“Surely the most ridiculous expedition that ever was plan’d”

After the exchange of fire over Grape Island on 21 May 1775, both sides of the war claimed to have damaged the other and gotten the best of the day.

Four days after the fighting, the New-England Chronicle stated:

Whether any of the Enemy were wounded, is uncertain, though it is reported three of them were. It is thought that they did not carry off more than one or two tons of hay.

As for the gunfire from the departing Royal Navy vessels, that was “without effect.”

The next day’s Connecticut Gazette was even more positive:

the People…wounded 3 of the Enemy, and drove them off. They had got a Ton and Half of Hay on Board.

And the 3 June Pennsylvania Ledger said:

the regulars returned to Boston, with the loss of eight men killed and several wounded, as the provincials were informed by a gentleman that left Boston the next day.

In contrast, Lt. John Barker of His Majesty’s 4th Regiment wrote in his diary that ”a few of the Rebels were killed, without any loss on our side,” and he estimated the amount of hay removed as up to “7 or 8 Tons.”

Militaries always have a better sense of their own losses and usually exaggerate the enemy’s. If we follow that guideline and accept only what each army said about its own force, then the day ended without any casualties on either side.

The Crown forces had taken away a few tons of needed hay, but the Patriots burned far more—even Barker guessed his comrades had left “about 70” tons behind.

The provincials also burned Elisha Leavitt’s barn on the island. Local tradition held that he treated his neighbors to rum during the day to avert similar violence against his property on shore.

As usual, Lt. Barker saw a lot to complain about:

It was surely the most ridiculous expedition that ever was plan’d, for there were not a tenth part boats enough even if there had been Men enough, and the Sloop which carried the Party mounted 12 guns, but they were taken out to make room, whereas if one of two had been left it would have effectually kept off the Rebels

That might have been echoed in the 26 May Connecticut Gazette: “We hear Gen. [Thomas] Gage blamed the Admiral [Samuel Graves] for sending Vessels that were so small, on this Enterprize.” We should ask how the printers could reliably know such a thing. On the other hand, it may be significant that Graves skipped over this action in his self-serving report narrative of the war.

The reaction on the provincial side was very different. In a follow-up letter to her husband, Abigail Adams had nothing but praise for the locals who took part in the fight, particularly their own relatives:

I may say with truth all Weymouth Braintree Hingham who were able to bear Arms, and hundreds from other Towns within 20 30 and 40 miles of Weymouth.

Our good Friend the Doctor [Cotton Tufts] is in a very misirable state of Health, has the jaundice to a [very gr]eat degree, is a mere Skelliton and hardly able to [ride fro]m his own house to my fathers. Danger you [know] sometimes makes timid men bold. He stood that day very well, and generously attended with drink, Bisquit, flints &c. 5 hundred men without taking any pay. He has since been chosen one of the committee of Correspondence for that Town, and has done much Service by establishing a regular method of alarm from Town to Town.

Both your Brothers were there—your younger Brother [Elihu Adams] with his company who gaind honour by their good order that Day. He was one of the first to venture aboard a Schooner to land upon the Island.

That reflects the general mood on the two sides at this time. The British military was having inter-service quarrels over logistics while the provincials were celebrating solidarity. Even though neither side had accomplished a great deal, or suffered a serious loss.

“Assembled on a Point of Land next to Grape-Island”

Yesterday we left the people of Weymouth and surrounding towns in a panic as three or four vessels full of British soldiers appeared off their north coast early on Sunday, 21 May 1775.

Abigail Adams happened to be writing on her husband’s behalf to Edward Dilly, a British publisher and bookseller sympathetic to the American Whigs. She portrayed the situation like this:

Now this very day, and whilst I set writing the Soldiers provincial are passing my windows upon an allarm from the British troops who have been landing a number of Men upon one of our Sea coasts (about 4 miles from my own habitation) and plundering hay and cattle. Each party are now in actual engagement. God alone knows the Event, to whom also all our injuries and oppressions are known and to whom we can appeal for the justice of our cause when the Ear of Man is deaf and his heart hardned.

At the command of Lt. Thomas Innis of the 43rd Regiment, scores of those redcoats started coming ashore, carrying long, sharp…scythes. They got to work harvesting hay from Grape Island, to take back to Boston to feed the garrison’s horses.

Meanwhile, local militia companies gathered in the towns, eventually augmented by three companies from the provincial army camp at Roxbury. An 1893 Hingham town history assumed that Capt. James Lincoln, commander of a new company of Massachusetts troops, took charge. That history stated: “The old people of fifty years ago, used to tell of the march of the military down Broad Cove Lane, now Lincoln Street.”

Once those local men reached the shoreline, however, they discovered that there was little they could do. As the 25 May New-England Chronicle reported:

The People of Weymouth assembled on a Point of Land next to Grape-Island. The Distance from Weymouth Shore to the said Island was too great for small Arms to do much Execution; nevertheless our People frequently fired.

The Fire was returned from one of the Vessels with swivel Guns; but the Shot passed over our Heads, and did no Mischief.

Matters continued in this State for several Hours, the Soldiers polling the Hay down to the Water-Side, our People firing at the Vessel, and they now and then discharging swivel Guns.

In Scituate, Paul Litchfield recorded in his diary, the Rev. Ebenezer Grosvenor went ahead with the second part of his Sunday sermon as normal.

Eventually the tide came in. Abigail Adams wrote of the shoreline defenders:

At last they musterd a Lighter, and a Sloop from Hingham which had six port holes. Our men eagerly jumpt on board, and put of for the Island. As soon as they [the regulars] perceived it, they decamped. Our people landed upon [the] Island, and in an instant set fire to the Hay which with the Barn was soon consumed, about 80 ton tis said.

The newspaper report offered more details:

The Tide had now come in, and several Lighters, which were aground, were got afloat, upon which our People, who were ardent for Battle, got on board, hoisted Sail, and bore directly down upon the nearest Point of the Island.

The Soldiers and Sailors immediately left the Barn, and made for their Boats, and put off from one End of the Island, whilst our People landed on the other. The Sloops hoisted Sail with all possible Expedition, whilst our People set Fire to the Barn, and burnt 70 or 80 Tons of Hay; then fired several Tons which had been polled down to the Water-Side, and brought off the Cattle.

Lt. John Barker basically agreed with that sequence of events in his diary:

as soon as they [the foragers] landed they were fired on from the opposite shore but without receiving any harm, the distance being too great; the party did not return the fire but kept on carrying the hay to the boats, until at last the Rebels in great numbers got into Vessels and Boats and went off for the Island; the party then embarked and sailed off with what hay they had, and as they were obliged to go along shore they were fired upon, when Lt. Innis who commanded was at last forced to return the fire…

Back to the New-England Chronicle:

As the Vessels passed Horse-Neck, a Sort of Promontory which extends from Germantown [in Braintree], they fired their Swivels and small Arms at our People very briskly, but without Effect, though one of the Bullets from their small Arms, which passed over our People, struck against a Stone with such Force as to take off a large Part of the Bullet.

That ended the crisis. All that remained was for the two sides to tote up gains and losses.

TOMORROW: The bottom line.

“3 Sloops and one cutter had come out”

In May 1775, the people of Hingham and other towns along the South Shore from Boston weren’t really worrying about protecting livestock on harbor islands.

As a 3 May petition from selectmen in Braintree, Weymouth, and Hingham to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress put it, those towns felt “in great danger of an attack from the troops now in Boston, or from the ships in the harbor.”

They worried that the British military would attack the towns themselves, not off-shore pasturage—perhaps to seize food but mostly to punish the rebellious population.

The congress therefore authorized those towns to raise two and a half companies of men for their defense through the end of the year, on the same terms as the provincial soldiers being signed up to keep besieging Boston. In Hingham, James Lincoln took a captain’s commission and started recruiting.

On the morning of Sunday, 21 May, vessels were spotted maneuvering through the islands off the Weymouth shore. Abigail Adams described the response in north Braintree:

When I rose about six oclock I was told that the Drums had been some time beating and that 3 allarm Guns were fired, that Weymouth Bell had been ringing, and Mr. [Ezra] Welds [churchbell in Braintree’s middle precinct] was then ringing.

I immediatly sent of an express to know the occasion, and found the whole Town in confusion. 3 Sloops and one cutter had come out, and droped anchor just below Great Hill. It was difficult to tell their design, some supposed they were comeing to Germantown others to Weymouth. People women children from the Iron Works flocking down this Way—every woman and child above or from below my Fathers.

My Fathers family flying, the Drs. [Cotton Tufts’s] in great distress, as you may well immagine for my Aunt had her Bed thrown into a cart, into which she got herself, and orderd the boy to drive her of to Bridgwater which he did. The report was to them, that 300 hundred had landed, and were upon their march into Town.

The allarm flew [like] lightning, and men from all parts came flocking down till 2000 were collected

In Scituate, Paul Litchfield was home from Harvard College, his senior year cut short by the war. He wrote in his diary:

Just before meeting began in morning, hearing the King’s troops were landing near Hingham, the people in general dispersed, so no meeting.

The 25 May New England Chronicle, newly moved to Cambridge, reported this military response:

Last Sabbath about 10 o’clock A.M. an express arrived at General [John] Thomas’s quarters at Roxbury, informing him that four sloops (two of them armed) were sailed from Boston, to the south short of the bay, and that a number of soldiers were landing at Weymouth.

Gen. Thomas ordered three companies to march to the support of the inhabitants.

But the first newspaper report of the action was the 22 May Newport Mercury:

An express arrived here this morning, from Providence, with advice, that a party of soldiers from Boston had landed at Weymouth, and burnt the town down, and were ravaging the country when the express came away. Troops from all parts of the country were going to oppose them.——The particulars not yet come to hand.

TOMORROW: The particulars of what really happened.

“Phebe Oliphant (a Black woman)”

At the Eleven Names Project, Wayne William Tucker shared a long essay about the preferred names of the black woman who helped to raise Abigail Adams and was part of her household later in life.

As Abigail grew up and married, that woman was enslaved to her father, the Rev. William Smith, probably coming from the family of her mother, formerly Elizabeth Quincy. The Quincy and Smith families referred to her by her first name only: Phoebe.

After becoming free in 1783, Phoebe married a man whom Abigail referred to as “Mr. Abdee.” Seeking to treat her in the same way as white women, the Adams Papers editors therefore referred to her as Phoebe Abdee.

Following that lead, I’ve tagged her under the name Phoebe Abdee. So did Woody Holton in one of the few articles written about her.

Tucker has found a more complex story in local records, however, indicating that Phoebe did adopt her husbands’ surnames—but Abdee wasn’t one of them.

First, Tucker brings up the possibility that Phoebe married and had children while enslaved to the Smiths, based on mentions of other people in the accounts settling the minister’s estate in 1784. That’s just a possibility, though.

In 1777, the Rev. Mr. Smith read out an intention to marry for his “Phebe” and “Brester Sternzey of Boston.” There’s no confirmation this union went through. (Boston’s town records don’t mention this intention. They state that the Rev. Joseph Eckley married Bristol Stenser and Deborah Foster on 16 Dec 1784.)

In 1784, Phoebe married a man Abigail Adams identified as “Mr. Abdee whom you know.” His name appears in town records as Abdi and Abda, elsewhere as Abdy. Tucker connects this man to “Abde Deacon Savil’s negro man,” who had married a woman enslaved to a Braintree minister back in 1754. It appears that Abdee (however spelled) was his given name, and that after emancipation (if not before) he used Savil as his surname. This man died in the first week of 1798, according to Abigail’s sister Mary Cranch.

On 19 Sept 1799, Quincy vital records show a woman named Phebe Savil marrying William Olifant. A month later, John Adams mentioned that Phoebe had remarried. In 1800, Abigail referred to Phoebe’s husband as William for the first time.

Finally, on 7 Oct 1812, weeks after Abigail referred to Phoebe as “sick and dying,” the Quincy records state that “Phebe Oliphant (a Black woman”) died at age eighty-three.

As Tucker says, the coincidences of the dates strongly suggest that the Adamses were referring to Phebe Savil/Oliphant, the woman Abigail had known all her life, without using her surnames.

Thus, it appears that “Phoebe Abdee” went by:

• Phebe as an enslaved woman, not by choice—her choice of surname, if any, unknown.
• Phebe Savil from 1784 to 1799, after her husband Abdee.
• Phebe Oliphant from 1799 to 1812, after her husband William.

This is a nice piece of research, supported by clips of the documents themselves, which helps to fill out a life we’ve known only through the Adams family.

“A small shock of an Earthquake” in 1783

Last fall the Heidelberg Center for American Studies shared Katrin Kleemann’s remarks about an earthquake that rattled a lot of the northern U.S. of A. in late 1783.

Kleemann wrote:

Many of the diaries I studied in the American archives mentioned this earthquake—in Philadelphia, New Haven, Boston, and Worcester. Most of these entries are really brief, usually only consisting of a few words, such as the line “Between 10 & 11 [pm] a small shock of an Earthquake” from Cotton Tufts’ diary on 29 November 1783. He lived in Weymouth, Massachusetts. The fact that diarists from several different states reported on the earthquake, means the earthquake must have been felt over a large area and must in fact have been quite strong, but not strong enough to cause widespread destruction.

Several contemporary newspapers also featured reports about this earthquake, such as this one above in the Pennsylvania Packet and General Advertiser, published in Philadelphia, from 2 December 1783:

“On Saturday night last, about a quarter after ten o’clock, a smart shock of an earthquake was felt in and about this city; and about one o’clock on Sunday morning another, less violent, was felt by many people in the city and suburbs. Most of the houses were very sensibly shaken so that in many the china and pewter, &c. were thrown off the shelves, and several persons were waked [sic] from their sleep. We hope that the country has sustained no damage by this convulsion of nature, which brings fresh to our memory the late calamities of Italy, &c, &c.”

Indeed, the earthquake(s) seemed to have awoken many people along the East Coast…

Kleemann’s primary focus is on climate events. I’ve noted her interesting essays in past postings. Last year she published A Mist Connection: An Environmental History of the Laki Eruption of 1783 and Its Legacy.

TOMORROW: The local angle.

“The more I think of our Enemies quitting Boston…”

Here’s how Abigail Adams experienced the British evacuation of Boston on 17 Mar 1776. She was at the family home in Braintree, writing to her husband John in Philadelphia. (And she had a cold, but I’m skipping that.)

I find the fireing was occasiond by our peoples taking possession of Nook Hill, which they kept in spite of the Cannonade, and which has really obliged our Enemy to decamp this morning on board the Transports; as I hear by a mesenger just come from Head Quarters.

Some of the [Boston] Select Men have been to the lines and inform that they have carried of[f] [every]thing they could [po]ssibly take, and what they could not they have [burnt, broke, or hove into the water. This] is I [believe fact,] many articles of good Household furniture having in the course of the week come on shore at Great Hill, both upon this and Weymouth Side, Lids of Desks, mahogona chairs, tables &c.

Our People I hear will have Liberty to enter Boston, those who have had the small pox. The Enemy have not yet come under sail. I cannot help suspecting some design which we do not yet comprehend; to what quarter of the World they are bound is wholy unknown, but tis generally Thought to New york. Many people are elated with their quitting Boston. I confess I do not feel so, tis only lifting the burden from one shoulder to the other which perhaps is less able or less willing to support it.—

(You know, that sounds like a dig at New York.)

To what a contemptable situation are the Troops of Britain reduced! I feel glad however that Boston is not distroyed. I hope it will be so secured and guarded as to baffel all future attempts against it.— . . .

From Pens Hill we have a view of the largest Fleet ever seen in America. You may count upwards of 100 & 70 Sail. They look like a Forrest.

It was very lucky for us that we got possession of Nook Hill. They had placed their cannon so as to fire upon the Top of the Hill where they had observed our people marking out the Ground, but it was only to elude them for they began lower upon the Hill and nearer the Town. It was a very foggy dark evening and they had possession of the Hill six hours before a gun was fired, and when they did fire they over shot our people so that they were coverd before morning and not one man lost, which the enemy no sooner discoverd than Bunker Hill was abandoned and every Man decamp’d as soon as he could for they found they should not be able to get away if we once got our cannon mounted.

Our General may say with Ceasar veni vidi et vici.

On Monday morning Adams returned to the topic of the British departure and the end of the siege:

The more I think of our Enemies quitting Boston, the more amaz’d I am, that they should leave such a harbour, such fortifications, such intrenchments, and that we should be in peaceable possession of a Town which we expected would cost us a river of Blood without one Drop shed. Shurely it is the Lords doings and it is Marvelous in our Eyes.

Like Gen. Washington, Adams didn’t know that the British commanders had been wanting to leave Boston for months, harbor and entrenchments or no.

Events to Remember Abigail Adams

Earlier this week I attended the launch of the “Remember Abigail” commemoration, a yearlong series of events honoring Abigail Adams.

We’re in the midst of some dates related to Adams: her wedding anniversary (25 Oct 1764), her death (28 Oct 1818), and her husband’s birthday (30 Oct 1735, N.S.). In addition, her own birthday was 22 Nov 1745, N.S.

The launch took place at the Massachusetts State House, and the Massachusetts Historical Society, home of the Adams Family Papers, was a host. But a lot of the participating organizations are on the South Shore where Adams lived most of her life: the Abigail Adams Historical Society, First Church, and public library in Weymouth; Adams National Historical Park, the Thomas Crane Public Library, and United First Parish Church (“Church of the Presidents”) in Quincy; and the Hingham Historical Society.

The first public events are scheduled for this weekend, but with today’s poor weather report they’re now all slated for Sunday, 28 October.

10:00 to 11:00 A.M.
Commemoration of Abigail Adams’s Death

Join the Abigail Adams Historical Society, stewards of the Abigail Adams Birthplace, as we mark the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Abigail Adams’s death with a special service and readings commemorating her remarkable life. The First Church in Weymouth is one of the oldest continuing congregations in the United States and the church where Abigail Adams's father, Reverend William Smith, served from 1734 to 1783.

At the First Church in Weymouth, 17 Church Street in North Weymouth; cosponsored by the Abigail Adams Historical Society. No reservations necessary.

10:00 A.M. to 12:00 noon
Adams Family of Boston Walking Tour

Follow the words and history of four generations of Adamses. John, Abigail, and their descendants were prolific writers. The trove of documents they left behind intimately describe their lives, public service, and Boston from the eve of the Revolution to the turn of the twentieth century.

Tickets from Boston By Foot; $15, or $5 for B.B.F. members.

1:00 to 3:00 P.M.
Boston Women’s Memorial 15th Anniversary

Join us as the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail celebrates the 15th anniversary of the Boston Women’s Memorial on the Commonwealth Mall. Festivities will include the reflections by Mercy Otis Warren, Arbour Tanner, and Elizabeth Brown Blackwell on their friendships with the memorial’s figures: Abigail Adams, Phillis Wheatley, and Lucy Stone.

On Commonwealth Mall between Fairfield and Gloucester.

Check the RememberAbigail.org website for upcoming events through November 2019.

Abigail Adams Birthplace Tour in Weymouth, 4 Nov.

On Saturday, 4 November, the Abigail Adams Historical Society will welcome visitors for “Behind the Scenes at the Abigail Adams Birthplace,” a tour of the building with preservation carpenter Walter Beebe-Center.

The organization says:

The Abigail Adams Historical Society concludes its year-long commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the rescue of the ca. 1685 Abigail Adams Birthplace from demolition with this special behind-the-scenes tour. Led by Walter Beebe-Center, owner of Essex Restoration, the program will feature an overview of the 2012–2013 restoration which Beebe-Center oversaw and which confirmed the building’s 17th-century construction date. It will also include a structural tour of the home from basement to second floor, sites usually not shown to the public.

There will be two tours, the first from 10:00 A.M. to noon and the second from 2:00 to 4:00 P.M. Each tour is limited to fifteen people. Tickets are $25 per person, or $20 for members.

Tickets must be reserved in advance through AAHS1947@yahoo.com. People who register will receive a reply email stating whether they have a reservation or are wait-listed. All attendees receiving a confirmation should be prepared to pay by check or cash at the door.

The Abigail Adams Birthplace is at 180 Norton Street in North Weymouth. Its last day this year open for regular tours is Sunday, 12 November, from 1:00 to 4:00 P.M.

Abigail Adams Birthplace Tours, 13 Aug. & 10 Sept.

On 13 Oct 1764, Abigail Smith sent a note to the young lawyer John Adams from Boston:

When I wrote you by the Doctor I was in hopes that I should have been out the next day, but my disorder did not leave me as I expected and I am still confind extreemly weak, and I believe low spirited. The Doctor encourages me, tells me I shall be better in a few days. I hope to find his words true, but at present I feel, I dont know how, hardly myself. I would not have the Cart come a tuesday but should be extreemly glad to see you a Monday.

Twelve days later, Abigail was recovered enough to marry John at the house of her father, the Rev. William Smith.

On Sunday, 13 August, that house, now named the Abigail Adams Birthplace in Weymouth, will be open for tours. This is the one day of this month when people can visit the building without making special arrangements in advance. The next such day, 10 September, will also feature apple cider pressing.

People can view the Abigail Adams Birthplace on that Sunday by guided tours only, starting on the hour and half-hour from 1:00 to 3:30 P.M. The building is located at 180 Norton Street in North Weymouth. Admission is $5, $1 for children under age twelve.

Slaves at the Smith Parsonage in Weymouth, 26 Feb.

On Thursday, 26 February, the Abigail Adams Historical Society will present a program on “Slavery at the Abigail Adams Birthplace” in cooperation with Weymouth Public Libraries.

As an adult, Abigail Adams strongly opposed the institution of slavery, yet she grew up in a slaveowning household. Her father, the Rev. William Smith, owned a male servant named Tom and a female servant named Phoebe, and they both played significant roles in Abigail’s life.

The fact that Weymouth’s town minister owned slaves was not unusual in New England. Indeed, ministers were part of a community’s elite, and sometimes independently wealthy. It was common for a genteel young woman marrying a minister to receive an enslaved person as a wedding present to help her set up her new household.

Michelle Marchetti Coughlin, author of One Colonial Woman’s World, will speak about the details of Tom’s and Phoebe’s lives within the Smith household and in the larger context of New England slavery.

Admission to this even is $15 per person, $10 for members of the society. It will take place from 7:00 to 8:00 P.M. at the Tufts Library, 46 Broad Street in Weymouth. Reservations are not necessary.

Inoculation Lecture in Weymouth, 19 Nov.

On Wednesday, 19 November, the Abigail Adams Historical Society in Weymouth will present a program on “The History of Inoculation and Vaccination: The Experience of the Adams Family and the Modern Perspective.”

David Jones, M.D., Ph.D., the A. Bernard Ackerman Professor of the Culture of Medicine at Harvard University and Harvard Medical School, will provide a historical perspective on smallpox inoculation, highlighting the experiences of the Adams family.

John Adams’s mother was a Boylston, niece of the doctor who had done the first inoculations in Boston decades before, Zabdiel Boylston. His work as a lawyer riding the circuit exposed him to lots of people, especially in busy Massachusetts ports. So he underwent the treatment during Boston’s epidemic of 1764, shortly before his marriage.

Abigail Adams and the children didn’t risk the treatment (not nearly as safe as later-developed vaccination) until 1776, when there was another epidemic after the siege. Contrary to how H.B.O.’s John Adams miniseries showed the process, Abigail took her four children, her household servants, and some other relatives and neighbors into Boston. Like John, she underwent inoculation at a house temporarily turned into a hospital, not at home.

Dr. Jones will speak in the Snell Conference Room of South Shore Hospital, 55 Fogg Road in Weymouth, from 7:00 to 9:00 P.M. This program is free and open to the public.

Celebrating Abigail and John Adams, 24-26 October

Saturday, 25 October, will be the sestercentennial of the marriage of Abigail and John Adams.

The Abigail Adams Historical Society, Adams National Historical Park, and First Church in Weymouth will commemorate that 250th anniversary with a series of events over the weekend. Those events will take place at the Abigail Adams Birthplace and First Church in Weymouth and at the Adams National Historical Park in Quincy. The schedule includes:

Friday, 24 October, 11:00 A.M.
Reenactment of the Wedding of Abigail and John Adams
First Church in Weymouth

Descendant Abigail Elias LaCroix will portray Abigail Smith preparing for her wedding at her home, then traveling by horse and carriage to the church, where reenactor Michael LePage will be waiting for her as groom John Adams. Henry Cook IV will act the part of Abigail’s father, the Rev. William Smith, and officiate at the marriage. Rain or shine, free to all, but reservations are highly recommended. Organizers invite the public to wear eighteenth-century attire to the wedding reenactment and reception that follows at the Abigail Adams Birthplace.

In the evening, there will be another reception at the Abigail Adams Birthplace in Weymouth. Admission to that is $125, or $100 for members of the Abigail Adams Historical Society.

Saturday, 25 October, 9:00 A.M. to 12:00 Noon
Symposium: Abigail & John: 250 Years Together
First Church in Weymouth

The scholars sharing papers will be:

• Steven C. Bullock, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, “Power and Politeness in the ‘Remember the Ladies’ Exchange”
• Sara Martin, Adams Papers, and Neal Millikan, George Washington Papers at the Library at Mount Vernon, “Reflections on the Courtship Writings of John, Abigail, John Quincy and Louisa Catherine Adams”
• Andrew Wehrman, Marietta College, “Inoculations of John and Abigail Adams and the Politics of Smallpox in Revolutionary Massachusetts”
• Robina Mitchell, Museum of Fine Arts, “Adams Family Objects at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts”

Admission is free; reservations are recommended because seats are limited. This symposium is co-sponsored by the Adams Papers project at the Massachusetts Historical Society.

At noon, there will be a luncheon at the Abigail Adams Birthplace with Stanford professor Edith Gelles speaking on “Abigail and John: Portrait of a Marriage.” Admission is $25, $20 for members; reservations are recommended.

Saturday, 25 October, 3:00 P.M.
“Songs on Letters of John and Abigail Adams”
Carriage House, Adams National Historical Park

The Lydian Quartet and soloists Clara Osowski and Paul Max Tipton perform the world premiere of James Kallembach’s seven-song cycle inspired by the couple’s correspondence. Admission is free, but seating is first-come, first-served; limited to capacity. Parking available on Adams Street.

Sunday, 26 October, 10:00 A.M. to 12:00 Noon
Celebration of Independence Service
First Church in Weymouth

An ecumenical service celebrating American independence, featuring readings from some of the nation’s founding documents. Admission is free; seating is first-come, first-served and limited. A coffee reception follows immediately at the Abigail Adams Birthplace. Following the reception, guests will be invited to proceed to the adjacent North Weymouth Cemetery for the laying of wreaths at the graves of Abigail Adams’s parents, Elizabeth and William Smith.

Call for Papers on Abigail and John Adams

The Abigail Adams Historical Society and the Adams Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society are co-sponsoring a conference on—what else?—Abigail and John Adams. This event will be called “Abigail & John: 250 Years Together,” and it will take place on Saturday, 25 October 2014 to mark the couple’s 250th wedding anniversary.

The conference organizers have issued a invitation to scholars to propose individual papers or complete panels. Those can cover “all aspects of the life and union of these two extraordinary individuals and their world,” though organizers ask for proposals to be keyed to one of these general topics:

• Adams Family Lives
• Courtship and Commitments in Colonial Massachusetts
• Home and Hearth in Colonial Massachusetts

If you wish to propose a paper or session, e-mail a 300-500-word abstract to Michelle Marchetti Coughlin by 16 May. Presenters will be notified in June. Papers will have to be completed in time to be circulated to attendees before the conference, which will take place at or near the Abigail Adams Birthplace in Weymouth.

Abigail Adams Birthplace Open House, 30 June

On Sunday, 30 June, the Abigail Adams Birthplace in Weymouth is reopening after a two-year restoration, the Quincy Patriot-Ledger reports. The 1685 house has been structurally reinforced, equipped with climate control to allow year-round programs, and spruced up with new clapboards.

I should note that this birthplace isn’t quite in the same place as it was in 1744, when baby Abigail Smith was born there, or 1764, when she married John Adams in the parlor. The house was moved to a new site by oxen in the early 1800s. After World War 2, it was sawed in half, moved back to its original neighborhood, and reassembled. The Boston Globe shares a photo of the latter move as well as the image above.

Three of Weymouth’s ministers lived in the house, with the Rev. William Smith being the second. But apparently it wasn’t officially the town parsonage—it appears to have been the property of the ministers themselves, and each family sold to the next. The building is now the property of the Abigail Adams Historical Society.

The newspapers disagree, but the society’s website says that after a members’ reception it will host a reopening ceremony for the public from 1:00 to 5:00 P.M. The house will then be open for visits this summer on 13 and 28 July and 10 and 25 August. Admission will be $5 for adults and teens, $1 for children under age twelve.

The 2013 Desk Calendar Contest

If you didn’t win last week’s wall calendar contest, don’t despair! I also have an extra Colonial Williamsburg desk calendar for the coming year. It’s spiral-bound, about 9 inches wide by 8 tall, with a page for each month and each week, all facing color photographs of Williamsburg sights. And I’m going to give this one away, too.

I’ve written capsule descriptions of eleven men linked to the American Revolution, broadly defined. Some of them were named John Robinson. Some of them were named William Smith. One of them was named neither John Robinson nor William Smith. The challenge is to identify the Robinsons and Smiths and name the odd man out.

1) Member of Parliament and Secretary of the Treasury in London from 1770 to 1782, he was Lord North’s principal political fixer.

2) Aide-de-camp to Gen. John Sullivan, Gen. Lafayette, and finally Gen. George Washington, he served as a diplomat and a Congressman, and became an in-law to John Adams.

3) An officer in the Westford militia company in 1775, he took part in the provincials’ advance toward the North Bridge without his men. Eleven years later he returned to Concord to help close the county courts during the Shays’ Rebellion.

4) Appointed a Commissioner of Customs, he went into hiding after a coffee-house brawl and sailed secretly to London with a set of pro-Crown reports about the Boston Massacre.

5) A historian of colonial New York, he railed against the idea of an Anglican bishop for America and sought compromises between Patriots and the Crown. He served as Chief Justice of both New York and Québec/Lower Canada.

6) Born in Charleston, South Carolina, he spent the entire Revolutionary War as an attorney in England. Back in America, he was elected to the first five Congresses under the new Constitution.

7) Invited to America by Benjamin Franklin, he helped to set up both the University of Pennsylvania and Washington University. He lobbied for an Anglican bishop for America and was driven from Philadelphia as a suspected Loyalist.

8) By training a carpenter, he had to leave Cambridge, Massachusetts, after the “Powder Alarm.” After convincing the Crown to support a settlement at Penobscot Bay in Maine, where he owned land, he endured a siege by Massachusetts forces.

9) He’s one of America’s leading historians on the poor in the late colonial and early national period, particularly in Philadelphia.

10) He died in office after serving for many years as both Speaker of the House of Burgesses and Treasurer in Virginia, and the government discovered he’d embezzled large sums of money.

11) Theologically liberal minister of the town of Weymouth, Massachusetts, he became an in-law to John Adams.

Some of these William Smiths and John Robinsons had middle names as well, but the descriptions are all straightforward. All research resources are allowed and encouraged.

Instead of challenging individuals to identify all the men at once, I’m inviting you folks to “crowdsource” the answers. If you can name one or more of the numbered men, do so in a comment with a confirming link or reference. (For example, if you think number 7 was the odd man out and named Dr. Samuel Gardner, your comment could say that and include a link to a webpage about him or cite a book that mentions him.) Make sure your comment has a name or unique pseudonym attached.

I’ll run the complete set of correct identifications next Saturday. And I’ll choose a Boston 1775 reader who contributed to the answer to receive the desk calendar. Happy searching!

Massachusetts Manuscript Maps

Back in January I bumped into the Massachusetts Historical Society’s “Massachusetts Maps” online exhibit. A lot of these images are manuscript maps—i.e., drawn by hand, not made for mass reproduction, and thus not to be seen anywhere else. Until now.

Among the choice selections:

• A British army officer’s map of Charlestown, Boston, and Dorchester in late 1775, showing the fortifications of his army and the rebels.
• Society founder Jeremy Belknap’s map of Boston harbor that same year.
• Belknap’s sketch of the extent of a fire in Boston in April 1787, with the Rev. Dr. Mather Byles’s house at the top and the site of the chopped-down Liberty Tree at bottom. “Frog Lane” is now [CORRECTED] the part of Boylston Street that defines a southern border of the Common.
• Belknap’s similar report on the fire of 1794, which shows the ropewalks where fights broke out between workers and soldiers in March 1770 as well as some landmarks of post-Revolutionary society: the controversial Federal Street Theater, the Tontine Crescent, and the Boston Glass-house.

The exhibit also offers a look at other locations in Massachusetts:

• John Adams’s notes on Braintree and Weymouth in 1760.
• Berkshire County in 1777, when it extended more to the east than today.
• Nehemiah Bennett’s 1785 map of Stoughton, which shows “Col. [Richard] Gridleys Mill.”

And I’ve barely started to explore the graphic representation of the comprehensive Boston property survey of 1798.