The Memory of Samuel Ely

For the last two days I’ve quoted advertisements from Connecticut newspapers spelling out a dispute between militia colonel William Williams of Wilmington, Vermont, and the former minister Samuel Ely. That wasn’t the last dispute that Ely got into.

In April 1782, while living in Conway, Massachusetts, Ely led a crowd that kept the Hampshire County court closed, just as similar crowds had done in 1774 and throughout the war. Though Massachusetts had a new constitution, Ely and the scores of men who supported him didn’t think the system was fair to poor farmers. Ely is described as picking up a stick and shouting, “Come on, my brave boys, we’ll go to the woodpiles and get clubs enough to knock their grey wigs off!” State authorities arrested Ely, but a crowd of over a hundred men broke him out of the Northampton jail.

Ely returned to Wilmington, Vermont, for refuge, only to find the same issues in that little nation. By the end of the year Ely was convicted for saying, “The state of Vermont is a damned state, and the act for the purpose of raising ten shillings upon every hundred acres of land is a cursed act, and they that made it are a cursed body of men.” Vermont officials happily gave Ely back to Massachusetts, which locked him up for a while.

After winning his release, Ely seems to have laid low, or perhaps he just got lost in the crowds of the Shays’ Rebellion. But he resurfaced in Maine in 1790, and was soon leading a settlers’ campaign against big landowner Henry Knox. While hiding from legal authorities he managed to publish pamphlets with titles like The Unmasked Nabob of Hancock County; or, The Scales Dropt from the Eyes of the People and The Deformity of a Hideous Monster, Discovered in the Province of Maine, by a Man in the Woods, Looking after Liberty. Ely finally died in the late 1790s.

In short, Samuel Ely was a radical organizer, constantly fighting against economic inequality according to his interpretation of Christian scripture. He wasn’t the sort of Revolutionary whom America’s wealthy liked to remember.

In Travels in New-York and New-England, Timothy Dwight (1752-1817, shown above) called Ely “the great fomenter of discontent, confusion, and sedition, in Massachusetts,” and wrote, “The remainder of his life was a tissue, woven of nothing but guilt and infamy.” Dwight had the most to say about Ely’s early work as a minister in Somers, Connecticut:

Ely was an unlicensed and disorderly preacher, and could not obtain an ordination. His character even at that time, although less known and probably less corrupted than it was afterwards, was yet so stained, as to render it impossible for him to enter the ministry. But he possessed the spirit, and so far as his slender abilities would permit the arts, of a demagogue in an unusual degree. He was voluble, vehement in address, bold, persevering, active, brazen-faced in wickedness, and under the accusation and proof of his crimes would still wear a face of serenity, and make strong professions of piety. At the same time he declared himself, everywhere, the friend of the suffering and oppressed, and the champion of violated rights. Wherever he went, he industriously awakened the jealousy of the humble and ignorant against all men of superior reputation, as haughty, insolent, and oppressive. Jealousy he knew to be, among human passions, the most easily and certainly kindled. Both his character and his circumstances were in his own view deplorable; and he felt therefore, that he had nothing to lose beside his neck; a loss too uncommon, in this state, to be seriously dreaded, except in the case of murder. Of course, he undauntedly applied himself to any wickedness, which promised him either consequence or bread.

In fact, Ely was qualified to preach as a graduate of Yale, the same college where Dwight was president for twenty-two years. Dwight was an arch-conservative of early America, so of course he hated Ely’s preaching against the upper class. Despite the omissions and obvious political leaning of Dwight’s statement, later authors repeated his judgment on Ely.

In 1858 Benjamin H. Hall’s History of Eastern Vermont described Samuel Ely’s military career this way:

A bold, but rash and impetuous man, he had served in the battle of Bennington as a volunteer, and being connected with no company or regiment had fought without the advice or direction of any person. He had been court-martialed after the action on account of his singular conduct in retaining a large amount of valuable plunder, but had been honorably discharged on proof that he had taken only such articles as he had won in his own independent method of warfare.

That account said nothing about Ely commanding of the Wilmington militiamen after their colonel had left, as three of them later wrote. Instead, it painted Ely as unable to get along with any group, and getting away with looting on that account. (Hall had only good things to say about Ely’s accuser William Williams, though he had to note that Williams had ended up moving to Canada.)

Another Yale-connected author actually concealed some favorable information about Ely. In Yale and Her Honor-roll in the American Revolution, 1775-1783 (1888), Henry P. Johnston quoted the 1778 advertisements from Ely’s supporters in Vermont, but incompletely. He left out the part about Ely leading the Wilmington militia and the Vermont men’s denunciations of Williams for plundering himself. Johnston did state: “After the war Mr. Ely agitated socialistic views, got into trouble, defied the authorities in Massachusetts, was denounced as a ‘mobber,’ and arrested.”

It wasn’t until the Depression that historians began to recognize Samuel Ely as a political leader, albeit an unsuccessful one. In 1932 the New England Quarterly published an article by Robert E. Moody titled “Samuel Ely: Forerunner of Shays.” In 1986 the Maine Historical Society Quarterly published Alan Taylor’s “The Disciples of Samuel Ely: Settler Resistance against Henry Knox on the Waldo Patent, 1785-1801.” And now the new Massachusetts Historical Review offers Shelby M. Balik’s “‘Persecuted in the Bowels of a Free Republic’: Samuel Ely and the Agrarian Theology of Justice, 1768-1797.”

Samuel Ely and the “Plunder Master General”

It took several months for Samuel Ely to respond to the accusation that militia colonel William Williams lobbed down at him from Vermont after the Battle of Bennington. But when he did, Ely had some impressive allies on his side.

On 13 Nov 1778, the Connecticut Gazette of New London published two new messages from Vermont:

Benington, Sep. 5, 1778.

These Certify, that Mr. Samuel Ely, the Preacher, who [was] in the two bloody Battles at Benington, and behaved with the greatest Honor, Valiantry and Courage in both Actions, and all the other Accounts did, when desired, appear before the Court of Enquiry, and made a handsome Defence relative to the Plunder he had taken; as he said what he had taken was at the point of the Sword, as a Volunteer for his groaning, bleeding Country; and he further said, he supported himself and lived upon his own Money while in Camp, and was at no charge to his Country. And the Court being fully satisfied with what he said and what he did, they never ordered Mr. Ely to be advertised, nor stigmatized, to my certain Knowledge, as I was both a Member and Clerk of that Court, at the same Time. This I solemnly declare as real Fact, and accordingly I request this to be published both by my own and Mr. Ely’s desire.

SAM ROBISON; Captain, and Clerk of that Court of Enquiry.

Wilmington, Sept. 11, 1788.
To the PUBLIC.

We the Committee of Safety, are very sorry we are obliged to inform the World, that Williams, who advertised Mr. Ely in Hartford Papers, after Benington Battle, should act such a dirty, scurrilous Part as to advertise Mr. Ely in the Name of the Court of Enquiry, when we are absolutely certain the Court never had it in their Hearts to do it, as appears by the Records of the Clerk and other good Evidence we have obtained; and what adds to the Guilt of Williams in his cruel and abusive Conduct towards Mr. Ely is his boldly and openly denying that he ever ordered Mr. Ely to be advertised, but as he did prove a Coward in leaving the Field in Time of Action, so Mr. Ely taking his Place and Command, the World will at once judge why he wickedly advertised Mr. Ely; We therefore declare that Williams whom the Soldiers universally called Plunder Master General, has acted like himself, and abused Mr. Ely without the least Cause or Reason; And as to Mr. Ely, we all know that General [John] Stark said, if he had five Thousand such Men as Mr. Ely, he would drive Burgoyne and his Army to the D___. Besides, we are sorry that Mr. Ely should be so treated by Williams and some others, when no Man could exert himself more for his distressed Country then he has done in various Instances.

Signed by the Committee of Safety for Wilmington, in Vermont State.
JOHN RUGG,
JOSEPH HARTWELL,
BENJ. PIERCE.

N.B. This we request to be printed in any of the Printing-Offices in Connecticut.

So according to those four men (whose names I confirmed are in Vermont records), Williams had neither a valid reason nor the authority to call for Ely’s arrest. And according to three of them, Williams had shirked his own duty as a militia officer during the Bennington campaign even though that meant forgoing his habitual opportunities for plunder.

In fact, if those Vermonters were telling the truth, the list of things Williams had accused Ely of stealing the year before while leading the Wilmington militia might actually have been items he would have taken for himself. (So no wonder Williams was so upset.)

TOMORROW: How this dispute has been treated in the history books.

[The image above is a latter-day portrait of Gen. John Stark.]

The Rev. Samuel Ely at Bennington

The latest issue of The Massachusetts Historical Review, for the year 2013, contains Shelby M. Balik’s paper “‘Persecuted in the Bowels of a Free Republic’: Samuel Ely and the Agrarian Theology of Justice, 1768-1787.”

Ely was from Connecticut, born in 1740 and educated at Yale. He became minister in Somers, Connecticut, in 1769 and was ousted in 1771—a remarkably short time, even for someone so fervent about arguing the New Light side of the period’s favorite religious controversy. As time went on, however, Ely only became more fervent and more radical.

In August 1777, he took part in the Battle of Bennington. Evidently not as part of any particular company, because he wasn’t the sort of man to take orders, but as an unattached volunteer.

On 7 Oct 1777, on the top of its center column, the Connecticut Courant of Hartford ran this notice from militia colonel William Williams of Wilmington, Vermont:

Run away from Head Quarters, about the 5th instant, with the following valuable articles, one infamaus, loquacious SAMUEL ELY, of Somers, formerly an itinerant preacher, and auctioneer of the gospel. This inhuman, plundering villain may be distinguished by his being constantly found cloathed with a face of brass, and armed with a lying tongue in his own vindication and defence, when most guilty.

ARTICLES.
A number of silk and worsted hose, one British officers coat, one gold diamond ring, one pair of shoes, a number of holland shirts, several pair of breeches, (some of which he sold to the prisoners for solid coin) one gold eppalet, one lawn apron, a considerable quantity of linnen, some engineers instruments, a pocket book, and many other articles too numerous to mention; all of which he knew to be in direct opposition to general orders.

It is earnestly requested of all comittees of safety and others in authority, in the neighbouring towns; to apprehend the said Ely and convey him to this place, or confine him so that he may be brought to justice, for which they shall receive ten dollars reward and have all necessary charges allowed them.

By order of the Court of Enquiry,
WILLIAM WILLIAMS President.

Reading between the lines, one suspects that Williams didn’t much like Mr. Ely.

TOMORROW: Samuel Ely’s side of the story.

“Voucher for rations delivered at the Port of Williamston”?

Last month the Boston Globe reported on the opening of a vault in the Massachusetts State House. Officials found nothing earth-shaking inside, and the contents produced more small mysteries than they solved.

But perhaps the most intriguing item, provenance unknown, was a note inked in elaborate cursive script on a small piece of aged paper dated 1787: “Voucher for rations delivered at the Port of Williamston.”

Treasury staff members said they had no idea where the item was from or its significance. But that note and other historical documents from the safe are set to be examined this week by a specialist from the state archives.

That document is not among the items shown in the photo gallery accompanying the article, so I’m working with no more information than in those paragraphs. But here are some guesses.

Might “Williamston” be how this receipt writer spelled “Williamstown”?

Might “Port” actually be “Post” or “Fort”?

Why would Massachusetts have supplied food to a military post in Williamstown? There were forts built there when Englishmen settled the town in the 1750s, but they had long been put to other use by 1787.

That was the the year of the Shays Rebellion, however, when special militia regiments recruited in and around Boston marched west to confront an uprising of farmers and veterans. After a couple of skirmishes, the rebellion melted away (as did the militia, a few weeks later).

Some of the uprising’s leaders found refuge in Vermont, then an independent state. Militia officer Royall Tyler crossed the border to try to capture Daniel Shays in early 1787. He wrote home of “Driving 40 miles into the State of New York at the Head of a Party to apprehend Shay” and “closing the Pases to Canada.” Williamstown is at the border of Massachusetts, New York, and Vermont, so perhaps that was where Tyler’s militiamen were stationed and supplied for a while.

(Photograph courtesy of teacher Mr. Voelger.)

The Mystery of “Sir Jack Brag”

In a comment on yesterday’s posting, Sean Kelleher brought up another alleged nickname for Gen. John Burgoyne: “Sir Jack Brag.” How far back does that go?

The nickname appears in print for the first time in late 1842, in an issue of Graham's Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine. The editor closed an issue with an article called “The Minstrelsy of the Revolution,” collecting a bunch of songs and humorous poems on Revolutionary subjects. That article said:

Burgoyne, more frequently than any other British officer, was the butt of the continental wits. His verses were parodied, his amours celebrated in songs of the mess-table, and his boasts and the weaker points in his nature caricatured in ballads and petite comedies. We obtained a manuscript copy of the song from which the following verses are quoted, from an octogenarian Vermonter who, with the feeble frame, shrill voice and silvered locks of eighty-seven, would give the echoing chorus with as much enthusiasm as when he joined in it with his camp-companions more than half a century ago.

THE PROGRESS OF SIR JACK BRAG.

Said Burgoyne to his men, as they pass’d in review,
Tullalo, tullalo, tullalo, boys!
These rebels their course very quickly will rue,
And fly as the leaves ’fore the autumn tempest flew,
When him who is your leader they know, boys!
They with men have now to deal,
And we soon will make them feel—
Tullalo, tullalo, tullalo, boys!
That a loyal Briton’s arm and a loyal Briton’s steel
Can put to flight a rebel as quick as other foe, boys!
Tullalo, tullalo, tullalo—
Tullalo,tullalo, tullalo-o-o-o, boys!

As to Sa-ra-tog’ he came, thinking how to jo the game,
Tullalo, tullalo, tullalo, boys!
He began to see the grubs, in the branches of his fame,
He began to have the trembles lest a flash should be the flame,
For which he had agreed his perfume to forego, boys!
No lack of skill, but fates,
Shall make us yield to GATES,
Tullalo, tullalo, tullalo, boys!
The devils may have leagued, as you know, with the States,
But we never will be beat by any mortal foe, boys!
Tullalo, tullalo, tullalo—
Tullalo, tullalo, tullalo-o-o-o, boys!

We believe the “Progress of Sir Jack Brag” has never been printed. The only clue to its authorship with which we are acquainted is the signature, “G. of H.” It was probably written soon after the defeat of its hero at Saratoga.

The editor of that magazine was Vermont native Rufus Wilmot Griswold. In 1844 he reprinted the article under his name as part of “Curiosities of American Literature,” a supplement to a British book called Curiosities of Literature, by I. C. D’Israeli.

By the time Griswold published that song, however, the British novelist Theodore Hook had created a character named “Jack Brag.” His 1837 novel was about a social climber in London. According to a biography of Hook, he based this character on a contemporary acquaintance—which means Burgoyne wasn’t involved.

So one possibility is that the name “Jack Brag” was invented twice, once by Americans lampooning their British enemy and again by a British author lampooning socially ambitious countrymen. Another possibility is that the “Sir Jack Brag” nickname for Burgoyne was known widely enough for it to reach Hook’s ears, and he recycled it for his character. Finally there’s the possibility that Griswold or his informant attached the name of a recent British novel to the words of an old song (whose surviving lyrics don’t include the phrase “Sir Jack Brag”).

I think the song itself is authentic. Like a lot of eighteenth-century satires, it’s written in the voice of the person being caricatured so that he comes across as boastful and (since these lines were probably indeed written after Saratoga) ironically doomed. The result is an American propaganda song that suggests “The devils may have leagued, as you know, with the States”—an odd thing for an American veteran to sing with so much enthusiasm.

James Hall, American Soldier

Yesterday I shared the first half of an essay by Dan Lacroix about stories told in Westford and Cavendish, Vermont, about a man named James Hall, said to have deserted from the British column on 19 Apr 1775 after being hit by a provincial musket ball and playing dead.

How reliable are those accounts? For example, did Sgt. Hall really try to shoot “Minuteman Wright of Westford” at Concord’s North Bridge? Did John Gray of Westford really steal his “military cap with its ostrich feathers”? And what might those details say about the underlying story, that James Hall wasn’t one of the British dead interred in Concord? Here’s more of Dan’s report:

Prior to Henry B. Atherton’s 1875 newspaper stories, the only Westford men reported to have been at the North Bridge at the time of the skirmish were Lt. Col. John Robinson, Sgt. Joshua Parker, the Rev. Joseph Thaxter, and Oliver Hildreth. The earliest any of the eight documented Wright men who served that day is said to have arrived at the bridge is as the skirmish was ending.

Moreover, even the Lowell Daily Courier article questions the existence of John Gray, a man who continues to elude proper documentation. It’s likely that Atherton gained his knowledge of Westford’s eighteenth-century residents by listening to the stories told by the descendents of the dozens of Westford veterans who emigrated to the Cavendish/Ludlow region of Vermont after the war. But was that oral history reliable?

Further details of James Hall’s life in America after 1775 are supported by vital records, as well as a family document found in a carton of the personal papers belonging to his grandson James Ashton [Under-Lyne] Hall (1816-1845) many years after his premature death. In this more straightforward telling of the story we find that following the grazing of his shoulder James Hall deserted when he found it “convenient.” He then returned to Westford with John Hildreth and spent the next year working for him and his brother Ephraim Hildreth, 3rd. For a time he moved to neighboring Chelmsford and took up the blacksmithing trade with Phineas Chamberlain (1745-1813), whose house still stands today (shown above and in this report).

By 1779 James had grown so fond of his adopted country and its ambitions for independence that he took up the call for nine months’ service in the Continental Army. His time was spent in the Hudson Highlands at West Point with Col. Michael Jackson’s 8th Massachusetts Regiment, part of it during the “winter of the deep snow.” For this service he later received a pension.

One of the many transcribed period documents in Wilson Waters’s History of Chelmsford provides a further example of James Hall’s support for the cause: we find him listed in 1781 along with Chamberlain, his blacksmith mentor, and a class of men who provided financial incentive for another man’s service in the army.

Soon after, the lure of freshly established communities in Vermont drew James and his blacksmithing trade to Cavendish with other Westford veterans. He returned in January of 1784 to marry Thankful Hildreth, and brought her back to Cavendish that same winter. During the 1790s they returned to Massachusetts, residing in Acton and Westford, before settling one final time in Vermont shortly before the turn of the century. In 1822, while living with his son James Whoral Hall in Reading, Vermont, this veteran died at the age of 69.

Like so many of his fellow revolutionary soldiers, James Hall’s weather-worn memorial stone proudly establishes him as “A Soldier of the Revolution.” Not surprisingly, there is no mention of his service to the King, though it very prominently declares his Lancashire birth, as well as the fact that he “Emigrated” from mother England in 1774.

So was Pvt. James Hall of the 4th Regiment one of the three British soldiers killed in the fire at the North Bridge and buried in Concord? Or did his comrades simply think that he was killed, allowing him to take up a new life as a New Englander? If James Hall wasn’t buried in Concord, who was? Or were there two James Halls in the British column, one who died and one who deserted? Very interesting questions. Thanks, Dan!

James Hall, “a British soldier”

Today I’m pleased to share with you the first half of an essay by Dan Lacroix. As a historical researcher, Dan has worked for years with the Westford Museum & Historical Society. As a reenactor with the Westford Colonial Minutemen, he also has a specialty in eighteenth-century house joinery (carpentry). And a while back Dan clued me in on a fascinating mystery from New England’s Revolution, so I asked him to write up some of his findings as a guest blogger.

About eight years ago my research into the lives of Westford’s Revolutionary War soldiers took an unexpected turn. A short passage in Edwin Hodgman’s 1883 History of Westford describes a past resident by the name of James Hall as “a British soldier, born at Ashton-under-line [Lyne], England, who during the retreat of the Regulars from Concord, April 19, 1775, voluntarily surrendered to the Provincials and came to Westford and worked for Ephraim Hildreth, 3rd, whose daughter he married in 1784.”

An interesting story in itself, but wasn’t James Hall also the name of one of the British soldiers from the 4th (King’s Own) Regiment killed at the North Bridge? The precise identities of those three soldiers have been debated for years, and I won’t be delving into that debate here. Though it may not be possible to conclusively prove that two men named James Hall are one in the same, there is considerable evidence supporting the core facts within some engaging nineteenth-century family stories.

One of Hodgman’s sources might have been an article in the Boston Journal from 26 Apr 1875, which was repeated with annotations two weeks later in the Lowell Daily Courier. Written by an accomplished lawyer and Civil War veteran, Capt. Henry B. Atherton (1835-1906, shown above), the article was based on family stories and traditions from his home town of Cavendish, Vermont, where James Hall, born 29 Sept 1753, ultimately settled and established his family.

From Atherton we learn that at about the age of twenty James “awoke with the fatal shilling of the recruiting sergeant in his pocket,” and then was “engaged with the rest of his regiment in laying roads in Scotland.” A six-week passage (with two of them becalmed off of Newfoundland) brought him to Boston Common with his regiment in 1774.

In true Centennial-era detail we learn of his experiences on April 19th of the following year:

At Concord, he was among those stationed at the bridge. As they were about to begin the retreat, Minuteman Wright of Westford called to them “Boys, don’t pull up the planks!” whereupon Hall took deliberate aim at Wright and shot, but failed to hit him.

And further,

On the retreat through Lincoln Woods, a shot from one of the Minutemen grazed his shoulder, and worn out with fatigue, he threw himself on the ground, his comrades exclaiming, “There goes Sergeant Hall; he is dead!”

After they passed, he rose and returned to the Wright Tavern in Concord. There he suffered no indignity, except that John Gray of Westford pulled off his military cap with its ostrich feathers, which he retained and subsequently gave to his daughters.

The colorful nature of the story aside, certain details immediately raise some questions.

TOMORROW: Details and discrepancies in the legend of James Hall.

“He had taken a Cold and became sick”

From the memoir of Pvt. Daniel Granger of Andover, published in the Mississippi Valley Historical Review in 1930:

My first services in the Revolution were on Winter Hill in the Fall and Winter of 1775. I at the age of 13 years. In the Month of December, News came up, that my Brother was sick and unable to do Duty, he was very thinly clad, as most of the Soldiers were at the time; he had taken a Cold and became sick. My parents said that I must take the Horse and go down and bring him home. But if the Officers would receive me in his sted, (and he being able to ride alone) I might stay in his room: I went down, & found him, he went with me to the Officers, to offer my services and to obtain a Furlow for himself: they questioned me a little and finally said that I might stay in his room if I thought that I could do the duty of a Soldier, & I gave my Consent, my Brother took the Horse & went home, & I took his Accoutrements and went in his Mess. The Barracks were then building, but were not finished. The Weather was extremely cold.

It looks like Daniel’s older brother was named Jacob and born about 1758. (All the other brothers whom that genealogy site lists were even younger than Daniel.) According to Sarah Loring Bailey’s Historical Sketches of Andover, in late 1777 Jacob marched north with a town militia company to defend against Gen. John Burgoyne’s thrust from Canada. The following spring Daniel, still only a teenager, served three months as a militia drummer at West Point.

My sinuses are feeling a bit like Jacob’s today, but—alas—I don’t have a thirteen-year-old brother to stand in for me.

“We can be good here as well as any where”

Newspapers weren’t the only forum for New Englanders to discuss the custom of bundling in the 1790s. Another popular print form, the almanac, also printed items on the topic.

Printer Ezekiel Russell, formerly of Boston, extracted the passage on bundling from the Rev. Samuel Peters’s history of Connecticut in Russell’s Newhampshire & Vermont almanack, for the year of creation, according to Mosaic history, 5756; and of the Christian aera, 1794, published at Concord, New Hampshire.

And the back of the Vermont Almanac and Register for 1799 offered this “ANECDOTE”:

While the American troops were at Cambridge, 1775, an Indian chief from one of the western tribes, was on his way to visit them. It happened that he was detained a number of days at a gentleman’s house in ——.

While he was there the gentleman’s daughter received a visit from her suitor. One evening the honest native, thinking to divert himself a little in their company, went up stairs: But when he entered their chamber, he stood in amaze, crying out, “Ho! bed—No do fo me Indians!”

[“]Why (says the spark [i.e., the young man],) we can be good here as well as any where.”

“Yes! yes! but you can be wicked more better!”

It’s interesting that the voice of caution and polite behavior in this joke was the “Indian chief,” not the “gentleman” or his family. Even more telling is that the story was set nearly a quarter of a century before it saw print, either because it had circulated orally since the start of the Revolutionary War or because the storyteller decided to set it back there.

Either way, this publication suggests that New Englanders were no longer viewing bundling as a common practice, embarrassment, or source of controversy. Instead, it was now a quaint custom of past generations that folks could share a laugh about.

“This Retreating, Raged Starved, lousey, thevish, Pockey Army”

Sometime in the past week, Blogger tells me, Boston 1775 surpassed 1,000,000 page views. I believe those include visits by search engines, with no actual eyeballs involved, but it’s the only yardstick I got. I’m grateful to all the folks who’ve peeked in, whether one time or every day.

That news prompted me to look back at the first week of postings, from May 2006. I found poor Lt. Col. Jeduthan Baldwin, working as a military engineer with the disintegrating American army that had come down from Canada into northern New York.

On 16 July Baldwin woke up to find that someone had sneaked into his tent and stolen his chest, including a lot of genteel clothing and surveying tools. The next day he wrote in his journal:

in the Morning a part of my Compass was found break to pieces & soon after the rest of it except the Needle. this Day I wrote to Genl. [John] Sullivan to remind him of the request I had made of a discharge from the Army, desiring him to use his intrest in my behalf while at the Congress, as I am heartily tired of this Retreating, Raged Starved, lousey, thevish, Pockey Army in this unhealthy Country.

But Baldwin stuck around. Which, like the page views, shows the value of just showing up every day.

Back in 2006, Baldwin’s diary was available only in an edition printed by a society in Maine a century before, and reprinted in a small quantity by Arno Press and the New York Times in 1971. I’d happened to find a copy in my local library. Now that edition is readable through Google Books, and the Massachusetts Historical Society is sharing portions of the original. Quite a change.

In July 1776, Baldwin was planning out the Continental fortifications on Mount Independence in Vermont. The engineer’s diary is a major source of Stephen Zeoli’s Mount Independence: The Enduring Legacy of a Unique Historic Place, a little book about that historic site published last year by the Mount Independence Coalition and sold at historic sites and bookstores in the region.

I see there’s a lot of activity coming up around Mount Independence, including an archeology hike tomorrow, living history next weekend, and a memorial ceremony at Hubbardton on 11 September.

“No man…was so hated and despised as Matthew Lyon”

Federalist journalist William Cobbett’s 1798 poem “The Pig and the Lion,” quoted yesterday, didn’t compare William Frederick Pinchbeck’s trained pig to an actual lion. After all, wearing a wooden sword, spitting in people’s faces, and carrying a candle in one’s buttocks isn’t typical leonine behavior.

Rather, Cobbett was comparing the beast to Rep. Matthew Lyon (1749-1822, shown here) of Vermont, a radical Democratic-Republican who became the Federalists’ biggest rhetorical target that year.

Lyon was born in Ireland and came to Connecticut in 1764 as a teen-aged “redemptioner”—meaning he worked as an indentured servant on a farm for a while to pay for his passage. Lyon moved north to the “New Hampshire Grants” in 1774 and was an adjutant and a lieutenant under Col. Seth Warner.

In 1776 Gen. Horatio Gates ordered Lyon to be cashiered. Lyon later claimed that this was because he had failed, despite his best efforts, to prevent his men from mutinying, and that he retained respect locally, which appears to be true. Lyon’s political enemies said he had been condemned to wear a wooden sword as a sign of cowardice, but there doesn’t seem to be evidence for that.

In independent Vermont, Lyon founded the town of Fair Haven, built mills, and started a newspaper. He served in the legislature and in 1796 was elected to represent Vermont in the U.S. Congress. At that time American politicians were openly forming two parties, each blaming the other for factionalism, and the bounds of accepted political behavior were being worked out.

Lyon was from the radical wing of the Democratic-Republican Party. On 30 Jan 1798, he claimed on the House floor that Connecticut Federalists weren’t representing the interests or desires of their constituents. One of those Federalists, Rep. Roger Griswold (1762-1812), replied by asking Lyon if he’d fight for them with his wooden sword. Lyon spat in Griswold’s face. Hence Cobbett’s poetic allusions to a wooden sword and spitting in Christians’ faces.

On 15 February, Griswold ran up to Lyon’s desk and started beating him with a cane. Lyon stumbled to a fireplace and grabbed the tongs to defend himself. The two men grappled before other members pulled them apart. Eventually the House decided not to take action against either Lyon or Griswold since both had behaved badly and both claimed to have won. That episode might have something to do with Cobbett’s candle allusion, though that would be more of a stretch.

In his History of the People of the United States (1914), John Bach McMaster wrote: “No man in the whole Republican party, not Benjamin Franklin Bache, nor Albert Gallatin, nor Thomas Jefferson, nor James Thomas Callender, was so hated and despised as Matthew Lyon.” In October 1798 Lyon was convicted and jailed under the Sedition Act for lambasting President John Adams’s policies toward France, but his constituents overwhelmingly reelected him anyway. He got to cast a decisive vote for Thomas Jefferson during the disputed election of 1800.

The next year, Lyon moved to Kentucky, which he and later his son also represented in Congress. J. Fairfax McLaughlin’s 1900 biography of Lyon is available on Google Books, and there have been more recent studies as well.

Samuel Williams: minister, astronomer, fugitive,…

Along with future physician Isaac Rand (profiled yesterday), Prof. John Winthrop took a young man named Samuel Williams (1743-1817) up to Newfoundland in 1761 to help observe the transit of Venus.

After that experience Williams, son of a Waltham minister (and former young captive from the Deerfield raid of 1704), set out on a rather conventional career path. He became minister at Bradford, Massachusetts. But he also kept up his scientific interests. In 1769 Williams observed the decade’s second transit of Venus from Newbury, publishing his observations through the American Philosophical Society seventeen years later.

In 1780 Williams succeeded Winthrop as Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Harvard. That year he wrote about New England’s famous “Dark Day” and led a small college expedition to Maine to watch the Moon eclipse the Sun.

That trip was hampered by the fact that Williams decided that the best place to make his observations was an island in Penobscot Bay which the British military had just defended from a large Massachusetts attack. As with the 1761 transit of Venus, however, warring governments were willing to let gentlemen make observations for the sake of science.

Later in the 1780s, Harvard student John Quincy Adams wrote: “Mr. Williams is more generally esteemed by the students, than any other member of this government [i.e., college faculty]. He is more affable and familiar with the students, and does not affect that ridiculous pomp which is so generally prevalent here.”

But in 1788 Prof. Williams suddenly had to depart Harvard—and the U.S. of A. He was charged with forgery for falsifying a receipt from a trust he administered. Williams rode north, leaving his family in Cambridge to await word of where to find him.

Williams settled in Rutland, Vermont, and found work as a legal copyist and minister, first fill-in and then full-time. He brought his family north and rebuilt a respectable life. Williams launched the Rutland Herald newspaper and edited it for three years. He published a history of the state and a short history of the Revolution for use in schools. Williams helped found the University of Vermont and in 1806 used his astronomical knowledge to settle the state’s northern boundary with Canada.

One of the telescopes Williams reportedly used is shown above courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution. The museum’s webpage says Williams used this one to observe the 1769 transit of Venus, but also implies he was a Harvard professor at the time. Soon I’ll share links to more of Williams’s equipment.

In 2009 Robert Friend Rothschild published Two Brides for Apollo, a sympathetic biography of Williams. I believe the title refers to the two types of astronomical events Williams studied: the transit of Venus and the solar eclipse.

Anthony Haswell and Isaiah Thomas

During the preparation of “Mapping Revolutionary Boston” website/app, as I recall, someone asked if there was enough information to profile a printer’s apprentice—like Johnny Tremain, but real. So I worked up an article on the youth of Anthony Haswell (1756-1816).

The text under young Anthony’s yellow pin describes how he was born in England, brought to Boston by his father, and basically abandoned when he was a teen. He worked through the town’s Overseers of the Poor to get himself apprenticed to a printer instead of a potter.

Those paragraphs don’t cover Haswell’s later life: possible military service during the Revolutionary War; a return to printing; starting the first newspaper in Springfield, Massachusetts, with Elisha Babcock in 1782; and then settling in Bennington, Vermont, as postmaster and publisher of the Vermont Gazette a year later.

I was surprised to find no biographical information about Haswell in Isaiah Thomas’s History of Printing in America, first published in 1810. Thomas claimed to write about everyone in the profession through the Revolution. To be sure, he highlighted firsts, and the Vermont Gazette was that state’s second newspaper, but Haswell was a very prominent printer in that state up through the time Thomas wrote his book.

Furthermore, Thomas must have watched Haswell’s career because he was the printer who’d signed up young Anthony as an apprentice back in 1771. During the war, when Thomas was beset by creditors, Haswell even became the nominal publisher of Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy for a while. That episode prompted the only mention of Haswell in Thomas’s History, and it’s hardly flattering:

The printer of the Massachusetts Spy, or Boston Journal, was obliged to leave Boston, as has been mentioned, on account of the commencement of hostilities between the colonies and the parent country. He settled in this place [Worcester], and on the 3d of May, 1775, recommenced the publication of that paper, which he continued until the British troops evacuated Boston; when he leased it for one year to William Stearns and Daniel Bigelow. . . .

After the first lease expired, the paper was leased for another year, to Anthony Haswell, printer. Owing to unskilful workmen, bad ink, wretched paper, and worn down types, the Spy appeared in a miserable dishabille during the two years for which it had been leased, and for some time after. At the end of that term, the proprietor returned to Worcester, and resumed its publication…

Why did Thomas have so little, and nothing good, to say about his former apprentice? I suspect politics was involved. Thomas was a Federalist. Haswell became a Jeffersonian, and not just any Jeffersonian—he was one of the printers jailed under the Sedition Act in 1799 and made into a martyr for press freedom. Here’s a page about Haswell at the Bennington Museum, and another from the Posterity Project.

So Anthony Haswell might not have been discussed in Thomas’s History of Printing because he was too prominent a printer.

The Origin of “Live Free or Die”

Back in February, I wrote about Rep. Michele Bachmann’s reverence for the Founding Fathers, and how trying to reconcile that conviction with modern values led her into stating historical nonsense.

In March, Bachmann told people in New Hampshire, “You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord.“ When corrected, she posted on Facebook: “It was my mistake, Massachusetts is where they happened. New Hampshire is where they are still proud of it!” Note the scurrilous implication about states besides New Hampshire.

Last month Bachmann campaigned in New Hampshire again, and, according to the Boston Globe:

She cited the idealism of Abraham Lincoln, and of General John Stark of New Hampshire who coined the phrase that is the state motto “Live Free or Die.”

And this time I must note that Bachmann (or her speechwriters) got it right.

In 1822, John Farmer and Jacob Bailey Moore printed the first volume of their Collections, Topographical, Historical and Biographical, Relating Principally to New-Hampshire. It included a “Biographical Sketch of General John Stark” quoting some of his letters.

In 1809, a committee from Vermont invited Stark to a dinner commemorating “the action commonly called the Bennington Battle.” On 31 July, Stark wrote back from his home in Derryfield, declining the invitation on account of his age; “You say you wish your young men to see me. But you who have seen me, can tell them that I was never worth much for a show, and certainly cannot be worth their seeing now.”

Stark’s letter didn’t include the words, “Live free or die.” But the following year, the Vermont committee wrote again (in a letter published in 1860 in Memoir and Official Correspondence of Gen. John Stark) to say:

In your patriotic address to us last year, we regret that you tell us that the oil is almost extinguished in the lamp, and that age has rendered it impossible for you to attend, although we are again pressed by our fellow-citizens to give you an invitation to come and join in the festivities of the day. The toast, sir, which you sent us in 1809, will continue to vibrate with unceasing pleasure in our ears: “Live free, or die—Death is not the worst of evils.”

The Collections volume also printed that saying (without the comma), with the statement: “Accompanying this letter, the General forwarded as his volunteer this sentiment.” That appears to be a rare use of the word volunteer to mean a voluntary gift. So it appears that Stark sent that toast on a separate piece of paper, which was lost or else its full text would be reprinted, but the information on that paper was preserved by the second letter.

Now let’s savor the irony that New Hampshire’s motto was invented for, and preserved by, folks in Vermont. (Of course, the “Bennington Battle” actually took place in New York. See, it doesn’t pay to suggest that only Americans from one state are special.)

The Ratification Response

Thanks to everyone who submitted answers to Friday’s quiz on Constitutional trivia. All commenters got at least one answer correct, many got more than one, and correct answers seemed to be proportionate to amount of time available for Googling.

Here are the answers I was looking for.

1) Of the South Carolina delegates to the Constitutional Convention, Pierce Butler had lived in Boston in 1769-70. Younger son of an Irish baronet, Butler entered the British army and in the late 1760s was a major in the 29th Regiment of Foot. That regiment was sent to Boston in late 1768, and Butler arrived a few months later.

On 5 Mar 1770, Pvt. Hugh White of Butler’s company was on sentry duty at the Customs house, where he started the spiral of violence that led to the Boston Massacre. Butler played little role in that crisis. He had apparently already set his sights on marrying the heiress to some South Carolina slave-labor plantation, and in 1771 he achived that goal and retired from the army. At the Constitutional Convention and later in the U.S. Senate, Butler was a strong voice for his elite landed class.

2) When Rufus King hypothesized on 20 Jan 1788 that another politician would “improve in his Health as soon as a majority shews itself on either side of the convention,” he was writing about Massachusetts governor John Hancock, and his state’s ratifying convention.

Hancock was very good at amassing popularity in Massachusetts, and very reluctant to spend any of that political capital. He reserved judgment on the new U.S. Constitution for a long time, pleading illness as a reason for keeping away from the public debate. Federalists convinced Hancock to become the spokesman for the idea of ratifying the document while proposing amendments, which might have been decisive in building a majority. (Some historians suggest they dangled the possibility that Hancock himself might become President.)

I chose that quote from King in part because I found it interesting, and in part because it’s not easy to Google. The document apparently wasn’t known when King’s writings were published in 1894. But the letter does appear in the Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, thanks to the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Hancock also pled illness as an excuse for not coming out to meet George Washington when the President visited New England in late 1789. As at the ratifying convention, the governor finally had himself carried in, swathed in flannel bandages, which deflected criticism that he was being petulant, at least at that moment. Which brings me to the third question, about Washington’s tour…

3. In asking, “Of our six New England states, which did he not visit and why?” I wanted to signal that the question applied to all the New England states that exist now. Some folks missed that parameter at first glance, but, hey, I was being tricky.

As folks noted, two of today’s New England states didn’t exist as such in 1789. Vermont was an independent country, so Washington never went there. (In 1912 one regional historian tried to claim otherwise.) Maine was still part of Massachusetts, but Washington’s record of his 1789 trip includes a brief touchdown “at a place called Kittery in the Provence of Main,” so I count that as a visit.

The second New England state Washington didn’t visit was Rhode Island. In late 1789 it had yet to ratify the Constitution or send delegates to the new bicameral Congress. The President’s choice to skip entering that state was taken as a sign of displeasure. The next year, Rhode Island finally ratified with suggestions and started participating in the new national government.

Congratulations to all the commenters who posted correct answers. The randomly chosen winner of a copy of Pauline Maier’s Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788, supplied by the publisher, is Liberty Atheist. (L.A., please send me an email or comment with a surface-mail address, and I’ll mail the copy this week.) For the rest of us, we can enjoy Maier’s talk about her new book at the Massachusetts Historical Society, via the Forum Network.

Prudence Wright and Her Brothers

Yesterday I quoted an 1848 anecdote about women in Pepperell seizing a Loyalist suspected of carrying “despatches from Canada to the British in Boston” in April 1775. Over the next half-century, other authors added to that story.

In an 1873 address in Dunstable, New Hampshire, Samuel T. Worcester filled in some information:

The maiden name of Mrs. David Wright, the heroine of the bridge guard, was Prudence Cumings, a daughter of Samuel Cumings, one of the first settlers of Hollis, and first town clerk. It appears from the Hollis records of “births and marriages,” that Prudence Cumings was born at the parish of West Dunstable, now Hollis, Nov. 26, 1740, and married to David Wright, of Pepperell, Dec. 28, 1761.

In 1899, Mary L. P. Shattuck delivered a talk to the local D.A.R. called “The Story of Jewett’s Bridge,” which she published in 1912. (Here’s the text in P.D.F. form.) This appears to be the most comprehensive telling of the bridge story.

Shattuck collected two versions of the tale, one each from descendants of:

• the suspected Loyalist, Leonard Whiting (1740-1807) of Hollis; unlike some other men arrested for favoring the Crown, he stayed in the U.S., moving only as far as Cavendish, Vermont.
• Prudence Wright (1740-1823), the leader of the women at the bridge.

Generally, Shattuck’s additions to the story make it more dramatic. For example, the earliest version reported that Whiting was detained at the home of Oliver Prescott (1731-1804), Groton’s Patriot political leader. Shattuck played up how Whiting’s daughter Nancy married Prescott’s son Oliver—which gives the tale overtones of “How I Met Your Mother.”

Another addition to the original tale isn’t possible to confirm through town records. It says Whiting was riding with another suspected Loyalist named Samuel Cumings, who recognized the voice of the woman shouting at them to stop—because Prudence Wright was his sister. Shattuck even quoted Samuel as saying, “Hold, that’s Prue’s voice, and she would wade through blood for the rebel cause.”

Yet a third addition to the tale was that Prudence Wright had actually overheard her brother (either Samuel or another one, Thomas Cumings) and Whiting discussing how they would ride to Boston and tell the British authorities about what the Patriots were doing. In this version, she organized the guard specifically to block them. And after hearing her voice, Thomas (in one version) left the area for good. That telling plays up family ties the most, and provides an even stronger justification for Wright’s actions.

I’m always dubious about stories that grow better over time without supporting documentation. And this tale strikes me as missing a particular type of evidence.

TOMORROW: The missing documents.

Freemasons Stepping in at Fort at No. 4

Earlier in the year I mentioned how the rebuilt Fort at No. 4 in Charlestown, New Hampshire, has been closed because of economic problems. This week I received a press release saying that the Olive Branch Lodge #64 of Freemasons, located in Chester, Vermont, is stepping in to help. The lodge’s efforts will include “Fund raising, marketing and volunteers.”

There was already apparently some overlap between the museum board and this Masonic lodge. One board member, Thomas Johnston, IV, is also Masonic Grand Master for Vermont. He noted, furthermore, that “the first Masonic Lodge for Vermont was chartered in Charlestown during 1781.” Olive Branch Lodge #64 is inviting other Masonic groups to join the effort, starting with Faithful Masonic Lodge #12 in Charlestown.

The press release says, “The Board intends to host events at the Fort this summer while preparing for a full reopening of the Fort at No. 4 in the spring of 2011.”

(Photo of the Fort at No. 4 grounds by Slabcity Gang, via Flickr under a Creative Commons license.)

Looking for Walter Graham, alias unknown

Don Hagist’s British Soldiers, American Revolution blog invited us to help solve a mystery:

If anyone can find details of a Vermont school teacher thought or known to have been a British deserter – either named Graham or with a background that suggests a changed name – this author would appreciate hearing of it.

What would be the significance of such a man? Read the whole story.

Ethan Allen and Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur

Jeremy Dibbell at PhiloBiblos provided links about a previously uncollected letter from Ethan Allen to Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur (shown above), now being auctioned at Christie’s, and a Vermont Times-Argus article about it.

Crèvecoeur (1735-1813) was the first of a long line of French intellectuals who spent some time in the United States and then returned to Europe to write a book about it. In fact, he settled in Orange County, New York, years before the Revolution and raised a family there. Crèvecoeur left for Europe during the war. In 1782, while in London, he published the first edition of his Letters from an American Farmer, which was such a hit that he expanded it through the 1780s. After the Treaty of Paris, Louis XVI made Crèvecoeur the French consul to the states of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, so he was back to the U.S. with some standing.

Meanwhile, Allen was a big man in the independent republic of Vermont. He too was an author, known for his Narrative of Colonel Ethan Allen’s Captivity. But Allen was losing influence with his fellow Vermonters, many of whom wanted to join the U.S. of A. He thought the republic’s interests lay with Canada, its major trading partner, and even talked about giving up independence to rejoin the British Empire. He left the capital of Bennington and settled in Burlington, closer to Vermont’s northern neighbor.

During their correspondence, Allen was able to make Crèvecoeur’s American sons into citizens of Vermont, and to have the town of St. Johnsbury named in his honor. (Crèvecoeur used St. John as his surname when he was farming in America.) Allen also sent the consul the book he’d developed from a manuscript of the late Dr. Thomas Young—Reason, the Only Oracle of Man—hoping it would find favor in France.

The newly discovered letter, dated 29 Aug 1787, reveals Allen’s jaundiced view of the prospects for the U.S. of A.:

I fancy that the confusions in the United States have increased beyond your expectation for so short a time, ever since the peace I have been apprehensive that the Federal Government of the United States would be but of short duration. This I suggested to you in our late personal conference. Liberty is not, nor will be, by the bulk of the People distinguished from licentiousness, and any Government that allows such freakish liberties to its subjects cannot endure long. Thirteen independent heads to one connective Government is a political monster and monsters are always short lived...

By “freakish liberties,” Allen was probably talking about the 1786-87 uprising in western Massachusetts that came to be called Shays’ Rebellion. He refused to support that movement, seeing it as a danger. Many of Allen’s fellow Vermonters, however, supported the men behind the uprising; Daniel Shays and others found shelter in the republic.

Even as Allen wrote, the U.S. Constitutional Convention was taking place in Philadelphia, and the New York delegates quietly agreed to let Vermont join the “more perfect Union,” dropping their state’s claim to that land. Vermont was admitted in 1791 at the same time as Kentucky, preserving a north-south balance. Allen had died two years before.

Seven Founders

Last week guest blogger Ray Raphael laid out a challenge: Choose seven people to follow through the entire American Revolution whose stories, when combined, would tell the whole of that political, military, and social change.

I shared my thoughts, and Boston 1775 readers rose to the challenge with many more suggestions. I also promised to reveal the folks whom Ray chose to follow in Founders: The People Who Brought You a Nation, and here they are:

• George Washington. Virginia planter. Delegate to the House of Burgesses and the Continental Congress. Generalissimo. Chairman of the Constitutional Convention. President. You’ve heard of him, right?
• Joseph Plumb Martin. Native of Massachusetts raised in Connecticut. Private soldier from 1775 to 1783, reaching rank of sergeant. Settled in Maine. Published a lively account of his military career, most likely edited from his contemporaneous journals because of all the detail, in 1830.
  
• Mercy Otis Warren. Political writer. Sister of James Otis, Jr., wife of James Warren, friend of John and Abigail Adams. Active Whig, Anti-federalist, and Jeffersonian. The Woman Who Did Everything More Beautifully Than You.
  
• Robert Morris. British-born Pennsylvania merchant. Delegate to the Congress. Financier and financial manager of the U.S. of A., founder of the Bank of North America, lender of large sums to the new republic. Delegate to the Constitutional Convention and Senator. Land speculator and debtor.
  
• Timothy Bigelow. Blacksmith from Worcester. Local political organizer. Colonel of a Massachusetts regiment in the Continental Army. Developer of Montpelier, Vermont. Debtor.
  
• Henry Laurens. South Carolina planter. President of the Continental Congress after John Hancock. Diplomat and eventually one negotiator of the Treaty of Paris. Father of John Laurens. Highest-ranking U.S. government official ever captured by the enemy.
  
• Dr. Thomas Young. A New York country doctor, deist, and poet. Helped found the Albany Sons of Liberty before moving to Boston. Soon one of the town’s top Whig organizers. Fleeing the troops in Boston in September 1774, he joined the Patriots in Rhode Island. Then he moved on to Philadelphia, becoming a leader of the state’s radical party and an army surgeon. Coined the name “Vermont.”

Choosing these particular people allowed Ray to play them off each other. For example, Dr. Young was one of the most radical and democratic politicians of the period while Laurens was fundamentally conservative. Warren strenuously opposed Morris, who in turn distrusted Young.

Washington, Martin, and Bigelow were all in the army at Valley Forge and Yorktown, but, holding different ranks, experienced the war in different ways. Morris and Laurens were very important figures in the civil government while Warren and Young wrote political essays and exercised behind-the-scenes influence. Washington, Morris, and Bigelow all invested in land development after the war; Martin was one of the small farmers who settled on such newly developed land. Only one of these people didn’t live to see Britain acknowledge American independence.