“To become private secretary to General Washington”?

The Rev. Thaddeus Mason Harris (1768-1842) grew up from a poor childhood to regain his family’s place in the cultural establishment of greater Boston. He was the librarian at Harvard College for several years before becoming a Unitarian minister in Dorchester.

And whenever I read the man’s early life life story, I come away feeling dubious.

All the profiles of Harris seem to derive from a letter that the Rev. John Pierce wrote on 1 Mar 1849. One of the anecdotes in that letter is:

On leaving College, he taught a school for a year at Worcester; and, at the end of that time, was applied to, to become General [George] Washington’s Private Secretary. He had consented to serve; but, in consequence of taking the small pox, he was prevented from entering at once on the duties of the place, and it was filled by Tobias Lear.

Using Pierce’s letter, the Rev. Nathaniel L. Frothingham wrote a longer reminiscence for the Massachusetts Historical Society. Here’s his version of the same anecdote:

He was graduated at Harvard College in July, 1787, at the age of nineteen. . . . After completing his collegiate course, he became the teacher of a school in Worcester. In this service he remained for a year; and here he formed the acquaintance of Miss Mary, the only daughter of Dr. Elijah and Mrs. Dorothy Dix, who was to be the partner of his whole life.

Immediately on leaving this pleasant town, he was honored by an application to become private secretary to General Washington. His heart leaped at such a proposal, which promised to bring him into connection with the greatest man of his nation and time, and with the leading events of a wonderful era in the fortunes of his country and the destinies of the earth. His patriotism and his skill with the pen, his love of history and of poetry both, conspired to recommend such a preferment, and promised to open a career for his highest aspirations. Now the course of his life seemed to be beaten out for him in high places, and the motto of his ring was translating itself into distinct prophecy.

But no sooner had he signified his acceptance of the appointment than he was struck down with that terrible malady, the small-pox, which at that time had been relieved of only the smaller half of its original terrors. Public affairs cannot wait for the slow recoveries of sickness and for private convenience; and before he was able to arrive at his post the place was filled by Tobias Lear, a gentleman who left the University the same year that young Harris entered it, and who afterwards went through a long course of diplomatic service as Consul-General at St. Domingo and at Tripoli.

In 1788, Lear had already been Washington’s secretary for four years; he wasn’t second choice to Harris. Lear also remained in Washington’s employ through 1793, moving with the first President to New York and Philadelphia, so there’s no sign of an opening.

I’ve seen no mention of Harris in Washington’s correspondence. And if someone at Mount Vernon wrote to Harris asking him to become the general’s closest employee, as Pierce and Frothingham understood, that would surely have left a paper trail.

Oney Judge and “the President’s Wishes”

As I reported yesterday, George Washington has been our richest President so far. Most of his property consisted of land, both plantations in Virginia and unsettled claims to the west, and slaves. A lot of those slaves had come to his wife Martha or her children, inherited from her first husband’s family, and George felt obliged to preserve that wealth.

When the federal government moved to Pennsylvania in 1791, that state’s law gradually ending slavery posed a problem for the Washingtons. If they brought their household servants to Philadelphia—and how could a rich couple live without their household servants?—then those people were entitled to be free after six months in the state.

On 24 April Washington’s plantation manager, Tobias Lear, wrote to him about what the U.S. Attorney General, Edmund Randolph, had said about that law:

But he observed, that if, before the expiration of six months, they could, upon any pretence whatever, be carried or sent out of the State, but for a single day, a new era would commence on their return, from whence the six months must be dated for it requires an entire six months for them to claim that right.

Lear then discussed the specific situations of several enslaved people, including: “Mrs Washington proposes in a short time to make an excursion as far as Trenton, and of course, she will take with her Oney & Christopher, which will carry them out of the State; so that in this way I think the matter may be managed very well.”

Oney Judge was Martha Washington’s personal maid. She had been born at Mount Vernon around 1774. Judge was part of Martha’s property, and the First Lady planned to bequeath her to a granddaughter. So the Washingtons made sure that she was never in Pennsylvania for six months at a stretch.

Five years after Lear’s letter, on 21 May 1796, Judge slipped away from the Presidential mansion. She later told an interviewer, “I had friends among the colored people of Philadelphia, had my things carried there beforehand, and left Washington’s house while they were eating dinner.” Frederick Kitt, the President’s steward in Philadelphia, placed an advertisement seeking Judge in the 24 May Philadelphia Gazette.

At the end of June, Thomas Lee, Jr., wrote from New York to President Washington in response to, as he wrote, “the desire you expressed that I should make enquiry about your runaway Woman.” Lee reported a cook saying that Judge had gone north to Boston, and he planned to make inquiries there. Washington knew multiple men named Thomas Lee, and I’m not sure which one this was, but he appears to have been pursuing Judge as a private favor.

Later that summer Elizabeth Langdon, daughter of Sen. John Langdon, recognized Oney Judge on the street in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Slavery was already unenforceable in that state. According to Washington’s understanding, Langdon “was about to stop and speak to her, but she brushed quickly by, to avoid it.”

The President moved to track Judge down—but instead of continuing his efforts through private channels, he began to use the resources of the federal government. On 1 Sept 1796 he wrote to his Secretary of the Treasury, Oliver Wolcott:

Enclosed is the name, and description of the Girl I mentioned to you last night. She has been the particular attendent on Mrs Washington since she was ten years old; and was handy & useful to her, being perfect a Mistress of her needle. . . .

Whether she is Stationary at Portsmouth, or was there en passant only, is uncertain; but as it is the last we have heard of her, I would thank you for writing to the Collector of that Port, & him for his endeavours to recover, & send her back: What will be the best method to effect it, is difficult for me to say. If enquiries are made openly, her Seducer (for she is simple and inoffensive herself) would take the alarm, & adopt instant measures (if he is not tired of her) to secrete or remove her. To sieze, and put her on board a Vessel bound immediately to this place, or to Alexandria which I should like better, seems at first view to be the safest & least expensive. But if she is discovered, the Collector, I am persuaded, will pursue such measures as to him shall appear best, to effect those ends; and the cost shall be re-embursed & with thanks.

The “Collector” was Joseph Whipple (1738-1816, shown above), the head of the Customs service in Portsmouth and thus a federal employee who answered to Wolcott. He had held the same position for the state of New Hampshire until 1789, and the new President had reappointed him on John Langdon’s recommendation.

Whipple wrote back to the Treasury Secretary on 10 September, “I shall with great pleasure execute the President’s wishes in the matter.” The next month, on 4 October, he wrote again, telling Wolcott that Judge had expressed “a thirst for compleat freedom” as well as “great affection & reverence for her Master & Mistress”; she was (at least initially) willing to return to Mount Vernon if the Washingtons guaranteed her freedom on their deaths.

The President replied directly to Whipple on 28 November, rejecting those terms. He also told the Collector:

…you would oblige me, by pursuing such measures as are proper, to put her on board a Vessel bound either to Alexandria or the Federal City; Directed in either case, to my Manager at Mount Vernon, by the door of which the Vessel must pass; or to the care of Mr Lear at the last mentioned place, if it should not stop before it arrives at that Port.

I do not mean however, by this request, that such violent measures should be used as would excite a mob or riot, which might be the case if she has adherents, or even uneasy sensations in the minds of well disposed Citizens. rather than either of these shd happen, I would forego her services altogether; and the example also, which is of infinite more importance. The less is said before hand, and the more celerity is used in the act of Shipping her, when an opportunity presents, the better chance Mrs Washington (who is desirous of receiving her again) will have to be gratified.

Again, this wasn’t government business. Washington was asking Whipple to do him a big favor, one gentleman for another. But Whipple was a federal government employee, and he owed his position to Washington. Today that would strike us as a clear conflict of interest.

There’s more to Oney Judge’s story, and the Washingtons’ pursuit of her. Today I’m just looking at how having the resources of government presents a great temptation to a President with private interests.

Schoolboy Views of President Washington in 1789

When President George Washington finally reached Boston on 24 Oct 1789, he found that the town had planned a huge celebration for him. Huge.

The young architect Charles Bulfinch had designed a triumphal arch, shown above. (For more about that structure, see the Massachusetts Historical Society’s recent posting about it.) Townsfolk turned out in a big parade, organized by their professions.

Among those groups were Boston’s schoolboys. The town was in the midst of reorganizing its public school system to allow girls to attend as well (for half the year), but boys were still considered the model scholars.

William H. Sumner was one of those boys, and his recollections of the day appeared in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register in 1860:

I, then a boy of between nine and ten years of age, was a pupil at Master [Oliver Willington] Lane’s West Boston writing-school. Washington entered Boston on Saturday, the 24th of October, 1789. The children of the schools were all paraded in the main street, and stood in the gutters in front of the long rows of men whose strength was required and exerted to protect them from the crowd on the side-walks as the procession passed along the street. The General rode on a noble white charger with characteristic erectness and dignity. Colonel [Tobias] Lear and Major [William] Jackson accompanied him as his aids. Washington was in uniform, and as he rode, his head uncovered, he inclined his body first on one side and then on the other, without distinctly bowing, but so as to observe the multitude in the streets, and the ladies in the windows and on the tops of the houses, who saluted him as he passed.

Master Lane’s boys were placed in front of Mr. Jonathan Mason’s hard-ware store, near the bend in Washington Street (then Cornhill) opposite Williams Court. I well remember the laugh which our salute created, when, as the General passed us, we rolled in our hands our quills with the longest feathers we could get.

Mr. N. R. Sturgis, who was at school with me at that time, remembers this circumstance. From our position at the angle of the street, we had a fair view of the procession as it approached and after it passed us. A select choir of singers, led by [Daniel] Rhea, the chorister of Brattle Street Church, was placed on the triumphal arch under which the procession was to pass, and which extended from the Old State House to the stores of Joseph Pierce and others at the opposite side of Cornhill. The arch was decorated with flags, flowers and evergreen, so that the musicians were not seen until they rose up and sang the loud paean, commencing as Washington first came in sight at the angle where we stood, swelling in heavy chorus until he passed from our sight under the triumphal arch and took his station upon it.

And Edward G. Porter’s Rambles in Old Boston (1887) reported:

Isaac Harris…was born in 1779, one of ten children of Samuel Harris, mast-maker. . . . At the reception of President Washington, in 1789, Samuel Harris was chosen to carry the mast-makers’ flag, which is still preserved in the family. On the same occasion the young Isaac participated with the boys of the public schools in doing honor to the distinguished visitor. They were ranged in two lines on the mall through which Washington passed on horseback. Each boy held a quill pen in his left hand, and was to take off his cap with the other when the President approached. Harris agreed with the boy next him that, as soon as they had made their bow, they would stroke their pens across the President’s boot. They did it successfully, and kept the pens as mementos of a famous event.

Anne Haven Thwing reports, “Harris was one of the six boys to receive the first Franklin medal in 1792,” endowed by Benjamin Franklin and still given to top scholars today. In 1810 he helped to save the Old South Meeting-House from a fire, receiving a silver cup from the congregation as thanks.

Washington’s Birthday Shifts

When George Washington was born, the British Empire was still using the Julian Calendar and refusing to abide by the more accurate, but papist, Gregorian Calendar. His birth was recorded as coming on 11 Feb 1731/2. The format of that “Old Style” date acknowledged how for most of continental Europe and their colonies the new year had started on 1 January instead of at the spring equinox. The Gregorian date was eleven days later in the month.

Britain and its colonies finally adopted the Gregorian Calendar in 1752. But it’s not clear when Washington himself started to consider his birthday as now pegged to 22 February. His diaries don’t mention anniversary celebrations or ruminations on either date.

In publishing an edition of Gen. Washington’s wartime expense accounts, John C. Fitzpatrick speculated that the first public celebration of the commander’s birthday occurred at Valley Forge on 22 Feb 1778. However, his only evidence was how on that date the general’s office paid the musicians from Col. Thomas Procter’s artillery regiment 15s. And that payment could mean a lot of things.

As I quoted yesterday, gentlemen in Milton, Massachusetts, celebrated Washington’s birthday on 11 Feb 1779. I’ve seen reports but not sources for a celebration in Winchester, Virginia, the same day. On 12 Feb 1781 (the eleventh being a Sunday), the French general Rochambeau declared a holiday for his troops in honor of the American commander-in-chief. Throughout the 1780s, in fact, the public celebrations of Washington’s birthday were pegged to the 11th.

On 14 Feb 1790 Washington’s secretary Tobias Lear wrote to Clement Biddle, U.S. Marshal for Pennsylvania:

In reply to your wish to know the Presidents birthday it will be sufficient to observe that it is on the 11th of February Old Style; but the almanack makers have generally set it down opposite to the 11th day of February of the present Style; how far that may go towards establishing it on that day I dont know; but I could never consider it any otherways than as stealing so many days from his valuable life as is the difference between the old and the new Style.

In 1790 the new Society of St. Tammany in New York voted to celebrate Washington’s birthday on 22 February, and in the decade that followed other celebrations shifted to that date. As late as 1799, however, Alexandria, Virginia, still observed Washington’s birthday on 11 February even though earlier that month he wrote to Jonathan Trumbull about “my birthday (the 22d. instant [i.e., of this month]).”

TOMORROW: The meaning of Washington’s birthday.

“Four Dollars at Christmas” for Philip Bateman

In early 1773, Philip Bateman (also spelled Bottiman) arrived at Mount Vernon as a gardener. As that historic site’s online encyclopedia says, in March George Washington recorded paying a man to bring Bateman from Leeds, now Leedstown. He had “bought” the gardener for £35 from a Mr. Hodge.

Bateman was apparently an indentured servant, not a slave. He continued to work at Mount Vernon after serving whatever time he had left in his contract. In 1786 Bateman received £20 as a year’s wages, but he enjoyed other benefits.

Three years earlier, plantation manager Lund Washington (1737-1796) wrote to his cousin, the general:

As to Bateman (the old gardener) I have no expectation of his ever seeking Another home—indulge him but in getg Drunk now and then, and he will be happy—he is the best Kitchen gardener to be met with.

In April 1787, the estate formalized that indulgence. Someone wrote a contract for the gardener, referring to him as “Bater.” The gardener promised:

to serve the sd. George Washington, for the term of one year, as a Gardner, and that he will, during said time, conduct himself soberly, diligently and honestly, that he will faithfully and industriously perform all, and every part of his duty as a Gardner, to the best of his knowledge and abilities, and that he will not, at any time, suffer himself to be disguised with liquor, except on the times hereafter mentioned.

In Consideration of these things being well and truly performed on the part of the sd. Philip Bater, the said George Washington doth agree to allow him (the sd. Philip) the same kind and quantity of provisions as he has heretofore had; and likewise, annually, a decent suit of clothes befitting a man in his station; to consist of a Coat, Vest and breeches; a working Jacket and breeches, of homespun, besides; two white Shirts; three Check Do; two pair of yarn Stockings; two pair of Thread Do; two linnen Pocket handkerchiefs; two pair linnen overalls; as many pair of Shoes as are actually necessary for him; four Dollars at Christmas, with which he may be drunk 4 days and 4 nights; two Dollars at Easter to effect the same purpose; two Dollars also at Whitsontide, to be drunk two days; A Dram in the morning, and a drink of Grog at Dinner or at Noon.

Bateman’s name remained in the Mount Vernon accounts until 1789.

It’s not clear who wrote that Bateman could “be drunk 4 days and 4 nights…at Christmas.” The general’s nephew and manager George Augustine Washington (1759-1793) wrote out the contract. The general’s secretary Tobias Lear witnessed it and may have had more leeway to be frank. (Incidentally, after G. A. Washington’s death, his widow married Lear.) But George Washington himself usually gets the credit for approving the terms.

Washington Documents on Display for One Day Only

A loyal Boston 1775 reader alerted me to this event in Philadelphia.

The Historical Society of Pennsylvania will host a display of documents related to George Washington on one day only this week: Wednesday, 3 August, from 12:30 to 7:30 P.M. The display will include:

• one of Washington’s pocket diaries.
• Martha Washington’s cookbook and household journal while she was in Philadelphia.
• the diary of Washington’s private secretary, Tobias Lear (shown here, courtesy of USHistory.org), who chronicled the President’s last days and death (quoted back here)
• a lock of Washington’s hair
• portraits of Washington by Charles Willson Peale and Gilbert Stuart.

The H.S.P. event is free to all, and comes in conjunction with the exhibit “Discover the Real George Washington” at the National Constitution Center.

For those of us not able to visit Philadelphia on short notice, the society will make digital images of the documents and artifacts and create an online display by the end of the summer.

George Washington: Buried Alive?!

On 12 Dec 1799, George Washington caught a cold, which turned into an infected throat. (Acute bacterial epiglottitis, according to this site on his health.) The contemporaneous notes by his secretary, Tobias Lear, describe what happened next in great detail.

The former President’s throat swelled so that he could not swallow any medicine. He called an overseer to bleed him, though his wife Martha feared he would lose too much blood. “A piece of flannel dip’d in salvolatila was put around his neck, and his feet bathed in warm water; but without affording any relief.” Then the professionals arrived:

Dr. [James] Craik came in soon after, and upon examining the General, he put a blister of Cantharides on the throat, took some more blood from him, and had a gargle of Vinegar & sage tea, and ordered some Vinegar and hot water for him to inhale the steam which he did;—but in attempting to use the gargle he was almost suffocated. . . .

Dr. [Elisha Cullen] Dick came in about 3 o’clock, and Dr. [Gustavus] Brown arrived soon after. Upon Dr. Dick’s seeing the General and consulting a few minutes with Dr. Craik he was bled again; the blood came very slow, was thick, and did not produce any symptoms of fainting. Dr. Brown came into the chamber soon after; and upon feeling the General's pulse &c. the Physicians went out together.

Washington began to put his final affairs in order: rechecking his will, authorizing Lear to settle the account books, thanking his doctors. Meanwhile, they debated Dr. Dick’s suggestion of a tracheotomy, which was then a rare and difficult surgery; Dr. Craik decided it was too risky.

On Saturday, 14 December, Washington had one more piece of business to attend to:

About ten o’clk he made several attempts to speak to me before he could effect it, at length he said,—“I am just going. Have me decently buried; and do not let my body be put into the Vault in less than three days after I am dead.” I bowed assent, for I could not speak. He then looked at me again and said, “Do you understand me? I replied “Yes.” “Tis well” said he.

Evidently the general was afraid that he might be interred before he was truly dead. He had once seen one of his slaves revived after being thought dead, and didn’t want that possibility to be discarded too quickly.

Washington died within an hour of that conversation. The next day, 15 December, another doctor—William Thornton—arrived and proposed warming up the body to try the tracheotomy, just in case. Martha Washington declined. Lear wrote:

Mrs. Washington sent for me in the Morning and desired I would send up to Alxa. [Alexandria] and have a Cofiin made: which I did. Doctor Dick measured the body, the dimensions of which were as follows

In length	6	feet	3 1/2	inchs.	exact.
Across the shoulders	1	"	9	"	"
Across the elbows	2	"		"	"

Of course, that was the general’s length lying down.

George Washington was interred on 18 December, four days after he died—fulfilling his last request.