Elizabeth Chapman’s Revolution

This afternoon I’m leading my new “Children of the Revolution: Boys & Girls in Cambridge During the Siege of Boston” walking tour for Cambridge Discovery Day, as described here.

One of the young people I’ll speak about is Elizabeth Chapman, born in Charlestown in March 1758 and thus seventeen years old when the war broke out. When she was seven, Eizabeth’s father had died while sailing to Surinam, leaving eight children with his widow Jemima.

I don’t know how the family supported themselves for the next decade, but Elizabeth’s older brother Jonathan went to sea four days before his nineteenth birthday, sailing in May 1775 from Gloucester. He returned a month later to find Charlestown “in Ashes” after the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Elizabeth, her other siblings, and their mother had “fled (with some little furniture to the Country)”—specifically to the house of Jonas Green in Malden. Massachusetts’s rebel government was scrambling to find homes for war refugees and ways they could support themselves.

Around the start of October 1775, Elizabeth Chapman went to work in a household in Cambridge. Not just any household—she became a maid at Gen. George Washington’s headquarters in the mansion left behind by the Loyalist John Vassall, shown above. Elizabeth reported to the household steward Timothy Austin, his wife, and the other women he had hired to cook the meals and clean the building.

On 4 April 1776, the day Gen. Washington headed south to New York, Austin paid “Eliza. Chapman 6 months wages” amounting to £2, 3s., and 4d. Not much cash, but Elizabeth had found food and shelter through the winter and relieved some of the burden on her family.

Eight years later, in 1784, Elizabeth Chapman married a Hartford-born sea captain named Ozias Goodwin. The couple settled in Boston and raised a family. Ozias became a merchant and served as an Overseer of the Poor, a respected public office. He died in 1819, and Elizabeth on 18 December 1831, fifty-five years after she had helped to look after the Washington household.

Who Slept on Dr. Warren’s Mattresses?

I’m opening this week and month with two Boston 1775 postings because of the crowd of holiday events. And because of our ongoing low-level obsession with the physical remains and relics of Dr. Joseph Warren (skull, bullet, teeth, &c.). We turn now to the doctor’s mattresses.

Sam Forman, author of Dr. Joseph Warren, has posted the text of a letter from the doctor’s fiancée Mercy Scollay on 17 Aug 1775, soon after she got out of besieged Boston:

I got to Mr Savages before 5 oclock found all friends well and heartily rejoiced to see me – was too much fatigued to go further till Wednesday when I came to Watertown where I’m now pening this –

My first inquiry was for Mr [John] Hancock whom I was lucky eno’ to find – I told him that I had learnt since I came down what was doing with the few effects my poor friend [i.e. Dr. Warren] was possess of out of Boston – that John W——n had sold every feather bed to General Washinton and for ought I know every thing else – that his picture so valuable to those who esteemed the original was somewhere near Roxbury the looking glasses that was brought out of town with it were (through carelessness) broke to pieces and I supposed all that was in their hands would share the same fate –

Mr H——k appeared much affected by my relation. Said his brother had no right to doo those things without proper authority and would certainly be called to account for those proceedings – he advised me not to go to Cambridge as the confusion of the town would distract me – that he was going himself there – would see the young gentleman and without letting him know he had seen me, or heard any thing would enquire what he proposed doing, and on his return would talk further on the subject

Feather-stuffed mattresses were actually valuable property in the eighteenth century. But Scollay’s response seem to be driven mostly by the sadness of losing aspects of her fiancé and the fear of being pushed out of the family. She hadn’t actually married Joseph Warren, after all.

Sam headlined this blog entry, “How Could He Sell the Feather Beds to George Washington?” The answer lies in the records of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, which on 22 July had said:

Resolved, That the Committee of Safety be desired to complete the furnishing General Washington’s House, and in particular to provide him four or five more Beds.

George Washington had moved into John Vassall’s empty house in Cambridge a week earlier. Also in that house was adjutant general Horatio Gates, secretary Joseph Reed, aides Thomas Mifflin and (as of 27 July) John Trumbull, perhaps other assistants, and household and personal servants. But clearly not enough beds.

Meanwhile, young Dr. John Warren was working a short distance away at the Continental Army hospital. And he had much of his late brother’s household property, including the bulky feather mattresses and frames. Was he really in a position to keep those under wraps?

Looking at this record and the headquarters accounts, I don’t think the young doctor sold the mattresses to Gen. Washington, as Scollay wrote. Rather, he sold them to the provincial government for the general’s use.

At the end of the siege, the headquarters steward, Timothy Austin, asked the Massachusetts legislature if he should pack up the household furniture to be moved to New York. The legislature replied no, those things were only on loan. Of all the furniture in Washington’s headquarters, only a set of chairs from the family of Suffolk County sheriff William Greenleaf can be identified today with a reasonably solid provenance. But it is interesting to know that Washington’s household slept on the late Dr. Warren’s beds.

Sam Forman will be speaking at the Old State House in Boston on Tuesday, 3 July, at 1:00 P.M. His gallery talk is titled “Dr. Joseph Warren and the Boston Massacre: Defining American Liberty on the Eve of Revolution,” and I’m sure he’ll sign books there. This event is free with museum admission.

Washington’s Wine Bottles?

The Northeast Museum Services Center of the National Park Service has an Archeology Lab, and that lab has a blog. Back in February it posted, “Did These Bottles Belong to George Washington?” as the hook for an article about finds at Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site in Cambridge.

The posting says:

Between 1759 and 1791 the house was home to several families. Both families were interested in botany and horticulture and purchased many plants for the yard. Evidence of fruit bearing trees, rye grass, cactus, and butterfly wings all speak to both the indigenous and exotic plants on the property.

The Longfellow house served as headquarters for George Washington and his officers from July 1775 to April 1776. During Washington’s 9 month occupation of the house, his steward, Ebenezer [actually, I believe, Timothy] Austin kept meticulous account books of expenses for food, drink and household goods. The account books list orders for mutton, fowl, butter, eggs, fish, smoking pipes, a sugar pot, and an earthen platter. . . .

The well-preserved biological material adds some additional clues. Seeds, eggshell fragments, and oyster shells, and animal bones were well-preserved in the feature. Fish, goat, chicken, rabbit, and rock dove are all represented. Seeds from a muskmelon or cucumber, apple or pear were also recovered from the basement and are listed as being purchased during Washington’s time in the home. Three cherry stones were also recovered and Ebenezer Austin entered payment for cherries in at least two different days in August 1775. One half of an olive pit was also recovered. Austin does not list any purchases for olives, but records from 1772 and again in 1783 document that George Washington ordered olives for his household in Mount Vernon. . . .

So how can we be certain that this trash deposit dates from the mere 9 months that George Washington occupied the house? We simply aren’t sure yet. The detailed accounts by Ebenezer Austin are extremely helpful and remind us that Historical Archaeology is a combination of historic research, architectural analysis, and archeological excavation.

That last paragraph acknowledges that it’s nearly impossible to tie artifacts to a particular nine months out of the house’s first thirty-two years. I suspect that Washington’s name comes up only because:

• We have his household accounts because he submitted them to the Continental Congress for reimbursement, and we don’t have such detail for the people who lived in the mansion the rest of the time.
• Gen. Washington’s a much bigger celebrity than John Vassall, Nathaniel Tracy, and Andrew Craigie, the other men known to have headed that household in the late 1700s.

But I suspect the archeologists know that very well. This is really a study of the garbage of an upper-class household in late-eighteenth-century New England. All the families, personal or military, who lived in that house probably shared a similar lifestyle when it came to the dinner table.

George Washington Sat Here

The invoice for cleaning the John Vassall house in Cambridge before Gen. George Washington moved in, which aide-de-camp Thomas Mifflin paid on 15 July 1775, includes this item:

Necessary house — [£]1.2.6

A few weeks later, on 25 August, Washington noted in his expense notebook a payment of £1.10 to “James Campbell—Necessaries for the House.” Four days later he made an equal payment to Jehoiakim Youkin for “D[itt]o. D[itt]o.”

“Necessary” was an eighteenth-century euphemism for an outhouse. Apparently the general had paid for Campbell and Youkin to clean out the headquarters latrines, or dig new ones. (The unusual name of Jehoiakim Youkin or Yokum also appears in the records of the Stockbridge Indians. His signed receipt for 30 shillings from the general’s secretary Joseph Reed is in the headquarters files.)

As autumn arrived, that outdoor facility no doubt seemed less enticing in the middle of the night. On 20 September steward Timothy Austin bought “3 Chamber Potts & 1 Pitcher.”

The house became more crowded in early December when Martha Washington, her son, and his wife arrived, along with some enslaved servants.

Late the next month the weather turned cold, with ice covering the Charles River for the first time. On 26 January 1776 and then on 14 February, Austin added six more chamber pots for the household, so on chilly nights the family wouldn’t have to visit that necessary house.

(The image above shows the pieces of a Rhenish chamber pot uncovered in an archeological dig at Mount Vernon.)

“Two or Three Women, for Cooks”

So if Adam Foutz wasn’t cooking all those robins for Gen. George Washington’s Cambridge household in the spring of 1776, who was?

The records of steward Timothy Austin mention a cook named Edward Hunt. On 19 July 1775, Austin wrote down the cost of going to Medford to fetch him and, most likely, his wife to work at the house Washington had just moved into.

Over the next few weeks, Austin gave Hunt payments of between one and three shillings every few days: eight payments in August and one in early September. But on 19 September, the steward “paid him in full for his Service in the Kitchen to the 14th. Instant,” and also “paid his Wife.” So the couple’s work was apparently over.

There are a couple of small mysteries associated with that employment. First is that Edward Hunt was already on site in late July when Gen. Washington gave money “To a French Cook.” Is that how Washington identified Hunt? Were two cooks vying for the same job? Was the Frenchman (not mentioned as such in Austin’s records) brought in for a special dinner? Did Washington dine out that day?

The second mystery is that Austin wrote down two payments to Mrs. (Elizabeth) Hunt in the spring of 1776 for “washing the food Linnen” and “washing the Servts. Cloaths.” If that was Edward Hunt’s wife, she might have come back to headquarters to earn some money.

But back to the robins. Since Edward Hunt was long gone by the time Austin started buying robins by the dozen, someone else must have cooked those birds. It looks like Washington’s kitchen staff for most of his stay in Cambridge consisted of women. Indeed, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress had initially resolved to recommend to the general a steward and “two or three women, for cooks.”

Unlike Hunt, the women didn’t receive cash payments every few days, so they barely show up in the household accounts. The ones still at work in the spring of 1776 were most likely some of the following:

• Austin’s daughter Mary, thirty years old and unmarried.
• Austin’s second wife, Lydia, who also still had three minor children.
• Dinah (no last name stated, and thus almost certainly an African-American), who started work around the beginning of August.
• Elizabeth Chapman, a seventeen-year-old who arrived in October.

The Austins and Chapman had all been living in Charlestown before the Battle of Bunker Hill destroyed most of the houses there. The Chapman family found refuge with another family in Malden, and Elizabeth probably jumped at the chance for work that came with room and board and payment at the end of her tenure.

Since there’s no way to be sure what these women’s arrangements were, it’s impossible to compare their compensation to what Austin had paid Edward Hunt in the fall. But I’m fairly certain they got paid less.

(Photo above taken by kroo2u at the Yorktown Victory Center, available through Flickr under a Creative Commons license.)

The Arrival of Adam Foutz

When Gen. George Washington stayed in what is now Longfellow National Historic Site during the siege of Boston, he kept a running expense account. The steward that the Massachusetts Provincial Congress had recommended, Timothy Austin, kept a more detailed record. And some invoices and receipts survive.

But nowhere in that material is the name of Adam Foutz, often identified as one of Washington’s cooks while he was in Cambridge, as I quoted yesterday.

Instead, Adam Foutz shows up first in documents from Pennsylvania, printed in the vast Pennsylvania Archives series. They show that he enlisted in Capt. John Patterson’s company of the 2nd Pennsylvania Regiment for the length of the war. One entry says that Foutz arrived on 2 Dec 1776; others imply he enlisted one year later, or perhaps that was when he was transfered. This must be the same guy because documents list him as “cook” and “baking for the army.”

The online Pennsylvania State Archives database shows that the state has several documents related to Foutz’s pay.

Adam Foutz thus came out of Pennsylvania, and joined the Continental Army months after its commander had left Massachusetts. There’s no evidence to link him to the “French Cook” whom Washington paid on 24 July 1775. (Which makes sense really, since Foutz isn’t a common French name.) Alas, there’s also no evidence to identify who that “French Cook” was.

TOMORROW: Adam Foutz and the commander-in-chief’s guard.

Weekly Robins

On 13 Mar 1776, things were looking good for Gen. George Washington. Eight days before, the American army had placed heavy cannon on Dorchester heights. The British military had set out to attack that position, but a sudden storm broke that effort almost before it began. There were clear signs that the British were planning to evacuate Boston at last.

At Washington’s Cambridge headquarters, steward Timothy Austin purchased something new for the general’s table.

13 March: “Paid for Six Robbins” … 8d.

These were the first robins that Austin recorded buying since he began managing the general’s household in late July 1775. Perhaps they had been included in the “Fowls” he bought regularly, but I suspect robins were a springtime delicacy.

16 March: “Paid for 1 Dozn. Robbins”… 1s.6d.

Among the other poultry that Washington, his military family, and guests had consumed in the preceding months were chickens, pigeons (some “Fatted”), partridges, “Turkies,” ducks and wood ducks, and geese, both wild and ordinary.

22 March: “for 1 Doz Robbins” … 1s.4d.

The robins appear to have been a hit, given how many more times Austin bought them in Washington’s final three weeks at Cambridge.

By April the general was packing to leave for New York, where he expected the British military to land. Much of the army was already on its way. He had bought a tent and other equipment for a summertime campaign, and established a guard unit to look after his command materials. Washington would leave Cambridge on 4 April, but before then there might well have been a celebratory dinner or two.

1 April: “Paid for 2 Dozn. Robbins” … 2s.8d.