Cherubum and Seraphim at Old North Church

As an Anglican church, the Old North Church (formally Christ Church, Boston) was more flashily decorated than the town’s Congregationalist meetinghouses.

There are, for example, four hand-carved angels mounted on the gallery railing. Tom Dietzel recently shared a four-part online essay about them.

Those statues are thought to have been made in what is now Belgium in the early 1600s. In 1746 they were shipped across the Atlantic to a French territory—it’s not clear where. Unfortunately for the church expecting to receive those angels, that was during what British colonists called King George’s War. A Boston-based privateer named the Queen of Hungary captured the French merchant ship carrying the figures.

The captain of that privateer was a man from the Isle of Jersey named Thomas James Gruchy. He had settled in Boston and purchased a pew in Christ Church five years before. Returning to his home port considerably better off for his trouble, Gruchy agreed with five of his partners to give their church the angels and two “glass branches” or chandeliers (discussed here).

Gruchy returned to his busy mercantile career but appears to have suffered reverses in the 1750s. By 1759 he and his family had left Boston for good, and it’s not clear where he settled next.

Capt. Gruchy’s angels weren’t the only heavenly decoration at Old North. This winter the church was able to commission a historic paint analysis that peeked below its current decor, established in 1912 based on that era’s thoughts of what a colonial church should look like.

As part of that work, Brian Powell and Melissa McGrew of Building Conservation Associates exposed the painted head of a cherub they date to 1727. What’s more, they believe there are twenty more cherubs’ heads elsewhere under the paint. Powell will speak about that find and other details of the church’s eighteenth-century interior in a free public lecture on Wednesday, 11 May.

“Uncovering Cherubs: New Discoveries at Old North Church” is scheduled to start at 6:30 P.M. Afterwards the Boston Preservation Alliance Young Advisors will host “a facilitated discussion about the role preservation plays in interpretation at historic sites.” The event is free, but advance registration is required.

(Funding for the paint study and/or the lecture came from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Freedom Trail Foundation, the National Park Service, and the Marr Scaffolding Company.)

Lawrence Sweeny, “of most facetious Memory”

In January I introduced the figure of Lawrence Sweeny, New York newspaper carrier of proud Irish descent. He was a loud opponent of the Stamp Act in 1765.

During the Seven Years’ War he reportedly became known as “Bloody News” Sweeny as he shouted out that phrase to sell the latest news. But most New Yorkers seem to have associated Sweeny with humor, though I can’t always tell whether they were laughing more with him or at him.

In the spring of 1770, this broadside appeared around the city:

An
ELEGY,
On the much lamented Death of LAWRENCE
SWEENY, ESQ; of most facetious Memory,
who departed this Life at New-York, upon
Tuesday April 10, 1770.

Ye Yorkers lay aside your jocund Farce
Of Freedom now, and hollow till your hoarse;
For LAWRENCE SWEENY’s Dead to all below,
Look to each Face and read it in their Woe.
Is SWEENY dead? Enquire the sorrowing Throng,
Who cry’d News, News, in Accents loud and strong.
He who was wont to raise the gen’ral Smile,
And for whole Days a World of Cares beguile,
Is now no more. How comes it SWEENY, now,
Has plac’d such gen’ral sadness on the Brow?
’Tis not his fault, replies the Comic Muse.
He never did a Chearful strain refuse;
Nor never did promote Domestic Strife,
But flogg’d Old PROSER, and caress’d his Wife.

See HOUSE, the Dutchman, who but t’other Day,
Did with our Hero, “News Via Boston” Cry;
He also join’d him in the hum’rous Song
Of SAWNEY’S Rant, and GEORGE’S Derry-down.
To Day he Views his Friend a load of Clay,
Frantic he raves, and throws his Songs away.

The Black-Ey’d Virgins, Ladies of the Green,
With streaming Eyes and sable Weeds are seen,
Along the Streets in Solemn Pomp they go
With downcast Looks expressive of their Woe---
Their Patron Dead---Their Patriot close confind---
Pale is their Face and discompos’d their Mind.
To MILLS’s Palace moves the Beauteous Throng,
Where SAWNEY Chears them with a Merry Song,
With Hands uplisted and distorted Eys.
Says he dear Nymphs can I your Grief asswage?

To asswage our Grief is more than Mortal can,
Not you the boldest of the race of Man,
Can chear our Souls or Alleviate our Pain.

SUN, MOON, and STARS with Watery Aspect Shine
And be their choicest Influence New-York, thine,
For Great’s the Loss this City has sustain’d,
And Great’s the Grief of Gen’rous SWEENEY’s Friend.

The 16 April New-York Gazette stated that Sweeny was “as well known in this City as any Man in it, and will be perhaps as much missed.”

“The very Time of the Convulsion” in Shrewsbury

On Thursday I’ll speak at Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site about “The End of Tory Row,” the events that led to drastic changes in that neighborhood in September 1774. (Here’s more information.)

Here’s part of a description of that day, which the Rev. Ezra Stiles of Newport took down from an Irish businessman named McNeil a few days afterward:

Mr. McNeil told me he proceeding from Springfield journeyed towards Boston and on Thursday the first Day of Sept. reached Shrewsbury in the Evening and lodged there. I asked him where he met the public Tumult? he said at Shrewsbury a few miles nearer Boston than Worcester.

He went to bed without hearing any Thing. But about midnight or perhaps one oClock he was suddenly waked up, somebody violently rapping up the Landlord, telling the doleful Story that the Powder was taken, six men killed, & all the people between there & Boston arming & marching down to the Relief of their Brethren at Boston; and within a qr. or half an hour he judges fifty men were collected at the Tavern tho’ now deep in Night, equipping themselves & sending off Posts every Way to the neighboring Towns. . . . The Men set off as fast as they were equipt.

In the Morning, being fryday Sept. 2, Mr. McNeil rode forward & passed thro’ the whole at the very Time of the Convulsion. He said he never saw such a Scene before—all along were armed Men rushing forward some on foot some on horseback, at every house Women & Children making Cartridges, running Bullets, making Wallets, baking Biscuit, crying & bemoaning & at the same time animating their Husbands & Sons to fight for their Liberties, tho’ not knowing whether they should ever see them again.

I asked whether the Men were Cowards or disheartened or appeared to want Courage? No. Whether the tender Destresses of weeping Wives & Children softened effeminated & overcome the Men and set them Weeping to? No—nothing of this—but a firm intrepid Ardor, hardy eager & couragious Spirit of Enterprize, a Spirit for revenging the Blood of their Brethren & rescue our Liberties, all this & an Activity corresponding with such Emotions appeared all along the whole Tract of above fourty Miles from Shrewsbury to Boston.

The Women kept on making Cartridges, & after equipping their Husbands, bro’t them out to the Soldiers which in Crowds passed along & gave them out in handfuls to one and another as they were deficient, mixing Exhortation & Tears & Prayers—spiriting the Men in such an uneffeminate Manner as even would make Cowards fight. He tho’t if anything the Women surpassed the Men for Eagerness & Spirit in the Defence of Liberty by Arms. For they had no Tho’ts of the Men returning but from Battle, for they all believed the Action commenced between the Kings Troops & the Provincials.

Remember, this was 2 Sept 1774, more than seven months before the Battle of Lexington and Concord, but the people of central Massachusetts “believed the Action commenced” already.

Many of those armed men with “a Spirit for revenging the Blood of their Brethren” ended up on the road from Watertown into Cambridge, passing the house of Lt. Gov. Thomas Oliver at the southwestern end of “Tory Row.”

O’Malley on the Slave Trade in Framingham, 24 Mar.

On Thursday, 24 March, Framingham State University will host two events with Prof. Gregory O’Malley of the University of California, Santa Cruz, author of Final Passages: The Intercolonial Slave Trade of British America, 1619-1807.

At 2:30 P.M. O’Malley will lead a roundtable discussion on balancing empirical quantitative research with a humane approach to writing about people, particularly those who were oppressed or marginalized. The debate over how to manage these issues is central to writing about the history of enslavement and many other issues where evidence is available largely in only quantitative form. O’Malley wrote about that balance in this essay for the Omohundro Institute’s blog about a discussion among scholars of the Atlantic slave trade:

Many were particularly troubled by the sources of the numbers—port records, insurance documents, and merchant accounts that treated enslaved people as commodities, abstracting human beings as mere tally marks in ledgers. In playing what critics often critiqued as the “numbers game,” were slave trade historians perpetuating the dehumanization of the slave trade by using these shipping records to count the captives crossing the Atlantic?

That roundtable discussion will take place in Framingham State’s Center for Inclusive Excellence on the upper mezzanine of the Henry E. Whittemore Library.

At 4:30 O’Malley will give a public lecture in the Heineman Ecumenical Center entitled “Beyond the Middle Passage: Slave Trading from the Caribbean to North America, 1619-1807.” This talk reflects the topic and approach of his book, the university says:

In Final Passages, O’Malley explores the origins, evolution, and decline of the trade in enslaved Africans within and among American colonies between 1619 and 1807. Most Americans are now familiar with the Middle Passage, the transatlantic crossing that brought enslaved people to the Western Hemisphere, but as O’Malley demonstrates, that was far from the end of the journey for many of them. O’Malley’s visit will provide an opportunity for us to explore the ways in which people of African descent have worked to forge communities in the Americas despite the enduring legacies of slavery and racial discrimination.

O’Malley’s presentation will particularly explore the role of New Englanders in the North American slave trade. A reception open to all attendees will follow.

Book Prizes from the A.H.A.

At their meeting earlier this month, the members of the American Historical Association announced the winners of their awards for books, other media, and teaching.

The Littleton-Griswold Prize for book on “the history of U.S. law and society (broadly defined)” went to a book about pre-Revolutionary Boston: Robert Love’s Warnings: Searching for Strangers in Colonial Boston, by Cornelia H. Dayton of the University of Connecticut, Storrs, and Sharon V. Salinger of the University of California, Irvine.

I’ve mentioned this book before, but here’s the publisher’s description:

In colonial America, the system of “warning out” was distinctive to New England, a way for a community to regulate those to whom it would extend welfare. Robert Love’s Warnings animates this nearly forgotten aspect of colonial life, richly detailing the moral and legal basis of the practice and the religious and humanistic vision of those who enforced it.

Historians Cornelia H. Dayton and Sharon V. Salinger follow one otherwise obscure town clerk, Robert Love, as he walked through Boston’s streets to tell sojourners, “in His Majesty’s Name,” that they were warned to depart the town in fourteen days. This declaration meant not that newcomers literally had to leave, but that they could not claim legal settlement or rely on town poor relief. Warned youths and adults could reside, work, marry, or buy a house in the city. If they became needy, their relief was paid for by the province treasurer. Warning thus functioned as a registration system, encouraging the flow of labor and protecting town coffers.

Between 1765 and 1774, Robert Love warned four thousand itinerants, including youthful migrant workers, demobilized British soldiers, recently exiled Acadians, and women following the redcoats who occupied Boston in 1768. Appointed warner at age sixty-eight owing to his unusual capacity for remembering faces, Love kept meticulous records of the sojourners he spoke to, including where they lodged and whether they were lame, ragged, drunk, impudent, homeless, or begging. Through these documents, Dayton and Salinger reconstruct the biographies of travelers, exploring why so many people were on the move throughout the British Atlantic and why they came to Boston. With a fresh interpretation of the role that warning played in Boston’s civic structure and street life, Robert Love’s Warnings reveals the complex legal, social, and political landscape of New England in the decade before the Revolution.

In addition, here are some other prize-winners covering eighteenth-century America.

Freedom’s Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution, by Ada Ferrer of New York University, won the Friedrich Katz Prize in Latin American and Caribbean history and the Wesley-Logan Prize in African diaspora history, and shared the James A. Rawley Prize for the integration of Atlantic worlds before the twentieth century.

Final Passages: The Intercolonial Slave Trade of British America, 1619–1807, by Gregory E. O’Malley of the University of California at Santa Cruz, shared the Rawley Prize and won the Morris D. Forkosch Prize in the field of British, British Imperial, or British Commonwealth history since 1485.

The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World, by Greg Grandin of New York University, shared the Albert J. Beveridge Award on the history of the United States, Latin America, or Canada, from 1492 to the present.

Peter Hasenclever and His Ironworks

Yesterday’s posting introduced Peter Hasenclever, manager of a big ironworks in New Jersey from 1764 to 1769. This extensive article at Immigrant Entrepreneurship tells a lot more about him.

Hasenclever was born in the German city of Remscheid in 1716 and as a young businessman worked in many parts of Europe. In 1763 he moved to London and began to promote a scheme to mine and refine iron in New Jersey. A year later he was in America to set up the manufactory.

A relative recruited miners and other specialized workers in Germany to come to America, their passages paid in exchange for years of work. In the 16 June 1766 New-York Mercury Hasenclever advertised for nine workers who had run away from his employment, asking for them to be “secur’d in any of his Majesty’s Goals.”

In his History of Printing in America, Isaiah Thomas wrote that newspaper hawker Lawrence Sweeny told New York officials that the anti-Stamp Act Constitutional Courant was printed “At Peter Hassenclever’s iron-works, please your honor.”

Hasenclever’s letters show he was opposed to the Stamp Act. Whether he had anything to do with that fake newspaper is uncertain. He might have provided printers James Parker and William Goddard with workspace, he might have provided financial support, or he might have been a convenient red herring.

Thomas also wrote:

Peter Hassenclever was a wealthy German, well known as the owner of extensive iron works in Newjersey. Afterward, other publications of a like kind frequently appeared with an imprint—“Printed at Peter Hassenclever’s iron-works.”

“Frequently” is an overstatement at best. Not one publication with that line has been identified.

The ironworks did not succeed as the investors hoped, and Hasenclever fell out with his partners in 1769. He slipped away to Charleston, then sailed back to Europe. Lawsuits over the American enterprise dragged on in British courts. In 1773, after publishing a pamphlet to promote his side of the story, Hasenclever moved to Silesia in Prussia.

Hasenclever promoted connections to America both before and after the War for Independence, but King Frederick II was uninterested. The businessman died in 1793. Six months later, the Chancery Court in London issued a final ruling for his side in the dispute over the ironworks.

“Happy Years to the Sons of LIBERTY”

Since there’s no better time to quote carrier verses about the Stamp Act than now, the sestercentennial of the period when that law remained a hot topic in North American politics, here’s another example.

This one comes from New York and is credited to a well known newspaper seller there—Lawrence Sweeny, not a young apprentice but a grown man from Ireland.

New Year’s
ODE
For the YEAR 1766,
Being actually dictated,
BY
LAWRENCE SWINNEY,
Carrier of News, Enemy to Stamps, a Friend to the Constitution, and an Englishman every Inch.

I AM against the Stamp Act;
If it takes Place, I’m ruined for ever.
C———’s Coach and J———’s House!
Lord Colvil, General Murray!
I’m in Debt to the Doctors,
And never a Farthing to pay.
The Weather is severely cold.
I have the Rheumatism in my Leg,
And but little Hay for my little Horse,
And if Famine should stamp him to Death,
More than half my Fortune in gone!
What shall I say for the Boys of New-York?
Happy Years to the Sons of LIBERTY.

Ding Dong.
Ding Dong.
Long live the KING,
The KING live long.
But the DEVIL may Shoot,
Wicked G————l and B——.

Well, that certainly has the sound of something someone might dictate, especially late at night in a tavern. But what’s it all about?

At the bottom “G————l and B———” are clearly George Grenville and Lord Bute, the prime minister who proposed the Stamp Act and his predecessor who didn’t but still got blamed for it all over North America.

“C———’s Coach” refers to Lt. Gov. Cadwallader Colden’s coach, fed to a bonfire during New York’s anti-Stamp Act protest on 1 Nov 1765. “J———’s House” refers to the house rented by Maj. Thomas James and torn apart by rioters that night.

“Lord Colvil” must be Adm. Lord Colville, the man in charge of the Royal Navy in North America at that time. He was based in Halifax, not New York, but as the new year began he was threatening to have the navy seize any ship trying to leave harbor without the correct papers.

“General Murray” was Gen. James Murray, governor of Quebec. He doesn’t seem to have had anything to do with the Stamp Act in New York. But his accommodation of the French Canadians—the vast majority of the people he governed—was making him unpopular with the English settlers up in Canada.

The names of Colville and Murray would have been especially resonant for Sweeny since they were both commanders during the recent Seven Years’ War. According to an article in the Magazine of American History in 1877, the news carrier became known as “Bloody News” Sweeny for his habit of shouting out that phrase to sell newspapers during the war.

Finally, Sweeny is studied today as an early example of Irish-American humor and pride. For example, the American Antiquarian Society has featured the New Year’s verse he distributed in 1769, which is proudly and loudly Irish. That makes the 1766 handbill’s phrase “an Englishman every Inch” somewhat problematic. I take that as Sweeny’s claim to all the rights of Englishmen, including not having a Stamp Tax foisted upon you (even though by that year Englishmen had been paying a Stamp Tax for decades).

TOMORROW: Sweeny against the Stamp Act.

“The effigy of a man who had been honoured by his country”

On 1 Nov 1765, New York had its first classic Stamp Act protest. This was the day the law was supposed to take place, and many other North American colonies had already seen such political disturbances.

James McEvers’s preemptive resignation as a stamp master meant that New Yorkers hadn’t had a good target for their demonstrations. Until, that is, Lt. Gov. Cadwallader Colden made it clear that as the highest royal authority in the colony he would try to enforce the new law.

As reported in the Boston Post-Boy, reprinting news from New York, the anti-Stamp demonstration on 1 November followed the usual lines:

About 7 o’clock in the evening two companies appeared, one of them in the fields, where a moveable gallows was erected, on which was (suspended the effigy of a man who had been honoured by his country with an elevated station, but whose public conduct supposed to aim at the introduction of arbitrary power, and especially in his officiously endeavouring to enforce the Stamp Act, universally held by his Majesty’s faithful and loyal subjects in America, to be unconstitutional and oppressive) has unhappily drawn upon himself the general resentment of his country.

The figure was made much to resemble the person it was intended to represent. In his hand was a stamped paper, which he seem’d to court the people to receive;—at his back hung a drum, on his breast a label, supposed to allude to some former circumstances of his life. By his side hung, with a boot in his hand, the grand deceiver of mankind, seeming to urge him to perseverance in the cause of slavery.

According to other sources, the label identified the effigy as “The Rebell Drummer of 1715,” suggesting that Lt. Gov. Colden had supported the Stuart Pretender’s uprising that year. Colden had in fact been back in Britain as a young physician in 1715; he had even gotten married there. According to him, however, he had “carried above 70 Volunteers into Kelso” to support the Hanoverian forces under Lord Jedburgh. It appears men of Scottish descent like Colden remained vulnerable to accusations of Jacobite disloyalty, even fifty years later.

Back to the New York protest:

While the multitude gathered round these figures, the other party with another figure representing the same person, seated in a chair, and carried by men, preceeded and attended by a great number of lights, paraded through most of the public streets in the city, increasing as they went, but without doing the least Injury to any house or person. They proceeded in this order to the coach-house at the fort, from whence they took the Lieut. Governor’s coach, and fixing the effigy upon the top of it, they proceeded with great rapidity towards the fields.

About the same time the other party was preparing to move to the fort, with the gallows as it stood erect on its frame, and lanthorns fix’d on various parts of it. When the two parties met, and every thing was in order, a general silence ensued, and proclamation was made that no stones should be thrown, no windows broken, and no injury offered to any one,—and all this was punctually observed.

The whole multitude then returned to the fort, and though they knew the guns were charged, and saw the ramparts lined with soldiers, they intripidly marched with the gallows, coach, &c. up to the very gate, where they knocked, and demanded admittance, & if they had not been restrained by some humane persons, who had influence over them, would doubtless have taken the fort, as I hear there were 4 or 500 seamen, and many others equally intrepid, and acquainted with military affairs.

But as it seems no such extremities were intended, after they had shewn many insults to the effigy, they retired from the fort gate to the bowling green, the pallisades of which they instantly tore away, marched with the gallows, &c. into the middle of the green, (still under the muzzles of the fort guns) where with the pallisades and planks of the fort fence, and a chaise and 2 sleys, taken from the governor’s coach house, they soon reared a large pile of wood round the whole, to which setting fire, it soon kindled to a great flame, and reduced the coach, gallows, man, devil, and all to ashes.

All classic anti-Stamp demonstrations involved burning an effigy like that. By adding four of Colden’s vehicles to the fire, the crowd got more fuel. But they hadn’t destroyed anyone’s house.

TOMORROW: Yet.

The Expiring Maryland Gazette

Yesterday I showed an image of the 5 Sept 1765 Maryland Gazette. In the lower right corner, publisher Jonas Green put an image of a skull and crossbones with the label, “Hereabouts will be the place to affix the STAMP.”

Green continued to run that image in the corner of his paper, with different captions, for another few weeks as a warning against the impending Stamp Act. Finally, on 10 October, he issued The Maryland Gazette, Expiring, blaming “The Fatal Stamp” for his decision to close the newspaper.

Green revived the Gazette in early 1766 once it was clear that the Stamp Act was a dead letter. He died the following year, and his Holland-born widow Anne Catherine Green continued the business until the eve of the war.

This University of Maryland website says the Greens had previously used that skull-and-bones woodcut to draw attention to prominent obituaries. The webpage continues, “When Archaeology in Annapolis excavated the remains of their print shop, the piece of type used to create the image on the front page was recovered.”

The Mystery of John Webber

As quoted earlier, the 3 Sept 1765 Newport Mercury blamed “An Irish young Fellow, who had been but a few Days in the Town,” for fomenting more unrest just when town leaders thought their protest against the Stamp Act had reached a satisfying end.

The Rhode Island newspaper thus absolved the town of full blame for the ongoing violence and class conflict. (Similarly, Whigs in Boston liked to blame riots on sailors, blacks, boys, and occasionally “teagues”—anyone but the white men of the community.)

The Newport paper didn’t report the name of that “young Fellow.” Other records indicate that he was named John Webber. On 4 Nov 1765, the Mercury reported:

During last Week two threatning Letters were dropped at the Door of Joseph G. Wanton, Esq; High Sheriff of this County, imparting, that unless he released one John Webber, committed about 2 Months since, being charged by the King’s Attorney [Augustus Johnston] for his Crimes and Misdemeanors, they would effect his Release by Violence; and likewise threatened Mr. Wanton’s House with Destruction.

To prevent the intended Mischief, a Number of Persons patroled the Streets last Friday Night, and discovered nothing of the expected Outrage: But the Night following the Gaol was surrounded by between 20 and 30 Men; an Alarm was given, and they immediately dispersed, but not without losing two of their Company, said to be the Ringleaders, who were seized; and instead of releasing their Associate in Prison, were forced to take up their Residence in the same Place.—

That Mr. Wanton’s Property should be threatened with Injury, by those abandoned Villains, is very extraordinary; as no Person is more zealous in defending the Rights of his Country than he, and consequently detests and abhors Stamp-Act Projectors and Abbettors, of all Kinds. It is therefore presumed, that the Inhabitants of this Town will manifest a due Resentment in his Behalf.

John Webber, mentioned above, endeavored to hang himself last Friday [1 November], but was prevented by a Person’s entering his Apartment just as he was perpetrating the Act.

The Authority have appointed a Military Watch, in order to suppress any Riots which may happen in Town.

As of February 1766, Rhode Island assembly records show, Webber was still in the Newport County jail. He was then deemed too poor to support himself, so the colony reimbursed the jailer for buying him food.

In 1999 the Newport Historical Society published a paper titled “Who Was John Webber?” by Ruth Kennedy Myers and Bradford A. Becken. I haven’t been able to access it, but the abstract says those authors regretted not being able to ferret out much more information about Webber. The paper probably cites the following items.

The Newport Mercury for 8 May 1784 reported the death of a man with the same name and approximate age of the crowd leader nineteen years before, but said he was from southwestern England instead of Ireland:

On Tuesday Morning last died of a Dropsy in this Town, in the 42d Year of his Age, Mr. JOHN WEBBER, late of Stratton, in the County of Somerset, Great-Britain, and on Wednesday his Remains were decently interr’d in Trinity Church-Yard.

This John Webber’s gravestone is still in that cemetery, as shown above (via Find a Grave), giving the same information about his origin. He must have been prominent enough in Newport for his death to warrant a full paragraph in the newspaper, yet the newspaper saw no reason to explain why he was prominent.

The carved stones (head and foot) suggest that Webber had notable property when he died, as did an advertisement that appeared in the 5 June Mercury inviting people to an auction of his effects to be held “near the Rev. Dr. [Ezra] Stiles’s Meeting-House.” Those effects included:

• “a complete Set of surveying Instruments”
• “a Camera Obscura”
• “Mahogany writing Desk”
• “a few Medicines and Surgeon’s Instruments”
• “a neat fowling Piece”

Had John Webber prospered in the two decades since the Stamp Act riots (including years that were very hard for Newport)? What had he done during the war, when Newport was occupied by the British military? All those things remain obscure.

“A new Fire” in Newport

Yesterday I broke off the news from Newport with the resignation of Augustus Johnston as stamp-tax collector on the morning of 29 Aug 1765.

The town did not stay calm, as the Newport Mercury reported:

Next Morning the Stamp Master’s Resignation being publickly read, the People announced their Joy by repeated Huzza’s, &c. and the Storm ceased.

Things, however, did not continue long in this easy State: An Irish young Fellow, who had been but a few Days in the Town, stood forth, like Massaniello, openly declared that he was at the Head of the Mob the preceding Night, and triumphed in the Mischief that was done. Some Gentlemen, to prevent any further Evil, thought it best to seize immediately upon this Desperadoe, and put him on board the Man of War, which they accordingly did: But this, instead of answering the desired Purpose, kindled a new Fire.

The Mob began again to collect; and a Number of Persons, who, it seemed, were not before concerned, were so irritated as his being carried on board the Man of War, that it became necessary to bring him on Shore again. This was done; and upon his promising immediately to quit the Government [i.e., leave the colony], he was released, and the Night passed without any Tumult.

The Morning following [30 August], Massaniello appeared again in the public Streets, boldly declaring himself to have been the Ringleader of the Mob, and threatning Destruction to the Town, more particularly to the Persons and Houses of those who seized him the preceeding Day, unless they made him Presents agreeable to his Demands.

The Attorney-General, who was the late Stamp-Master, being met and insulted by him, heroically seized upon him; and some Gentlemen running to his Assistance, they carried him off to Goal. This proved effectual;—nobody appeared to rescue him, nor to say a Word in his Favour. He is now under Confinement;—the Town is again in Peace, and we sincerely wish it my continue so.

The whole situation had gone topsy-turvy twice. First, the “Gentlemen” merchants who had led the town’s anti-Stamp protest turned against the self-proclaimed leader of the mob that followed. They put that young man on board the same Royal Navy ship as Martin Howard and Dr. Thomas Moffatt, two targets of that protest. That left him in danger of impressment, so the Newport crowd turned against those local merchants until they brought him back to town.

But then the young man kept threatening disorder, enough to be arrested by the colony’s Attorney General—none other than the central target of that anti-Stamp protest three days before. Johnston had resigned as stamp master and was now helping to stifle class conflict, so the local gentry accepted him again. (As I noted yesterday, the populace was also more lenient on Johnston than on Howard and Moffatt, so he might have had more social capital built up overall.)

One thing that didn’t change was how the other two Newport protest targets were still unwelcome. The 2 September Mercury concluded: “The Ship Friendship, Capt. Lindsey, sailed for England Yesterday. Doctor Thomas Moffat, and Martin Howard, jun, Esq; of this Town, went Passengers.”

The same issue of the Newport Mercury contained this advertisement.

Howard’s house is now the Newport Historical Society’s Revolution House. In London the Crown government gave both supporters new patronage positions, Howard as Chief Justice in North Carolina and Moffatt as a Customs official in New London, Connecticut.

COMING UP: Who was that “Irish young Fellow”?

The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wooldridge

Thomas Wooldridge (often called Woolridge) returned to London by September 1773, having cultivated a relationship with Secretary of State Dartmouth and made contact with merchants in multiple North American ports. Through his father-in-law, William Kelly, he already had excellent connections among the London merchants investing in the American trade.

Kelly took ill and died in 1774, and Wooldridge, still in his mid-thirties, stepped up to become a spokesman for London’s American traders. In the months when Parliament voted on its Coercive Acts, that interest group was lobbying hard for a peaceful end to the American crisis.

The merchants’ strategy seems to have been to argue that a rupture with the colonies would be bad for their nation’s economy and their own—but that they shouldn’t have to reveal how much loss they were personally exposed to, lest their creditors lose faith in them. Wooldridge met with Edmund Burke in January 1775 and with Josiah Quincy, Jr., the next month. In 1778 he testified to Parliament about losses to American privateers.

By then Wooldridge was an alderman of the City of London, elected in 1776 for the district called the Bridge Ward Within (shown above in 1720). He remained in that post until February 1783, though not always comfortably.

In 1777 Wooldridge was chosen sheriff of London and Middlesex, but that September he declined the office because of financial reverses. That same year, he declared bankruptcy. Wooldridge found a sympathetic audience in London. The same issue of the London Magazine that reported his resignation and the ensuing debate went on to say:

Last Thursday at a meeting of the creditors of a North American merchant, the state of his affairs was laid before them, by which it appeared, that his present situation could not in the least degree be imputed to any misconduct of his own, but totally owing to the present unhappy state of affairs in America. It appeared there is now due to the house 70,000l. from that quarter, and that the demand upon the house is no more than about 27,000l. It was agreed that a letter of credit be given to the said gentleman for three years; that his affairs should be put under the inspection of five trustees, and that he should assist in getting in his effects, allowing him a stipend of 500l. per ann. for his time, trouble, and the maintenance of his family, house rent, &c.

That merchant may well have been Wooldridge himself.

That same year, Wooldridge spoke out against the prosecution of the Rev. William Dodd for forgery. Later he signed one of the petitions Lord George Gordon circulated protesting the granting of political rights to Catholics. When in 1780 that movement provoked anti-Catholic riots in London, however, Alderman Wooldridge sent letters to Lord Jeffery Amherst requesting troops to keep peace in his district.

Britain lost the war, of course, and that result sunk Wooldridge’s prospects, whether because his firm’s debts became uncollectible or because the peace revealed that his finances were far worse than he’d represented. Wooldridge was imprisoned for debt in 1783 and had to declare bankruptcy again the next year.

This time, the City wasn’t forgiving. To lose one fortune was a misfortune; to lose it again looked like mere carelessness, or worse. Furthermore, according to Ben Saunders’s article “The Swindler Detected,” the city government determined that Wooldridge had been maintaining himself by submitting false expenses, skimming fines, and forcing defendants into military service, pocketing recruiting fees.

After a raucous meeting of the aldermen, Wooldridge’s voters stripped him of his post, an unprecedented step that prompted him to sue to get it back. That effort failed, though his wife Susanna continued to receive substantial sums from the aldermen’s budget for years afterward, “independent of her husband, for the support of herself and her children.”

Wooldridge’s reputation was ruined from then on. The City Biography of 1799, which was full of unabashed gossip about London politicians, stated of Wooldridge:

He was at one period regarded as a mouth-piece to the City, and if he had possessed capacity equal to his effrontery, it is probable he would have made a considerable figure. Impudence made him, and caused him to be unmade, an Alderman; but he had no talents beyond those that commonly fall to the lot of Aldermen.

In the new U.S. of A., lawsuits over the property and debts of William Kelly, his sons, and Thomas Wooldridge continued for years, such as this 1795 case in Pennsylvania. As for Wooldridge himself, at some point he went back to America. He was in Boston by late 1793, when a couple named a child after him. And he died in Boston by 4 Jan 1794, as reported in the Columbian Centinel, and was buried out of King’s Chapel. The 6 January Boston Gazette reported the death “In this town, Thomas Wooldridge, Esq. aged 54, late an Alderman of the city of London.”

The Fate of the Rev. John Martin?

I promised more of the story of the Rev. John Martin, whom we left during the siege of Boston, preaching to the riflemen about how he’d taken command at Bunker Hill and perhaps marrying deserter George Marsden to young bride Wilmot Lee in Medford without recording their marriage.

Martin disappears from sight for many months, but in May 1777 he resurfaced in the diary of the Rev. Dr. Ezra Stiles (shown here):

12. I went to Providence, where this day where Rev. Mr. Martin of Ireld. was taken up by Gen. [Joseph] Spencer for a Spy & as havg a Commission from G. [William] Howe.

13. At Providence waited on Gen. Spencer who told me Mr. Martin had been over to the Enemy in the Jerseys & returned. One Dennison of Stonington informed the General that Mr. Martin had a Majors Commission & offered him a Captaincy. The General sent him off to Windham.

Joseph Denison (1707-1795) was head of the Stonington, Connecticut, committee of safety during the war, and the town had other men of that name.

Martin’s detention also appeared in newspapers of the time, such as the Pennsylvania Evening Post of 3 June 1777:

PROVIDENCE, May 17. Sunday last one Martin, a well known itinerant preacher, was apprehended here, and committed to close keeping, being charged with attempting to retail commissions for General Howe in Connecticut, to which state he has since been sent, under a proper guard.

The Freeman’s Journal of New Hampshire, 31 May 1777:

HARTFORD, May 26.
A few days since one Martin, a well known itinerant preacher, was apprehended at providence and committed to close keeping, being charged with attempting to retail commissions for Gen. Howe in this state: He has since been brought to Windham goal.

And the Independent Chronicle of Boston, 22 May 1777, was almost gleeful:

Last week a certain Rev. Mr. Martin, who is well known in this Town for boasting of his Exploits at Breed’s Hill, on the 17th of June, 1775, on the Part of the Americans, was taken up at Greenwich, State of Rhode-Island, recruiting for the Enemy.

I haven’t come across more about Martin’s case. I’m not convinced that the evidence against him was necessarily strong, given the atmosphere in New England after the Danbury raid. But he did get locked up.

In 1777, according to what he’d told Stiles, Martin was only twenty-seven years old. Therefore, if he survived the war in the U.S. of A., he might be the aged Rev. John Martin, a former itinerant preacher from Ireland, who lived in Otsego County, New York, in the 1810s. That Martin published an anonymous pamphlet titled Union the Bond of Peace in 1811.

The next year, that Rev. Martin got arrested for trying to bribe state legislators to approve the Bank of America. After a legislative hearing and a trial, he was sentenced to ten years. But the governor, who supported the bank, pardoned Martin after fourteen weeks. And then he slipped back out of the record.

The Mysterious Minister, Mr. Martin

As I described yesterday, the widow Wilmot Marsden based her plea for a federal pension on her memory of having married her husband George in Medford on 25 Nov 1775, when he was an officer in the Continental Army. She recalled the minister who officiated at their wedding as “a professor in the Harvard University” named Martin. Alas, the college had no record of such a man.

But there was a clergyman in the area who seems a likely candidate for marrying the Marsdens: the Rev. John Martin, born (as he told the Rev. Dr. Ezra Stiles) in the west of Ireland in 1750 and coming to Nova Scotia in 1772.

The earliest sign of Martin in North America that I’ve found is an advertisement in the 21 Oct 1774 New-Hampshire Gazette stating that “JOHN MARTIN, Minister of the Gospel,” had lost a silver watch somewhere between the meetinghouse of Rochester, New Hampshire, and Berwick, Maine.

Shortly afterward this notice appeared in the 7 November Boston Gazette and 16 and 23 November Essex Journal of Newburyport:

L O S T.
An old Sea-Chest, (supposed to be taken out of Captain [Jonathan] Mason’s Store on the Long Wharf in Salem,) broad at the Bottom, painted blue but much wore off. If it has any Mark, it’s J. M. Should it be opened, it contains Weston’s Stenography, some Books of Physick, and some of Divinity, and considerable Writings, and both Men and Womens Cloths. Whoever shall give Information of the said Chest to the Rev. Dr. [Nathaniel] Whittaker in Salem, or the Rev. Samuel Stillman in Boston, so that the Subscriber may have it, they shall be well rewarded, and all reasonable Charges paid by
JOHN MARTIN.

Martin appears to have been a very unlucky traveler indeed. On the other hand, these ads might have been a way to announce to the region that one is the sort of learned gentleman to travel with a silver watch and a trunk full of books even if one doesn’t actually have those goods with one. Another notable point: The ministers Martin designated as his local contacts weren’t the orthodox Congregationalists but a Presbyterian and a Baptist.

Martin preached in place of the Rev. Dr. Stiles in Newport on 16 Apr 1775. Stiles went to see him speak again on 19 April and quizzed him about his background. Martin described religious peregrination from a Catholic school through the Episcopal Church and Deism to some form of Calvinist Protestantism that Stiles found acceptable. But the Rhode Island minister was suspicious of Martin’s tale of having been a chaplain to the Pretender in Ireland in 1771. Stiles was a sucker for stories he wanted to believe, and he didn’t want to believe Bonnie Prince Charlie was genuinely Protestant.

Meanwhile, the war was starting. Martin evidently went to the siege lines. He returned to Rhode Island after the Battle of Bunker Hill, reporting that he’d served as a chaplain on the battlefield and had taken part not only in the fighting but also in overseeing the redoubt, deploying troops, and more. Fanfiction critics would recognize the story Martin told as a “self-insert,” in which he was the bravest, most perceptive, and indispensable man on the American side of the battle lines.

As outlandish as Martin’s story was, this time people wanted to believe him. On 28 June, the Rhode Island Assembly appointed “John Martin” surgeon of its army brigade at a salary of £9 per month. There were other, better established men named John Martin in that colony, but I suspect this new surgeon was the young minister because he’d claimed to own “some Books of Physick” and because of a newspaper statement the next month that he’d been “appointed to a post in the Rhode Island regiment.”

On 30 June, Martin returned to Stiles’s doorstep in Newport, telling his story of the battle, and the minister wrote it all down. That evening he listened as Martin preached “a high Liberty Sermon.” On 18 July, the New-Hampshire Gazette reported briefly how Martin had “fought gallantly at Bunker-Hill.” Presumably he headed back to the war zone.

On 28 September and 28 December 1775, the New-England Chronicle newspaper reported that letters for John Martin were waiting in the Cambridge post office. Again, this may be another man of the same name (he’s not identified as a minister or a surgeon). But it’s quite clear who Sgt. Henry Bedinger of the Virginia riflemen heard preach in Roxbury on 3 Oct 1775:

We had also a Very Good Sermon preached to us by the Reverend Mr. Martin, Who Took part of the Command on Bunker’s Hill In that Battle.

This is clearly the same Martin who visited Stiles, and he was once again acting as a clergyman in the fall of 1775.

Thus, the Rev. John Martin seems like an excellent candidate to be the minister who married George Marsden and Wilmot Lee in Medford in November. He would have no qualms about breaking the Massachusetts law against traveling clergy performing marriages. And, just as he left the riflemen and others with the idea that he’d been a commander at Bunker Hill, he could easily have left Wilmot Marsden convinced he was a “professor at Harvard University.”

COMING UP: What happened to the Rev. John Martin?

Widow Marsden’s Marriage Claim

I’ve been writing about George Marsden, who went from a deserter from the British army in early 1774 to a lieutenant in the Continental Army in January 1776. He served a couple of years, including service at Saratoga, before retiring at an uncertain date. Marsden died in 1817.

His widow was born Wilmot Lee, reportedly in Nova Scotia on 21 Jan 1757, to Edward and Ann Lee or Leigh. She may therefore have been named after the British army commander Montague Wilmot. She probably met George Marsden while he was stationed in Halifax from 1769 to 1774, and she might even have been the reason for his desertion just before the 59th Regiment sailed for Boston.

Wilmot Marsden died in 1850, and she spent her last three decades trying to secure a federal pension as the widow of a Continental Army officer. The issue for the U.S. government was whether Wilmot and George had married before or after his army service. If they were legally a couple when he was an active officer, then she qualified for a pension. If not, then the government owed her nothing.

Unfortunately for Wilmot Marsden, she couldn’t provide documentary proof of their wedding on 25 Nov 1775 “at the house of Henry Putnam” in Mystic, as she wrote. Mystic was an old word for Medford, and Henry Putnam was a prominent landowner there, but that town’s records had no mention of the Marsdens’ marriage.

On 10 Oct 1839, Wilmot Marsden filed an affidavit describing her wedding in more detail. She said:

both her husband & herself came to Massachusetts, from Nova Scotia, Just previous to the revolutionary war, that she had resided but a few months at Mystic (now Medford) at the time of her marriage, & had few acquaintances, & not known out of the immediate neighborhood in which she lived, that her husband was with the army, and as little known at Mystic as herself,

that the persons present at the wedding are reported to have died long since, their names were Roger & Eli [?] Putnam & wives, Capts. Darby & Nowell from Cambridge, of Col Scammons Regiment, Edward Lee, Watson, Pool, Hall, Bracket, Gallop, Temple & Fisk [?].—

(Curiously, although Wilmot Marsden’s signature appears on her previous affidavit of 16 April, on this document she simply put her mark.)

Samuel Darby was indeed a captain in Col. James Scamman’s regiment at that time. In January 1776, Marsden became a lieutenant under him in Col. William Prescott’s regiment. Some other surnames in this affidavit also appear on the list of men in Scamman’s 1775 regiment. In addition, the alleged host Henry Putnam had younger brothers named Roger and Elijah Putnam.

Most interesting is the name of Edward Lee. Wilmot had a brother of that name (as well as a father). Had he accompanied his sister from Nova Scotia? The Medford town records include the death of a woman surnamed Lee, wife of “a Soldier in Army,” on 30 Sept 1775. Was that Edward Lee’s wife, and thus Wilmot Marsden’s sister-in-law?

Marsden clearly recalled her wedding as occurring during the siege of Boston. But there was still the problem of there being no legal record of that marriage to confirm her memory. A man from Rome, New York, looked into Marsden’s claim for her and offered an explanation for why the marriage may not have been recorded locally. At the time Massachusetts law recognized only marriages performed by ministers resident in that town; preachers without settled pulpits didn’t have the authority to marry couples. The New York man wrote:

the marriage of Mrs. Marsden was in the parish of the Revd. Doct. David Osgood, who was pertinacious of his priviledge, & was in the habit of exacting fines when he learned by the record of the town or otherwise, that a marriage had been consummated in his parish by a non-resident minister, & that such marriages were seldom recorded.

The minister who married her, Wilmot Marsden recalled, was not connected to the town of Medford. Rather, he was “the Revd. Mr. Martin of Cambridge a professor in the Harvard University.” She couldn’t say “to what denomination he belonged.”

Unfortunately for the widow Marsden, Harvard archivists told the federal government that the college had no professor or other official named Martin in 1775.

TOMORROW: Tracking down Mr. Martin the minister.

Sgt. George Marsden of His Majesty’s 59th Regiment

To delve into the British army career of George Marsden, I turned to Don Hagist, author of British Soldiers, American War and other books.

Don checked his thorough records and found that Marsden first arrived in New England in 1768 with the 59th Regiment of Foot in a company commanded by Capt. John Willson. They came to Boston, and local Whigs soon made Capt. Willson notorious for supposedly encouraging slaves to revolt.

As Don told me:

Marsden is on the April 1769 roll for the grenadier company, prepared in Boston. On the October 1770 roll for the company he shows up as being appointed serjeant, but in 1774 he’s a private again.

Unfortunately, the regiment did a lousy job in filing its paperwork, so we don’t know about anything the dates in between except that the regiment was in Nova Scotia from 1769 to 1774. (Marsden’s descendants also understood him as coming through Nova Scotia with the British army, but as an officer during the earlier French and Indian War.)

The fact that Marsden (usually written “Marsdin” in the muster rolls) became a sergeant suggests that his officers saw him as intelligent and dependable. Furthermore, while enlisted men often bounced from private to corporal and back depending on the regiment’s needs, a sergeant usually stayed a sergeant. So what’s the significance of Marsden’s demotion? Had he lost his superiors’ confidence? Did he resent losing that rank? We don’t know.

On 24 July 1774, the 59th Regiment prepared to sail from Nova Scotia back to Boston as part of Gen. Thomas Gage’s build-up of troops. And Pvt. George Marsden was no longer with them.

Don tells me that British regiments often suffered a wave of desertions just before they made a big move. Soldiers might have built ties with locals that they were loath to break, or they might have realized that their officers’ departure meant this was a good chance to make a run for it.

After July 1774 Marsden disappears from all records, as far as I can tell, until he enlisted in Col. James Scamman’s Massachusetts regiment on 19 May 1775. That unit was made up of men from southern Maine and New Hampshire. Marsden’s home was then listed as “Londonderry,” which one later researcher interpreted to mean Londonderry in Ireland. However, that same document listed several other men from Londonderry as well, so it probably referred to Londonderry, New Hampshire. Evidently Marsden had found his way to that town.

Marsden became the Scamman regiment’s adjutant, an administrative post, undoubtedly because of his experience as a sergeant in the British army. A month later came the Battle of Bunker Hill. Marsden’s old regiment, the 59th, was fighting on the British side. Had Marsden been captured, he would almost surely have been recognized, tried as a deserter in arms with the enemy, and executed. Nevertheless, he pushed ahead to the front lines faster than his colonel.

Adj. Marsden testified against Col. Scamman in his court-martial the following month, and I can’t imagine that the regimental meetings were smooth after that. At the end of the year, however, it was clear who prevailed. Scamman was left out of the Continental Army. In contrast, Marsden was commissioned as a Lieutenant in Col. William Prescott’s regiment—i.e., the commander who had actually been in the redoubt on Breed’s Hill was ready to fight alongside him. (Similarly, Ens. Joshua Trafton, who also got on Scamman’s bad side, was offered a lieutenant’s commission and eventually became a captain.)

George Marsden is thus like Thomas Machin, Daniel Box, Andrew Brown—deserters from the king’s army who had been recognized for their skills but barred by the British class system from rising into the officer class. In the Continental Army, Marsden became an officer. In the new republic, he was considered a gentleman. Like Machin and Brown, Marsden or his family retroactively came up with a more genteel history for him in Britain, making him an officer of the king who resigned before the war and wiping out any embarrassment about his having deserted.

TOMORROW: Marsden’s mysterious marriage.

George Marsden: “half-way up Bunker’s hill with Col. Scammans”

The last witness in the July 1775 trial of Col. James Scamman for “Backwardness” during the Battle of Bunker Hill was his regimental adjutant, George Marsden.

The record of Scamman’s court martial states:

Adjutant Marsden was sworn at the desire of the complainants and deposed that we were three-quarters of an hour on the little hill and continued about twenty minutes after we heard of the firing on the hill in Charlestown. I went half-way up Bunker’s hill with Col. Scammans when I left him and went to the breastwork, where I got before the enemy forced it; the confusion was so great when we got to Bunker’s-Hill we could not form the regiment.

On Monday, 17 July, precisely one month after the battle, the court-martial board deliberated and acquitted Scamman of the charge against him. The chaos of the battle and the lack of clear lines of command meant there wasn’t enough proof to find him guilty of disobeying orders.

Nonetheless, Scamman’s reputation suffered. Junior officers like Ens. Joshua Trafton treated him with disrespect. At the start of 1776 he wasn’t offered a commission in the reformed Continental Army. His name had even come up in the secret correspondence of Dr. Benjamin Church, who told his contact inside Boston, “the cowardice of the clumsy Col. [Samuel] Gerrish and Col. Scammon, were the lucky occasion of their [the provincials’] defeat.”

After that correspondence became public, Scamman sent the record of his court martial to the New-England Chronicle in the hope of vindicating himself. But he couldn’t let that record speak for itself; he added comments about how particular testimony justified his actions or should be disbelieved.

In regard to Adj. Marsden, Scamman wrote:

It is observable that the Adjutant would insinuate by his deposition that the regiment arrived at Bunker’s-Hill time enough to reinforce the breastwork before it was forced by the enemy, but if the public will only consider that those regiments which were stationed only two miles distance, did not arrive seasonable enough, and that the deponent had heretofore perjured himself by his desertion from the enemy, and by his common deportment discovers no regard to the Deity, his deposition will have but little weight with them.

So Marsden was a deserter? (As well as having “no regard to the Deity,” whatever that might have meant to New England Congregationalists.) That’s interesting.

A genealogy titled George Marsden, Revolutionary Patriot; His Family, Friends & Descendants, published in 1961, states this family understanding:

George Marsden was born in Leeds, England in the year 1737, the youngest son of an English gentleman. Upon the death of his father, his older brother inherited the estate, titles, etc., and George was procured a commission in the British army as was customary at that time for the younger sons of an English family. Soon thereafter, he was sent to the Colonies by way of Nova Scotia, to fight the French and Indians. He performed his duties with exceptional valor and bravery, and it was a great disappointment to his fellow officers when, early in 1775, he tendered his resignation as an officer in the British army, joined the Colonies against, the motherland and thereby became a rebel in the eyes of his friends and his family.

Was that what Scamman meant by referring to Marsden’s “desertion from the enemy”?

TOMORROW: How George Marsden really came to the American army.

The Broken Officer of Bunker Hill

This is a detail of a print titled “An Exact View of the Late Battle at Charlestown, June 17th, 1775.”

Versions of this image are on display right now in both the Boston Public Library’s “We Are One” exhibit and the Massachusetts Historical Society’s “God Save the People” exhibit. Here’s a link to the B.P.L.’s page for the full picture.

The engraving is credited to Bernard Romans, a native of Holland who had emigrated to Britain and then to North America in the 1750s. He explored parts of Florida and the southern frontier, then journeyed north on business.

When the Revolutionary War broke out, Romans was in Connecticut. He raised a small force to attack Fort George in New York, enjoying the same success as Ethan Allen in seizing Fort Ticonderoga but not the same fame.

In his “Exact View” of the battle we know best as Bunker Hill, Romans took a perspective from a point west of the Charlestown neck, putting the Breed’s Hill redoubt on the left of his frame as shown above and Charlestown in flames farther back toward the right. As shown in the detail, he or his colorist depicted the provincial soldiers in unlikely blue uniforms.

“General [Israel] Putnam” was the only individual Romans’s key identified by name, but that Connecticut officer wasn’t the picture’s biggest figure. There are two men in the left foreground, gesticulating on either side of a cannon. A number 8 hovers over one of their heads. The key at the top identifies that man as “Broken Officer.”

Yes, that’s Maj. Scarborough Gridley, youngest son of the artillery regiment’s commander, who chose to trade potshots with a British warship from Cobble Hill rather than go onto the peninsula where the real battle was.

Scar Gridley wasn’t cashiered from the Continental Army until September 1775, meaning Romans must have created this engraving after that date. The prominence he gave to that embarrassing detail of the battle suggests that his American public was interested in Maj. Gridley’s removal.

Deborah M. Child on the Life of Richard Brunton, 17 June

On Wednesday, 17 June, Deborah M. Child will speak at the New England Historical and Genealogical Society about her new illustrated biography Soldier, Engraver, Forger: Richard Brunton’s Life on the Fringe in America’s New Republic.

Child’s talk will take place on the anniversary of Bunker Hill, appropriate because Brunton fought in that battle. As a British soldier.

Brunton later deserted and used his skill as an engraver to make a living in the U.S. of A. Unfortunately, at times the most lucrative engravings he could turn out were forged bank notes. He died in Groton in 1832.

I played a very small role in the creation of this book. A couple of years back, Child got in touch with me because she was trying to reconcile her sources about Brunton’s army and post-army careers. I did the smart thing and put her in touch with Don Hagist, author of British Soldiers, American War, who quickly cleared up the biggest mystery by alerting Child that her sources in London were reading the army muster rolls wrong. Once that artificial barrier fell, she was able to piece the evidence together to create this unusual biography.

Child’s talk at the N.E.H.G.S. headquarters, 99-101 Newbury Street in Boston, is scheduled to start at 6:00 P.M. It will be followed by a signing. The event is free and open to the public. Register here.

Who Was Crispus Attucks’s Father?

Many websites and books identify Crispus Attucks’s father as Prince Yongey (or Young or Jonar), based on the fact that Framingham records say a man of that name married Nancy Peterattuck on 19 May 1737.

However, according to William Brown’s runaway advertisements, “Crispas” was about twenty-seven years old in 1750. That means he would have been about fourteen when Nancy Peterattuck married Prince Yongey.

Furthermore, in 1860 someone from Natick informed William C. Nell that Attucks’s parents were “Jacob Peter Attucks” and “Nanny,” which might have been another form of Nancy. This source said there were other children in the family—Sam, Sal, and Peter—and that they were all “uncommonly large.”

William Barry’s 1847 history of Framingham says Jacob Peterattucks was in that town by 1730 working for “Col. Buckminster.” There was a series of prominent men with that surname, including Joseph (1666-1747) and his sons Joseph (1697-1780) and Thomas (1698-1795).

It seems more likely, therefore, that Prince Yongey was Crispus Attucks’s stepfather, marrying his mother in 1737 after his father Jacob Peterattucks’s death. There are, of course, many other possible scenarios, including multiple people with the same name, unreliable informants, or a church marriage performed years into the relationship because the couple’s owner got religion.

Jacob Peterattucks was previously listed as a member of John Shipley’s military company in 1722, described as “Servt. John Wood.” On 16 May 1723, he was one of several men dismissed as “Sick, lame and unfit for Servis, by thear own Requests.” Notably, the lieutenant of that company was Joseph “Buckmaster.” Crispus Attucks was born around that year.

(In addition, a Moses Peter Attucks of Leicester served as a private at Fort Massachusetts under Lt. Elisha Hawley and Capt. Ephraim Williams in 1747-49. Another member of the family?)

We have no way of knowing whether Prince Yongey had any influence on Crispus Attucks, who was enslaved to Brown by 1750 and perhaps earlier, and therefore may never have lived with a stepfather. Yongey did become a Framingham fixture, as local historian Barry learned from townspeople who had known him:

But the most noted individual of the class under consideration, was Prince, sometimes called Prince Young, but whose name is recorded as Prince Yongey, and Prince Jonar, by which last name he is noticed [and “rated”] in the Town Rec. in 1767. He was brought from Africa when a young man of about 25 years, having been a person of consideration in his native land, from whence, probably, he derived his name. He was first owned by Col. Joseph Buckminster, and afterwards by his son, the late Dea. Thomas. He married, (by name Prince Yongey) in 1737, Nanny Peterattucks, of Framingham, (the name indicating Indian extraction) by whom he had several children, among them a son, who died young, and a daughter Phebe, who never married.

Prince was a faithful servant, and by his general honesty, temperance and prudence, so gained the confidence of his first master. Col. Buckminster, that for about a quarter of a century, he was left with the management of a large farm, during his master’s absence at the General Court. He occupied a cabin near the Turnpike, and cultivated, for his own use, a piece of meadow, which has since been known as Prince’s meadow. He chose the spot as resembling the soil of his native country.

During the latter part of his life he was offered his freedom, which he had the sagacity to decline; pithily saying, “massa eat the meat; he now pick the bone.” Prince shunned the society of persons of his own color, and though accustomed to appear in public armed with a tomahawk, was a great favorite with the young, whom, under all provocations, he was never known but in one instance to strike.

He had been sufficiently instructed to read, and possessed the religious turn characteristic of the African race. In his last sickness, he remarked with much simplicity, that he was “not afraid to be dead, but to die.” He passed an extreme old age in the family of Dea. Thos. Buckminster, and died Dec. 21, 1797, at the age of 99 years and some months. Numerous anecdotes are yet related, illustrating the simplicity, intelligence, and humor of “Old Prince.”

This description of Prince Yongey is evidently based on people who knew him as an old man, probably after his wife and perhaps his children were gone. He outlived the institution of slavery in Massachusetts, though he insisted that the Buckminster family was obliged to look after him in his old age, and he even outlived Deacon Buckminster.

It occurred to me that some elements of Prince Yongey’s life might have gotten mixed in with locals’ memories of Crispus Attucks, especially if they were indeed part of the same extended family. Brown’s descendants recalled Attucks being allowed to “trade cattle upon his own judgement”; locals recalled Yongey managing the Buckminster farm for his master. And did ”Prince’s meadow” become remembered as the “cellar hole” where the Attucks family lived?