“Go down to the ferry ways so as to see Charls”

Even after the siege of Boston began, the nearby ferries continued to operate, at least intermittently. Those boats offered ways to transmit information or goods, sometimes illicitly.

There was a ferry between Boston’s North End and Charlestown, operated by a man named Enoch Hopkins (d. 1778). On 15 June 1775, a Boston magistrate named William Stoddard wrote to James Littlefield in Watertown:

Your letter and the last, dated the 13th instant, by Mr. Hopkins, I have received. I waited on the Admiral [Samuel Graves] this morning, and have got you a fishing pass for your boat and three men, to come in and out of this harbour, which I now send you. You will carefully observe the pass; you must observe to go a fishing from Salem, before you come up here, and then you may come in and go out. I hope you will not meet with any obstruction at Salem; not forgetting, if in your power, to bring up veal, green peas, fresh butter, asparagus, and fresh salmon.

Mr. Miles went away yesterday in the afternoon, by water, in order to come to you, and we suppose he is with you before this. I hope you have received a cloak, with a bag of brown sugar, I sent over yesterday by Mr. Hopkins’s son. I have paid some of the ferrymen, and I shall pay them all for their trouble, when I have done with them. Do not pay them any thing; if you have, let me know; keep that to yourself. . . .

I wish you would send me last Monday’s newspaper, and this day’s paper. I shall be much obliged to you, if you can, before you go for Salem, send me some fresh butter, and half a bushel of green peas. I now send you two dollars in this letter, and an osnaburgh bag, by Mr. Hopkins’s son, to put the peas in. What other charges you are at I will settle with you hereafter.

On 28 July, Joseph Reed, Gen. George Washington’s military secretary, wrote about getting a secret message into Boston via “a Waterman” operating north of Boston, possibly Hopkins. And at some point during the siege, a Boston shopkeeper warned Gen. Thomas Gage that ferrymen named Hopkins and Goodwin were “as bad Rebels as any”:

I have seen them bring men over in Disguise—and they are up in Town every Oppertunity they have gathering what Intelegence they can and when they return communicate it to the Rebels the other side, and they again to the Rebel Officers.

This may be the same Enoch Hopkins who with his wife and seven children arrived in Concord as war refugees in November, as Katie Turner Getty has written about.

The British army took the Charlestown peninsula two days after the Stoddard letter above. That meant the ferry across the Charles River was fully within royal territory, and the Mystic River now defined the siege line. There were two ferries crossing the Mystic to Charlestown, one from Malden called the Penny Ferry and one from Chelsea called the Winnisimmet Ferry (spelled variously, of course).

On 6 August, British army raiders burnt the Penny Ferry landing house in Malden, and it was never rebuilt.

At Chelsea, Lt. Col. Loammi Baldwin was in charge, stationed at the ferry landing. On 28 July he became part of Reed’s chain of men sending information into Boston, and in return he sent headquarters several reports about people coming over the Winnisimmet Ferry.

As I quoted yesterday, in the summer of 1775 Dr. Benjamin Church discussed using the Winnisimmet Ferry as a conduit for information and what he really wanted, money:

If I am to Continue in your Service Major be so good to send me out a little Cash, Charly the ferry Man if you can trust him may give it me—Slyly—by heavens Major I shou’d loose my life if it was known by these people.

I attempted some time ago to write you, over Chalsey ferry but the Committy would not let me go down to the ferry ways so as to see Charls. After that I did not try but went to Newport and from thence wrote.

Clearly the local Patriot authorities (“the Committy”) understood that people might use that ferry for nefarious purposes and didn’t let Church, or probably anyone, go there alone. 

I’ve tried to identify this ferryman named “Charly” or “Charls” (or, presumably, Charles) without success. While the men granted the right to run a ferry sometimes show up in the records, Charly may well have been an employee instead.

Stymied by that route, Church instead sent information through Newport, and ultimately that led to his arrest.

TOMORROW: Church’s report on the Arnold expedition.

“Your Excellency will therefore excuse our doing anything”

During the conflict over the Manufactory building, Gov. Francis Bernard was still pushing other ways to find housing for the two-plus regiments in town.

The governing law was the Quartering Act of 1765. That required colonies to provide barracks for army troops, which Massachusetts did at Castle William—but the Crown didn’t want the troops off on that island.

The next option in the law was government-owned buildings—but locals didn’t want troops in Faneuil Hall, the Town House, and Manufactory.

After that came “inns, livery stables, ale houses, victualling houses, and the houses of sellers of [wine and spirits]”—and no one wanted to force citizens to turn over those properties without strong local authority behind the order.

Gov. Bernard had gotten no cooperation from his Council, so he tried another branch of local government. He put pressure on Boston’s justices of the peace. Those magistrates were appointed, not elected, so they supposedly owed more loyalty to the Crown.

The governor started that effort on 20 Oct 1768, the same day that Sheriff Stephen Greenleaf actually got into the Manufactory. In a letter to London, Bernard explained:

I therefore summoned all the acting justices to meet me in the Council chamber: Twelve of them appeared; I acquainted them that the General demanded quarters for two regiments, according to the Act of parliament; they desired to take it into Consideration Among themselves; I consented, & We parted.

Two justices, 2 days after this [i.e., 22 October], attended me with an Answer in writing, whereby the whole body refused to billet the Souldiers. But these Gentlemen informing me that the Justices had been much influenced by the Argument that the barracks at the Castle ought to be first filled &c, I showed them the Minutes of the Council whereby the barracks at the Castle were assigned for the Irish Regiments; and they must be considered as full. This was quite new to them, the Council themselves having overlook’t this effect of their Vote. I gave them a Copy of this Vote & returned the Answer desiring them to reconsider it.

Three days after [i.e., 23 October] the same Gentlemen informed me that they had resolved against billeting the Souldiers but could not agree upon the reasons to be assigned for the refusing it:

At that meeting, according to the Boston Whigs, Lieutenant Governor Chief Justice Thomas Hutchinson insisted to the magistrates that Bernard “required their answer not in the usual way, but in writing, and under their hands.”

The justices therefore got another day to prepare a written reply to Gov. Bernard. (Meanwhile, the Manufactory option had collapsed.) The Boston Whigs included the 24 October result in their “Journal of Occurrences”:

May it Please Your Excellency,

Your Excellency having been pleased to demand of us to quarter and billet a number of officers and soldiers in the publick-houses in this town: we would beg leave to observe that in the act of Parliament, a number of officers are mentioned for that purpose, namely constables, tytheing-men, magistrates, and other civil officers of the town, which upon enquiring we cannot find have been applied to; and also that by the same act of Parliament the justices are not empowered to quarter and billet the said officers and soldiers, but in default or absence of the aforementioned officers; your Excellency will therefore excuse our doing anything in this affair till it is properly within our province.

William Stoddard
Richard Dana
John Ruddock
Nathaniel Balston
John Hill
Edmund Quincy
John Avery
John Tudor

Dana (shown above) and Ruddock would take the selectmen’s complaint against Capt. John Willson days later. With justices Hill and Quincy, they would also collect most of the depositions about the Boston Massacre. Avery’s namesake son was one of the Loyall Nine. So these men included the most radical of the magistrates.

Gov. Bernard had started this conversation with “Twelve” justices, but only eight signed that letter. The governor reported: “2 others were against billeting & gave other reasons for their refusal; 2 others argued for billeting, but declined acting by themselves after so large a Majority of the whole body had declared for the contrary Opinion.”

Stymied again, Bernard called his Councilors back in. The Whigs’ version of that meeting began:

the Governor proposed in the forenoon their submitting the dispute relative to quartering troops in this town, to the opinion of the judges of the Superior Court [i.e., Hutchinson’s court]; which extraordinary motion was with great propriety rejected.

Gov. Bernard had no legal avenues left to pursue. There was only one way for the army to solve the problem of housing its troops for the winter: throw money at it.

COMING UP: So where did the soldiers go?

Prisoners and Spies in Boston Harbor

On 1 June 1775, Boston selectman Timothy Newell added to his journal of oppressions:

Mr. Hopkins a carpenter released from on board the Admiral where he has been prisoner for 3 weeks for no other reason than taking his own Canoe from one wharf to another. He complained that his fare on board was cruel viz. but half allowance of provisions; kept under deck without any thing to lodge on but the bare deck amidst the most horrid oaths and execrations, and amidst the filth and vermin &c. and left a number of prisoners in that same dismal state &c.

This carpenter may also have aroused suspicion because early in the siege a Boston retailer told Gen. Thomas Gage that ferrymen named Hopkins and Goodwin were sneaking rebels into Boston and sharing information. That informant must have meant the men who kept the regular ferries from the North End to Charlestown and Chelsea. John Greenwood remembered “the person who kept the [Charlestown] ferry” as “Mr. Enoch Hopkins, whose son used to go to school with me.” This Hopkins died on 27 Dec 1778 at the age of 55.

Gage’s informant went on:

And the men that go in the Fishing-boats are Equally as bad, for they will get a pass from the Admiral for a boat and Perhaps four men, they will take three Fisher-men and one Rebel, and as soon as they get below they will Land the Rebel and take another on board, so he comes up in the stead of him that they carried down, and Sees and hears what he can, and then returns the same way that he came.

In fact, here’s a letter from William Stoddard, a justice of the peace in Boston, to Capt. James Littlefield on 15 June 1775, showing how ferryman Hopkins and his son were conduits for messages, goods, and money, and how bringing a fishing boat into town was indeed a way to slip in precious food—and perhaps more:

Your letter and the last, dated the 13th instant, by Mr. Hopkins, I have received. I waited on the Admiral this morning, and have got you a fishing pass for your boat and three men, to come in and out of this harbour, which I now send you. You will carefully observe the pass; you must observe to go a fishing from Salem, before you come up here, and then you may come in and go out. I hope you will not meet with any obstruction at Salem; not forgetting, if in your power, to bring up veal, green peas, fresh butter, asparagus, and fresh salmon.

Mr. Miles went away yesterday in the afternoon, by water, in order to come to you, and we suppose he is with you before this. I hope you have received a cloak, with a bag of brown sugar, I sent over yesterday by Mr. Hopkins’s son. I have paid some of the ferrymen, and I shall pay them all for their trouble, when I have done with them. Do not pay them any thing; if you have, let me know; keep that to yourself. . . .

I shall be much obliged to you, if you can, before you go for Salem, send me some fresh butter, and half a bushel of green peas. I now send you two dollars in this letter, and an osnaburgh bag, by Mr. Hopkins’s son, to put the peas in. What other charges you are at I will settle with you hereafter. I am obliged to you for the hint in coming out. I will let you know more when you come up from Salem. . . .

Twenty-four sail of transports have arrived here this week with Light-horses and Troops from Ireland, and twenty-four more sail are coming.

Capt. James Littlefield was later recommended for a post as Deputy-Commissary of the Continental Army. After all, he was good at supplying things. Justice William Stoddard died in September, aged 82.