The Last Years of Henry Howell Williams

I’ve written before about how Henry Howell Williams came from a wealthy, well-connected Roxbury family.

Close relatives married members of the Crafts, Dawes, Heath, and May families, all prominent in republican Boston.

Though in 1787 he told Henry Knox that he’d been “reduced to beggary” by his losses in the spring of 1775, Williams actually appears to have maintained a genteel lifestyle.

By 1784, as I wrote back here, Williams was once again living on Noddle’s Island, employing enough laborers that they needed their own building. An 1801 survey of the island labeled his rebuilt home as a “Mansion House.”

Williams also had the resources to keep petitioning one level of government after another, cajoling supportive letters from various officials. In 1789, the state of Massachusetts granted him £2,000.

Four years later, Williams bought the Winnisimmet ferry from the family that had run that concession for decades. He upgraded it and made good money for a decade crossing the Mystic River.

In 1797, Williams’s eldest daughter Elizabeth (1765–1843, shown here in a portrait by Gilbert Stuart) married Andrew Sigourney, who became the treasurer of Boston. His daughter Harriet married a son of John Avery, the state secretary. Other Williams siblings married another Sigourney, another Avery, and a couple of Williams cousins.

In that decade, Henry Howell Williams moved his family off of Noddle’s Island to mainland Chelsea. One of his last public acts, in January 1802, was to petition the state legislature to compensate him for the income he’d lose after a consortium built a bridge across the Mystic.

Williams didn’t live to see that bridge. He died in December 1802 after “three months confinement.” Lengthy death notices appeared in the Columbian Centinel and Massachusetts Mercury, obviously written by relatives and friends. They praised him as a generous host, a vigorous farmer, and a beloved family patriarch. (Notably, they make no mention of any service to the republic during the war.)

As I mentioned above, Williams’s daughter Harriet married John Avery’s son, John, Jr. In 1800, the next year, they had a son, also named John. And then in October those parents were lost at sea. Little John was raised by relatives, perhaps maiden aunts. He wouldn’t have remembered his grandfather, but he would have grown up on stories about him.

In particular, young John probably heard about the building on the Noddle’s Island farm that had once been a barrack for the Continental Army in Cambridge, and about how his grandfather’s livestock had gone to feed those troops. Putting those facts together in the most complimentary way probably gave rise to what Avery told William H. Sumner later in life: that his grandfather had been some sort of quartermaster supplying the army, and that the barrack had been a reward from the Continental commander, George Washington himself. Contemporaneous records tell a different story.

The third John Avery showed Sumner the file of documents his grandfather had collected to make his case for compensation. In 1911 another heir, Henry Howell Williams Sigourney, donated those papers to the Massachusetts Historical Society. They’re what got me started on this series about one long-extended outcome of the Battle of Chelsea Creek.

“The said Inventory (A Very few Articles excepted)”

By 1787, Henry Howell Williams had been reestablished on Noddle’s Island for about three years.

Having stayed in Massachusetts throughout the war, Williams had also established his loyalty to the republic, which might have been in doubt back in 1774 and 1775.

Williams then decided to revive his effort to be compensated for the loss of his animals and the destruction of his farm and house back in May and June 1775.

Williams assembled a long list of the property he had lost twelve years before, including furniture, clothing, and food. A sampling of the items:

• “24 very Eloquent Gilt Pictures, 1 small Carpet”
• “1 Coat of Arms work'd on Satting with Silver & Gold thread”
• “40 lb. of flax 2 Barrls Hops & 3 Quntal salt fish”
• “3 Large Jarr’s Sweet meats never opened”
• “1 Mahogy. Clock cost in England 25 £ Sterl. New”
• “1 Silver Nipple & Bottle”
• “60 bullets 30 lb. Lead. 6 Powdr horns. 2 Powdr flasks”
• “1 Barrl. best hard Bread a large Quanty of Loaf Sugar”
• “1 Large Bible & Several Other Books”
• “3 Hogsheads New Rum Just got home from the W. Indies Quanty. 234 Gallons a 3/4–”
• “6 Chissells 3 dung forks. Squares &c.”
• “1 large Boat £32– 1 Moses do £14. 1 yall £10–”
• “A New Black-Smiths Shop”
• “333 Young Locust tree’s Cut down which were Set out by Mr. Williams & were to have been paid for by the Owners of the Island at 3/ Each”

As to livestock, Williams stated he had lost:

43 Elegant Horses...@ 30£ Each put into the Publick Stables … £1290:11:—
3 Cattle taken & used as Provisions for the Army … 30:11:—
220 Sheep used as Provisions as above @12/- … 132:11:—
4 fine Swine … 12:11:—
5 Dozn Fowls Turkys & Ducks … 6:11:—

The bottom line was £3645:6:2. That might or might not have been in debased local currency, but pound for pound that total was more than a third of what the East India Company had calculated as its loss in Boston harbor back in 1773.

On 10 Mar 1787, Williams and his wife Elizabeth went before magistrate William Tudor (shown above) and swore

That the said Inventory (A Very few Articles excepted) was taken in the month of July following [the raids] & that according to my best Judgment and Recollection the Same is just and true

The whole document can be studied on the Massachusetts Historical Society’s website.

In addition, Williams had collected some evidence supporting his claim, or perhaps answering critics who had said back in 1775 and 1776 that he didn’t deserve financial support.

TOMORROW: Supporting documents.

“Your poor memorialist is stripped almost naked”

Within two weeks of seeing the provincial army destroy his house and farm on Noddle’s Island during the Battle of Chelsea Creek, Henry Howell Williams petitioned the rebel government for support.

On 12 June 1775 he told the Massachusetts Provincial Congress (as transcribed in American Archives):

That your memorialist hath, for eleven years last past, dwelt on an island in Boston Bay, commonly called Noddle’s Island, at a very high rent, and in order to pay the same was obliged to keep a large stock of horses, cattle, sheep, &c.; and that during all the years aforesaid hath paid very large taxes for said island, stock, &c., for the support of Government; and hath always endeavoured faithfully to discharge his duty, as a good member of society, towards all men, and all that was theirs.

That on Saturday, the 27th day of May last, a number of armed troops, commonly called Provincials, came on to said island, by way of Hog Island, and did then and there kill or carry away eight horses and three cows, part of the aforesaid stock, and also burnt and destroyed one dwelling-house and barn, with all the household goods therein contained, wearing apparel, &c.

That on Monday, the 29th of May, the same or another number of said armed troops, came again on to said island, and then and there did burn and destroy two other dwelling-houses, goods, &c., and three barns; and at the same time did take away and drive off from said island about five hundred old sheep, and about three hundred and forty lambs, with between thirty and forty head of horned cattle, the property of your memorialist, together with a further number of horses, hogs, &c., &c.

And that on Tuesday, the 30th day of May aforesaid, they entered again on to said island, and then and there proceeded and burnt your memorialist’s mansion house, with all the barns, corn-houses, and store houses, stores, provisions, goods, house furniture, wearing apparel, liquors, and utensils of all sorts, to a very considerable amount and value:

And on Saturday, the 10th day of June, instant, entered again, and burnt and destroyed the warehouse, the last building on said island, by which means your poor memorialist is stripped almost naked, and destitute of any place to lay his head, with a very large family of children and servants, to the amount of between forty and fifty in number, that are destitute of any business or supplies but from your memorialist.

These are therefore to request your Honours will take his most distressed circumstances into your wise consideration, and make such order thereon as in your wisdom shall seem meet…

That number of forty to fifty dependents probably included everyone Williams employed at harvest time, not his year-round staff. But he was trying to make the case that his personal loss was a societal problem that justified spending scarce public funds.

It looks like Williams had given up hope of having the congress help retrieve his livestock. In fact, the rebel government was already assigning horses from Noddle’s Island to the war effort. The sheep, cattle, and hogs went toward feeding the troops. Figuratively, it was too late to close that barn door.

Then the Battle of Bunker Hill happened five days later, giving the Provincial Congress a lot of other things to deal with.

TOMORROW: Animal tracks.

“Belonging to Mr. Henry Howell Williams”

Henry Howell Williams lost more property in the Battle of Chelsea Creek than anyone else but the Royal Navy.

Williams held the lease for Noddle’s Island. He had a big house there—big enough to show up on maps of the harbor. He’d invested in agricultural outbuildings, horses, sheep, cattle, hogs, and hay.

Williams probably took his family off the island in April, soon after the war began. On 1 May, Adm. Samuel Graves granted him a pass to go to and from his home, with the stipulation that he not remove anything. Williams later reported that his house still contained a clock bought in Britain, mahogany furniture, family pictures, and other genteel possessions.

Late that month, provincial troops went onto Hog Island and Noddle’s to grab animals, keeping them away from the British. In the fighting that followed, they set fire to the hay and most buildings on Noddle’s Island. In early June the provincials returned to grab the remaining livestock and burn the last structure.

Williams’s farm was reduced to charred ruins on an empty, singed landscape. As I wrote back here, Williams was protective of his interests, placing regular advertisements to warn off trespassers and hunters. He came from a wealthy Roxbury family. He had connections to men in the Patriot leadership.

However, Williams had also signed the farewell to Gov. Thomas Hutchinson. He sold his livestock and forage to the British military, possibly even after the war began. That no doubt affected his standing with the provincial authorities.

On 31 May, Gen. Artemas Ward’s general orders stated:

That the stock, which was taken from Noddle’s Island, belonging to Mr. Henry Howell Williams, be delivered to his father, Col. Joseph Williams, of Roxbury, for the use of the said Henry H. Williams.

But evidently few or no animals were driven all the way around the siege lines to Roxbury and returned to the Williams family. After all, there was a war on. The provincial army also needed food and horses.

TOMORROW: The first petition.

“Every thing I had, to amount of Seventy pounds”

Yet another outcome of the Battle of Chelsea Creek was the destruction or removal of various agricultural resources on Hog Island and Noddle’s Island: hay, livestock, and buildings.

Provincial soldiers removed all the animals they could and destroyed the rest to prevent the British military from using it.

Alexander Shirley was a longtime resident of Noddle’s Island, as attested to by Isaiah Tay of Chelsea. In March 1776 Shirley told the Massachusetts legislature that its troops had “set fire to my Hous, & Destroyed all my substance, goods, & provisions, & every thing I had, to amount of Seventy pounds, Lawfull Money, at least.” He had “a large family of Children” to support.

That wasn’t a large estate, and Shirley didn’t claim to have lost crops or animals. That’s because, while he probably tended the island’s livestock and worked the harvest, he didn’t own the farm. He worked for Henry Howell Williams.

Boston vital records show that Alexander Shirley married Eleanor McCurdy in 1750, when he was in his thirties. They had children baptized at Christ Church in the North End. In 1774 Alexander Shirley married Molly King, so Eleanor had probably died.

Alexander Shirley appears to have actually been part of the Chelsea company of provincial soldiers who fought on Noddle’s Island in May 1775. Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War lists both Alexander Shirley of Chelsea and Alexander Shirley, Jr., of Chester, New Hampshire, in Capt. Samuel Sprague’s company, along with other men named Shirley—quite possibly related.

After the war, the older Alexander Shirley and his wife went back to living on Noddle’s Island, still working for Williams. In old age he gained the nickname “Governor Shirley” (since William Shirley was no longer using it).

On 17 Feb 1800, Alexander Shirley died “aged eighty-three, an inhabitant of the Island for upwards of fifty years.” The funeral took place the next day from the house of John Fenno, described as “at Winnisimmet-Ferry.” Shirley was buried in the Copp’s Hill cemetery after one last trip across the water.

TOMORROW: The big loser.

“Permission to pass to & repass from Noddle’s Island”

As discussed yesterday, Henry Howell Williams’s oversaw what was probably the biggest farming operation in Boston harbor in 1775. He was renting Noddle’s Island to raise sheep, cattle, and horses and to grow forage and vegetables.

According to Mellen Chamberlain’s Documentary History of Chelsea, Williams’s “most profitable business had been supplying the King’s troops rendezvoused at Boston, in time of war, and merchant vessels, in time of peace, with fresh provisions from his fields and stock yards.”

That tie to the royal establishment and imperial trade was probably why Williams had signed a complimentary address to Gov. Thomas Hutchinson on his departure for London in June 1774, which quickly became a litmus test for Loyalism.

On the other hand, Williams also had strong ties to the other side of the political divide. He was the son of Roxbury farmer Joseph Williams, and I found hints that that family helped to smuggle cannon out of army-occupied Boston in 1774–75. Williams’s sisters married into Patriot families like the Mays, Heaths, and Daweses. His brother Samuel had moved out to Warwick but then came back east as a Provincial Congress delegate and militia captain.

On 21 April, Williams was in Boston and ran into William Burbeck, who held the Massachusetts government post of storekeeper at Castle William. A year later Burbeck described their interaction:

after some Conoversation with him setting forth my Concern how I should git out of town, Expecting every minute that I should be sent for; to go Down to that Castle—

he told me that he would Carry me over to Noddles Island if I would Resque it that he would Do the same for ye good of his Country; And am Sure that if we had been taken Crossing of water must have been confind. to this Day, or otherway more severly punished. . . . And that the Very next morning after; A party of men & Boat was sent after me And Serchd. my house & Shop to find me—

that after we got to ye Island Mr. Williams ordered one of his men to Carry me over to Chelsea by which means I am now in Cambridge—And that a few Days after I got into Cambridge sent to Mr. Williams Desiring him to Send my millitary Books & plans as also all my instruments which ye Army stood in great Need of. And Could not Do without.

Days after arriving behind provincial lines, Burbeck became the second-in-command of the Massachusetts artillery regiment.

However much Williams wanted to support the Patriot cause, the British military still controlled Boston harbor. So he also made a deal with the royal authorities. On 1 May, Capt. Robert Donkin, one of Gen. Thomas Gage’s aides, issued Williams a pass, shown above courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Head Qrs. Boston 1st. May 1775

The Bearer, Mr. Williams, has the Commander in Chief’s permission to pass to & repass from Noddle’s Island to this place as often as he has occasion; he having given security to carry no people from hence, or bring any thing off the Island without leave from His Excelly or the Admiral—

Rt. Donkin
Aide Camp

NB. his own Servants row him.

Adm. Samuel Graves approved this pass as well. After all, the Royal Navy had at least one storehouse on Noddle’s Island, including a cooper’s shop.

William Browne, John Glover, and a Farmhouse in Swampscott

Save the Glover is a campaign by several historic organizations in Swampscott and neighboring towns to preserve an eighteenth-century farmhouse.

The house was originally built in the third quarter of the 1700s by William Browne (1737–1802), a wealthy and respected lawyer. It was his country estate since he already owned a mansion in Salem, as well as part of a family seat in what’s now Danvers.

Browne was elected to the Massachusetts General Court in 1762. Though he joined the Customs service in 1762 as collector for the port of Salem, he favored local merchants enough to keep getting reelected—until he voted to rescind the Circular Letter of 1768.

After that, Browne was firmly on the side of the royal government. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson rewarded him with appointments: as colonel of the Essex County militia, as judge in the county court, and eventually as the last royal appointment to the Massachusetts superior court in 1774. That same year, the London government named him to the mandamus Council.

Refusing to resign from the Council made Browne unpopular locally. Dozens of militia officers refused to serve under him. He moved to Boston late in 1774, to Britain in 1776, and to Bermuda as royal governor in 1781. The state of Massachusetts confiscated Browne’s real estate, including that country house and land.

Gen. John Glover (1732–1797) of the Continental Army bought the property and moved in with his second wife in 1782. He lived there for the rest of his life, welcoming fellow veterans and serving in local offices.

In 1793 the Rev. William Bentley recorded how “the general received us with Great Hospitality” when a committee came through to settle the boundaries of Marblehead, Salem, and Lynn. Glover evidently felt he still lived in Marblehead, but surveyors determined that his house stood in a narrow splinter of Salem which later became part of Swampscott.

The property remained a farm through the nineteenth century. The photo above shows how it looked about 1910. In the twentieth century, the original house became the core of a larger inn and then restaurant, both named, in fine Colonial Revival fashion, for Gen. Glover. For the last thirty years or so, however, that complex has been abandoned.

Originally the Save the Glover campaign sought to preserve the house from being taken down for a new residential development (to be called Glover Residences, naturally). However, the developer has scrapped that project. Now weather and decay are the biggest dangers to the Glover house.

Peeking in on the Hive, 8–9 Feb.

On Saturday and Sunday, 8–9 February, the Friends of Minute Man Park will once again host “The Hive,” a living history symposium designed to prepare people for the Battle Road reenactment in April.

As of this writing, the event is sold out, and the Eventbrite page is putting people on a waitlist.

Nonetheless, I think it’s worth listing the formal presentations. On Saturday:

12:00 noon: 1775: The Year the War Began, Bob Allison
The War for American Independence began in 1775. Why? Why did armed conflict not begin sooner? Could war have been avoided? Neither side wanted a war, but each would accept one in order to establish its aims. What were the aims of each side, what obstacles were in the way of achieving them, and how was the situation different at the end of the year?

1:10 P.M.: Infantry in Battle in the Eighteenth Century, Alexander Burns
This presentation will explore the world of combat for eighteenth-century infantrymen in North America and Europe, in order to contextualize the fighting on April 19th, 1775. Across the Atlantic World, infantrymen often fought in flexible and adaptable ways, firing without orders, firing at longer ranges than their officers preferred, and by taking cover on the battlefield. In this process, these enlisted men played an important role by asserting tactical reforms from below.

2:20 P.M.: Farming and Land Use along the Battle Road in 1775, Brian Donahue
This talk will describe the development of colonial farming in Concord and Lincoln. It will focus on the pattern of settlement and land use along the Battle Road by 1775. It is drawn from Brian's book The Great Meadow, which can be consulted for greater detail on any neighborhood, particularly from the Meriam House to the Hartwell Tavern.

3:30 P.M.: April 19th Overview and Panel Discussion about British and Colonial Tactics, Alexander Cain, Jim Hollister, Sean Considine, and Jarrad Fuoss
The Battle of Lexington and Concord is often associated with the image of British soldiers marching in tight formations and in the open, incapable of defending themselves against the unorthodox tactics of the minute men. How much of this is real vs historical fiction? How did the fighting along the bloody Battle Road compare to more regular military practices?

On Sunday:

11:00 A.M.: Sober, Industrious Women: Portraying the Roles of Soldiers’ Wives, Don Hagist
Wives of soldiers had to work to earn their keep, but many of their jobs were associated with parts of the military infrastructure that isn't portrayed at reenactments. This talk will present ways to effectively present the roles of nurses, sutlers, seamstresses, gardeners and others within the limitations of modern reenactment encampment settings.

12:10 P.M.: Massachusetts Men’s Civilian Clothing 1750–1775, Paul Dickfoss
Using depictions in period art and portraiture, historian Paul Dickfoss will provide a detailed glimpse into how men from Massachusetts dressed in the late colonial period.

1:20 P.M.: Battle Road Fashion Runway, Ruth Hodges and friends
Looking for some inspiration to update your Battle Road impression? The Minute Man Living History Authenticity Standards offers a wider variety of impressions than first meets the eye. Differences are sometimes subtle, and the devil is in the details! See some excellent examples of women and children of 1775 Middlesex County Massachusetts in this very first Battle Road Fashion Runway!

There are also workshops, drills, inspections, and mutual advice for a couple of hours each morning and breakout sessions on specific elements of an eighteenth-century impression on Sunday afternoon. High standards and mutual support like this is what makes the Battle Road reenactment so terrific.

The Hive’s other sponsors are the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati, Revolution 250, and the Massachusetts Army National Guard. It will take place at the Massachusetts National Guard Museum and Archives in Concord for folks who can secure a spot.

Lincoln’s Sestercentennial Series

The town of Lincoln is observing the Sestercentennial with a series of exhibits at the library and a series of events.

The January exhibit was about Lincoln’s vote to send delegates to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress 250 years ago this month. The February exhibit will be on the theme “Enslaved in the American Revolution.”

Here are the presentations and other events announced so far.

Thursday, 30 January, 7:00 P.M., online
Causes of the American Revolution
Dane Morrison

Increasing taxation created dissent in Massachusetts. In 1774, Great Britain issued more punitive measures to suppress dissent and restore order, such as the revocation of the Massachusetts Bay Colony Charter of 1691. Former Salem State Professor Dane Morrison will discuss Lincoln at the beginning of the Revolution, exploring why an inland agricultural village would feel threatened by the new royal and Parliamentary initiatives. Register here.

Sunday, 2 February, 12:30–4:00 P.M., in and around Bemis Hall
The Lincoln of 1775
Co-hosted by the Bemis Free Lecture Series, the Lincoln Historical Society, the Lincoln Minute Men, the Middlesex County 4-H Fife & Drum, and Lincoln250

What was life like for families 250 years ago in Lincoln? Talk with reenactors about the attire, the food, and the amusements of family life of the day. The event will include musket demonstrations and music. At 2:00 P.M., a dance party will begin with instruction for all who wish to join. Refreshments will be served.

Thursday, 27 February, 7:00 P.M., online
Entangled Lives, Black and White in Lincoln, Mass.
Don Hafner

In the 18th century, the town of Lincoln had dozens of Black residents, enslaved and free, who helped the town thrive. They plowed the fields, hoed the gardens, and harvested the food. They did the cooking, they did the laundry, they cared for the children, they tended the sick and the elderly. They worked the blacksmith shops and the sawmills, made the nails and cut the boards for Lincoln’s first meeting house and houses that still stand. More than a hundred white residents of Lincoln lived in a household with an enslaved person. Come hear what we know about their entangled lives with historian Don Hafner. Register here.

Saturday, 8 March, 2:00 P.M., at the library
Meet Abigail Adams
Sheryl Faye

Lincoln250 celebrates Women's History Month! All ages are invited to Sheryl Faye’s engaging portrayal of Abigail Adams, wife of second President John Adams and sister of Lincoln Minute Men captain William Smith. Ms. Faye will portray Abigail as an adult and a child as she navigates life in colonial New England and stands up for the rights of women during the turbulence of War for Independence. All ages welcome. No registration necessary.

Thursday, 13 March, 7:00 P.M., at the library
Women in the American Revolution
Audrey Stuck-Girard

While the experiences of individual women during the American War of Independence have been largely left out of the historical record, they were nonetheless active participants of the cultural shift known as the American Revolution. Rural Massachusetts women in 1775 managed household budgets and property while being legally barred from owning any of that property. As the primary influence and educators of young children, they instilled moral and cultural values and ethics to the first generation of independent Americans. And when many of the men in their lives were away serving or killed in the war, women endeavored (with varying levels of success) to fulfill both male and female roles in their absence. Register here.

“Brushes with the law reshaped rural time consciousness”

The topic of this seminar at the David Center for the American Revolution in Philadelphia caught my eye: “The Triumph of Bank Time in the Early Republic.”

The scholar sharing that paper, Dr. Justin Clark, is Senior Lecturer in the History Department at Cornell University and formerly an Associate Professor of History at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. His current projects include the anthology A Cultural History of Time in the Age of Empire and Industry (1789–1914) and his own book A Clockwork Republic.

Here’s the abstract that Clark probably wrote for the seminar series, probably months back, so it may or may not reflect his work as it’s coming out:

Historians have long believed that Americans relinquished more “natural” forms of time consciousness only with the industrial developments of the antebellum period: mass-produced clocks and watches, railroad timetables, and growing reliance on factory wage labor. Yet as this paper argues, rural republicans had already developed a more modern and abstract understanding of time by the 1790s.

Throughout the eighteenth century, an intermediate network of coastal merchants, wholesalers, and village shopkeepers connected manufacturers in the British Isles with rural producers in the colonies. By quietly pricing interest—the time value of money—into the cost of goods, inland shopkeepers protected the rural customer who paid by the harvest with the Liverpool merchant who charged interest by the day. The accommodation between these two financial cultures collapsed with the Revolution, as an examination of account books, commercial correspondence, newspapers, and other sources shows.

After 1783, as a condition for renewing commerce with their newly independent American counterparts, British merchants demanded the swift repayment of old debts with interest. These demands quickly travelled down the chain of debt from coastal importer to villager, such that rural debtors found themselves dragged not only into court, learning in the process what Franklin’s urban artisans already knew: “Time is money.” As one agricultural journal urged in 1799, “every minute thou hast ever spent in consulting Almanacks for the weather, has been entirely lost, or very foolishly employed”; time was better spent watching the financial calendar.

Long before the appearance of the steamboat, train, village clock or factory, these brushes with the law reshaped rural time consciousness. Ultimately, this paper argues, impersonal and inflexible demands for punctuality played an overlooked but significant role in contemporary episodes of agrarian resistance such as Shays’ Rebellion.

Time working as it does, I won’t be able to log into this seminar because I’ll be traveling. And since this seminar is a discussion of a work in progress, it won’t be recorded. We’ll have to wait until Clark publishes. But already the concepts are giving me something to think about on the plane.

For folks interested in the history of Boston, Justin Clark’s previous book is City of Second Sight: Nineteenth-Century Boston and the Making of American Visual Culture.

Talking about Ebenezer Richardson in Stoneham, June 4

On the evening of Tuesday, 4 June, I’ll speak to the Stoneham Historical Society. The society is headlining my talk “The Most Hated Man in Revolutionary Boston.”

Was that Gov. Thomas Hutchinson? Customs Commissioner Benjamin Hallowell? Or even Boston 1775’s latest figure in the spotlight, Capt. John Malcom?

No, for producing long-lasting, multifaceted, bitter antipathy, I don’t think anyone could beat Ebenezer Richardson. In fact, I’ve argued that Richardson did as much as any other individual to turn people in rural Massachusetts against the royal government.

Richardson was born in 1718 on a Woburn farm touching the border with Stoneham. Until the age of thirty-four he was an ordinary middling New England farmer—married, raising children, and helping to house his wife’s poor widowed sister.

Over the next quarter-century Richardson became a secret adulterer, an outcast from his home town, a government informant, a Customs officer, a target of riots, a convicted child murderer, and a fugitive. Starting around 1760, each new scandalous episode linked him more closely to royal officials, whom people saw as protecting him.

I’ve chased traces of Ebenezer Richardson through archives on two continents. This talk brings his story back to, well, not quite to his home town, but to the neighboring town, and also the town where his widowed mother moved after she remarried.

This event is scheduled to start at 7:00 P.M. at the Stoneham Public Library, 431 Main Street. It is free and open to the public, sponsored by the Stoneham and Massachusetts Cultural Councils.

The Return of Jacob Bates?

You thought I was done with Jacob Bates when we saw him off to London four days before the Boston Tea Party.

However, in The Circus: Its Origin and Growth Prior to 1835, Isaac J. Greenwood wrote:

…he is said to have been conducting a riding-school in Philadelphia after 1786.

Incidentally, Greenwood also published on his ancestor John Greenwood and early American naval hero John Manley.

S. L. Kotar and J. E. Gessler echoed that report in The Rise of the American Circus, 1716–1899, stating:

Bates returned to Philadelphia in 1787 and rented an equestrian building from Thomas Pool and established a riding school.

I’m not completely convinced this man in Pennsylvania was the same Jacob Bates who billed himself as an equestrian before the war. He did display horses, but as a breeder rather than a performer. He did offer riding lessons, but didn’t promise any special tricks. But maybe he was getting too old for that stuff.

The name of Jacob Bates appears in the city of Philadelphia’s roll for the “effective supply tax” in 1781 and 1782, even before the formal end of the war. This Bates’s property in the “Northern Liberties,” north of the city, was valued at somewhat over £900. In 1781 the entry just below Bates was “for Thomas Hopkins’s,” and in 1782 it was “Robert Hopkins.”

The next sign of Jacob Bates that I’ve found is an advertisement in the Pennsylvania Packet on 30 Apr 1782:

ECLIPSE,
A beautiful high-blooded bright-bat STALION, will COVER this season, at Point-no-Point, on the Farm late the property of Robert Hopkins, deceased.

HE is full 15 hands high, entirely free from blemish and well marked, bread from Fearnought and Herod, and out of a Juniper Mare; for beauty, carriage and speed ’tis supposed that no horse on the continent excels him, now rising five years old, and in fine order. His Pedigree will be given to those who send their Mares.

The Price is FIVE POUNDS for each Mare and a Crown to the Groom.

Good Grass and careful Attendance given to the Mares on the Farm. The Money to be paid before they are taken away.

JACOB BATES.
April 6.

He will be shewn on Market-days (if the weather proves fair) at the Coffee-house.

Bates advertised Eclipse at much greater length on 12 Apr 1785. Later that month he offered to sell a mare named the Ulster Lass. In 1789 he offered the stud services of Atlass, the Ulster Lass’s colt.

Point-no-Point was a spot on the Delaware River north of Philadelphia. John Adams rode out there in 1777 and wrote home:

The Road to Point No Point lies along the River Delaware, in fair Sight of it, and its opposite shore. For near four Miles the Road is as strait as the Streets of Philadelphia. On each Side, are beautifull Rowes of Trees, Buttonwoods, Oaks, Walnutts, Cherries and Willows, especially down towards the Banks of the River. The Meadows, Pastures, and Grass Plotts, are as Green as Leeks. There are many Fruit Trees and fine orchards, set with the nicest Regularity. But the Fields of Grain, the Rye, and Wheat, exceed all Description. These Fields are all sown in Ridges; and the Furrough between each Couple of Ridges, is as plainly to be seen, as if a swarth had been mown along.

That was prime farmland, near the country’s largest city. The area is now the part of Philadelphia known as Bridesburg.

TOMORROW: Menage à deux?

Watching Flax Grow in New Hampshire

For the last several months Kimberly Alexander and her classes at the University of New Hampshire have been exploring a staple crop of colonial New England: flax.

Following a student’s suggestion, the team started growing flax (as well as cotton, rye, and indigo) in partnership with the university’s Sustainable Agriculture program.

Further steps will include harvesting, stooking, retting, breaking, scutching, and hackling the flax to make enough fibers to spin into linen thread and possibly weave into cloth.

As those unfamiliar terms suggest, flax requires its own processes, dictated by the plant’s needs and traits. The stalks have to be dried, soaked just right, dried again, and then knocked around to leave only the useful long fibers.

In colonial America that work was usually left to women, children, and enslaved workers. The only detail I can remember from past reading is that young farmworkers tending flax were trained to walk backwards so that their toes wouldn‘t catch and yank up the stalks.

The project has its own blog with such content as:

• an interview with Shirley Walker, sharing lessons from processing flax for the Canterbury Shaker Village and the New Hampshire Farm Museum.
• a survey of mentions of flax in the diary of farmer Matthew Patten (1719–1795).
• an examination of linen garments belonging to the Stratham Historical Society.

As the university’s article on the program says, this project is expected to run through next spring. The big question will be how much useable fiber all that effort will produce.

A Revolution in Relating to the Environment

Last month the Journal of the Early Republic’s Panorama website published an essay by Blake McGready titled “Searching for a Reusable Past: Public History and the Revolutionary Origins of the Climate Crisis.”

McGready argues that historical sites are missing an opportunity to alert visitors to the effects of environmental changes, particularly the oncoming climate change.

Revolutionary-era sites can reach their audiences and remind them of the fearsome stakes of this moment by asking different, environmentally focused questions: How do ecological processes challenge understandings about space and boundaries? How has the natural, nonhuman world shaped the past, and how does it continue to shape our present? And what kinds of environmental relationships did the American Revolution produce?

Valley Forge rangers are already working to direct visitor attention towards the ways human-made environmental change exacerbates parkwide flooding. The Washington’s Headquarters railway embankment, erected for the Pennsylvania Railroad, now prevents the sloping land from reaching the riverside. During storms these tracks become a levee, pinning floodwaters into the lowlands around the structure. The construction of upriver single-family housing developments, which has accelerated during COVID-19, continues to clear trees and fill open space, intensifying runoff during storms. Structures like Washington’s Headquarters that sit at the confluence of creeks and rivers have become targets as water levels rise.

That example doesn’t strike me as ideal. Most people go to historic sites to feel transported back to the period when those places were “important,” not to hear about subsequent changes—like railway embankments and suburban development, in this case. Now I happen to like learning about both the history and the preservation of a site, but the latter is still the chocolate syrup, not the ice cream.

People would probably think about environmental change more if they’re part of the story from the start, as in perhaps a comparison of how the Valley Forge landscape was suddenly altered by the arrival of thousands of men building huts in 1777. How does that compare to the area’s current population? 

I know there are environmental historians working on integrating those factors into the larger Revolutionary narrative, as McGready discusses later:

public historians might reimagine the Revolution as a contest over environmental relationships. In 1779 General John Sullivan led the Continental Army’s invasion of Iroquoia, an expedition whose torrent of destruction devastated Seneca and Cayuga agroecosystems. Haudenosaunee women’s farming techniques produced superior yields compared with those of white colonists, nurtured healthier soils, supplied more nutritious diets, and cultivated sustainable practices for generations. Colonists, fastened to seasonal cycles of subsistence and profit, applied abusive farming practices to their lands. . . . By discussing the Sullivan Campaign, public historians can pull environment into their conversations about the American Revolution’s legacies, and invite audiences to think about how environmental relationships have been made and can be remade.

We do a lousy job of discussing the Sullivan Campaign already, though. Its sites aren’t preserved like others. We’re uncomfortable remembering the vicious attacks on civilian communities. The campaign’s success at breaking the Iroquois Confederacy makes it easy to treat it as a sideshow.

Examples aside, I think McGready’s main point is worth considering. It made me remember a visit to Bodiam Castle in southern England over a decade ago. Back then, U.S. media was still treating the likelihood of climate change as worthy of debate. In contrast, between the car park and the castle I came across a sign baldly stating that all the lovely riverine landscape in front of me was going to be underwater in a quarter-century or so.

That sort of message—coming with the authority of the site, tied to the visitor’s immediate experience, and linked to the hope to preserve that place—might be the most powerful approach.

“Never more than one quarter a year”

Last month the Cambridge Core website shared Carole Shammas’s essay “How Long did the School Year Last in Early America?”

I’ve studied schooling in Boston, but the opportunities there weren’t typical for a mainly rural society. Shammas offers a wider view:

The eighteenth century addition of cursive handwriting and arithmetic to reading as the desired skills to be transmitted to free boys and then girls in a primary school environment notably increased the cost of education. The latter two skills demanded classrooms, textbooks and stationery supplies. . . . Children had to go to school, often a distance away, and that journey meant taking time from their field or domestic work and employment from a third party that supplemented their family’s income. . . .

Consequently, the poor relief records that I examined indicate that children of indigent parents most commonly obtained schooling through the indenturing of their labor to a master until they reached adulthood, 16-18 for girls and 21 for boys. . . . In exchange, this system required the new master to take over support of the child by providing him or her with shelter, food, and clothing as well as a specified amount of instruction—boys sometimes received instruction up through arithmetic and girls usually learned reading and needlework. Other indentures instead set aside a time period for schooling, never more than one quarter a year (13 weeks), and usually in the winter, which in an urban area could also be in the evening. In effect, these children self-funded their education through their labor services. . . .

Children in rural areas had more difficulty accessing their schoolhouses during bad weather, which kept them home more than students in cities. Additionally, farmers, more than workers in other occupations, viewed what they called “ornamental” learning suspiciously and had greater reluctance to increase the time devoted to their children’s education.

Census data revealed these trends. I found in a one-of-a-kind school census from 1798 for New York state that children living in more newly-settled, low-density, high-fertility agricultural areas attended school for a significantly fewer number of days than did children living in more urban and less agricultural counties. All in all, the average attendance in those counties ranged from 9-13 weeks. . .

Because of the need for child labor, few boys or girls enrolled for a full academic year or the equivalent of three quarters, and even fewer attended even 90% of the time. Because the majority of North American households engaged in agriculture, boys could be utilized for fieldwork and animal husbandry most months. However, having only a quarter year of schooling meant that children had to constantly re-learn material the following year before they could be presented with new lessons.

Shammas holds the John R. Hubbard Chair Emerita in History at the University of Southern California. Having written books about inheritance, household government, investing, consumption, and other aspects of everyday life in America and Britain, she is currently studying “the long, torturous process whereby American children mastered the three Rs.”

(The image above is a handwriting specimen that John Molineux produced in the 1760s for his writing-school master, Abiah Holbrook, now in the Harvard University library collection.)

“The Displeasure of our Honoured Masters”

Sir Francis Dashwood, baronet, served as chancellor of the exchequer in the government of the Earl of Bute. That went poorly for both of them, and Dashwood’s tenure lasted less than a year.

After leaving government, Dashwood made his case for inheriting the Despencer barony, the oldest in Britain not held by a peer with a higher title. That peerage gave him a guaranteed seat in the House of Lords.

Toward the end of 1766 the new Baron le Despencer was appointed one of the two postmasters general of the British Empire. This was a sinecure granted to various aristocrats, who in British society of the time usually failed upward.

In that year the other postmaster general was the Earl of Hillsborough, who was soon made Secretary of State for the colonies. The next appointee was the fourth Earl of Sandwich, who had previously been First Lord of the Admiralty and Secretary of State for the Northern Department (i.e., northern Europe) and would hold both those posts again.

Despencer, in contrast, kept the job of postmaster general until his death in 1781. He may not have totally ignored the job, though the real work was done by department secretaries Henry Potts (d. 1768) and Anthony Todd (1717–1798, shown above). That situation made Despencer a boss of the two deputy postmasters general for the colonies: John Foxcroft of New York and Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania.

Franklin had held that appointment since 1753. He had been quite successful, even making the American postal service profitable for the first time. By the mid-1760s Franklin was living full-time in London, focusing on representing Pennsylvania and other colonies to Parliament, but he continued to manage the postal system with Foxcroft. It brought him a valuable income.

Within the British government’s system of patronage appointments, that meant Franklin had a strong incentive to keep the Baron le Despencer happy. Sucking up to your bosses never hurt. Neither did sucking up to lords. And when those lords were your bosses, you went all out.

As a taste of how this worked, in February 1769 Foxcroft wrote to Franklin from Virginia, reporting that he and Gen. Thomas Gage had disagreed about when a packet ship should sail. Even though the regulations gave Foxcroft the authority to make that decision, Hillsborough took Gage’s side. “I have fallen under the Displeasure of our Honoured Masters,” Foxcroft lamented. “I hope my Dear Friend that you will be able to prevent any disagreable consequences taking place from this unfortunate mistake.”

We don’t know what happened next, but Foxcroft kept his appointment—probably because Hillsborough had moved on to the Colonial Office. Sandwich was a navy man, after all, and might not have gone out of his way for army concerns. When the system ran on personal favors and connections, a change of person could mean a lot.

As part of keeping the bosses in good humor, Franklin appears to have helped with Despencer’s agricultural experiments. He got favors in return, such as an invitation to dine on a buck from one of the postmasters’ estates. But those interactions were arranged through the secretaries, not directly.

TOMORROW: Forging a more personal connection.

Teleconnections of 1783

As the eastern U.S. of A. deals with smoke from forest fires in Canada, it seems appropriate to link to a recorded book talk about a similarly widespread environmental phenomenon that started in 1783.

I’ve mentioned Katrin Kleemann’s research a couple of times before. In this recording, she describes her book A Mist Connection: An Environmental History of the Laki Eruption of 1783 and Its Legacy, published this year, and answers questions.

The video description says:

In the summer of 1783, an unusual dry fog descended upon large parts of the northern hemisphere. The fog brought with it bloodred sunsets, a foul sulfuric odor, and a host of other peculiar weather events. Inspired by the Enlightenment, many naturalists attempted to find reasonable explanations for these occurrences.

Between 8 June 1783 and 7 February 1784, a 27-kilometer-long fissure volcano erupted in the Icelandic highlands. It produced the largest volume of lava released by any volcanic eruption on planet Earth in the last millennium. In Iceland, the eruption led to the death of one-fifth of the population. The jetstream carried its volcanic gases further afield to Europe and beyond, where they settled as a fog, the origin of which puzzled naturalists and laypersons.

A Mist Connection is an environmental history that documents the Laki eruption and its consequences for Iceland and the wider world. The book combines methods of historical disaster research, climate history, global history, history of science, and geology in an interdisciplinary approach. Icelandic flood lava eruptions of this scale have a statistical recurrence period of 200 to 500 years; it is crucial to understand their nature so that we can prepare for the next one.

One of the concepts Kleemann uses in this talk is “teleconnections,” a term borrowed from meteorology to refer to the effects of a weather phenomenon distant in space and time from that event. An event can also have teleconnections within societies, she argues.

For example, the eruption of 1783 didn’t kill thousands of Icelanders in an explosion; rather, it poisoned the air and the pasturage, killing most of the crops and livestock, and that led to widespread famine. The event has also been linked to a famine in Egypt as decreased rainfall in Africa put less water in the Nile. Some historians argue the volcano was also a factor in the French famine of 1785, which exacerbated the Revolution that started four years later.

Davis on Ragsdale, Washington at the Plow

Camille Davis recently reviewed Bruce A. Ragsdale’s Washington at the Plow: The Founding Farmer and the Question of Slavery for H-Net.

Davis writes:

Going beyond much of the historical analysis that presents farming as primarily an occupation that Washington held before the Revolution and a retirement activity that he reestablished after relinquishing command of the Continental Army, Ragsdale proves that farming was at the nexus of the first president’s personhood, an indelible component of his identity that he consistently developed. Additionally, Ragsdale uses Washington’s preoccupation with land ownership and cultivation to illuminate Washington’s decision-making processes as a slaveowner. Ragsdale believes Washington’s roles as landowner and slaveowner were inextricably linked.

Ragsdale’s work illustrates that Washington’s preoccupation with agriculture was tied directly to the Enlightenment impetus of using science to assess, understand, and control one’s physical environment. Specifically, for Washington, this meant using scientific principles to improve soil conditions and crop growth. . . . As a private citizen, he continuously looked for ways to maximize the efficiency of enslaved persons working on his plantation. Additionally, he insisted that enslaved persons be kept aware of and trained on the most recent English farming techniques.

That overlap between what seem like the latest thinking and the most barbarous custom is provocative. Davis also notes some unanswered questions in Ragsdale’s analysis. Read the whole review here.

Dick Morey “in the Capacity of a Servant”

As I mentioned yesterday, David Stoddard Greenough, the lawyer and landowner who took control of what’s now the Loring Greenough House in Jamaica Plain, secured the labor of a small black boy in 1785.

The Massachusetts Historical Society shares the documents of that transaction on its website.

That happened a couple of years after Massachusetts’s highest court rendered chattel slavery unenforceable in the commonwealth. However, another widespread system of unpaid labor continued to be in force: indenturing apprentices.

Parents with teenagers, particularly boys, voluntarily entered into those agreements to provide the children with training they could use to establish themselves in professions and support themselves and their families as adults. The master didn’t pay the young worker but was responsible for feeding, clothing, sheltering, and medicining him.

In addition, local law provided for a town’s selectmen or Overseers of the Poor to indenture children born to unwed mothers or whose families couldn’t support them. Those indentured boys and girls might be separated from their relatives, treated as servants, taught lesser skills, and turned out with few resources to fend for themselves when they came of age. But, society felt, this was better than letting them starve.

In July 1785 Greenough paid £5 to John Morey of Roxbury for a little boy’s labor. The bill of sale leaves no doubt that this deal treated little Dick as property:

I do hereby acknowledge Do give, grant, & sell unto him the said David, his Heirs or assigns a Molatto Boy of Five years Old called and known by the Name of Dick who was Born in my House of my Negro servant Binah. to live with and serve him the said David, his Heirs, or assigns in the Capacity of a Servant untill he shall attain to the Age of Twenty one Years & I do hereby renounce and foreverquit claim to him the said David all right & title I now have or ever had to the said Molotto Boy

Unlike the sales records for enslaved people, however, that document put a sixteen-year limit on Greenough’s claim. It acknowledged that Dick would eventually be an adult and therefore free.

In September 1786 Greenough (who was, after all, a lawyer) put his relationship to “Dick Morey” on a different legal basis, more solid under the new Massachusetts law. Using a standard printed form, the selectmen of Roxbury indentured the boy to Greenough.

To do so, the men producing this contract had to cross out the parts of the form about how Dick “doth voluntarily and of his own free Will and Accord, and with the Consent of his” parents, bind himself to Greenough. The boy was too young to enter such an agreement. His mother, Binah, wasn’t mentioned at all; she may have been dead, absent, or shunted aside.

Greenough promised to teach Dick “the Art, Trade or Calling of a Farmer,” suggesting the boy was supposed to work around the Roxbury estate. That was basic, not specialized, training. But with an indenture Greenough did make a legal, handwritten promise to supply “good and sufficient meat, Drink, washing, Lodging & Clothing” for the next fifteen years. Again, that was more than slave owners ever had to promise.

These documents are thus evidence of Massachusetts’s transition away from legalized slavery. One possible interpretation is that Greenough found a way around the court’s decision to exploit a vulnerable child for sixteen years. Another is that he and the Roxbury selectmen used the legal tools of their society to secure a home for little Dick until he became an adult. And in fact both those readings could be true.

TOMORROW: The Morey household.

Winter Is Coming at Minute Man Park, 15 Oct.

On Saturday, 15 October, Minute Man National Historical Park will host a day of special programming on the theme of “Preparing for Winter, Preparing for War.”

The event description explains:

Autumn in Colonial New England was a time of change and transition when many gathered to share the fruits of summer labor and prepare to survive the coming winter. In 1774 it was also a time of preparation for the coming conflict; Colonial Militia mustered to train their soldiers and scrambled to secure military supplies. As Colonists ferried weapons and goods into Concord, local families brought in their harvests to be preserved as food sufficient to feed their family through the coming year.

October 1774 was a couple of months after the arrival of the Massachusetts Government Act from London, which produced massive resistance in the countryside. It was weeks after the “Powder Alarm” changed the de facto balance of power in the colony, and the same month when the Provincial Congress started to meet.

On the local level, at least some towns were ahead of that shadow legislature. Westborough had already voted to ramp up militia training and acquire artillery. Worcester had put actual money toward bringing cannon out of Boston, but its meeting balked later that month at buying powder and shot. In sum, there was a lot for people to talk about.

“Preparing for Winter, Preparing for War” will take place at the park’s Hartwell Tavern site in Lincoln from 10:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. on Saturday. It is free for all visitors, supported in part by the Friends of Minute Man Park.

A version of this event was scheduled for last fall before a more contagious variant of the Covid-19 virus spread. Since then, we’ve allowed yet more variants to evolve. So now’s the time for us to prepare for winter by getting up-to-date inoculations against both Covid and the flu. If there’s one species-changing lesson western civilization learned in the 18th and early 19th centuries, it’s how inoculations save millions of lives.