Thomas Williston, Doorkeeper

Yesterday I introduced Thomas Williston, sexton of Boston’s Old Brick (First) Meeting-House starting in the 1740s.

Williston also took on jobs for the town of Boston. Some of those were tied to his work as a church sexton, such as winding his meetinghouse’s clock and burying the dead. Others were civic tasks, as in managing the weekly traffic of farm wagons at the marketplace.

In June 1754 the town government offered another job: “Mr. Thomas Williston is appointed to attend the Select men in the room of Mr. John Savel who by reason of Age and Infirmities cannot attend the business.” Williston was also given “the care and Oversight of all the Watches in the Town.” And he was still the sexton at the Old Brick.

Thomas Williston’s official title was doorkeeper at Faneuil Hall. As such, he continued to patrol the marketplace, arranged to illuminate the building after the capture of Montreal in 1760, and the next year took down “the Potts & other Iron Ware” from the walls and hung “the Town Ladders” there instead.

But being doorkeeper also involved a lot of running around Boston. In 1758 the selectmen empowered Williston to enforce the town’s newly revised by-laws, including speed limits on vehicles. They sent him out on the water to warn ship captains against unloading “French neutrals” or possible smallpox patients. Along with Deacon William Larrabee, Williston was assigned to warn newcomers out of town—though he did that for only a few months, Robert Love’s Warnings reports. At different times Williston summoned new officeholders, tax collectors, and heads of fire companies to meet with the selectmen at Faneuil Hall.

For the annual inspection of the schools, Williston contacted the many respected gentlemen chosen for that committee. He also visited the two grammar-school masters to obtain the names of the graduating scholars so the selectmen could invite their parents to a dinner at Faneuil Hall. (Students leaving the three writing schools didn’t get a party.)

Some of Williston’s assignments overlapped with his roles as gravedigger, bellringer, and watchman. For example, in March 1761 he informed tomb owners they were responsible for paying to repair a wall of the burying ground. But he could also be told to deliver the seals to the newly elected sealers of leather, inspect leaning chimneys, and warn property owners about dangerous drains.

Williston’s busiest months on record were during the smallpox epidemic of 1764. He appears over and over in the selectmen’s minutes: tracking down reported patients, moving some to the hospital at New Boston in the town sedan chair, installing flags and guards (including his brother Ichabod) outside quarantined homes, hiring and dismissing nurses, smoking homes and clothing, and burying the dead under special arrangements to contain the disease. Thomas, his brother John, his other brother Ichabod, and Ichabod’s wife Elizabeth all got extra pay during those months.

After army regiments arrived in Boston in October 1768, Thomas Williston had the task of telling British officers that the selectmen wanted to speak to them—a potentially volatile clash of authorities. In November he summoned two officers accused of having “insulted & interrupted” the Dock Watch; those officers apologized for being drunk. In July 1770 “Mr. Williston, Door-keeper to the Select-men,” carried a letter from a town committee to Capt. Thomas Preston in the town jail. In September, some sick soldiers came back from Castle Island to enter “the Hospital in the Common”; the selectmen had Williston summon regimental surgeon Charles Hall for consultation.

In sum, Thomas Williston was well known in Boston, the liaison between the town’s highest elected officials and citizens of all sorts. He was based at Faneuil Hall and the Old Brick Meeting-House, but he could show up anywhere in the course of his duties.

On 18 Feb 1773, Isaiah Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy reported the death of Thomas Williston, “sexton of the Old-Brick, and doorkeeper of Faneuil hall.” He was buried in the Granary Burying Ground with his wife Sarah, who had died on Christmas Day in 1771.

Four days later the selectmen met in Faneuil Hall. Those men, “taking into consideration who was a proper Person to fill up the place of Mr. Thomas Williston, who for a number of years had attended them on the Towns Business; Agreed to give the Offer of the office to Mr. William Barrett Sexton of Dr. [Samuel] Coopers Church” on Brattle Street.

Williston’s successor as sexton of the First Meeting-house and, as of 31 March, as a town-approved gravedigger was Josiah Carter. As I discussed here, he had also been a town watchman. However, Carter lasted in that sexton’s job less than two years after Williston’s demise.

“Where the Small Pox has been for sometime past”

In December 1774, Boston selectmen learned that children in three British officers’ families were recovering from the smallpox—possibly after receiving the disease by inoculation. They wanted to respond quickly. But they heard the news on on a Saturday evening, and weren’t supposed to do business on Sunday.

The selectmen therefore gathered on “Sabbath Evening” and drafted an advertisement for those weekly newspapers that appeared on Monday. Here’s the text from the Boston Evening-Post:

The Publick are here by informed, that there are now but three People in the Hospital at New Boston infected with the Small Pox, who will probably be dismissed from thence this Week; that on Saturday information was given that the Wife of Mr. [Trotter] Hill, Surgeon of the 59th Regiment and three of their Children in a House in Hanover Street, near the head of Cold Lane, also two Children of Lieut. [John] Clark’s of said Regiment, under the same Roof, have the Distemper together, with three Children of Capt. [James] Figg’s of the 59th Regiment, in a House down a Yard opposite the White Horse [tavern], South End:—

As it has been suggested that the eleven Children received the Infection by Inoculation, the Inhabitants may be assured, that such Measures will be pursued with the Delinquents, for the present and future safety of the Town and Country as the Laws of the Land require.

But the selectmen didn’t have a lot of legal options. According to their 19 December discussion:

The Selectmen deliberated on the expediency of removing the Persons infected, from Capt. Clarkes in Hanover Street and Capt. Figs House opposite the White Horse who refused their consent for a removal, and considering the doubtfulness of the Law as to impowering the Selectmen to remove any Person contrary to their consent—therefore Voted that Fences be put up in the Street near the Infected Houses, and that a Flag be hung out in each House to give notice of the Distemper.

The selectmen apparently went to Gen. Thomas Gage and ask that the military use its own resources to look after its sick dependents. The following week they could announce:

No Inhabitant [i.e., local] has hitherto taken the Distemper, & by the care of his Excellency the Governor a Transport is provided for the reception of any Persons Belonging to the Army who should hereafter appear to have the Symptoms of that Disorder

And indeed on 27 December, when the selectmen heard about another case in the officers’ households, the patient didn’t end up in the province hospital:

Information was given Yesterday by Dr. [Charles] Jarvis that a Maid Servant in Lieut. Clarkes House in Hannover where the Small Pox has been for sometime past, was broke out with the Small Pox; She was by consent of the master and the Order of Collo. Hammilton put on hoard the Hospital Ship in the Harbour.

The same day, Dr. Charles Jarvis reported that the “Davis McGraws & Jacksons Children” were well enough to go home safely. But another person didn’t leave the hospital in such fortunate circumstances:

One George Baldwin a Soldier sent to the Hospital from the Barracks in King Street, died on the 13th. Inst [i.e., of this month], when Mr. [William] Barrett had orders to bury him in the Night, carrying his Corps over the Hill to the Burying Ground at the bottom of the Common.

On 4 January, the outbreak appeared to be over. The selectmen stated:

Information having been given that the Hospital at New Boston is now sufficiently smoked & cleansed Mr. Will. Darrington the Keeper had leave for himself & Family to go abroad as usual & Orders were given him accordingly.

But only one week later “a Lad of one Kings a Rigger at the North End” came down with the disease, and he and his mother moved into the hospital. The disease had reached the civilian population, and would continue to spread slowly but steadily through 1775 and 1776. This was an early stage of the continent-wide smallpox epidemic that Elizabeth Fenn discusses in Pox Americana.

TOMORROW: Back to the arrest of William Dorrington. (Remember that?)

Boston’s Selectmen Fight the Smallpox

On 22 Nov 1774, the Boston selectmen learned that smallpox had broken out in town. Frightening as this disease was, the selectmen had procedures for limiting epidemics among the inhabitants. This outbreak became complicated, however, because it involved military families, and thus competing lines of authority.

The initial report came from the surgeon of the 59th Regiment of Foot, Dr. Trotter Hill. There were two families involved, headed by soldiers named McGrath (though spellings varied widely) and Burkins. The regiment was one of several that had arrived in Massachusetts in the preceding months.

The selectmen responded quickly:

The five Children with the Small Pox in the House of one Magraw a Soldier of the 59th Regiment [under] Collo. [Otho] Hammelton were removed this morning to the Hospital at at [sic] New Boston under the care of Mr. [William] Dorrington, the Parents of the Children consenting to the same.

Voted, that Dr. [Charles] Jarvis have the care of the Children as their Physician.

The Mother of three of the Small Pox Children, and the Father of two of them, were permitted to go into the Hospital, to attend their Children.

Agreed with Mr. Joseph Vose to supply the Hospital with Mutton for three Weeks, at 3 Coppers p. pound.

That afternoon a smaller set of selectmen continued to deal with the health crisis. They posted “a Guard...to prevent the Soldiers going into the Infected Rooms” of the house. They ordered Dorrington as keeper of the hospital to “prevent any Persons from coming in and going out of your House, unless they have our Permission,” and to “conduct in such a manner as to give satisfaction to the Sick and their Friends, at the same time that you guard against needless expences.”

Hiring William Barrett to deliver supplies to the hospital, the selectmen said he “must keep an Account of in a small Book for our Inspection.” They also ordered Barrett to treat the house where the infected families had lived to keep the disease from spreading:

You must Smoke and cleanse the Rooms of the House the Sick were taken from well with Rossom [rosin] and Brimstone, and the Bedding and other things to prevent the Infection being communicated and if you should observe that the Guard permits any Person going in without our permission, give us immediate notice there of

Smoking clothing, linen, and other goods was the standard way to prevent the spread of smallpox. I’m not sure it had any effect on the virus—perhaps the heat, dryness, or simple passage of time was helpful. More likely, the effort let people think they were doing something.

TOMORROW: The situation grows worse.