“Twas Expected The Troops would have embarkd this night”

On 15 March 1776, merchant John Rowe was expecting the British military to sail away from Boston. Any minute now.

This night my Store on the Long Wharff broke open & almost A hhd of Sugar & A hog head of Ware Stole—

Twas Expected The Troops would have embarkd this night but they still Remain in Town

I din’d at home with Genl. [James] Robertson Colo. Clark Richd. Green An Officer of the 5th Regt. Mrs. Rowe & Jack Rowe—

after dinner Capt. [John] Haskins gave me Notice that several officers were in Mrs. [Mary] Hooper’s House committing Violence & breaking Everything Left they Broke a Looking Glass over the Chimney which cost Twenty Guineas such Barbarous Treatment is too much for the most Patient man to bear.

Mary Hooper was the widow of the Rev. Dr. William Hooper (1702–1767, shown above), an Anglican minister Rowe admired. She was also the mother of the William Hooper who represented North Carolina in the Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence.

“Rainy Weather” came on 16 March, and the preparations for departure went on.

The Troops are getting every thing in order to depart.

My store on Long Wharff broke open again this night—the Behaviour of The Soldiers is to bad—tis almost Impossible to believe it

I din’d at home with Mrs. Rowe & Capt. [John] Gore & Spent the Evening at home with Richd. Greene Mr. [Samuel] Parker Mr. [Jonathan] Warner & Mrs. Rowe & Jack.

Two officers of the 5th: came to Mee for Wine they wanted to be Trusted I Refused them since I have heard nothing only they Damned me & swore they would take it by Force—One of them nam’d Russell of the 5th. Regmt. the Other I dont know

There was a Boston paint merchant and official, about to evacuate, called Capt. John Gore for his militia rank. Just to make things fun, there was also a captain named John Gore in His Majesty’s Fifth Regiment of Foot. Rowe could conceivably have dined with either.

As for Russell of the Fifth Regiment, no officer of that name appears in the Army Lists of 1773 or 1778. Then again, Rowe forgot the name of the officer from that regiment whom he hosted at dinner the day before. So he didn’t know them that well. Certainly not enough to extend credit for wine.

TOMORROW: The country people come in.

“Treading the reforming justice out of me”

Yesterday we bravely accompanied James Murray, a justice of the peace known to be friendly to the royal government, into Faneuil Hall as two Whig magistrates heard a charge against William Burnet Brown for helping to assault James Otis, Jr., in September 1769.

According to a letter Murray wrote at the end of the month, selectman Jonathan Mason chided the crowd for jostling him, even if everyone knew he was no fan of Otis.

Then, lending me his hand, [Mason] helped me over the door into the selectmen’s seat. Before I got down from the seat I was hiss’d. I bowed. I was hiss’d again, and bowed around a second time. Then a small clap ensued. Compliments over, I sat down.

The justices asked me up to the bench. I declined.

The justices of the peace presiding at this session were Richard Dana and Samuel Pemberton. Murray had the status to sit beside them and render judgment—but of course he knew he would be outvoted.

The examination of some evidence [i.e., witness] was continued, and, being finished, the justices thought fit to bind over Mr. Brown. He lookt about for bail. No one offered but I.

According to Dr. Thomas Young, the printer John Mein also offered to be one of Brown’s “sureties.” That of course didn’t make Mein any more popular with the crowd. (This was several weeks before he was driven into hiding, as discussed here.)

Murray insisted that his offer to put up bail for Brown didn’t mean he supported one side of the the British Coffee-House brawl:

Here I desired the justices to take notice that I did not mean by this offer to vindicate what Mr. Brown had done, but only to stand by him now the torrent was against him. The recognizance taken, the justices desired the people to disperse, for that Mr. Brown had complied with the law; but the crowd, intending more sport, still remained.

As I was pressing out next to Mr. Dana, my wig was pulled off, and a pate, clean shaved by time and the barber, was left exposed. This was thought a signal and prelude to further insult, which would probably have taken place but for hurting the cause.

Going along in this plight, surrounded by the crowd, in the dark, Lewis Gray took hold of my right arm and Mr. William Taylor of my left, and supported me, while somebody behind kept nibbling at my sides and endeavoring to trip me; for the pleasure, as may be supposed, of treading the reforming justice out of me by the multitude.

Mr. [Gilbert or Louis] Deblois threw himself in my rear, and suffered not a little in my defence. Mr. G. Hooper went before, and my wig, disheveled, as I was told, was borne on a staff behind.

The gentlemen, my friends and supporters, offer’d to house me near the Hall, but I insisted on going home in the present trim, and was by them landed in safety, Mr. Gray and others having continually thus admonished my retinue in the way, “No violence, or you’ll hurt the cause.”

Gray, Taylor, and the Debois brothers were all Boston merchants who became Loyalists during the war. Taylor eventually moved back to Massachusetts.

I’m guessing that “Mr. G. Hooper” was George Hooper (1747-1821), a son of the late Rev. William Hooper of Trinity Church. Murray promised to look after that family when the minister died in 1767.

Murray had lived for decades in North Carolina, and he probably helped the Hooper brothers set themselves up in that colony. Oldest surviving brother William, having studied law under Otis, started a practice in Wilmington. He became politically active and eventually signed the Declaration of Independence.

George Hooper followed William to the Wilmington area by the 1770s, worked as a merchant, and held some local offices. In 1780 he was suspected of having Loyalist sympathies and left for Charleston, South Carolina. Since that city had fallen into British hands, that looks like the sort of thing a Loyalist would do. But Hooper’s brother and father-in-law, both active Patriots, advocated for him and he managed to come back to Wilmington after the war. Eventually he was the first president of the Bank of Cape Fear.

Murray’s experience on 6 Sept 1769 might have been the inspiration for this engraving, which appeared in James S. Loring’s Loyalists of Massachusetts. Having tried to describe the situation with detached wit, the justice wouldn’t have appreciated this depiction.

John Adams Sends a Letter to North Carolina

John Adams and William Hooper (shown left, courtesy of the National Park Service) were delegates to the First and Second Continental Congresses in Philadelphia in 1774-76, one from Massachusetts and the other from North Carolina. But they had known each other for more than ten years before that. 

Hooper had been born in Boston and studied law under James Otis, Jr., in the early 1760s. He set up his practice in Wilmington because he figured there would be less competition there.

In March 1776, as Hooper prepared to go back to North Carolina to help plan a government separate from the British Crown, he asked Adams for advice on that challenge. The Braintree lawyer had been recognized as an expert in constitutional law since 1765, when he published his “Dissertation on the Canon and the Feudal Law” in the Boston Gazette. His “Novanglus” essays in the Gazette in early 1775 cemented his reputation. 

Adams wrote out his ideas in a letter to Hooper, then made a copy for another North Carolina delegate, John Penn. Then Jonathan Sergeant of New Jersey wanted a copy, and George Wythe of Virginia another. Finally, Richard Henry Lee asked Adams for permission to have the text printed in Philadelphia; it appeared as a pamphlet titled Thoughts on Government.

North Carolina is displaying Adams’s original letter to Hooper in its state capitol through 8 September.