“A Sett of Globes (which came over by Mistake)”?

In eighteenth-century New England, booksellers sold more than books, pamphlets, and magazines. 

As the business letters of Thomas Hancock and Henry Knox show, they also purveyed medicines, tea, “Instruments,” quills, stationery, snuff, and other genteel goods.

In the spring or summer of 1773, Knox received a set of globes from one of his London suppliers. This set probably consisted of a terrestrial globe—the spherical representation of Earth that we’re used to—and a celestial globe showing the constellations and other stars.

We have a bunch of Knox’s incoming correspondence, published by the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1928, but I don’t see a clue about who sent those globes.

Some London merchants, such as the publisher Thomas Longman, just shipped Knox the latest magazines and the books reviewed in those magazines without waiting for an order. So it’s possible one of the young bookseller’s suppliers put those globes on a ship expecting he would find a market for them.

Fortunately, a customer appeared. On 6 August, the schoolmaster John Vinal wrote to Knox from Newburyport:

Mr. [Tristram?] Dalton informed me that you had a Sett of Globes (which came over by Mistake) that you would dispose of at the Sterling Cost and Charges. I was just going to write to London for such a Sett; but if you have not disposed of yours, and the price is agreeable, and they are the right sort I will purchase them. I should be glad of a Line immediately; you may inclose one to me directed to my Friend Mr. Wm. Miller Collector.

I should be glad to know the following particulars, vizt. Whither they are Senex’s Globes—who they are made by, if they have a Magnetic Needle and Card, if they have a Nonius Scale and Analemma, Quadrant of Altitude, etc. and what Cases they are in. . . .

Please to express the Price either in Sterling or L[awful] M[one]y.

As published, this letter told Knox to send mail through “Wm. Millen,” but the deputy collector of customs in Newburyport was another of Knox’s customers, William Miller. Since Vinal was officially a handwriting master, you’d think he’d render his friend’s name unmistakably.

As a teacher of adult classes in navigation, among other subjects, Vinal’s wanted to know this product’s features. “Senex’s Globes” meant those modeled on the work of cartographer John Senex (1678–1740). A “Nonius Scale” was the invention of the Portuguese scientist Pedro Nuñez (1492–1577). An “Analemma” is the figure-8 pattern traced by the Sun when viewed from the same spot day after day over a full year.

As for the price, that probably depended on how large these globes were. Sets ranged from small enough to fit in a pocket to large enough to count as furniture, and their price tags were proportional.

Did Knox and Vinal close the deal? We don’t know because we don’t have both sides of the bookseller’s correspondence. But on 27 June the Rev. John Murray had written to Knox from Boothbay in Maine asking for “one pair of 18 inch Globes.” (Murray also complained about how Knox had supplied “Copies of the Classical authors,” nonetheless ordered some other books, and asked how to reach Knox’s childhood friend the Rev. David McClure.) So if those globes from London were 18 inches across, they were probably on their way past Newburyport to Boothbay.

TOMORROW: Mr. Vinal’s notices.

The First Captured British Officer to Die in the Revolutionary War

When provincial militia companies fired at the British soldiers holding the North Bridge in Concord, they wounded four army officers:

• Lt. Edward Thoroton Gould of the 4th Regiment, in the foot.
• Lt. Waldron Kelly of the 10th, in the hand or arm.
• Lt. William Sutherland of the 38th, only slightly.
• Lt. Edward Hull of the 43rd, in the arm.

Unable to march back to Boston, Gould commandeered a chaise in Concord and set out with Hull, who seems to have been more badly hurt. They raced back to safe ground through the hostile countryside.

Somewhere east of Lexington, the lieutenants met up with Col. Percy and the British relief column. Gould briefed the colonel about what had happened in Concord and drove on. But by the time the chaise reached Meontomy, the provincial militia was out in force.

Someone fired at the vehicle, wounding Hull again. Gould surrendered and was taken to Medford. Hull was carried into a deserted house beside the road. When the homeowners, Samuel and Elizabeth Butterfield, returned at the end of the day, they found a provincial man, Daniel Hemenway, shot in the chest but relatively healthy, and Lt. Hull, grievously wounded.

The next day, the Rev. David McClure had been in the Butterfields’ house. He wrote:

I went into a house in Menotomy, where was a stout farmer, walking the room, from whose side a surgeon had just cut out a musket ball . . .

In the same room, lay mortally wounded, a british Officer, Lieut. Hull, a youthful, fair & delicate countinance. He was of a respectable family of fortune, in Scotland. Sitting on one feather bed, he leaned on another, & was attempting to suck the juice of an Orange, which some neighbour had brought. The physician of the place had been to dress his wounds, & a woman was appointed to attend him. His breaches were bloody, lying on the bed. . . .

I asked him, if he was dangerously wounded? he replied, “yes, mortally.” That he had received three balls in his body. His countenance expressed great bodily anguish. I conversed with him a short time, on the prospect of death & a preperation for that solemn scene, to which he appeared to pay serious attention.

A rumor about Hull’s captivity circulated among his fellow officers in Boston, as recorded by Lt. Frederick Mackenzie on 30 April:

Lt. Hull of the 43rd Regiment who was dangerously wounded on the 19th Instant, was left in a house in the Village of Menotomy. ’Tis said the Rebels placed three deserters from the 43rd Regt over him while he lay on a bed unable to move, and that one of those Villains threatened to shoot him for having formerly brought him to a Court Martial.

There’s no hint of such treatment in provincial sources. The head of the Massachusetts Committee of Safety, Dr. Joseph Warren, had written to Gen. Thomas Gage assuring him that Hull and Gould were getting medical care. He invited the general to send out any British army surgeon he chose.

In Igniting the American Revolution, Derek W. Beck writes that toward the end of the month, as Hull weakened, Warren sent Gage another note saying that the lieutenant hoped to see his regimental adjutant. That was Lt. William Miller; he was promoted to captain at the end of the year and was still at that rank when he died in 1789.

Hull died on 2 May. The next day, Gen. Artemas Ward ordered three lieutenants and three adjutants to escort the lieutenant’s coffin to Charlestown and turn it over to the British military. A barge from H.M.S. Somerset carried it across the Charles River to Boston.

On 4 May Lt. John Barker of the 4th Regiment wrote in his diary:

The late Lt. Hull of the 43d was buried today: he was wounded and taken Prisoner on the 19th and the day before yesterday died of his wounds; they yesterday brought him to town as he had requested it.

They won’t give up any of their Prisoners, but I hear they treat ’em pretty well.

(The photo above shows the monument to two British privates killed and buried near the North Bridge in Concord. We don’t know where Lt. Hull’s body was interred.)