Don Hagist on Pvts. Montgomery and Kilroy

A few years back, Don Hagist, blogger and author of British Soldiers, American War, alerted me that the name of Pvt. Hugh White of His Majesty’s 29th Regiment of Foot appeared in army pension records digitized by the British National Archives. White’s pension paperwork showed where he was born, how old he was at discharge, and how long he had been in the army.

From that data we could calculate White’s age and military experience on 5 Mar 1770, when he was the sentry on King Street before the Boston Massacre. Suddenly a man who had been little more than a name and a caricature in the propaganda prints by Henry Pelham and Paul Revere became an individual. He was an Irishman, thirty years old, and he’d served in the British army for eleven years.

Late last year Don told me he’d found similar records for two more soldiers involved in the Massacre—in fact, the two who were convicted of manslaughter. Here is Don’s explanation of this new discovery as a special “guest blogger” posting.

The 29th Regiment’s muster rolls for the second half of 1774 are missing, and Pvts. Edward Montgomery and Mathew Kilroy do not appear on the surviving 1775 rolls. That leaves no indication of whether they were discharged, died, deserted, or were drafted into another regiment—and at that time many men were being drafted into regiments bound for America.

The discharge certificates for many army pensioners survive in the WO 97, WO 119, and WO 121 collections at the British National Archives (all indexed online), and those do not list Montgomery and Kilroy either. But those collections do not include all pensioners, only those for whom discharge certificates survive.

There’s another source on army pensioners in the National Archives: WO 116, Chelsea Out-Pension Admission Books. This collection is a chronological listing of all men who appeared before the board of examiners for out-pensions administered by Chelsea Hospital in London.

Montgomery and Kilroy both appeared before the board on 22 Feb 1776. Here is a screen shot of the PDF file of the digital scan of the microfilm of the manuscript (don’t we live in a wonderful age?).

This admission book states each soldier’s name, age, years of service, infirmity for which he was discharged, place of birth, and trade. Montgomery was born at Antrim in Ireland and was thirty-five years old in 1770, with fourteen years in the army. Kilroy was from a town in County Laois, Ireland. Twenty-two years old around the time of the Massacre, he had joined the army at fifteen, an unusually young age. Both men were listed as “labourers,” meaning they had no skilled trade.

It is also very interesting that Montgomery and Kilroy went before the examination board (which met several times a year) on the same day, suggesting some camaraderie between them, but that’s only speculative. Officially, Montgomery was “Worn out” while Kilroy had “a Lame Knee.”

I speculate that the army was happy to discharge Montgomery and Kilroy before their regiment headed for Canada and the American war. With their thumbs branded, those two men could have been recognized and singled out for punishment if they were captured.

As it happened, the 29th’s grenadier company was part of Gen. John Burgoyne’s army and did become prisoners of war, marched to eastern Massachusetts in the Convention Army. But thanks to this discharge, Montgomery and Kilroy were not among them.

Thanks, Don, for helping us see these soldiers as individuals. Keep up the excellent work!

The Twisting Tale of Learned Pigs in America

Today Boston 1775 features an essay from guest blogger Russell Potter, author of the new novel PYG: The Memoirs of Toby, the Learned Pig. Check out his blog for more information about that book, set mostly in eighteenth-century London. This posting tracks learned pigs across the Atlantic.

The history of that Sagacious Animal, the Learned PIG, in America in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries turns out to be far longer and twistier than the Tail of most members of the Species. It begins just a few years after Toby, the original of that Act, was exhibited in London in the 1780s, and—like so many other American phenomena—the first sign of it is a lawsuit.

In a Philadelphia paper of June 9th, 1792, under the heading “LAW INTELLIGENCE” we learn of an action brought by one Mr. Williams against the landlord of the George Inn in the Haymarket, who had distrained both his pig and his caravan against some unspecified debt. The judge opined, and the jury agreed, that—as tools of the trade—both animal and wagon were exempt from such seizure, and returned a verdict in the plaintiff’s favor. Of this pioneer Mr. Williams and his learned companion nothing more is heard.

The next we hear of our estimable friend comes two years later, and comes upon the Stage, with no actual Pig in sight. A comic song, “Of the LEARNED PIG and TIPPY BOBBY,” debuted upon the stage in Boston in June of 1794, as an entr’acte between a play titled Which is a Man and a farce known as Animal Magnetism. The same song is also mentioned in connection with other productions of this time, including “How To Grow Rich,” which was performed at the New Theatre in Hartford in September of 1796.

And then the pigs start to appear in earnest: In 1797 a sapient Swine—claimed to be the same one “shewn in London at half a crown each person”—debuted at No. 219 South 2nd Street in Philadelphia. By July of that year, the same pig, or at least one with very similar advertising copy, appeared in New York at Mr. Marling’s Long Room, No. 87 Nassau-Street, where he was soon joined by a variety of companion amusements, including the “celebrated TURK,” an infamous chess-playing faux-automaton operated by a dwarf concealed behind the works (and debunked some years later by Edgar Allan Poe). The pig’s run was extended again and again, with a “last chance” advertised on October 2nd, after which he seems to have gone into (a doubtless well-earned) retirement.

The next Pig to strut the boards is that of William Pinchbeck, which I’ve blogged about; in his advertisements he claimed that his Pig was the London original, and had been purchased for a thousand dollars in Philadelphia. However, Pinchbeck’s later Expositor describes the pig’s training, suggesting that he brought this animal to its sense himself.

Pinchbeck had an extended run in Boston in a room underneath Bowen’s Museum of curiosities, and then embarked on a tour that included Newburyport, Salem, and (as discussed here) Providence, which he reached in September of 1798. He advertisements fade away soon after this, although the Pig is mentioned prominently in his notices for his Expositor.

Pinchbeck was followed by a number of exhibitors, some purely local—such as “Dick,” a fixture in Charlestown from 1799 through 1804, and one Mr. Brigshaw’s pig, shown in Newport in March of 1797. (One wonders if Brigshaw might have been the “A.B.” with whom Pinchbeck corresponded in the letters about training such a pig in the Expositor.)

Another pig, under the banner of “A Curiosity in which the Public will not be Disappointed” (see above) appeared in Philadelphia, Alexandria, Albany, and New York. Although there is a long tradition of Mr. Gadsby’s Tavern in Alexandria having been home to one of these sagacious animals, this pig appeared at a rival establishment, Mr. Charles McKnight’s Eagle Tavern, in 1801.

And, shortly after that, another pig appeared, with the motto “Seeing is Believing.” It astonished the visitors at the Rising Sun Hotel, Market Street, Philadelphia, by telling the time of day, distinguishing colors, counting the company present, and so forth. A final, late-arriving porcine prognosticator arrived in 1806 in Alexandria, where he was exhibited at Mr. John Bogan’s Spring-Garden.

The newspapers of this period are filled with allusions to the Learned Pig, most of them treating the act as a single, well-known attraction, although one Philadelphia paper noted in 1803 that “within four years four learned pigs had been exhibited.” The anecdote of Dr. Johnson’s remarks on the Pig was widely reprinted, and as J. L. Bell has described, the animal was often the subject of political satires and diatribes.

Eventually, the popularity of the pig declined, although there are accounts of it being revived in scattered places across the country—including Buffalo, Cleveland, Toronto, and Chicago—as late as the 1890s. As was the case in England, it seems that the idea of a Learned Pig had its greatest appeal in the period that regarded itself as the “Age of Reason.”

Thanks, Russell!

Russell Potter will speak about this history and his novel PYG at Gadsby’s Tavern Museum in Alexandria, Virginia, on Saturday, 20 October, at 3:30 P.M.

“The march they chose was…”

My postings on the story about Gen. George Washington’s “huzzah” remark at Yorktown stopped at identifying Dr. Thomas H. McCalla as the source, partially identified in Alexander Garden’s Anecdotes of the American Revolution.

I didn‘t explore the question of how reliable that story itself was, particularly to the level of the words it credited to the commander-in-chief. That prompted a thoughtful message from martial-music expert Susan Cifaldi, which with permission I’m running as a “guest blogger” column.

The problem I have with Alexander Garden’s Anecdotes of the American Revolution (1822 and 1828) is embodied in the title; what he presents are simply anecdotes, which had a large oral circulation but are supported by vague second- and third-hand documentation. While this may confirm the peripheral circumstances, it leaves us frustrated for actual proof.

Perhaps Dr. M’Calla did recall hearing the Commander-in-Chief say some ponderous, lofty, and encouraging things while “addressing himself to the division of the army to which he was attached.” But in addition to the lack of written notation of such a lengthy statement, there is the physical factor of the problems associated with recall 40+ years after the fact. Who among us can recall 46 words of of anything that happened 40+ years ago, verbatim or otherwise?

“Huzzah” isn’t the only legend accepted as fact simply because the historical buck stops with Alexander Garden. Take the tune “World turned up side down,” commonly but erroneously assumed to have been played at Yorktown (Anecdotes, 1828, p. 17).

Quoting such luminaries as John Laurens, Garden tells the story how, during negotiations of the surrender terms, Laurens apparently insisted that “The [British] Troops shall march out with colours cased, and drums beating a British or a German march.” A “harsh article,” according to a British representative, who felt the surrendering troops should have been accorded the honors of war and thus march out with drums beating an American or French march. However, Laurens would not consider argument, “This remains an article, or I cease to be a Commissioner.”

The result was conformed to this just retribution. The British army marched out with colours cased, and drums beating a British or a German march. The march they chose was—“The world turned up side down.”

The late Arthur Schrader did a much better job than I could in explaining why there is nothing but Alexander Garden to support this theory at this stage in the game.

I like my copy of Garden, which I paid quite a bit for some years ago so I could have both the 1822 and 1828 issues in their original marbled boards, but I think we have to use it as we would a coffee-table book or maybe a 19th-century version of the Reader’s Digest.

Indeed, even when we’ve got a source on the scene, we must consider how reliable that source might be, and how reliably his or her testimony has been transmitted to us.

Thanks, Sue!

(The image above, courtesy of the Library of Congress, is sheet music for a piece genuinely associated with Yorktown. It’s a piano composition created to commemorate the siege a century later.)

The Gravestone of James Reed

My recent postings about Col. James Reed of New Hampshire and his regiment brought a message and photo from Boston 1775 reader Robert J. O’Hara. I decided to adapt them into a guest blogger posting, letting me rest in peace on new material for another day.

James Reed is buried in the Laurel Hill Cemetery in Fitchburg, under a fine large stone carved in John Dwight’s workshop in Shirley. He might have become as well known as his fellow New Hampshireman John Stark, but the year after Bunker Hill he became ill, possibly with smallpox, and this left him almost totally blind. He retired to Keene, and then eventually to Fitchburg, where he lived in a house on the lot now occupied by the Fitchburg City Hall. He died there in 1807.

JAMES REED

Born at Woburn 1723

In the various Military scenes

In which his country was concerned

from 1755 to the superiour conflict

distinguished in our history as the

Revolution

He sustained Commissions.

In that Revolution, at the import-

ant post of Lake George,

he totally lost his sight.

From that period to his death he

receiv’d from his country the

retribution allowed to pensioners

of the rank of

Brigadier General.

died at Fitchburg

February 13th 1807.

Please visit this webpage for more information and photos about Fitchburg’s cemeteries.

Thanks, Bob! 

Interview with Local Historian Charles Bahne

Today Boston 1775 offers the first part of an interview with Charles Bahne, local historian, tour guide, author, and (most important) occasional guest blogger here.

You can review Charlie’s essays on local milestones, the cobblestones that mark the site of the Boston Massacre, the tea in the Boston Tea Party, and the painting that might have inspired the popular name of that event. And here’s the interview.

What was your introduction to Boston and its history?

I came to Boston as a college freshman from Indianapolis, intending to study math or science. Of course, Boston’s role in the Revolution had been taught in my high school history classes, but I’d totally forgotten about that by the time I got here. A few weeks after my arrival as a freshman, some of my classmates and I went on an expedition to get produce at Haymarket, which we’d vaguely heard about. We got hopelessly lost in the North End, and then we came upon the statue of Paul Revere galloping away from the Old North Church.

A photo of that statue had been on the front cover of my eighth-grade American history textbook; I’d looked at that picture almost every day for a full school year. And now I had just chanced upon it while wandering through the city, looking to buy some fruit. That’s still one of my favorite things about Boston—history lurks around every corner, without your actively looking for it.

I ended up majoring in Urban Studies and Planning, and in one of my classes the professors and lecturers were talking about their work planning for the hordes of tourists that would be coming to town during the upcoming Bicentennial. So that sparked my interest in Boston’s history, so to speak. I did several college projects about local history, but after I graduated I went in other directions for a while.

Although I was in Boston during the Bicentennial, I wasn’t really involved with history at the time. A couple of years later, I saw an ad for Boston By Foot, which was looking for volunteer guides. I answered it, and the rest, as they say, was history.

How has the city’s approach to its Revolutionary history changed since you started working in the field? What major changes have you seen?

I began working at the Old State House in 1980, and later with the National Park Service. My understanding is that the large numbers of tourists who started coming to Boston for the Bicentennial have never really gone away since then.

The local history field became much more professional during and after the Bicentennial. For the Bicentennial, a number of academically-inclined professionals—including some city planners—created historically accurate guidebooks, museum exhibits, and other resources about the events of the Revolution. The National Park Service came to Boston about that time, too, in 1974. And over the next two decades, you really saw the professionalization of the staff at the city’s historic sites. As late as the early 1980s, some of them were still basically old boys’ clubs, run by descendants of Boston’s fabled “brahmins”.

The last decade, though, has seen an increased commercialization of tourism, and the advent of “edutainment”. Wikipedia says that term was invented by Disney; whether that’s true or not, Disney-like approaches to history are seemingly becoming the norm. Pirates, for example, were a staple of Disney’s TV shows when I was growing up; now they’ve become a favorite topic of some of the city’s tour operators. Colonial Boston never had that much involvement with real pirates, but you can’t walk the streets of old Boston today without encountering at least one swashbuckling tour guide.

How did you come to publish your first book, The Complete Guide to the Freedom Trail?

One of my roles at the Old State House in the early 1980s was to work in the museum shop. Visitors were asking if we had a good guidebook to the Freedom Trail, but the best I could recommend was a book from the 1940s—written before anyone even conceived of putting a red brick line on the sidewalk. So I saw that the market was there, and I created a book to fill that need.

A good part of that book’s first edition was written during my down time with the Bostonian Society, and later with the Park Service—especially in the winter, when things were really quiet. I guess I’m like Nathaniel Hawthorne, who wrote much of The Scarlet Letter at the Custom House in Salem.

How has writing and researching changed since you wrote your first book 27 years ago?

It’s unbelievable. So much historic material is now available on the internet, almost instantaneously, 24 hours a day. Back then it would have taken me years of going to libraries to do the research that I can now accomplish in just a few weeks over the web. You always have to be careful with the web, of course, but the vast majority of 19th-century books are now on the web in full text.

And the writing has changed, too. When I first wrote The Complete Guide, everything had to be written first in pencil and then typed on a typewriter. If you made too many mistakes, you had to retype the entire page from scratch. And then I had to retype everything again into the typesetting equipment—there was no way to “capture the keystrokes”, as they say now.

Now I simply type everything into my computer, e-mail it to my publisher, and the book designer pastes the file into a layout program. I didn’t even make as many printouts as I used to do with my older computer.

TOMORROW: What’s new from Charles Bahne.

Milestones of Greater Boston, Then and Now

Last week Matt Rocheleau reported for Boston.com on the state government’s plan to restore a colonial milestone along Harvard Avenue in Allston that was damaged by a truck. I knew that Charles Bahne, author of the just-published Chronicles of Old Boston, has studied milestones and other early road markings around Boston, so I asked him for his reaction. Charlie kindly supplied this guest blogger essay.

I’m glad to see that the Massachusetts Department of Transportation is overseeing the milestones now, and that the Massachusetts Historical Commission is involved in plans for preserving this one. I’m pleasantly surprised that they have a count of surviving stones— 47 known to exist in situ. I’m sure that there were many more than 99 erected in the colonial era.

The article repeats the myth that the stones mark the “distance from a stone near City Hall in downtown Boston”—referring to the Boston Stone on Marshall Street. All of the colonial stones in the immediate Boston area were erected before 1735, thus before the Boston Stone was set in a public place. The actual zero point was the northwest corner of the Old State House, today’s State and Washington Streets.

It also does not appear that the Allston 6-mile stone was ever part of a mail delivery system; it was erected before the establishment of an official colonial post office and was never along any of the established post roads.

Rather, most of the stones in the immediate Boston area were erected by prominent political figures, such as Samuel Sewall, Jonathan Belcher, and Paul Dudley. I’m guessing that those men saw the milestones partly as a public service, and partly as a billboard advertising their beneficence—just as we see signs near highway construction projects that give the names of government officials today.

There were originally eight milestones along the road from Boston to Cambridge (Harvard Square). Of these, the stones at 1, 2, and 3 miles are now lost. I assume that the 1- and 2-mile stones—and possibly the 3 as well—were lost during the siege of Boston, since they were in a hotly contested area with entrenchments on both sides.

The 4-mile stone still stands on Huntington Avenue in Roxbury. The 5-mile stone is on Harvard Street in Brookline. The 6-mile stone is referenced in this article. The 7-mile stone is on North Harvard Street in Allston. And the 8-mile stone is at the corner of Garden Street & Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge (slightly moved from its original location in the middle of Harvard Square).

I’ve seen the 3-mile stone on Centre Street in Roxbury and the 5-mile stone at Monument Square (Centre & Eliot Streets) in Jamaica Plain. And of course the “Parting Stone” (not a milestone, but it indicates which route went where) stands at Eliot Square in Roxbury.

I have a copy of an article from the Brookline Historical Society in 1909 reporting the location of several then-existing stones along other highways in Roxbury, Dorchester, Milton, Quincy, Braintree, Canton, Jamaica Plain, and Walpole, in addition to the ones I just mentioned. There is an old milestone in Arlington, near Arlington Heights, which reads simply “8,” and I can’t figure out where that number refers to.

The stones referred to in the article along the Boston Post Road were indeed set up under the instruction of Benjamin Franklin, and in some cases directly under his field supervision. They were erected much later than the stones mentioned in earlier paragraphs.

The Post Road follows U.S. 20 west (with a few modern bypasses) from Watertown Square to about Northborough. At that point U.S. 20 diverges to the south of the Post Road, which goes directly through Worcester. West of Worcester the Post Road follows Mass. Route 9 for several miles, then some other highways, and then rejoins U.S. 20 west of Palmer. In the Springfield area some of the Post Road has been designated as Route 20A.

There were two other routings of the Boston Post Road, one going southwest from Dedham towards Hartford, and one going south from Dedham towards Rhode Island. And in the early nineteenth-century another set of milestones was erected along turnpikes, including the Worcester Turnpike, now Route 9.

As for the sad story of the Allston stone, until about fifteen or twenty years ago it was fairly well protected simply because the city had installed parking meters in that block. The meters defined the parking spaces so that the stone was relatively safe from “attack” by motorized vehicles. When the parking meters were removed, the parking spaces were no longer defined, so people continued to parallel-park in spaces of random length and positions. As a result the milestone was frequently hit and scratched by cars and trucks, a fact which I observed circa 1999. Thus I wasn’t wholly surprised to see that this accident had happened last August.

The other surviving stones along the Roxbury-Allston-Cambridge route are all set back behind the sidewalk, relatively safe from vehicular incursions.

Thanks, Charlie! Part of the plan for restoring the Allston stone is to move it back from the road by about a foot, which would provide a little more protection.

TOMORROW: Milestones on the web.

A Petition from Fifty Woburn Women

This is a guest-blogger posting from Chris Hurley of Woburn, a researcher and reenactor with a deep knowledge of that big town’s Revolutionary experience. Today he shares a notable document from 1775.


FIFTY women of Woburn.

In May 1775 they wanted the Massachusetts Provincial Congress to incentivize home manufacture by paying bounties to families with the best and most output of home-produced goods. How to pay for it? Their petition offered an answer.

To the Honorable Gentlemen the House of Delegates for the Province of the Massachsetts Bay, in Provincial Congress assembled, by Adjournment from Cambridge to Concord in the County of Middlesex on Wednesday the Twenty second day of March 1775

The Petition of the subscribers Female Inhabitents of the Town of Woburn and County aforesaid.

Humbly sheweth, that your Petitioners being greatly alarmed at the many bold & daring attempts of the British Administration to reduce this devoted Province & Continent to a state of the most abject Slavery; Do esteem it our indisspensible duty to exert our utmost efforts to defeat all the plans of our [restless and] inveterate Enemies and if possible [render] their projects to enslave us, Abortive.

Your Petitioners from a just sense of the Duty they owe to themselves, their Country and Posterity, have come to a full determination Totally to abstain from the use of all India Teas so long as the same shall be attended with a duty or Tax for the purpose of enslaving America & to refrain from all superfluities in our dress untill the Acts, & parts of Acts of the British Parliament enumerated by the Grand American Congress shall be totally Repeal’d.

That August assembly in their great Wisdom have strongly enjoind on all Merchants, Traders & others not, to import any, Goods, Wares, or Merchandize from any part of Great Britain or Ireland till said Acts & parts of Acts are repealed. It therefore becomes absolutely necessary according to their & your own recommendation to encourage & promote our own Manufactories as much as possible.

Your Petitioners humbly pray your Patronage & Encouragement in this Laudable & necessary undertak’g but without the assistance of the industrious Farmers to furnish us with the necessary materials which we flatter our selves may be produced in in [sic] plenty from a proper Cultivation of the Soil of this Province & Continent.

It is with the utmost regret that your Petitioners are constrain’d to say that too many Men are Guilty of a very great mispence of Time at Taverns & Tippling Houses, & Expence of Money laid out for Rum & other spiritous Liquors which ought to have been expended for Materials for the Women to Manufacture or the support of their Families.

Your Petioners pray a speedy remedy for this great and prevailing Evil and humbly recommend and submitt the following to the Consideration of this Hon-ble Congress Viz—That you would be pleased in your great Wisdom & prudence to cause an Excis to be laid on all spiritous Liquors expecially on Rum Retailed in this Province in such way & manner as you shall in your Wisdom think most effectual to prevent the present excessive use and abuse of those articles of Luxury, and that the [net?] proceeds of the same may be appropiated to the encouragement of Manufactures in this Town & Province by way of Bounty to those of us that shall produce the most and best Cloths & other Manufactures of various kinds, your Petitioners the more earnestly request your aid & assistance in this important affair as we have have sacrificed our favorite Teas at the Altar of Liberty for the good of the Community & your Petitioners further pray that you would be pleased to appoint such a Number of suitable Persons to determine the qualities of the Manufactures produced by our Industry as to you shall seem [meet?] and to see that the several Bounties you in your Wisdom may assign are equitably disposed of according to the merit of our performances, as in duty bound your Petioners shall ever pray

Ruth Baldwin
Phebe Snow
Perses Garry
Kezia thomson
Perses Snow
Ruth Snow
Lydia thomson
Kezia Thompson
Abigail Tay
Deborah Eatton
Mary Baldwin
Bridget Tompson
Abigail Thomson
Ruth thomson
Abigail thomson
Anna Snow
Sarah Tay
Phebe Peirce
Susanna Tay
Joanna Eames
Huldah Wyman
mary convers
Mary Wright
Lydia Wright
Jemima Richardson
Mary Flagg
Phebe Thomson
Abigail thomson
Abigail Wyman
Rebekah Wyman
Sarah [Gay?]
Phebe Wright
Abigail Richardson
[erased Hanna ___]
Hannah Brewster
Mary Carter
Eleanor Douglass
Eleanor Douglass
Sarah Richardson
Mary Richarson
Hannan Richardson
Alice Richarson
Mary Richardson
Martha Richardson
Mary Leathe
Eleanor Leathe
Susanna Leathe
Lydia Richardson
abigail [Tilar?]
Abigail Warren

This document is in the collections of the Houghton Library at Harvard University. It’s not mentioned in the published records of the Provincial Congress. A fair photographic copy of the original petition will be on display at Saturday’s Pathway of the Patriots living-history presentation in Woburn.

This year’s Pathways of the Patiots consists of tours of the Old Lexington Road (now in wooded conservation land), marched by Loammi Baldwin’s militia on April 19th. There are multiple starting times for the tours on Saturday afternoon. Each tour features five documented scenes of Revolutionary Woburn. Scene one features this petition. Reserve a spot on a free tour.

Thanks, Chris! (And look at all those Wymans, Richardsons, and Thompsons in Woburn. A nice reminder of how rural New England towns were often settled by extended families.)

Government Finance of Health Care, 18th-Century Style

Today Boston 1775 welcomes Dr. Sam Forman as a guest blogger. He is the author of the new book Dr. Joseph Warren: The Boston Tea Party, Bunker Hill, and the Birth of American Liberty. This is only the third full biography of Warren, a central figure in the beginning of the Revolutionary War, and the first in decades. Sam is also an expert in health management, and in this essay looks at that side of Warren’s work.

My new biography of Dr. Joseph Warren is the rousing story of one involved citizen who made a big impact in troubled times. Once famous and broadly admired, he is now barely remembered as the Patriot who sent Paul Revere on that legendary ride, and as the hero of the Battle of Bunker Hill, where he was killed in action.

A sidelight to Warren’s tale is interesting relative to a current controversy. Some conservative Republicans and modern Tea Partyers are calling for the repeal of President Obama’s health care financial reforms. They appear to argue that our Revolutionary-Era leaders never countenanced government involvement in health care finance. Such originalist assertions are Libertarian staples on which calls for reductions and elimination of such programs are based.

The notion that American Founders were not involved in government finance of health care is not borne out by the experience of Boston Patriots. Some, like Joseph Warren, were heavily involved in such programs. Politicians on all sides of the modern controversy do not seem to realize this.

All shades on the political spectrum of Warren’s day judged finance of health care of vulnerable populations as a fitting role for government, even as Whigs opposed taxation without representation within the British Empire. The issue was not whether this was an appropriate role of government, but who should hold the government contract and provide the services.

Dr. Joseph Warren held that Massachusetts province contract to provide health care to needy and elderly residents served by the almshouse and workhouse public institutions from 1769 into 1772. Physician services to people served by these institutions was on a fee-for-service basis to the designated physician, payable one or more times yearly, by a committee of Boston overseers. Designation of the physician and his reimbursement were handled separately from the staffing and administration of the almshouse and workhouse.

Dr. Benjamin Church served prior to Warren. Making his clinical rounds on October 20th at the workhouse at the outset of the 1768 British army occupation of Boston, Dr. Church was refused entry at point of bayonet. As a large crowd gathered, only the intercession of Sheriff Stephen Greanleaf gained Church access to his patient and avoided a riot.

This episode and Church’s clinical services to the poor doubtless reinforced his cache as a popular Whig, and may have helped to immunize him against suspicions of disloyalty for years.

Joseph Warren succeeded Benjamin Church as the province-designated physician to provide charity care from about May 1769 through April 1772. Appointments are recorded in the minutes of the Governor’s Council, whose originals are at the Massachusetts Archives. Government reimbursement and charity care patient volume for 1770/71 come from surviving Governor’s Council records and a Town of Boston tabulation approved by a committee headed by John Hancock.

Government reimbursed fee-for-service care for the indigent constituted about 42% of Warren’s practice, based on volume. As a portion of total revenue, estimates range from 64 to 68% for the three years Warren held the post.

Estimates of Government Reimbursed Care by Dr. Joseph Warren to Massachusetts Almshouse Poor as a Portion of His Medical Practice, May 1769 through April 1772

In 1772 Dr. Samuel Danforth, a Loyalist, displaced Joseph Warren. The new appointment may have had political overtones during a period of Whig quiescence and Tory resurgence. Despite his suspect politics, Dr. Danforth later practiced medicine in Boston and went on to become a founder of the Massachusetts Medical Society.

The closest modern equivalent to Massachusetts Province’s provision of health services to the almshouse and workhouse poor, would be a state Medicaid plan or Medicare, if it had a recipient means test.

Dr. Joseph Warren is a favorite Revolutionary figure among modern Republicans, and was idolized by their favorite American president of modern times, Ronald Reagan. The notion that fighting American founder Dr. Warren—very probably an organizer of the historical Boston Tea Party—aggressively pursued governmental finance of health care for the needy, is an important observation for modern observers of all persuasions. The extent of Warren’s provision of government reimbursed care during 1769-1772, and the widespread support that such government involvement enjoyed in Massachusetts by both Patriots and Tories in the Revolutionary era, are noteworthy. They constitute a humanitarian legacy predating the creation of the United States and its Constitution.

Nevertheless, I would not venture to assert that the compelling history of the American Revolutionary era confers originalist clout to any particular modern agenda regarding health care. To do so would be to commit the sin of presentism, the transgression of asserting a modern agenda in the guise of past events.

Thanks, Sam! For more on the care of the poor in colonial Boston, see the published town records The Eighteenth-Century Records of the Boston Overseers of the Poor, edited by Eric Nellis and Ann Decker Cecere and published by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. Visit Sam’s website for more on Joseph Warren and his compatriots, with weekly updates of primary-source documents.

Sam will speak on Dr. Warren, the early Revolutionary era, and his new biography at the Brookline Booksmith tonight at 7:00 P.M.; at Newtonville Books on Wednesday, 11 January, at 7:00 P.M.; and at Old South Meeting House on Thursday, 19 January, at noon (admission $6, free to Old South members).

Henry Sargent’s Tea Party and the Boston Tea Party

I invited Charles Bahne, author of The Complete Guide to Boston’s Freedom Trail, to write a guest-blogger essay for Boston 1775 on the origin of the term “Boston Tea Party.” An expert in many eras of Boston history, Charlie had noted how that term appeared in print shortly after a notable cultural moment.

The destruction of the tea in Boston Harbor on December 17, 1773, is one of American history’s most famous events. As Boston 1775 has documented already, the earliest known use of the phrase “Boston Tea Party” to describe that event occurred more than 50 years later, in 1826. Just two years before this, however, the term “Tea Party” appeared in conjunction with Boston, albeit in an entirely different context. Is it possible that this earlier usage influenced the 1826 coinage?

For obvious political reasons, tea as a beverage lost favor in America after 1773. But as time elapsed, tea again become fashionable, particularly for the upper class. By the early 1820s, consumption of tea had become the focus of elegant social gatherings.

Shown here is a portrayal of one such gathering: Henry Sargent’s painting The Tea Party, completed and first exhibited in Boston in the spring of 1824.

Sargent’s earlier canvas, The Dinner Party (1821), had been a commercial success when it was first exhibited, so Boston gallery owner David L. Brown commissioned a companion picture from Sargent. The Columbian Centinel of May 1, 1824, included a notice that The Tea Party was displayed in “Mr. Brown’s Rooms” at 2 Cornhill Square, from 9 o’clock in the morning until dark; admittance was 25 cents. (Cornhill Square was an alley opposite the present 226 Washington Street, on part of the site now occupied by the skyscraper at 1 Boston Place.)

In The Magazine Antiques for May 1982, Jane C. Nylander offers evidence that both The Dinner Party and The Tea Party depict rooms in Henry Sargent’s own rowhouse mansion, located at 10 Franklin Place in Boston. This was part of Charles Bulfinch’s famous Tontine Crescent, on modern-day Franklin Street near Arch Street.

The large Tea Party canvas, more than five feet high by four feet wide, gives us a window into the lives of Boston’s social elite. In the two parlors, women and men are seated, standing and lounging. The furnishings are of the highest taste and fashion, as described in contemporary writings by Thomas Sheraton, George Hepplewhite, and others, featuring items imported from France and Italy. Barely visible in a side room, an African-American waiter stands ready to dispense tea, coffee, and cakes from his tray. As Nylander points out, the painting’s great appeal was precisely due to the vicarious thrill of “an intimate glimpse of a private world of luxury” to those who couldn’t afford such opulence.

While I can offer no proof, it seems likely that this work by a prominent Boston artist helped establish a verbal connection between the phrases “Boston” and “tea party” in the mid 1820s. How ironic, then, that today’s highly-politicized term “Boston Tea Party” may have been originally popularized by a portrayal of the social life of Boston’s 1%!

Interestingly, both Henry Sargent’s house and David Brown’s art gallery were scarcely more than a block away from the Old South Meeting House, where Bostonians had gathered just before the tea was thrown into the harbor.

The Tea Party and The Dinner Party were exhibited in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and other cities over the course of two decades. Nearly a century after they were painted, the artist’s family gave them to Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, where they are now on display in Gallery 121 of the new Art of the Americas wing. There you too can get a glimpse into the lifestyles of the rich and famous of the early 19th century.

Thanks, Charlie! Click back here for Charles Bahne’s study of exactly what tea was thrown into Boston harbor and how much it cost.

Stones in My Passway

Earlier this month, the Boston Globe reported that the cobblestone circle set out to mark the site of the Boston Massacre (shown here in a Globe file photo) had been removed for roadwork and eventual replacement. Boston 1775 friend Charles Bahne wrote into the paper with a historic perspective, and has graciously offered his full letter for posting here.

As a historian and tour guide, I regularly point out the circle of stones marking the Boston Massacre site in front of the Old State House. I was shocked to see the stones missing a few days ago, and I thank the Globe for printing an explanation.

This will not be the first time that subway construction has required the stones’ relocation. They were originally placed in the street pavement in 1887 near the corner of State and Exchange Streets, much closer to the present site of 60 State Street. (Exchange Street is now gone, but it roughly corresponded with the southbound lanes of Congress Street.)

In 1904 they were removed to allow construction of the subway to East Boston, and replaced in a new site right in the middle of the intersection, near where James Caldwell had died.

Again in the 1960s, when urban renewal caused reconfiguration of the streets, the circle of stones was moved to its most recent site, apparently chosen simply because that’s where the city wanted to place a traffic island.

All this means that the circle of stones no longer represents the spot “where Crispus Attucks fell.” To stand on that site, you'd have to go back to the 1887 location of the stones, and you’d probably get hit by a truck as soon as the traffic signal changed.

I’ve long marveled at how research located the Massacre exactly where city planners saw the need for a traffic island. Now I understand how the process of historic revision continually updates the accuracy of that siting, reflecting the changing present’s priorities and interests.

Ann Edwards: “retained her Eastern habits until her death”

Back in my first posting about John Singleton Copley’s portrait of Margaret Gage, I noted that her father, the New Jersey merchant Peter Kemble, had been born in Smyrna, in the Ottoman Empire. (Shown here in a 1732 print, which Iscra of the Netherlands is selling.) Kemble’s father ran a trading house, and his mother was of Greek ancestry.

Boston 1775 reader John Beasley sent me an email adding that Margaret Gage had an even more direct connection to Turkey:

Margaret’s Greek grandmother had a sister who married the British consul to Smyrna named Edwards. The Kembles were in the trading business, and Mr. Edwards seems to have taken part in the trading business also. He is credited with introducing coffee in England. At some time, under circumstances unknown, the Edwards family died out, except for a daughter, Ann Edwards, six years older than Margaret.

The Kembles invited Ann to leave Turkey and live with them in New Jersey. She spent the rest of her life with the Kembles and [following her death in 1808] is buried in the Kemble family plot at Mount Kemble, N.J. In the Prefatory Notes for Volume II of the Stephen Kemble Papers (pg. xiv), Margaret’s brother (Stephen Kemble) writes: “She was highly educated, spoke Greek, Italian, French, and English.” But more importantly he adds that she was “a complete Greek, and retained her Eastern habits until her death.”

Thus Margaret grew up with a Greek/Turkish cousin living in the same house—a cousin who perhaps regularly wore a Turkish costume. It just might be Ann Edwards’ clothes that Margaret wears in the portrait.

If so, they had probably been altered to be closer to British-American norms, in the same way other aspects of culture get adapted. The “Turkish” style fashionable in late-eighteenth-century Britain apparently had little connection with actual Turkish dress.

Nevertheless, Margaret Gage clearly had more knowledge of and emotional ties to life in the Ottoman Empire than the average British aristocrat, and far more than the average North American lady. She might have chosen to be painted in that fashion as a statement of her heritage as well as her taste. Given how other Copley patrons had their pictures painted in similar dress, it’s also possible that Margaret Gage helped to promote the “turquerie” style in America.

TOMORROW: Remaking Copley’s portraits of the Gages.

The First Reenactment at Lexington?

Last November, Roger Fuller of Minute Man National Historical Park alerted me to a description of what might be the first “reenactment” of the fight on Lexington common, in 1822—the auspicious 47th anniversary of the British march. I’ve copied most of Roger’s comment into this “guest blogger” posting.

Albert W. Bryant read his paper “The Military Organizations of Lexington” before the Lexington Historical Society on December 9, 1890. He wrote of his own experiences in the Lexington Militia until it disbanded in 1847. And he wrote of an earlier experience:

I recall standing, on the 19th of April, 1822, on the steps of the south side entrance to the meetinghouse, which had three entrances, and seeing a company of about 60 men in line on the Common near where the stone boulder is placed, under the command of Abijah Harrington. They were representing the Minute Men who stood upon that spot on the morning of the 19th of April, 1775.

I also saw Maj. Benj. O. Wellington on horse-back, riding up Main Street in front of several militia companies who were intended to represent the British troops. When they came to the Common, Major Wellington said, “Lay down your arms and disperse, you rebels,” at the same time firing his pistol, and immediately giving the order to the foremost company to fire, which was quickly answered by the Minute Men.

This scene was incomprehensible to my youthful mind, but it awakened an interest that led me to learn as soon as possible what it was intended to convey. Other movements followed descriptive of scenes that took place on that day, such as marching toward Concord as far as the Lincoln line, a hasty retreat back, and the firing upon the main body, from behind trees, stone walls, etc. This part of the program lasted until noon, when refreshments were furnished at Munroe’s Tavern. In the afternoon commemorative services were held in the meeting-house, Rev. Mr. Stearns of Bedford delivering an oration.

An interesting way for these veterans and townspeople to come to terms with arguably the most important event in their lives and of their town.

According to Charles Hudson’s Genealogical Register of Lexington Families, Albert Withington Bryant was born on 16 Feb 1814, so he was eight years old in 1822 when he saw this mysterious and inspiring commemoration.

Burgoyne Returned to Parliament

Don Hagist of the British Soldiers, American War blog unearthed this item from the Cumbria Packet, a regional British newspaper, on 9 June 1778. It turns on the aftermath of the Battle of Saratoga, and how British politics uses the word “returned” as a synonym for “elected.”

Bon Mot.

A day or two after General [John] Burgoyne arrived, a large party being at dinner, the conversation turned upon the propriety, or impropriety, of his taking his seat in Parliament, previous to a court of inquiry:

“Poh, poh, (says a gentleman of the party) independent of his borough here, he has a right to take his seat in the House.”

“How will you make that out?” said the company,

“because (says the other) he’s returned by America.”

Ha ha! Well, maybe one had to be there.

(Burgoyne’s image above comes courtesy of the University of Houston’s Digital History site.)

Finding Elizabeth Royal’s Husband

Back in June, I wrote about Elizabeth Royal, who shows up in the records of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress trying to get into besieged Boston with her child. The legislature understood she was “wife to William Royal, first sergeant in the 63d regiment of foot.” How, I wondered, had she become separated from her husband? And why was the Provincial Congress paying to send her to Newbury and maintain her there?

Don N. Hagist of the British Soldiers, American Revolution blog has data on more redcoats than anyone I know, so it didn’t surprise me when he was able to answer some of those questions—while raising others. Don is today’s guest blogger, writing on the mysteries of Elizabeth Royal.

I had heard of this woman before, but the version of the Committee of Safety entry reprinted in the Essex Institute Historical Collections, V. 46 (1910), has her name as Rogers rather than Royall.

The muster rolls for the 63rd Regiment of Foot confirm that a man named William Royall was in fact in the regiment at this time; there was, however, no William Rogers. He is on the rolls prepared in Ireland which cover January to April 1775 and indicate that he was from either England or Scotland (the rolls distinguish British, covering England, Scotland and Wales, from Irish or Foreign). He continues to be carried on the rolls during the regiment’s service in America.

Royall was not, however, a sergeant in the regiment as the Committee of Safety minutes indicate. He was a private soldier. The rolls have no information to suggest why he was separated from his wife. When British regiments sailed for America, shipping space was allocated for only 60 wives from each regiment. It is possible that Elizabeth Royall could not get space on a ship with the regiment; it is also possible that she was “big with child,” and her condition prevented her passage at that time. It is also possible that she was separated from the army after arriving in America.

We also do not know whether she was able to make her way into Boston to be with her husband. Even if she was, they were not destined for a long and happy future. The muster rolls show that William Royall died on 6 October 1777; as is typical for these documents, no cause is given. The fate of his wife who dutifully tried to get to him in Boston remains unknown.

Thanks, Don! For more information on women attached to the British army during the Revolution, here’s Don’s article on the subject. He’s also author of Wenches, Wives and Servant Girls: A Selection of Advertisements for Female Runaways in American Newspapers, 1770-1783, available from Ballindalloch Press.

Making the Mails Travel

Today Boston 1775 welcomes guest blogger Eric Jaffe, author of a new book titled The King’s Best Highway: The Lost History of the Boston Post Road, the Route That Made America. This essay, adapted from the book, describes the development of the British postal system along the Atlantic coast, and how it got caught up in Revolutionary change.

The first American post rider left New York for Boston in January of 1673. Francis Lovelace, colonial governor of New York, made establishing a postal system his personal mission. And his personal obsession. So consumed was Lovelace with the mail that he imprudently left New York that July to discuss the system, only to be interrupted with the news that the Dutch had taken Manhattan.

Following this fateful decision, the colonial postal system endured a period of fits and starts. The new Dutch leader outlawed correspondence with New England, even jailing the English post rider John Sharpe. When Britain regained New York in 1674, Governor Thomas Dongan was authorized to set up post offices all along the East Coast, but was sent “noe power”—read: money—“to doe it.”

A lack of adequate funding plagued the young system for decades. Duncan Campbell, colonial postmaster of New England and firm believer in a system “of so great a benefit to this country,” frequently petitioned the mother country for expenses. Still, by the time his son, John Campbell, assumed this position in the early 1700s, the office lost a considerable 275 pounds a year. By late September 1703, John Campbell was soliciting colonial leaders for “some encouragement” to boost his post office, “else of necessity it must drop.”

It was Ben Franklin who finally gave the post office the “encouragement” it needed to thrive. As joint deputy postmaster general, the post office’s highest position in America, Franklin addressed the problems with mail service that had lingered, nearly unchanged, for roughly a century. He provided postmasters with precise accounting tables and demanded punctuality of his riders. “You are not,” he instructed them, “out of Friendship or Compliment to any Person whatsoever, to delay his Majesty’s Post one Quarter of an Hour.” If a letter sat unclaimed for two months, it was sent to Philadelphia—the birth of the “dead letter office.”

Later on, Franklin devised an odometer that measured distance between routes and called for the placement of milestones to both guide riders and help them calculate costs. He hung rate-tables in every office and slashed the speed of exchange between New York and Boston: “By making the Mails travel by Night as well as by Day,” he wrote, “Letters may be sent and answers received in four Days, which before took a fortnight.”

Taken altogether, Franklin’s designs essentially drew the modern postal blueprint. He made communication in America strikingly efficient. Finally, come 1761, he made it profitable. It had taken eight years, but the colonial post office finally earned money for the English government: a modest 494 pounds. Over the next three years the American office sent the mother country roughly two thousand more.

Sure enough, the throne took a renewed interest in the colonial post. King George III ordered colonies to do whatever it took so “the Posts may meet with no delays or interruptions.” Soon the crown decreed that anyone caught robbing the post “upon the King’s Highway … shall suffer Death as a Felon.” The measures largely worked. By 1774, England annually brought in 3,000 pounds from the American post.

But early that year, in the wake of the Boston Tea Party, British leaders dismissed Franklin as deputy postmaster. Anyone considered “too much of an American,” like Franklin, was replaced with postal workers willing to put British interests ahead of colonial rights. The safety of American mail, wrote Franklin, “may now be worth considering.”

Indeed, rebellious colonial printer William Goddard was considering just that. In response to Britain’s tightened grip, Goddard formulated a plan for a “constitutional” post office. Not only would Goddard’s mail service employ only American sympathizers, but any revenue would be shared within the system, rather than sent to England as a general tax.

During the spring of 1774, driven by a single-mindedness worthy of Francis Lovelace, Goddard sold his plan to colonial leaders along the Post Road between New York and Boston. Samuel Adams embraced the plan with gusto. Paul Revere called it “one of the greatest strokes that our Enemies have mett with (except the late affairs of the Tea).” At the second Continental Congress, the following year, the gatherers finally ratified the constitutional post—unanimously naming Franklin the first American postmaster general.

Thanks, Eric! Check out the King’s Best Highway website for more information on the Boston Post Road and the many things that have happened along it.

Myth, Memory, and What Really Happened at Bunker Hill

This essay comes to Boston 1775 from guest blogger Brad Cornelius, a freelance historical writer with an M.A. in European History living in Troy, New York. His latest project is writing corporate histories for established companies and institutions.

In the historical vernacular, to identify something as a myth is to label it as a misconception at best and an outright lie at worst. However, if we accept the broader definition of myth common to other social sciences, myths reveal as much information about the past as any solid historical fact.

In their simplest form, myths are stories that explain the origins of peoples or things. You don’t have to be Joseph Campbell to understand why such myths are useful to the societies that create them. In the half century that followed the battles of 1775, Americans were consciously creating a new nation. Recording the historical origins of this new nation also produced myths because both pursuits sought to define a new people, establish their core values, and chart an ideological course.

From the first shot fired at Lexington and Concord in 1775, the military actions of the Revolutionary War became infused with myth-like meaning that created difficult situations for later historians. A prime example of this process can be found in the events surrounding the battle of Bunker Hill that took place on June 17, 1775.

The traditional narrative of the battle is quite simple. Colonial forces occupied and fortified Breed’s Hill on a peninsula in Boston harbor. British forces took heavy casualties during their three assaults on the hill, dislodging the colonial forces only as the rebels ran low on ammunition and opted for a controlled retreat.

The first pitched battle of the Revolution became legendary due to the actions of high-profile individuals, the heavy casualties inflicted on the British, and the escape of all unwounded colonial forces. As the early decades of the nineteenth century passed, the men who fought on Breed’s Hill became the “greatest generation” of a young nation.

Fifty years after the battle, dignitaries like the Marquis de Lafayette and Daniel Webster gathered to lay the cornerstone for the monument that stands on the site today. Much like our generation, those behind the monument’s construction sensed the inevitable passing of the men behind important events. Just as collecting oral histories from World War II vets is popular today, the directors of the Bunker Hill Monument Association seized the opportunity to document the recollections of the battle’s surviving veterans who attended the 1825 ceremony.

As the reports began to accumulate, the directors became profoundly disturbed and perplexed by what they revealed. As part of the centennial celebration of the battle in 1875, the president of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, George Washington Warren, described how his predecessors reacted to the problem of myth and memory in The History of the Bunker Hill Monument Association During the First Century:

While the survivors of the Revolution were convened in Boston to attend the laying of the corner-stone of the Monument, their several depositions were taken of their reminiscences of the Battle. But the accounts they gave were confused and conflicting; so much so that no reliable information could be obtained from them.

At a meeting of the Directors, General [William] Sullivan stated to the Board “that he had possession of the papers containing the accounts given by the survivors of the Battle of the 17th June, 1775, and that he proposed to hold them subject to the inspection of the Directors exclusively.” His proposal was assented to, as the most expedient course to be adopted. Where they are now, nobody knows.

In the past two decades, advances in cognitive psychology and its related disciplines have taught us a great deal about memory formation and the workings of the brain. Historians now understand that where history is dependent on human memory, it is also subject to the shortcomings of the human mind. Lacking this perspective, the historians of the Bunker Hill Monument Association were perplexed by discrepancies in the veterans’ memories and chose to ignore the troublesome data – perhaps even destroy it.

The lost recollections would be a valuable source for any modern historian. We would arrive at some firm conclusions about the path of the battle through contemporaneous sources and analyze the veterans’ accounts in relation to those known facts, pinpointing useful information through a sort of triangulation. Careful analysis of the veterans’ words would allow us to describe the meaning memories of the battle carried within their society. The Bunker Hill Monument stands as a physical representation of that meaning, but the directors of the Monument Association were ill-equipped to deal with the quirks of memory and thus a wealth of sources was lost.

We would like to think that the most important events, those heavy with meaning for the United States, are immune to the uncertainty that accompanies myth creation. In reality, such events deserve our most critical attention. Where meaning is of the utmost importance, human memory often bends in its service, and it falls to the historian to explain both the events as they happened and the cultural meaning ultimately attached to them. Only through such a dual explanation can historians approximate the true nature of past events and honor their myth-like meaning in American culture.

For more information on war, meaning, and memory, Brad Cornelius recommends G. Kurt Piehler’s Remembering War the American Way (Washington: Smithsonian Books, 1995). Thanks, Brad!

How Much Was the Tea in the Tea Party Worth?

Charles Bahne, author of The Complete Guide to Boston’s Freedom Trail wraps up his timely look at the Boston Tea Party with an analysis of the financial cost.

The account reproduced yesterday itemizes the East India Company’s cargo by ship and by kind of tea. In all, as you can see, the losses came to a grand total of £9,659/6/4—that is, 9,659 pounds sterling, 6 shillings, and 4 pence. (For you uninitiated out there, there were 12 pence in a shilling, and 20 shillings in a pound before British currency was “decimalised” in 1971.)

According to another document reproduced in the same booklet, Catalyst for Revolution, this “Invoice Amount” includes the American duty of 3 pence per pound of tea, and a commission of 8%, which was presumably to be paid to the local consignees.

But how much does that figure mean in terms that we 21st-century Americans can understand?

Three years earlier, in 1770, Paul Revere purchased his house at 19 North Square for £213/6/8. Do the math, and you’ll find that the destroyed tea was worth more than 45 times the price that Revere paid for his 7-room house. This wasn’t a mansion; it was an older house and the rooms were small. But the Revere home was probably typical of the housing stock for an average working-class family in Boston.

Out in the country, Abigail Adams paid £600 for the finest house in Braintree (now Quincy) while her husband John was away on diplomatic work in 1787. The tea was worth more than 16 times the price of this mansion.

(If you visit those houses, note that Revere’s house today is smaller than it was in his time, while Adams’s house is considerably larger than it was when the family bought it.)

After the American Revolution, in Massachusetts at least, British pounds were converted to U.S. dollars at a rate of £3 to $10, or £1 = $3.333333.... Applying that exchange rate, the East India Company’s losses amounted to $32,197.72—in 1773 dollars.

And if we want to factor in inflation over the last 236 years, two different websites offer data that we can use. Measuringworth gives us an inflation factor of 27.5 for a present-day value of $885,000; while Oregon State University Prof. Robert Sahr offers a factor of 26.3 for a modern value of $847,000.

Lastly, we can go to our local supermarket to see the present-day price of tea. I found a 100-bag box of Salada tea (official co-sponsor of Old South’s events this year) at $3.99. Based on the earlier calculations about the number of tea bags the cargo would fill, that’s about $739,000. Which might show that tea has become less of a luxury good than it was back then.

Of course, fancier blends cost more, just as Hyson cost more than Bohea in 1773. The best supermarket deal I found on Earl Grey, for example, came to $26.26 per pound. At that rate the Tea Party cargo would be worth more than $2.4 million today. Then again, that’s retail, not wholesale.

Thanks, Charlie! Knowing how much that tea was worth sure helps to explain the anger of the Parliament in London.

How Much Tea Was Destroyed in the Boston Tea Party?

Charles Bahne, author of The Complete Guide to Boston’s Freedom Trail, continues his stint as Boston 1775’s guest blogger today, discussing how this document from 1774 sheds light on the Boston Tea Party.
The history books tell us that 342 chests of tea were destroyed in Boston on the evening of December 16, 1773. But how big was a chest? What was the total weight of tea leaves consigned to the fishes?

We can find answers in the document shown here. As I described yesterday, it was annexed to a petition from the East India Company to Parliament, dated February 16, 1774. This reproduction is from Catalyst for Revolution: The Boston Tea Party, 1773, written by Benjamin W. Labaree and published by the Massachusetts Bicentennial Commission in 1973.

The third column of the account lists the weights of tea, by kind and by ship. No totals are provided in the original document, but we can add up the numbers ourselves. They come to a grand total of 92,616 pounds avoirdupois of that pernicious herb! That’s more than 46 tons in the U.S. system of weights (“short tons” in the U.K.’s old measure); or, for you metric aficionados, it’s 42,009.9 kilograms.

In terms that the tea drinker can understand, there are typically 100 tea bags in a half-pound box sold in the supermarket today. So that comes to 18,523,200 cups of tea!

There were about 16,000 inhabitants living in Boston then: we’re talking three cups of tea a day, for every man, woman, child, and infant in the town, every day for more than a year.

That’s a lot of tea.

So how big were those chests? Were they bigger than a breadbox, as the saying goes?

They certainly were. The bulk of the tea, 84,880 pounds or 91.6% of the cargo by weight, was Bohea, the lowest-priced grade of tea, invoiced at 2 shillings per pound including duty and commission. The Bohea was shipped in 240 so-called “full chests” which contained an average of 353 pounds per chest. The chest itself, made of wood and lined with lead, added another 80 or 90 pounds, thus the total weight of each chest was well over 400 pounds.

Not something that you would casually pick up—it required several men to lift a full chest, and blocks and tackle to hoist them up from the vessels’ holds.

The higher-priced grades of tea were shipped in “quarter chests” which were, as you might guess, about a fourth the size of a full chest.

There were 40 chests of “Singlo (1st sort),” invoiced at 2/8 (2 shillings, 8 pence) per pound, totalling 3,233 pounds and averaging more than 80 pounds per chest.

“Singlo (Hyson Skins)” amounted to 20 chests, all on board the Eleanor, 1,389 pounds at 3/- (that is, 3 shillings) per pound, for 69 pounds per chest.

The highest-priced grade was Hyson, at 5/- per pound, just 15 chests comprising 1,134 pounds, for an average of 75 pounds a chest.

Congou accounted for another 15 chests, 1,296 pounds at 2/3 per pound, or 86 pounds per chest.

And there were 10 chests of Souchon, 684 pounds at 3/- per pound, or 68 pounds of tea per chest.

As you can see, even the smaller chests of more expensive tea would have required substantial manpower to heft overboard.

Contrary to what some people have claimed, the tea was not shipped in bricks. The leaves were loose in the chests, but they were very densely packed, allegedly pressed under workers’ feet as they were loaded in the wooden boxes. It probably took some effort for the “ruffians” to break up the compressed clumps of tea leaves with their bare hands.

There is, by the way, an interesting discrepancy revealed by this document from the House of Lords archives. Most history books say that 342 chests of tea were destroyed in the Boston Tea Party. That figure appears as early as the December 20, 1773, issue of the Boston Gazette that first reported the event. But the East India Company’s numbers add up to only 340 chests—114 chests each on the Eleanor and Dartmouth, but only 112 chests on board the Beaver. Where did the other two chests come from? Or were they just a miscalculation by the Gazette?

TOMORROW: Charlie addresses the £9,600 question: how much was that tea worth in real money?

Charles Bahne on “the Consequences of Such an Insurrection”

Many histories of the Revolution report that on the night of 16 Dec 1773, Bostonians destroyed 342 chests of tea by throwing it in Boston harbor. On this anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, I’ve invited Charles Bahne, who literally wrote the book on Boston’s Freedom Trail, to add more detail about that tea and why it meant so much.

After the Boston Tea Party, the East India Company went to the Parliament in London with a petition that itemized the damages that the Company had suffered from the “violent and illegal Proceedings” in Boston, and sought indemnification for its losses.

After explaining how the company had shipped its tea under the new Tea Act to Boston, as well as other American ports, the petition concludes:

[The] lawless Rabble went on board on the Arrival thereof, and stoved & threw into the Harbour the whole of the said Cargoes of Tea, after forcing the Officers of the Customs on board of the said Ships to quit the same & go on Shore, whilst they perpetrated their violent and illegal Proceedings.

That the East India Company’s Loss on this account, together with the Freight which they are obliged to pay, will amount, according to the said annexed account, to the Sum of Nine Thousand Six Hundred Fifty Nine Pounds Six Shillings and four Pence, and as it was not in your Memorialists’ power, who were carrying on a fair & legal Trade, to prevent the Consequences of such an Insurrection,

Your Memorialists, on behalf of their Constituents, beg leave to request of Your Lordship to lay their Case before His Majesty, & that His Majesty will be graciously pleased to pursue such Measures, or give such Directions, for the Indemnity of the East India Company, respecting their said Loss, as to His Majesty, in His great Equity and Wisdom, shall seem meet.

East India House
London 16th Febry 1774.

I found this document reproduced in a booklet which I purchased many years ago at the Boston Tea Party Ship when it was berthed in Fort Point Channel. The booklet, Catalyst for Revolution: The Boston Tea Party, 1773, was written by Benjamin W. Labaree, who was also the author of the classic scholarly volume The Boston Tea Party (1964). The smaller booklet was originally issued in 1973 by the Massachusetts Bicentennial Commission, although my copy appears to be a later reprint.

Along with its petition, the East India Company included an “annexed account” which contains in one place answers to several questions not generally found in most popular—or scholarly—studies about the Tea Party:

• How big was a chest of tea?
• What was the total weight of tea leaves consigned to the fishes?
• And how much was it worth altogether?

TOMORROW: Charlie starts to lay out those vital statistics.

Richard Stockton’s Release Date

Back when I was writing about Richard Stockton, the Continental Congress delegate from New Jersey who signed the Declaration of Independence, was captured in late 1776, and then signed a commitment of loyalty to the Crown, I couldn’t figure out exactly how long he had been in captivity. Documents showed that he was captured about 30 Nov–1 Dec 1776, and he was back home by 8 Feb 1777.

Todd W. Braisted, who maintains the stellar Institute for Advanced Loyalist Studies website, had a better answer in his files, so he’s today’s Boston 1775 guest blogger. In response to a comment from me about this question on the Revlist, Todd wrote:

This document may shed some light on the subject:

Lord [Richard] and General [William] Howe having granted a full pardon to Richard Stockton, Esq, by which he is Intitled to all his property, and he having informed that his horse Bridle & Saddle was taken from the ferry by some of the people under your command, you will upon receipt of this restore the said Horse &c and such other of his Effects as shall come within your department to the said Mr. Stockton at the house of John Covenhoven in Monmouth I am Sir yours &c.

James Webster
Lt. Col. 33d Regt.

Perth Amboy
Decemr. 29, 1776

To Coll. Elisha Lawrence
Of the Loyall Jersey Volunteers

(Source: New Jersey State Archives, Dept. of Defense Manuscripts, Loyalist Mss, No. 192-L.)

Occasionally there is confusion when the name Richard Stockton is discussed, as there was a New Jersey Loyalist by the name of Richard Witham Stockton.

This man was a Loyalist from the start, joining the British on Staten Island on 3 August 1776 and initially being commissioned captain in the New Jersey Volunteers. By early December he was promoted to major in the 6th Battalion of the corps.

Taken prisoner at Bennett’s Neck, near New Brunswick, on 18 February 1777, Stockton was marched in irons to Philadelphia and paraded through the streets to “The Rogue’s March.” There was discussion of putting him and the other officers captured at the same time on trial for their lives, until Washington put a stop to it, fearing retaliation.

Stockton and his officers were confined in Philadelphia Jail, until moved to York and then by October 1777 the jail at Carlisle, where they complained of close confinement, where they complained the air was “affecting the body with strange sensations and destroying of our healths...” Stockton and his officers, along with the remaining rank & file still alive, were exchanged between August and October 1778.

The battalions of New Jersey Volunteers being reduced from six to four, Stockton had no command to return to and was reduced upon half pay. In early 1780 he and Captain Robert Richard Crowe, a New Jersey Loyalist & half-pay officer in the Black Pioneers, were involved in an incident that resulted in the death of a miller named Amberman on Long Island. Stockton was court-martialed, found guilty and sentenced to death. He spent months in the provost in New York City until eventually pardoned by the King himself.

One could make the argument that his wartime experience was rather more severe than his more famous namesake.

So the signer Richard Stockton was in British custody slightly less than one month. On 30 December his son-in-law, Dr. Benjamin Rush, still believed him to be “a prisoner with Gen Howe,” but by then he had actually been pardoned. Thanks, Todd!

(I’m especially tickled by the fact that New Jersey has papers for a Department of Defense.)