Reforming the Ancient and Honorables

When we last left the private military training organization called the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, it had gone dormant because of the Revolutionary War. The group’s records indicate a brief stirring of activity in 1782, but it wasn’t really active again until 1786.

That summer, some members visited the last elected captain, William Bell, and convinced him to start meetings again. They elected a new clerk, William Dawes, who went around Boston signing on a bumper crop of new members, including John Brooks, Benjamin Lincoln, Samuel Gore, John Winslow, Alexander Hodgdon, Jonathan Balch, John Johnson, Andrew Cunningham, and many other veterans of the Revolutionary movement and the war.

On 6 Sept 1786, the Federalist Massachusetts Centinel newspaper reported:

On Monday last for the first time, since the commencement of the late Revolution, the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, commanded by Major Bell, paraded at the State house in this town, and, preceded by a band of musick, marched into the common, where they performed a number of military exercises—after which they marched to Faneuil Hall, discharged a volley of small arms and finished the day much to their honour, and the credit of the town.

It was gratifying to the real friends of this country, to see our aged citizens, some of whom were near seventy years of age, equipped in the accoutrements of soldiers and setting an example to the younger part of the community, that should their country require their aid in the field, they might be found ready disciplined and fit for immediate service.

What prompted that burst of military activity? I don’t think it was coincidence that the company’s rebirth followed a rumbling of unrest in western Massachusetts—the “Regulators” whose movement was eventually dubbed Shays’ Rebellion. Several other private military companies formed in and around Boston at the same time. Within four months, Gen. Lincoln would lead militia companies, paid for by wealthy citizens, west from Boston to put down that unrest.

“Fifty Pompions in Arms”

In 1774 the bricklayer William Bell (1731-1804) was elected captain of Boston’s Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company. That group wasn’t an official company of the Massachusetts militia, but rather a private organization that functioned as a sort of militia officers’ training school.

Like the town’s official companies, the Ancient and Honorables usually drilled on Boston Common. But in the fall of 1774, there were British army tents on much of that land. So Bell led his comrades to the biggest stretch of open space in the North End, on Copp’s Hill.

Merchant John Andrews had a fun time describing what happened in a 4 Oct 1774 letter to a relative in Philadelphia:

Yesterday afternoon our honorable and ancient Artillery company turn’d out, and for want of a better place they march’d down to Cop’s hill, where they went through their several manoeuvres to the satisfaction of every one, and really made a much more respectable appearance than they formerly us’d to.

Their fifes and drums, when near the hill, alarm’d the [warship] Lively, which lays near the ferry [to Charlestown]; and when they had got upon the hill, in sight of the Ship, the Boatswain’s whistle call’d all hands upon deck, the marines with their firelocks were fix’d upon the quarter, the ports open’d with a spring upon their cables, the round tops man’d, and a boat man’d and sent out upon each side to reconnoitre.

Such was the terror they were in, from the appearance of about fifty pompions [i.e., pumpkins, and metaphorical ones at that] in arms. At about five o’clock they remarched into King street, where they perform’d their evolutions with the greatest propriety and exactness; much more so, in my opinion, than any performances of the [regular] troops since they’ve been here.

Andrews’s letter is the main evidence of this event; the organization’s contemporaneous records don’t mention it. His sardonic tone seems to reflect a conviction that the British authorities weren’t up for a real military confrontation, and would back down before things got that bad.

The Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company met next, according to its records, on 3 Apr 1775, planning for their big annual parade and election of new officers in May. But then the war started, and the organization basically went dormant until 1782.