Adverts 250, New and Improved!

Several years ago Carl Robert Keyes, professor at Assumption University, launched a couple of web-based history projects called Adverts 250 and Slave Adverts 250.

(Or, in Twitter terms, #Adverts250 and @SlaveAdverts250.)

Adverts 250 is a blog on which each date features an advertisement from one of colonial America’s newspapers published 250 years before, along with commentary by Keyes or his students. As an example, this recent 9 May entry featured Thomas Walley promoting a wide range of goods in the Boston News-Letter.

On that blog, and on a dedicated Twitter feed, the Slave Adverts 250 project reprints every advertisement mentioning slavery from exactly 250 years before. Here is the collection from 10 May 1773; that was a Monday, when a lot of Boston’s newspapers came out.

Keyes just announced on Twitter that he’d used some of his recent sabbatical time to upgrade the Adverts 250 website. Now the top of the page offers drop-down menus for finding advertisements on particular days. (WordPress’s archive function got one no closer than the month.) Other options at the top lead to featured early American printers, to the guest curators’ posts, and to special topics. 

Those additions make the Adverts 250 website even more useful and worth exploring. Reading newspapers is one of the best ways to put oneself into a particular place and time, and advertising brings you right into daily life.

“Play up the Yankee Doodle tune”

This series started with a letter from three of Boston’s wardens reporting an incident of martial music played on Sunday, 11 June 1769.

As I’ve been quoting, the Boston Whigs complained about that noise disrupting church services almost since army regiments arrived in town the previous October. That incident wasn’t the only conflict.

The Whigs’ “Journal of the Times” addressed the event the wardens wrote about, but not until the dispatch dated 24 July 1769, or six weeks afterward. That dispatch said:

Some Sabbaths past, as the guards, placed near the Tavern-House, were relieving, there was a considerable concourse of people, chiefly boys and Negroes to partake of the entertainment given by their band of music;

the wardens having by their laudable exertions dispersed the rabble, soon perceived that Mr. John Bernard, our Governor’s second son, had made one among them, and still kept his standing; upon which they very civilly accosted him desiring that he should walk off, lest his being suffered to remain, should give occasion for their being taxed with partiality in the execution of their trust;

Mr. Bernard then seemed to be walking away, when Capt. M—s—h, who commanded the guard, called to him, desiring that he would come into the square, where he should be protected from the wardens; the young man accepted of so pressing and polite an invitation; but the wardens called to him as he was going into the square, praying him to desist, as they would otherwise be put to the disagreeable necessity of returning his name to a magistrate, the Monday following;

upon that the officer of the guard, in a sneering manner, called upon the musicians to play up the Yankee Doodle tune, which compleated the conquest of the military, and afforded them a temporary triumph.

The wardens made good their promise, and discharged their duty, by entering a complaint with a magistrate, against Mr. Bernard, for breach of Sabbath, when he was convicted, and punished agreeable to law.

The wardens’ letter referred to “a Young Gentleman an Inhabitant of the Town,” but this newspaper item makes clear that man was John Bernard (1745-1809), son of Gov. Francis Bernard. He had served as his father’s personal secretary and then set himself up in business. In early 1770 he was one of the handful of merchants who defied the nonimportation agreement.

The wardens spelled out the name of “Capt. M—s—h,” letting us identify him as Ponsonby Molesworth of the 29th Regiment. In April he had eloped with fifteen-year-old Susannah Sheaffe, beautiful daughter of a Customs official, but then they came back to town to start life as a married couple.

The wardens’ letter said Molesworth ordered the regimental musicians to play “the Yankee tune.” The Whigs’ article confirms Lance Boos’s guess that meant “Yankee Doodle.” However, in his essay on the letter for the Massachusetts Historical Society’s blog, Boos interpreted the tune as intended to insult the “Young Gentleman.”

The “Journal of the Times” item shows that in fact the officers saw themselves as protecting Bernard’s right to enjoy the army music, and they called for “Yankee Doodle” as a way to defy and insult the wardens. In Boston’s political conflict, the governor, Customs officials, the army, and their family members were allies.

On the other side, wardens Thomas Walley, John Joy, and Henry Hill had the responsibility to ensure people observed the Sabbath, a reflection of Boston’s Puritan traditions. They couldn’t order the army to keep quiet; they and the selectmen could only make requests of the army commanders. But they could charge “an Inhabitant of the Town” like young Bernard with violating the Sabbath by not going home when they asked him to.

It’s interesting to note that in 1774 warden John Joy (1727-1804) became a Loyalist, probably inspired by his past military service to the Crown. His namesake son returned to Boston after the war and gave his name to Joy Street on Beacon Hill.

“Martial music on the Sabbath”

Back in December 2019 Lance Boos, working on a fellowship at the Massachusetts Historical Society, shared and analyzed a 17 June 1769 letter from Boston’s wardens to Col. Alexander MacKay, senior army officer in town.

The letter concerned an incident the preceding Sunday, six days before. A military band was playing that morning around the time of church services (which of course extended over most of the day).

More specifically:

a Young Gentleman an Inhabitant of the Town, appeared at ye relieving of ye Main Guard who being desired by one of ye Wardens to retire showed a willingness to Comply, but Capt. [Ponsonby] Molesworth of ye 29th Regiment, who was Capt. of ye Guard that was to be relieved, & an other officer Came to him & Insisted upon his tarrying to hear the Musick, Saying he would protect him, & Immediately ordered the fifes to play (in derision, as we Suppose,) what by them is Commonly Called ye Yankee Tune.

The three town officials who signed this letter—Thomas Walley, John Joy, and Henry Hill—then asked Mackay to order the troops not to play music during guard changes on Sunday any longer. As wardens, they had civic responsibility to keep the peace on the Sabbath.

We can find more context for this incident in the “Journal of the Times” reports that Boston’s Whigs dispatched to newspapers in other colonies to complain about the army presence in their town. The historian Oliver Dickerson collected and published those articles with the title Boston Under Military Rule.

The Whigs complained about martial music on Sundays starting soon after the regiments landed, with the first complaint dated 6 Nov 1768:

This being Lord’s day, the minds of serious people at public worship were greatly disturbed with drums beating and fifes playing, unheard of before in this land—What an unhappy influence must this have upon the minds of children and others, in eradicating the sentiments of morality and religion, which a due regard to that day has a natural tendency to cultivate and keep alive.

Yes, think of the children! About a month later, as of 4 December, the army seemed to accommodate the local authorities’ wish for peace and quiet:

It is observed with pleasure that the guards are now relieved on Lord’s day morning one hour earlier than on other days, which allows the soldiery to attend public worship in season; that there is now much less martial music on the Sabbath then has been heard since the first arrival of the troops.

But within a couple of weeks, the problem came to be martial music when the meetinghouses let out, and once again children were at risk:

Last evening after church service, there was a considerable gathering of children and servants, near the Town House, drawn by the music of the fife, &c. which is again heard on the Sabbath, to the great concern of the sober and thoughtful inhabitants; some of the youth’s having behaved so as to displease the officer, orders were given the guard to clear the parade; they marched up with bayonets presented,—one of the lads was pursued by a soldier to some distance, who made a thrust with his bayonet, which passed thro’ his coat, and had he not thrown himself on the ground that instant, its thought he would be run thro’ the body: He has entered a complaint against said soldier, with one of the magistrates of the town.

This passage repeats a common Whig trope, blaming disorder on “children,” “servants” (i.e., enslaved people), and “youth’s,” as opposed to “the sober and thoughtful inhabitants” who truly represented the town.

On the one hand, the dispatch said, young people lacked the judgment to resist gathering for the music. Even when they expressed their opposition to the soldiers, they did so through misbehavior instead of, say, formal complaints to the army and newspaper essays.

The result proved the Whigs’ main message: the presence of soldiers in the crowded town led to violence, and the London government should have foreseen that. And of course, when describing military abuse, a child was always a useful victim.

TOMORROW: This conflict continues.

The Aftermath of the Second Boston Tea Party

Yesterday I discussed the political effect of the second Boston Tea Party in London. Today I’ll wrap up this topic with a look at the ripples from the event in Massachusetts.

Five local men were linked to the shipment of tea on the Fortune. All of them insisted that they hadn’t expected the tea to cause such trouble and wanted to send it back. How did the public accept those assurances?

The captain of the Fortune was Benjamin Gorham. Alas, not only were there other men of that name in Massachusetts, but two had the title “captain” from either maritime or military service. One was born in 1715, died in 1788, and is buried in Barnstable.

According to genealogists, though, this ship’s captain was the Benjamin Gorham born to Shubael and Mary (Thacher) Gorham in Barnstable on 5 June 1726. As of the late 1760s he commanded coasting vessels, bringing in the Hannah in 1769. In 1773, the owners of the Fortune sent him to London with a cargo and instructions to sell the ship there. Instead, Capt. Gorham came back with a range of goods, including those 28 1/2 chests of tea.

Nonetheless, Boston merchants continued to regard Gorham as reliable. On 18 April the Boston Post-Boy announced that he would soon sail the brig Leopard back across the Atlantic, carrying its owner, Jonathan Williams, Jr., and passengers in “genteel Accommodations.”

Gorham was back in Boston that fall; he married Nancy Hinckley in Boston on 28 Nov 1774 at the Rev. Samuel Stillman’s Baptist church. Eventually they had five children.

Early in the war, Gorham carried hatter Nathaniel Balch back to New England from London. In 1776 he became commander of a privateer named the Lizard, but that appears to have been his only military venture. In 1782 the Gorhams bought a house on North or Fore Street; four years later they sold it to John Hinckley, probably a relative of Nancy. In 1785 Capt. Gorham had the license for the Pine Tree Tavern in Dock Square. According to the Columbian Centinel, Gorham was widowed at the start of the year 1793, and genealogists say he died two years later.

The merchant who was supposed to receive most of the tea on the Fortune was Henry Lloyd (1709-1795). In its first report on the cargo, the Boston Gazette accused him of ordering forty chests. A week later, evidently after Lloyd showed them his letterbook, printers Edes and Gill ran a correction:

Better information obliges us to inform the public that Mr. Lloyd on the fifth and seventh of November last wrote to his correspondent to send him no tea on any account whatever, till further orders. . . .

Mr. Lloyd directly contrary to his order and expectation has been drawn into view in a light very disagreeable to himself, and wishes nothing more ardently than to have his conduct truly represented to his Country, with whom his highest ambition is to stand fair and agreeably.

In his politics, religion, and extensive property outside Massachusetts (family manor in Huntington, New York, shown above), Lloyd had many reasons to align with the royal government. As the political split widened in 1774, he signed the address welcoming Gen. Thomas Gage to Boston. Later he supplied the army. A niece he raised, Elizabeth, married royal appointee Joshua Loring, Jr., and also became mistress to Gen. William Howe. In 1776 Henry Lloyd joined the evacuation to Halifax. Though he made one return visit to Boston in 1785, Lloyd didn’t end up standing “fair and agreeably” with most of the people there.

Also among the Loyalist refugees was the brazier William Bowes, who in March 1774 loudly if unreliably stated that the owners of the Fortune had brought in tea for themselves. Although Bowes later claimed to have supported from the Crown from early on, in August 1769 he was among the many Boston men dining with the Sons of Liberty. Bowes’s father was a Congregationalist minister and his mother was a Hancock, so it would have been natural for him to be a Whig. Instead, after 1774 he declared his Loyalism by signing all the addresses to royal governors and then leaving the province.

As for those three owners of the Fortune, I still can’t trace William Thompson. Thomas Walley and Peter Boyer were, as I wrote before, solid Whig merchants up to 1774. Like Lloyd, they insisted that they had told their London contacts they didn’t want any tea and were completely surprised at what Capt. Gorham brought back.

Unlike Lloyd, Walley and Boyer remained trusted Whigs after the second Tea Party. Indeed, they became more politically active.

According to John W. Tyler’s Smugglers and Patriots, Walley was a documented smuggler, and he remained firmly in the center of the Boston business community. He served in the Massachusetts General Court during the war, and from 1786 to 1797 the town chose him as a selectman.

Meanwhile, Boyer served on Boston’s committee to help the poor after the Boston Port Bill and on the committee of correspondence, safety, and inspection in 1776. The following year he signed Massachusetts money along with John Scollay and Ezekiel Price. In 1782 David Jeffries resigned as Boston’s treasurer after many years, and the town meeting elected Boyer to that office, which he held until 1791. The community couldn’t have demonstrated any more trust in him. 

“Emptied and threw the Tea into the Water”

On Sunday, 6 Mar 1774, as described yesterday, the brig Fortune carried 28 1/2 chests of tea into Boston harbor, along with “Gun-Powder, Duck and Hemp.”

“The next day,” Gov. Thomas Hutchinson wrote, “the vessel was haled to the wharffe, where the vessels lay which had the East India Company’s tea.” And we know what had happened to that tea the preceding December.

That same Monday, the Boston Gazette ran this calm and measured item:

Messi’rs Edes & Gill, PUBLISH THIS!

It is said that Capt. [Benjamin] Gorham who is just arrived from London, has brought Forty Chests of that baneful, detested, dutied Article TEA, shipped by the East-India Company, their Brokers or Employers, and consigned to HENRY LLOYD, Esq; of this Town, Merchant.

Justice to ourselves and to AMERICA—Justice even to the other Consignees—A Regard to our own Reputation and Honor—Every Obligation binds us most SOLEMNLY, at once to DETERMINE ABSOLUTELY to oppose its Landing—Experience has fully convinced us that the Governor and the Custom-House Officers concern’d will lay INSUPERABLE Bars in the Way of sending it back to London. The Consent of the Consignee to have it return’d would be to no Purpose, if he be waited upon to request it.

The SACHEMS must have a Talk upon this Matter—Upon THEM we depend to extricate us out of this fresh Difficulty; and to THEIR Decisions all the GOOD People will say, AMEN!

That dispatch got some factual details wrong—namely, the number of tea chests, who had sent them, and who was to receive them.

But the Whig newspaper was accurate in predicting the royal authorities would make no compromises to allow the tea to be returned to Britain.

The owners of the Fortune—Thomas Walley, Peter Boyer, and William Thompson—laid out what they were doing that Monday in the next Boston News-Letter. With Lloyd, who had been sent sixteen tea chests; Henry Bromfield, who owned much of the ship’s cargo; and Gorham they “applied to the Collector and Comptroller of the Customs, and unitedly requested a Qualification for the Vessel to return with the Tea.” Because otherwise, they declared, there was “Danger of this Tea’s being destroyed.”

The Customs officers replied:

it was absolutely contrary to their Duty, and therefore could not give any Papers to qualify the Vessel to go back; and that although no Report [legal notice of the arrival] had been then made, yet she could not go away without being liable to be seized, and that even if they should give a Clearance, she would inevitably be stopped by the Officers of the King’s Ships, who were also Custom-House Officers . . . moreover that she could not be reported that Day after two o’Clock, and if not reported within 24 Hours the Capt. as liable to a Penalty of £100 Sterling.

Seeing where his interest lay, Capt. Gorham quickly reported the ship’s arrival and “took out a Permit to unlade the Gun-Powder.” Everyone agreed that was a good idea.

As for further steps, Boston town clerk William Cooper wrote to the Brookline committee of correspondence, seeking to rebuild the united front that had formed the preceding December:

We think it our duty to acquaint you that a Brigantine Benjamin Gorham Master is just arrived from London with a quantity of Tea on board liable to a duty: We ask the favor of your Company at the Selectmens Chamber in Boston toMorrow afternoon 3. OClock in order for a joint consultation, relative to this matter——

As it turned out, that meeting became moot.

Evening fell. Illuminated pictures of the Boston Massacre shone out from the windows of Mary Clapham’s Royal Exchange Tavern on King Street. (That display had been postponed from the 5th because that fell on the eve of the Sabbath.) As I recounted back here, in 1774 there was a new image attacking Gov. Hutchinson and Chief Justice Peter Oliver.

Bostonians had spent weeks talking about what to do with the first three shiploads of tea. They had no patience left for the Fortune. In the words of a petition from shippers in London:

about Eight o’Clock in the Evening…a great Number of Persons all of whom were unknown to the Captain and many of them disguised and dressed and talking like Indians armed with Axes and Hatchets with Force and violence entered on Board the said Vessel and broke open the Hatches and proceeded to rummage the Hold and hoisted out Twenty eight Chests of Tea…upon the Deck of the said Vessel and there with Hatchets axes and Clubs broke open the said Chests and emptied and threw the Tea into the Water whereby the same was wholly lost and destroyed.

That was the lesser-known second Boston Tea Party on the night of 7 Mar 1774.

COMING UP: John Adams surveys the scene.

“Chests of Bohea tea consigned to several persons”

At three o’clock in the afternoon of Sunday, 6 Mar 1774, Bostonians were jolted by the arrival of the brig Fortune.

More specifically, people were jolted by the news that that ship was carrying chests of tea. This was about ten weeks after the Boston Tea Party and about five weeks after local shopkeepers had agreed not to sell any tea.

Thomas Newell wrote in his diary for that day:

Captain Benjamin Gorham, nine weeks from London, brought 28 1/2 chests of Bohea tea consigned to several persons here.

Who were those “several persons”? Sixteen chests—more than half of the total—were consigned to Henry Lloyd (1709-1795), a wealthy Anglican merchant with relatives locally and on Long Island in New York. Those chests had been shipped to him by the London partnership of Monkhouse Davison and Abraham Newman, with insurance to the amount of £480 backed up five other London businessmen.

A letter to the Boston News-Letter identified “a principal Freighter in said Vessel” as “Mr. Bromfield”—the merchant Henry Bromfield (1727-1820). The Fortune carried a variety of cargo, so it’s possible Bromfield had no tea assigned to him, but it’s also possible he was supposed to receive up to 12 1/2 chests.

Three other businessmen also had a big financial interest in the situation: the owners of the Fortune, who were Thomas Walley, Peter Boyer, and William Thompson.

Thompson is hard to trace, not least because his name was so common. Walley and Boyer, on the other hand, were stalwart members of Boston’s mercantile and civic community. Walley had held town offices since 1763 while Boyer had served on town committees. Both those men dined with Boston’s Sons of Liberty in August 1769. They had signed most of the petitions and non-importation agreements of the past ten years.

What’s more, Boyer was one of the fifteen men whose names Paul Revere had engraved on the so-called “Sons of Liberty Bowl.” In 1770 the Boston town meeting had chosen Boyer for a committee “to draw up an Agreement for the Shopkeepers that have or do deal in Tea, not to dispose of any more of that Article untill the Revenue Acts are repealed.”

So how did those men’s ship end up carrying tea? That’s what they’d like to know, they said. In a 9 March letter to Richard Draper, printer of the Boston News-Letter, Walley, Boyer, and Thompson declared that back in September they had sent the Fortune to London “to have her sold.” They had told Capt. Gorham that if he couldn’t obtain their low asking price, he should bring back “a Quantity of Hemp on the Owners Account.”

As for tea, those three merchants said, they had been explicit in their instructions:

P.S. We are informed the India Company intend to ship a Quantity of Tea to this Place in private Ships,—if our brig should come back on Freight, we absolutely refuse to take on board any Tea for that Company, let the Offer be never so advantageous, or our Loss in the Sale of the Vessel never so great.

Yet the Fortune had returned with tea. Not shipped directly by the East India Company to its North American agents, but tea nonetheless. What‘s more, “a certain William Bowes, Brazier on Dock-Square,” was telling people that the ship’s owners had “imported a Quantity of Tea in that Vessel upon their own Account.” That they firmly denied.

But still, what could be done with the 28 1/2 chests of tea aboard the Fortune? For ten weeks people all over eastern Massachusetts had worked to keep all British tea out of the colony, even chests washed overboard in a shipwreck.

The situation was a powder keg—almost literally, since the Fortune was also carrying gunpowder.

TOMORROW: Attempts at official action.