following 17 Jan 1787, when he wrote:

I had a deal of chat, with Miss [Almy] Ellery, who has a larger share of Sense, than commonly falls to an individual of her sex. We conversed upon diverse subjects, but I can never give any thing but general accounts of conversations, for I cannot always keep this book under lock and key; and some people have a vast deal of curiosity.

Despite that caution about his conversation with Almy Ellery, in the same season John Quincy set down some delightfully acidic comments about other people he met.

On 4 January:

Miss [Catherine] Jones as usual was severe. Her disposition would be much more amiable, if she was not so sensible of her satirical talents, and so fond of them as to gratify her passion upon all occasions.

12 January:

We pass’d an hour in the evening at Mr. [Caleb] Gannett’s [the Harvard steward]; he was not at home: Mrs. [Ruth] G. is quite historical; that is she gives a very minute history of whatever occurs to herself or her family.

1 February:

Mr. [Thomas] Fayerweather and his family were there. An extraordinary character. The greatest range of his ideas, is between the counter of a shop, and the potatoe-hill behind his House; these furnish him with an universal topic of conversation, which he commonly enjoys alone, for he gives no other person time to express either approbation or dislike of his sentiments.

15 February, after a dance:

Of the Ladies, some had beauty without wit, and some wit without beauty; one was blest with both, and others could boast of neither. But little was said, and sentiment did not thrive, when the feet are so much engaged, the head in general is vacant.

16 February:

Miss [Rebecca] Hastings was there, but she has neither youth nor beauty, and if she has wit it is somewhat beneath the surface.

Clearly John Quincy Adams didn’t worry about his brother seeing those comments.

COMING UP: More catty comments to come.

“Which service has not as yet been fully comply’d with”

Yesterday I described how in 1707 Massachusetts and Boston instituted a legal system of drafting free black men to work a certain number of days each year on maintaining highways.

The Boston selectmen’s records show that system being used often in the early decades of the eighteenth century, then less often. Eventually men were able to pay to get out of the labor.

In 1762, three wartime years after the last time they invoked this law, the selectmen of Boston once again cranked up the system to draft the town’s free black men.

The effort started on 12 May with a list in the selectmen’s records of all the free black men they could think of:

• Scipio—late a Servant of Capt. Osbornes
• Scipio, late a Servant of Mr. [Charles?] Apthorp
• Pompy Blackman
• Lank (a Lemmon Merchant, who has been sick)
• Charlestown ——
• Dick, late a Servant to Mr. Tyng, (both sick & lame).
• Toby, living at New Boston.
• Boston. (Jackson)
• Cesar Clark (Baker) keeps at Mr. Pollard’s Old House.
• Another Negro keeps with ye. above named, his name unknown
• Thomas (a Baker) late a Servant to Mr. Knox.
• Homan (late a Servant to the Widow Blackadore[)]
• Joseph, late a Servant to Richard Bill Esq.
• Scipio, late a Servant of Capt. [Thomas] Fayerweather
• Prince Holms
• A Negro at Deacon Fosters
• Jack Clemmons, so called
• George Cobourn, he came from Redding.

You can picture the town officials scratching under their wigs, trying to remember the men they’ve seen around town. “Oh, yeah, there’s a Negro baker over at Pollard’s.” “No, there are two.” “Didn’t Knox’s man become a baker?” “Yes, but he’s not one of them. What was his name?” “Speaking of names, why do we call so many ‘Scipio’?”

Six days later, the selectmen added more information they had collected. In particular, they noted how long each man had been free and how many days since becoming free each had worked for the town (and thus how many days of labor they owed):

• Prince Holmes, “has been free 23 years has paid for 12 Days work.”
• John Thurber, freed “last Novemr. Order’d to work...2 Days.”
• Pompy Blackman, free for six years the next October, 20 days.
• Fortunatus Pitts, free for seven years the next September, 24 days.
• Scipio Fayerweather, free for one year the next September, 2 days.
• Scipio Apthorp, free for two years the next September, 8 days.
• Homer Blackader, “has been sick since his mistresses death,” 0 days.
• Peter How, free nine years, “has work’d 2 Days,” 30 days.
• Richard Tyng, free five years, 10 days.
• Tobias Lockman, free six years as of 1 March, 18 days.
• Scipio Gunny, free as of the previous August, 2 days.
• Boston Jackson, free three years and “(has a Rate Bill),” 6 days.

The selectmen directed John Sweetser to set these men to work on the highways.

That information could be useful in connecting these men to their moments of manumission. In addition, I think the notation by Boston Jackson—“had a Rate Bill”—meant that he’d paid taxes, perhaps arguing that he didn’t need to contribute more to the community in labor.

Even with that added information, however, the selectmen and Sweetser couldn’t make the system work. On 15 December, the selectmen’s minutes say:

Whereas there was an Assignment made on the 18th Day of May last of a certain number of Days on which the Free Negros of this Town were to Work on the High Ways, which service has not as yet been fully comply’d with—therefore Voted—

that the Town Clerk Issue a Warrant this Day, Ordering and requiring them to work such a number of Days as shall be affixed to their respective Names.

Boston ss.
To Scipio and other Free Negros residing in the Town of Boston.

You are hereby severally Ordered and Required to perform so many Days work as is here under affixed to your Names, and this at the Time and Place you shall be directed by mr. John Swetser, appointed an Overseer for this purpose. It being such a proportion of Time as is adjudged to be equivalent to the service of Trainings, Watchings and other duty required of his Majesty’s Subjects, the benefit of which you share. Hereof fail not as you avoid the penalty of Law in such case made and provided.

By order of the Select men
Boston Decemr. 15. 1762
William Cooper Town Clerk.

The numbers of days demanded were:

• Lancaster Hill 16
• Pompey Blackman 20
• Dick Tyng 10
• Boston Jackson 6
• Toby Lockman 18
• Cesar Clark 16
• Thomas Knox 16
• Scipio Osborne 2
• Scipio Apthorp 8
• Peter How 30
• John Thurbur 4
• Fortunatus Pitts 24

Did that work? Not in all cases. On 11 June 1766, four years later, the selectmen’s records say: “Order was this Day issued to Tobias [Lockman, presumably] & Scepio (late Capt. Fayerweathers) Free Negros, to work on the High Way before the Market, four Days each, there being Several Years duty due from them.”

Through one method or another, free black Bostonians kept resisting the town’s demands for free labor. And the town evidently lacked the means or will to force the issue.

This was, of course, the same period when Boston’s Whigs were talking more and more about the importance of ”liberty,” making slavery and its remnants harder to defend. In the 1770s the Massachusetts General Court voted to end the slave trade. One of the men being pursued for work in 1762, Lancaster Hill, would sign a petition to the legislature seeking an end to slavery fifteen years later, as shown above.

The last sign of this law that I spotted in the selectmen’s records appeared on 17 June 1767: “Voted, that Mr. John Sweetser be directed to procure two Pick Axes, & two Wheelbarrows, and four Shovels, for the use of those Negros that may be imployed on the High Way,—and that those Tools are to be left in his care, he to be accountable for them.” Yet it’s unclear who actually used those tools and on what terms.

The selectmen of Boston never officially discussed drafting black men to work again. There were plenty of discussions about streets needing repair in the town records from 1769 to the start of the Revolutionary War, but no lists of black citizens or discussions of how to compel them to work.

TOMORROW: One last gasp.

“Looked for accommodations for my companies”

Ebenezer Storrs was a lieutenant colonel commissioned by Connecticut in the spring of 1775. These are entries from his diary describing what he found when he arrived in Cambridge to add his forces to the New England army.

[2 June 1775] Ordered the companies to proceed as far as Leeson’s in Waltham and make a halt for the night, then left them under the care of Lieut. Gray, and proceeded with Lieut. Dane to Cambridge, at Col. [Joseph] Lee’s house, where we expected to have tarried; found 3 companies. Went to head quarters to Gen. [Israel] Putnam, he came with us to our proposed quarters, looked for accommodations for my companies. Conclude to march in to-morrow. Came out to Watertown with Lieut. Dane; tarried there.

[3 June] Towards noon the companies arrived. Sat off with them to Cambridge; met Gen. Putnam on the road. Come to the house of Mr. [Thomas] Fairweather, where we make our quarters; after dinner went up to head quarters to show ourselves to the General [Artemas Ward]; he recommends our being immediately provided for action.

[4 June] Lord’s day. Heard Mr. [Abiel] Leonard our chaplin on the common.

[5 June] Attended prayers this morning with the companies. Spent some time in aprising the arms, &c., from Mansfield. Ordered the companies to discipline 15 men. Sent to clear the house at head quarters, after prayers at night at head quarters.

[6 June] Sent a letter to Mr. Salter respecting printing the sermon he delivered to our companies on our departure from Mansfield; had liberty for 4 of my men who have been here since the allarrum to return home on a furlough of 12 days. Deacon Freeman and Aaron Hovey at our lodgings. Walked the grand rounds with them and Col. Freeman to view the various fortifications in this place and at Charlestown.

[7 June] Unwell, bad cold. Returning from prayers had orders to take the command of the guard today; unacquainted with the business, unwell; however I am willing to learn my duty, as I have all the customs and rules of the camp to learn; not much sleep to-night, many prisoners. Some drunk, noisy and crazy.

[8 June] Relieved this morning, came home and went to sleep. Mr. Fairweather came home last night out of humor as they tell me. No wonder, his house filled up with soldiers, and perhaps his [financial] interest suffers as it really must. Sent for me, yet appears to act the part of a gentleman. Went to sleep, took some refreshment and am some better, but have a bad cough.

[9 June] Went to Gen. Putnam to make return of my companies to draw soap, beer, &c, out of the Connecticut store; he declines coming to a settlement about it, my company uneasy for want of beer and soap for washing; many visitors from Windham.

Thomas Fayerweather had bought his house in Cambridge (shown above) from Loyalist George Ruggles just a few months before. Though he supported the Patriot cause, Fayerweather was evidently dismayed to find his property quite so full of troops in need of “beer and soap for washing.”

It’s striking how often Storrs’s diary speaks of sermons and prayers. This was the New England army, composed largely of rural descendants of the Puritans. I also find it interesting how many men from the home province just showed up to see how the siege was going. Presumably they slept somewhere else.