Don Hagist on Drummer Thomas Walker’s War

Don Hagist, author of British Soldiers, American War and editor of the Journal of the American Revolution, is my go-to advisor on British military records. 

Every so often Don unearths a new gem of information about redcoats who served in Massachusetts, such as the record of Edward Montgomery and Mathew Kilroy, the two privates convicted of manslaughter after the Boston Massacre, retiring in 1776 just before the 29th Regiment was sent back to North America. 

Now as a guest blogger Don shares another new discovery about a soldier prominent in Boston 250 years ago:

In the months leading up to the Boston Massacre, a number of altercations occurred between soldiers of the 14th and 29th Regiments of Foot and civilians in Boston. One of the best-known soldiers involved in these scuffles was Thomas Walker, a drummer in the 29th Regiment.

The 29th’s drummers were of African heritage, but those those whose place of birth is known were born in the Caribbean—Jamaica, St. Kitts, St. Domingo, Antigua. The first of them joined the regiment in 1759 and were replaced by others as attrition demanded, well into the nineteenth century.

The earliest surviving muster rolls for the regiment indicate that Walker was already serving as a drummer in 1765. He was a key player in the fighting that occurred at the ropewalks in Boston on March 1, 1770. He is frequently mentioned in this context, but what about his subsequent career?

The 29th Regiment was removed from Boston soon after the events of March 5, 1770, and after a few more years in other American colonies they returned to Great Britain. Their stay in the home islands was not long, though; the outbreak of war in American necessitated a significant military buildup there, and in early 1776 the 29th Regiment was ordered overseas once more.

As a drummer in the regiment’s grenadier company, Walker may have been among the first ashore when the regiment landed in Quebec in June 1776 to relieve the besieged city. With several other regiments, they drove American forces out of Canada and up Lake Champlain. Walker may have been among the 29th’s soldiers that served on board British ships and gunboats at the battle of Valcour Island in October.

After spending a cold Canadian winter dispersed in various locations between Quebec and the northern end of Lake Champlain, the British army regrouped for a new campaign in 1777. While most of the 29th Regiment remained in Canada, their light infantry company and grenadier company, including Thomas Walker, went with the army under General John Burgoyne up Lake Champlain. The grenadier battalion, formed of grenadier companies from ten regiments, was involved in some of the campaign’s hottest fighting including the battles of Hubbardton, Freeman’s Farm and Bemis Heights. The campaign ground to a halt in October and Burgoyne’s army capitulated in October. Thomas Walker became a prisoner of war.

The prisoners were marched to the outskirts of Boston where they spent the winter in crude barracks on Winter Hill and Prospect Hill. From here Walker had a good view of the city where he had spent two years almost a decade before. The following summer the prisoners were moved inland to Rutland, Massachusetts. In November they were marched Albemarle, Virginia, where they arrived in the January snow for two more years in poorly-constructed barracks.

British campaigning in Virginia in 1781 provoked yet another overland march for the beleaguered prisoners, this time to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The prisoners arrived there on June 16. Since their capture in 1777, they had walked over 1,000 miles from prison camp to prison camp. By this time, only four men of the 29th Regiment’s grenadier company remained, the others having escaped, deserted, or died.

Thomas Walker got to Lancaster, but his time had run out; by the time a list was made of the prisoners, on July 18, Drummer Thomas Walker was “dead in the Barracks.” The cause of his demise is not known. Dying in captivity was a sad end for a man who had served as a soldier for over sixteen years.

I’m struck by how Drummer Walker remained with his dwindling company, not escaping and deserting. As a black man, he may have seen fewer opportunities to move around in American society. And he may have commanded more respect as an army drummer than he expected as an unattached black laborer. 

Thanks again, Don!

Five Ways of Looking at a Brawl

Here are five men’s perspectives on what happened outside John Gray’s ropewalk in central Boston on Friday, 2 Mar 1770, 250 years ago today.

Samuel Bostwick, ropemaker:

between 10 and 11 o’clock in the forenoon, three soldiers of the 29th regiment, came up Mr. Gray’s ropewalk, and William Green, one of the hands, spoke to one of them, saying, Soldier, will you work?

The soldier replied, Yes.

Green said, then go and clean my s--t-house.

The soldier swore by the Holy Ghost that he would have recompence, and tarried a good while swearing at Green, who took no further notice of him, and then went off…

Nicholas Feriter, ropemaker:

about half after 11 o’clock, A.M. a soldier of the 29th regiment came to Mr. John Gray’s ropewalks, and looking into one of the windows said, By God I’ll have satisfaction! with many other oaths; at the last he said he was not afraid of any one in the ropewalks.

I stept out of the window and speedily knock’d up his heels. On falling his coat flew open, and a naked sword appeared, which one John Willson following me out took from him, and bro’t into the ropewalks.

Pvt. Patrick Walker, 29th Regiment:

Deponant having Occasion to go by the Ropewalkes in Boston, he was assaulted, knocked Down, trod under feet, Cut in several places, and Very much bruised, Without any Provocation Given, by about twelve of the Inhabitants of Boston, (supposed Rope makers) and Left in Danger of his Life

Pvt. Walker had to sign his deposition with a mark.

Ropemaker Feriter, continued:

The soldier then went to Green’s barrack, and in about twenty minutes return’d with 8 or 9 more soldiers armed with clubs, and began as I was told with three or four men in Mr. Gray’s warehouse, asking them why they had abused the soldier aforesaid? These men in the warehouse passed the word down the walk for the hands to come up, which they did, and soon beat them off.

Drummer Thomas Walker, 29th Regiment:

between the Hours of Twelve & two o’Clock in the Day He was Going to His Barracks, that he met Pattrick Walker Soldier in Sd. Regiment in the Street cut & bleeding Very much, that he Asked Sd. Walker Who had used him So,

that he told him that he was Served in that manner by the Rope Makers, that he then asked him What was their Reason for so doing, upon which he informed Him that as he Went for a Buckett of Water to a Yard Adjacent to the Rope Walk, he was asked by one of the Rope Makers if he Would Work, he reply’d he Would, asking him What he was to Work at, to Whom the Rope maker reply’d to Empty his Necessary House,

To Which Sd. Walker reply’d, that if he had no other Work, he might Empty it himself, as he thought it beneath a Soldier, to be Guilty of so Scandalous & Servile as Office upon which they argued for Some time, but at Length fell to blows Upon Which the Rope Makers turned out and Cut him most Desperatly,

upon his Information That he [Drummer Walker] & and one or two More Went down to know the truth how it happened,…

Thomas Walker signed his own deposition, which is striking since the drummers of the 29th were black men, originally purchased as enslaved teenagers.

John Hill, justice of the peace:

I was at a house the corner of a passage way leading from Atkinson’s street to Mr. John Gray’s rope-walks, near Green’s barracks so called, when I saw eight or ten soldiers pass the window with clubs. I immediately got up and went to the door, and found them returning from the rope-walks to the barracks; whence they again very speedily re-appeared, now increased to the number of thirty or forty, armed with clubs and other weapons.

In this latter company was a tall negro drummer, to whom I called, you black rascal, what have you to do with white people’s quarrels?

He answered, I suppose I may look on, and went forward.

Hill was sixty-nine years old. He would soon one of the magistrates active in collecting testimony, including his own, about the shooting on King Street.

Ropemaker Feriter, continued:

In a few minutes the soldiers appeared again at the same place, reinforced to the number of 30 or 40, armed with clubs and cutlasses, and headed by a tall negro drummer with a cutlass chained to his body, with which at first rencounter I received a cut on the head, but being immediately supported by nine or ten more of the rope-makers, armed with their wouldring sticks, we again beat them off.

Peter Slater, then a nine-year-old apprentice at the ropewalk, much later recalled fetching those hickory sticks for his older colleagues to fight with.

Justice Hill, continued:

I went out directly and commanded the peace, telling them I was in commission [i.e., was a magistrate]; but they not regarding me, knocked down a rope-maker in my presence, and two or three of them beating him with clubs, I endeavoured to relieve him; but on approaching the fellows who were mauling him, one of them with a great club struck at me with such violence, that had I not happily avoided it might have been fatal to me.

The party last mentioned rushed in towards the rope-walks, and attacked the rope-makers nigh the tar-kettle, but were soon beat off, drove out of the passage-way by which they entered, and were followed by the rope-makers, whom I persuaded to go back, and they readily obeyed.

Ropemaker Bostwick, continued:

a party of thirty or forty soldiers, headed by a tall negro drummer,…challenged the ropemakers to come out. All hands then present, being about 13 or 14, turn’d out and beat them off, considerably bruised.

Drummer Walker, continued:

that he no Sooner Entered the Rope Walk, then they Rope Makers ordered them to turn back, which they Did, But had not Gone far when they Called him Sd. Thomas Walker back, Saying that they Wanted to Speak to him, that he turned back When Numbers of them Jumped out of the Windows in the Walk, with Clubs in their hands asking What he wanted

to Which the Soldier that was Cut by them, reply’d that he wanted to know in what Shape he had offended them that they should use him so inhumanly as they had done

they Made no Answer but fell upon me and the two that Was with me, most Outragiously in Which time they Cut me in three places in the Head

he remained there as long as I was able but Growing weak with the Great Effusion of blood Which abundantly Issued from his Wounds that it was with Some Difficulty he could reach the Barrack

That the Next Morning as he was Carrying to the Hospital in the Machine for the Conveniency of Removing the Sick, He heard them in a Deriding & Scoffing manner ask the Men that bore him Were they Going to Bury their Dead.

An off-hand, perhaps spur-of-the-moment insult thus grew into a brawl involving dozens of men.

TOMORROW: Drummer Walker’s war.

New Myths of the Boston Massacre

The Boston Massacre occurred 244 years ago today. From the start that was a controversial event with different participants seeing it quite differently. It’s been mythologized in many ways, and myths and misconceptions continue to crop up. Here are some that I’ve seen repeated recently.

Did Crispus Attucks work at Gray’s ropewalk?

Boston’s official report on the shooting, titled A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre…, gave a lot of attention to a brawl between soldiers and workers at John Gray’s rope-manufacturing facility on 2 March. That fight involved two soldiers, Mathew Kilroy and William Warren, and one ropemaker, Samuel Gray, who faced off on King Street three days later. Another soldier, John Carroll, was part of a follow-up brawl on 3 March. Thus, the town suggested, those soldiers had not shot in self-defense but out of anger at townspeople, and perhaps at Samuel Gray in particular.

In all that attention to the ropewalk fight, however, no witness identified Crispus Attucks as being involved. Testimony does put a big man of African descent in the brawl: Drummer Thomas Walker of the 29th Regiment. But justice of the peace John Hill recalled shouting at Walker, “you black rascal, what have you to do with white people’s quarrels?” That suggests that no man of color like Attucks had been prominent in the fights before. Newspapers described Gray as a ropemaker but Attucks simply as a sailor.

In 2008 I noted a Boston Globe essay that said, “According to lore, Attucks reappeared [in Boston] just before the massacre, likely finding dock work as a rope maker.” But there’s no evidence for that guess and some to suggest it was mistaken. I suspect people trying to find a tight link between the ropewalk fight and the shooting on King Street assumed Attucks was involved in both, but historical events aren’t always so neat.

Did Attucks work on a whaling ship?

In Traits of the Tea-Party, published in 1835, Benjamin Bussey Thatcher cited an old barber named William Pierce as his source that Attucks “was a Nantucket Indian, belonging on board a whale-ship of Mr. Folger’s, then in the harbor…” But Pierce also told Thatcher that he’d never seen Attucks before the night of the Massacre, so he didn’t have inside information.

Boston’s 1770 newspapers directly contradict Pierce. They said Attucks was from Framingham, not Nantucket. They reported Attucks was “lately belonging to New-Providence [in the Bahamas], and was here in order to go for North-Carolina”—meaning he worked on trading voyages to the south rather than hunting whales.

I suspect that Pierce’s memory of Attucks from sixty-five years before had gotten mixed with his memory of the Prince Boston legal case, which did involve a man of African and Native descent, whalers from Nantucket, and a captain named Folger.

TOMORROW: The myth of the tombs.

Passing the Hat for Christopher Monk

Yesterday I wrote about how shipwright Thomas Walker had asked the town of Boston for money to pay for the care of Christopher Monk, his apprentice wounded during the Boston Massacre of 1770. On 14 Mar 1774, the Boston town meeting turned down Walker’s request.

But that wasn’t because of lack of compassion. Rather, Bostonians had already provided a sizeable amount of cash for young Monk’s care through a voluntary collection after John Hancock’s oration about the Massacre on 5 Mar 1774 in the Old South Meeting-house (thumbnail shown here, courtesy of Prof. Jeffery Howe’s scrapbook of Georgian architecture).

The oration was also a legal town meeting, and Boston’s records say:

Upon a Motion made Voted, that there be a Collection made in this Meeting, for Mr. Christopher Monk, a young Man now languishing under a Wound receiv’d in his Lungs, by a Shot from [Capt. Thomas] Preston’s Bloody Party of Soldiers on 5th. March 1770.

A Collection for Mr. Monk was made accordingly, which amounted to the Sum of Three Hundred and Nineteen Pounds 13/3 old Tenor, & the same by Order of the Town, was lodged with the Select Men for the Use of the said Monk.

On 9 March this note appeared in the minutes of the selectmen’s meetings:

A Collection was made by the Town at their meeting on the 5 of March Instant for Christopher Monk of Forty two pounds twelve Shillings & 4d. which by Order of the Town was deposited with the Selectmen for the use of said Monk—The Selectmen having determined to deliver the same to him at twelve different times, the whole was lodged with Deacon [Timothy] Newell for that purpose, who has made him one of these Monthly payments.

How did the collection manage to shrink from £319 to £42 in four days? The first sum was calculated in “old Tenor,” or the devalued local currency, and the 9 March total was probably in real money. Wikipedia has a brief description of the fall of the Massachusetts pound over the 1700s. It says that after 1759 new money was worth ten times the “Old Tenor,” so the selectmen might actually have collected more for Monk since the night of Hancock’s speech.

It’s also interesting that the selectmen didn’t trust Monk—or, more likely, Walker—to handle the whole £42 at once, and doled it out over the full year.

Thomas Walker Seeks Help with Health Care Costs

On 25 Feb 1774, shipwright Thomas Walker (not to be confused with British army drummer Thomas Walker) delivered a petition to Boston’s selectmen, describing himself as “a very great Sufferer by the Barbarous Firing of the Soldiers of the 29th. Regiment upon the Inhabatents of this Town on the Memorable fifth of March 1770”—i.e., the Boston Massacre.

Walker doesn’t appear on the list of dead or wounded from that event. Instead, he really wrote on behalf of his teen-aged apprentice, for whom he had taken legal responsibility:

His Apprentice Christopher Monk then in the siventyth [i.e., seventeenth] Year of his Age, havng been at that time Dangerously wounded by a Bullett passing through his Lungs, Whereby you Petitioner besides loosing the most Valuiable Part of his Apprentices Time, was Obliged to surport him, and pay for his Nursing, which was a very Expence, and has also the Sergen’s Bill amountg. to One Hundred & Eighteen pounds five shillings, & four pence lawfull Money now laying against him, and altho the Surgeon has generously consented to give in his whole Charge for Dressing and Attendance, and to take only what the Medicenes amounts to charged at the Usal rate, yet this is more than yr. Petitioner us able to Pay without greatly Straitning himself and Family.

He Therefore Humbly Prays that you would take into Consideration, the Great share of that Public Calamity which has fallen to his Lott, that you would Commerate his Circumstances and grant him that Relief which your Wisdom and Generosity to a Distressed fellow Citizeon whose Missfortunes are not owing to any Crime or Indiscretion in him, or in his Aforesaid Apprentice shall point Out.

Walker signed this petition, but someone else had written it out for him. The matter appeared on the agenda for Boston’s 14 March town meeting.

That meeting came just after the anniversary of the Massacre, commemorated in 1774 by an oration from John Hancock (shown above). Unlike previous years’ orators, Hancock specifically mentioned Monk. Addressing the “bloody butchers” in the royal government who had supposedly instigated that shooting, Hancock declared:

surely even your obdurate hearts must shrink, and your guilty blood must chill within your rigid veins, when you behold the miserable Monk, the wretched victim of your savage cruelty. Observe his tottering knees, which scarce sustain his wasted body ; look on his haggard eyes; mark well the death-like paleness on his fallen cheek, and tell me, does not the sight plant daggers in your souls?

unhappy Monk! cut off in the gay morn of manhood, from all the joys which sweeten life, doomed to drag on a pitiful existence, without even a hope to taste the pleasures of returning health! yet Monk, thou livest not in vain; thou livest a warning to thy country, which sympathizes with thee in thy sufferings; thou livest an affecting, an alarming instance of the unbounded violence which lust of power, assisted by a standing army, can lead a traitor to commit.

Despite such ringing rhetoric, however, the town meeting responded to Walker’s petition like this: “it was moved that the Petition be dismissed, and it was accordingly dismissed.”

TOMORROW: What Boston did for Christopher Monk instead.

Black Drummers of the 29th Regiment

Roger Fuller at Minute Man National Historical Park alerted me to this online image of a small exhibit at England’s Worcester City Museum on the black drummers of the British army’s 29th Regiment of Foot. And here’s an article about that regiment’s tradition of recruiting drummers of African descent; its pictures come from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but it names the drummers going back to Revolutionary times, as compiled by John Ellis.

Now “tradition” and “recruited” might not be the right words for the practice in 1768-70, when the 29th was in Boston. According to other sources, Admiral Edward Boscawen bought the first “eight or ten boys” to serve as drummers in 1759 and gave them to his brother George, who was colonel of the 29th. So those boys most likely arrived as slaves, not of their free will, and the tradition was only about a decade old.

Or are those other sources accurate? Ellis’s study notes three drummers who retired from the regiment with years of service dating from before 1759, at least two of them middle-aged by that year:

• John Charloe—born on St. Kitts, 1710; served 1751-80
• John Bacchus—born on Jamaica, 1726; served 1752-80
• Joseph Provence—born on Santo Domingo; served 1755-90

Perhaps the 29th had some black drummers before 1759, but the Boscawens decided to employ only black men. Perhaps the term “boys” was inaccurate, and a bit pejorative. A later commander of the 29th, John Enys, stated that when he joined in 1775, at least three of the original ten black drummers were still serving, which matches with the data above.

Bacchus was the drummer for Capt. Ponsonby Molesworth’s company in 1769, according to muster rolls. Cpl. William Wemms (or Wemys), one of the Boston Massacre defendants, came from that company.

Ellis’s research lets us identify the other drummers of the 29th’s time in Boston as Robert Baird (born 1738, discharged 1792), Lushington Barrett (died 1787), Thomas Othello (Capt. Archibald Campbell’s company in 1770, died 1777), John Rufael (deserted 1770), John Archer, Thomas Walker, and possibly John Blenheim.

The best documented of that group is Thomas Walker, who got caught up in the fight at the ropewalk on the Friday before the Boston Massacre. He left a deposition about his experience, and Justice John Hill mentioned the “tall negro drummer” in his own testimony. Walker served in Capt. Thomas Preston’s company. Ellis found that he was with the regiment in 1765 and 1774, and might be the drummer “Samuel Walker” listed as dying in 1781 but otherwise unknown.

In the British army (as later in the Continental Army), drummers were responsible for whipping men convicted of crimes. The Worcester City Museum website says, “recruits were sometimes deterred by the thought of being flogged by a black man, and the citizens of Boston even wrote to the commanding officer about it.” That refers to protests like this, from an October 1768 dispatch that the Whigs sent to newspapers in other colonies:

In the forenoon one Rogers, a New-England man, sentenced to receive 1000 stripes, and a number of other soldiers, were scourged in the Common by the black drummers, in a manner, which however necessary, was shocking to humanity; some gentlemen who had held commissions in the army, observing, that only 40 of the 170 lashes received by Rogers, at this time, was equal in punishment to 500, they had seen given in other regiments.

The locals’ main point was how British military punishments far exceeded what the local courts doled out, even when corporal punishment was standard. But the Whigs made sure to slip in the detail about the drummers being black, which could rile up people. As the Boston Evening-Post expressed it on 6 Oct 1768: “To behold Britons scourged by Negro drummers was a new and very disagreeable spectacle.”

Another dispatch from the same series shows a drummer himself being punished the same way in Feb 1769:

There has been within these few days a great many severe whippings; among the number chastised, was one of the negro drummers, who received 100 lashes, in part of 150, he was sentenced to receive at a Court Martial;—It is said this fellow had adventur’d to beat time at a concert of music, given at the Manufactory-House.

It appears that even if these drummers arrived as slaves, they enjoyed a respectable standing within the regiment and retired as free men—but they had to get through the discipline of British military service first.

Brawl at Gray’s Ropewalks

On 2 March 1770, Pvt. Patrick Walker of the 29th regiment passed John Gray’s ropewalks in Boston on an errand. Months later, he left a blunt and unhelpful description of what he experienced there:

That about the latter end of February Last, Deponant having Occasion to go by the Ropewalkes in Boston, he was assaulted, knocked Down, trod under feet, Cut in several places, and Very much bruised, without any Provocation Given, by about twelve of the Inhabitants of Boston, (supposed Rope makers) and Left in Danger of his Life

Pvt. Walker had to sign his deposition with his mark, didn’t recall the exact date of this assault, and didn’t accurately describe the details of what led up to his beating. But Walker was correct about minding his own business, fetching water, as he passed the ropewalks. Ropemaker William Green called out a question: did he want work? (Soldiers were allowed to moonlight, which lowered the wages for locals.) Walker asked Green what the work was. For three descriptions of Green’s insulting reply, see my posting on the term “little-house.”

Witnesses differ about what happened next. Drummer Thomas Walker (no relation to Patrick) recalled meeting the private “in the Street cut & bleeding very much” because he and Green had fought. The two soldiers then gathered several of their fellows and returned to the ropewalks.

On the other side, ropemaker Nicholas Feriter stated:

about half past 11 o’clock, A.M., a soldier of the 29th Regiment came to Mr. John Gray’s ropewalks, and looking into one of the windows, said, by God I’ll have satisfaction! with many other oaths; at the last he said he was not afraid of any one in the ropewalks. I stept out of the window and speedily knock’d up his heels. On falling, his coat flew open, and a naked sword appeared

Another ropemaker, Samuel Bostwick, insisted that “Green...took no further notice of” Walker after getting off his clever line, but the soldier came back “with a party of thirty or forty soldiers, headed by a tall negro drummer.” That drummer was Thomas Walker, quoted above; since 1759, the 29th had used black men as its regimental drummers.

Whoever was the first to get physical, Green’s gratuitous insult quickly escalated into a brawl between dozens of soldiers and dozens of ropemakers. Even young apprentices got into the action: Peter Slater, only nine years old, recalled bringing the ropemakers their “way-sticks” or “wouldring-sticks”—each two feet of hickory, used for twisting and laying out strands of hemp.

Sixty-nine-year-old Justice of the Peace John Hill testified:

I was at a house the corner of a passage way leading from Atkinson’s street to Mr. John Gray’s rope-walks, near Green’s barracks so called, when I saw eight or ten soldiers pass the window with clubs. I immediately got up and went to the door, and found them returning from the rope-walks to the barracks; whence they again very speedily re-appeared, now increased to the number of thirty or forty, armed with clubs and other weapons.

In this latter company was a tall negro drummer, to whom I called, you black rascal, what have you to do with white people’s quarrels?

He answered, I suppose I may look on, and went forward.

I went out directly and commanded the peace, telling them I was in commission [i.e., was a magistrate]; but they not regarding me, knocked down a rope-maker in my presence, and two or three of them beating him with clubs, I endeavoured to relieve him; but on approaching the fellows who were mauling him, one of them with a great club struck at me with such violence, that had I not happily avoided it might have been fatal to me.

The party last mentioned rushed in towards the rope-walks, and attacked the rope-makers nigh the tar-kettle, but were soon beat off, drove out of the passage-way by which they entered

Though it’s clear Green’s gratuitous insult had started this conflict, I think it probably escalated in a tit-for-tat pattern, each side bringing in more fighters and thus prompting the other side to do the same. Among the ropemakers involved was a young man named Samuel Gray—no relation to the ropewalks owner. Among the soldiers were Pvts. William Warren and Mathew Kilroy and (during follow-up brawls the next day) John Carroll, all grenadiers in the 29th.

All in all, the ropemakers seem to have gotten the better of the fights. Drummer Walker and Pvt. John Rodgers had to be taken to the hospital on Saturday, and several more soldiers described their injuries in depositions months later. In contrast, though ropemakers complained about the soldiers’ aggression, none reported serious injuries.

On Saturday the owner of those ropewalks, John Gray, visited the colonels of the two regiments in Boston. Gray was very wealthy, not politically active but leaning toward the Crown. (His brother Harrison was the provincial treasurer.) He made a deal with the colonels: he would dismiss Green from his employ, they wouldn’t enter his property without his permission, and each side would try to calm their own men. How well that worked became clear the following Monday night.

(The modern picture of a colonial ropewalk above comes from a webpage about ropemaking in Alexandria, Virginia. There are other useful sites about the cordage industry from Lewis-Clark.org, kite flyer Uli Wahl, and the Historic Naval Ships Association. Incidentally, in January 1771 the fired ropemaker William Green started working at the Box & Austin ropewalk on the other side of town. One of that firm’s account books is in the Winterthur library.)

Colonial Boston Vocabulary: "little-house"

Here's a bit of the transcript of the trial of soldiers for the shootings known as the Boston Massacre. Ropemaker Nicholas Ferreter was asked about trouble three days before at Gray's rope-making factory, on 2 Mar 1770.

...there was one of our hands while I was coiling a cable, said to a soldier do you want work, yes, says the soldier I do faith; well said he to the soldier, go clean my little-house, he damned us and made a blow at, and struck me, when I knocked up his heels, his coat flew open, and out dropt a naked cutlass, which I took up and carried off with me. He went away, and came back with a dozen soldiers with him

Off-duty British soldiers were allowed to work for pay, and historians believe they charged less for their labor than locals because the army was providing their basics. This economic competition exacerbated the resentment that many Bostonians already felt toward the soldiers.

As for the term "little-house," there are more clues about what that meant in this July 1770 deposition from Thomas Walker, drummer for the 29th regiment:

...he met Patrick Walker Soldier in sd. Regiment, in the Street cut & bleeding very much, that he asked sd. Walker Who had used him so, that he told him that he was served in that manner by the Rope Makers, that he then asked him What was their Reason for so doing, upon which he informed Him that as he Wint for a Buckett of Water to a Yard Adjacent to the Rope Walk he was asked by one of the Rope Makers if he would Work he reply'd he would, asking him What he was to Work at.

To whom the Rope maker reply'd to Empty his Necessary House.

To which sd. Walker reply'd, that if he had no other Work he might Empty it himself, as he thought it beneath a Soldier, to be Guilty of so Scandalous & Servile an Office upon which they argued for some time, but at Length fell to blows.

And in more earthy terms, we have an account of the insult from Samuel Bostwick, dated 19 March:

...three soldiers of the 29th regiment, came up Mr. Gray's ropewalk, and William Green, one of the hands, spoke to them, saying, "soldier, will you work?"

The soldier replied, "yes."

Green said, "then go clean my s--t-house."

The soldier swore by the Holy Ghost that he would have recompense, and tarried a good while swearing at Green, who took no further notice of him, and then went off, and soon after returned to the ropewalk with a party of thirty or forty soldiers, with a tall negro drummer [Thomas Walker], and challenged the rope makers to come out.

The ensuing brawl led to two more days of running fights between locals and soldiers (with Sunday off for the Sabbath, of course). Those fights in turn became one of the triggers for the shootings on King Street on the 5th. One ropemaker was shot dead, and two soldiers who had been at the ropewalk were tried for murder.

Ferreter's testimony appears in the transcript of the soldiers' trial, reprinted in The Legal Papers of John Adams. Walker's deposition is filed in the British National Archives. Bostwick's account, strategically placed hyphens and all, is in Boston's report on the shootings, titled A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre.