“Wounded in the cheek, and it is tho’t will not recover”

Lt. Thomas Hawkshaw went out of Boston with his soldiers in the 5th Regiment of Foot on 19 Apr 1775.

He came back wounded. The always helpful Lt. Frederick Mackenzie recorded that Hawkshaw was wounded on the cheek.

Almost half a century later, provincial militiaman Joseph Thaxter recalled this rumor:

Lieutenant Hawkstone, said to be the greatest beauty of the British army, had his cheeks so badly wounded that it disfigured him much, of which he bitterly complained.

That looks like a memory of Lt. Hawkshaw. But I can’t find any British source inside Boston that includes a handsome lieutenant’s lament. That’s the sort of thing fellow officers would be likely to mention or remember.

If Hawkshaw was indeed handsome, that might be why Bostonians remembered him being at disputes and couldn’t identify the other officers with him. That might also make it more appealing for Patriots to imagine him grieving his lost beauty.

I don’t think Thaxter is a reliable source here. Not only did he recall the lieutenant’s name imperfectly, but he described the man being wounded at Concord’s North Bridge, and he wasn’t. Hawkshaw was probably hit between Lexington and Charlestown.

Ezekiel Russell’s “A Bloody Butchery, by the King’s Troops” broadside offered readers outside Boston another significant detail:

Lieutenant Hawkshaw was wounded in the cheek, and it is tho’t will not recover.

For at least the first week, many people expected the lieutenant to die.

By 6 May, that medical prognosis had improved. David Greene wrote from Boston of “Hawkshaw, of the 5th, badly wounded, but like to recover.”

TOMORROW: How bad was Lt. Hawkshaw’s wound?

Hic incipiat

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts’s Seal, Flag, and Motto Advisory Commission started meeting in July 2021, blowing past its original deadline but gaining approval last year to change those state symbols.

Earlier this year, the commission invited citizens to suggest designs for a new commonwealth seal, flag (no longer necessarily just showing the seal), and motto.

This week it unveiled the results—more than a thousand responses (some repeated), which anyone can thumb through in this download.

The commission sent “23 seals, 48 flags, and 32 mottos” to a second round. (For some reason, those are shared as a PowerPoint file.)

The whole collection includes lots of allusions to Revolutionary history, as we might expect. Some are obvious, like Minuteman figures, messengers on horseback, a pair of lanterns (or just one), lots and lots of pine trees, anachronistic teabags, even a Crispus Attucks.

One person suggested simply returning to the seal carved during the Revolutionary War by Paul Revere, with a figure of a Minuteman. Others combined a Minuteman with an Indian, as on the early colony and later state seals. Several proposed versions of the “Bunker Hill” or “New England” flag with a pine tree canton over the English cross.

Some allusions to the Revolutionary era are more subtle. At least a couple of designs used the nine vertical red and white stripes of the “Sons of Liberty flag.” I don’t think that’s an authentic Revolutionary relic, but I do like the idea of the state acknowledging the political activity of Samuel “Rat-trap” Adams.

Since 2005 Massachusetts’s official state colors are blue, green, and cranberry, and those show up in lots of designs, but many more people used the blue, white, and gold of the current flag. To me the gold looks awfully buff, recalling the “buff and blue” of the British Whigs and thence the Continental Army uniform modeled by Gen. George Washington.

Many of the flag designs include five-pointed stars, like the one on the current seal/flag, but the number of those stars varies widely. Six stars was the most common count. I was baffled by what that number represented. Usually stars refer to the number of things making up an entity, as with the fifty states of the union, and I didn’t think Massachusetts has six of anything.

Then I read that six stars refer to Massachusetts being the sixth state to ratify the Constitution. But that ratification was not, as many submitters believed, when Massachusetts joined the United States. The country had been formed a few years earlier as states signed onto the Articles of Confederation, and Massachusetts was the ninth state to do so.

Of course, the commonwealth has a lot more history than the Revolution. The proposed designs also include lots of Mayflowers, both the ship and the flower. Many nod to the state’s educational, technological, and maritime heritages. At the commission’s urging, lots of designers incorporated animals, plants, or landscapes that have some connection to Massachusetts.

The commission’s top three choices in each category are on this page. I don’t like any of the seals, and I don’t love any of the flags. In the larger group, nothing stood out for me as obviously right either, but I thought some worked better than those selected. (Massachusetts also has an official governor’s flag and an official naval ensign, so there’s room for runners-up.)

I did think a few people came up with the right motto: “Let it begin here.” It’s punchy and understandable, forward-looking enough to evoke innovation. It nods to the state’s false claim to be the real start of the American nation and its more arguable claim to provide the cradle of liberty. It definitely derives from a story of the fight at Lexington.

Unfortunately, that proposed motto didn’t get past the first round. The commission evidently wants something in Latin. (One submitter did translate the words attributed to John Parker into Latin: Hic incipiat.)

“A beautiful tribute to so many American heroes”

After the White House issued its letter illegally demanding control over the Smithsonian Institution, Donald Trump weighed in through his preferred method of communication: a rant on his Truth Social microblogging network.

As usual, Trump’s presentation of the situation was more bombastic and expansive than actual policy, or actual facts:

The Museums throughout Washington, but all over the Country are, essentially, the last remaining segment of “WOKE.” The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future. We are not going to allow this to happen, and I have instructed my attorneys to go through the Museums, and start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities where tremendous progress has been made. This Country cannot be WOKE, because WOKE IS BROKE. We have the "HOTTEST" Country in the World, and we want people to talk about it, including in our Museums.

This produced a lot of responses, many pointing out how the complaint about museums portraying “how bad Slavery was” matches the Trump administration’s moves to honor Confederates, remove African-Americans from positions of authority, and roll back programs to remedy the effects of historic racism.

Others noted the ridiculousness of complaining that history museums should be more focused on “the Future” and less on the past.

Politifact rated Trump’s claim that the Smithsonian Institution museums include “nothing about success, nothing about brightness, nothing about the future” [capitalization corrected] as “Pants on Fire.” Its analysis said in part:

A walk through the [African-American history] museum’s six levels reveals its overwhelming focus on Black Americans’ resilience, strength and success. . . .

Smithsonian museums are also chock full of patriotic items and exhibits celebrating American culture. . . .

As for "brightness," it’s hard to ignore the nonpartisan pop culture icons at the American history museum, from Kermit the Frog to "Star Wars" droids and basketball legend Michael Jordan.

Author Jonathan M. Katz wrote on Bluesky:

The funny thing about this is that the Smithsonian African American History Museum is built around the exact "Success" narrative Trump claims to want. You climb through the Middle Passage, slave cabin, Jim Crow train, etc, and come out into Oprah's studio and Obama.

But we have to wonder if success for African-Americans counts as success for Trump.

The Civil War historian Kevin M. Levin offered further analysis on Substack:

The Smithsonian and National Park Service are not leaders in the direction of historical interpretation and trends in public history. They largely reflect changes that have already taken place. More broadly, these institutions reflect cultural and societal shifts that have already been established.

Another way to make this point is to say that if you are a young activist, committed to instilling Americans with radical leftist ideas, the last place you will want to work is at the Smithsonian or National Park Service. Such a career move promises a lifetime of disappointment and frustration.

Levin also noted that Trump visited the National African American History Museum around the time he first entered public office in 2017 and came out saying, “This museum is a beautiful tribute to so many American heroes.”

According to a Washington Post article from 2019, based on Smithsonian director Lonnie Bunch’s memoir, that visit was more fraught behind the scenes.

The incoming president wanted to come on the holiday commemorating the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., according to the memoir. The administration also asked that the museum be closed to the public during the visit. “The notion that we could shut out visitors on the first King holiday since the opening of the museum was not something I could accept,” Bunch writes. Another day was chosen. . . .

Before the president-elect arrived, his aides told Bunch that Trump “was in a foul mood and that he did not want to see anything ‘difficult,’ ” Bunch writes. Nevertheless, Bunch started the tour in the history galleries, which begin with the global slave trade.

“It was not my job to make the rough edges of history smooth, even for the president,” he writes. . . .

“The president paused in front of the exhibit that discussed the role of the Dutch in the slave trade,” Bunch writes. “As he pondered the label I felt that maybe he was paying attention to the work of the museum. He quickly proved me wrong. As he turned from the display he said to me, ‘You know, they love me in the Netherlands.’ All I could say was let’s continue walking.”

“There is little I remember about the rest of the hour we spent together. I was so disappointed in his response to one of the greatest crimes against humanity in history,” he continues. “Here was a chance to broaden the views and the understanding of the incoming president and I had been less successful than I had expected.”

It looks like Trump now has no memory of that visit.

Also, for the record, the Dutch, like most people around the world, had a negative view of Donald Trump. In 2017 the Pew Research Group reported that Dutch confidence that the U.S. President would do the right thing had gone down 75 percentile points in the shift from Barack Obama (92%) to Trump (17%). As of June 2025, the same global survey reported that 63% of the people in the Netherlands have no confidence at all that Trump will do the right thing as President.

“Whittled down to a couple of dozen notables”

I started this week planning simply to pass on the Professor Buzzkill podcast’s analysis of the “We must hang together, or separately” remark.

But then I looked into the evidence myself to be sure. I found holes in the record, and more questions. I went in a different, and more prolix, direction.

Nonetheless, I do commend this analysis of how we remember the Revolution as time passes:

As the revolutionary generation started to die out and become part of the early written history of the young United States, the vast number of people involved in the revolution and the development of the new government was gradually whittled down to a couple of dozen notables in popular memory and history. I call this “the Mount Rushmore effect.” You can’t possibly talk about the hundreds or thousands of people directly involved in something important, so people concentrate on leaders and on the famous.

As time rolls on, and more and more events become part of the “American story,” the number of individual historical figures well-known in the popular mind continues to go down. We forget about all the second- and third-level people who do most of the work for which political and military leaders get all the credit. And that’s not even mentioning the hundreds of thousands of, if you will, “foot soldiers” on the ground. Archaeologists (perhaps alien archaeologists) thousands of years from now will find Mount Rushmore, and assume that the four men depicted there were responsible for most of American history.

Plus, of course, Benjamin Franklin.

“According to Dick Penns bon Mot”

As quoted here, in April 1776 Carter Braxton wrote home to Virginia from the Continental Congress: “It is a true saying of a Wit—We must hang together or separately.”

Was Braxton referring to a generic “Wit,” or had he heard this remark from a specific person, or attributed to a specific person? His letter didn’t say.

Editors of the Benjamin Franklin Papers suggested that Braxton might have been alluding to Franklin. But given how Alexander Graydon credited the remark to Richard Penn speaking in 1774 or 1775, Braxton might have been referring to that lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania instead.

Graydon didn’t publish his Memoirs of His Own Time until 1811, however. While that’s decades before anyone attributed the remark to Franklin, it’s also decades after Penn allegedly spoke. Is there any closer evidence?

Indeed, there is. In April 1786, John Adams wrote home from London to his brother-in-law Richard Cranch. At the time Britain and the new U.S. of A. were trying to sort out their trading arrangements, and states were starting to compete with each other.

Charles Jenkinson (1729–1808, shown here) was the new president of the Council for Trade and Plantations overseeing British overseas commerce. Jenkinson had served in the administrations of Lord Bute, George Grenville, and Lord North, and Adams viewed him as part of a cabal inimical to America. (Later in 1786 Jenkinson became Baron Hawkesbury, and in 1796 the first Earl of Liverpool.)

Adams wrote:

Mr Jenkinson, I presume, has, by his late Motions in Parliament, all of which are carried without opposition, convinced the People of America, that they have nothing but a ruinous Commerce to expect with England.

Our Crisis is at hand, and if the states do not hang together, they might as well have been “hanged Seperate,” according to Dick Penns bon Mot in 1784.

Did Adams write the wrong date, meaning 1774 instead of “1784”? That would be in accord with Graydon’s memory and Braxton’s 1776 mention of “a Wit.” Penn left Pennsylvania for Britain in 1775, carrying the Olive Branch Petition, and I don’t think he returned during the war (contra Graydon). Or did Adams hear Penn voice or repeat this remark in London in 1784?

TOMORROW: Looking for eighteenth-century uses.

“It is a true saying of a Wit”

In 2014 and again in 2016, I noted that the Pennsylvania lieutenant governor Richard Penn was the first Revolutionary figure credited with this remark:

An evidence of this was the pleasantry ascribed to him, on occasion of a member of Congress, one day observing to his compatriots, that at all events “they must hang together:”

“If you do not, gentlemen,” said Mr. Penn, “I can tell you that you will be very apt to hang separately.”

More recently, the Professor Buzzkill podcast called my attention to a letter the Virginia delegate Carter Braxton wrote on 14 Apr 1776:

Upon reviewing the secret movements of Men and things I am convinced the Assertion of Independence is far off. If it was to be now asserted, the Continent would be torn in pieces by Intestine Wars and Convulsions. Previous to Independence all disputes must be healed and Harmony prevail. A grand Continental league must be formed and a superintending Power also. When these necessary Steps are taken and I see a Coalition formed sufficient to withstand the Power of Britain, or any other, then am I for an independent State and all its Consequences, as then I think they will produce Happiness to America. It is a true saying of a Wit—We must hang together or separately.

Less than three months later, Braxton voted for independence.

Did Braxton have a particular “Wit” in mind? Alas, he didn’t say.

TOMORROW: Flemish roots?

“The Revolution belongs to all Americans”

Johann Neem, author of Creating a Nation of Joiners: Democracy and Civil Society in Early National Massachusetts, Democracy’s Schools: The Rise of Public Education in America, and other historical studies, is a forthright critic of today’s political trumpery.

The New Republic just published Neem’s essay “Unfit to Lead: Trump Is the Enemy of the American Revolution.”

Here are some passages:

Today, as we approach the Declaration of Independence’s semiquincentennial, Donald Trump and his allies claim the Revolution for themselves. They have made fealty to the American Revolution part of their culture war against “woke” progressivism. The Revolution has become a pawn in Trump’s politics of retribution against the country’s supposed cultural enemies. Trump and his allies claim to be patriots while regularly violating the principles outlined in the Declaration of Independence and undermining the government established by our Constitution. . . .

For Trump, [Chief Justice John] Roberts, and their allies, the actual principles of the Revolution matter less than its capacity to signify tribal loyalty by distinguishing “real Americans” from domestic enemies. Trump conflates respect for the Revolution with loyalty to him. The gross spectacle of Trump hosting a military parade on his birthday—as do kings and dictators—and connecting it to the birth of the Continental Army illustrates all too well that he seeks to legitimize his own rule by wrapping himself in the Revolution.

To our Founders, there was a causal relationship between legislative consent and liberty. Today, we often think freedom is the ability to do what one wants. To our Founders, in contrast, freedom was a collective possession, not a private one. Freedom was only possible in a free state in which the people or their representatives actively made the rules that govern their shared life. . . .

Trump’s violations of the Constitution are too long to list here, but among them are illegally suspending laws and violating court orders. He has sought to dominate the other two branches of government by encouraging extralegal violence against legislators, judges, and their families. He has weaponized the Justice Department to go after his political enemies. He threatens the media, universities, and other civil society institutions that dare to question his edicts. Indeed, he seeks to destroy any person or institution that checks his will. . . .

Trump and his allies distort the past to convince their followers that respecting the American Revolution is somehow compatible with supporting a tyrant. They want to turn the Revolution into a symbol for tribal loyalty, but the Revolution belongs to all Americans. The United States was born from a revolt against lawless tyranny and arbitrary power. Today, future generations of Americans are counting on us to protect the republic. Like those who sacrificed so much to secure our freedom two and a half centuries ago, once again we Americans must pledge our sacred honor to uphold the legacy of the American Revolution from those who invoke it only to betray it.

The New Republic article on the web has links to show some of the events Neem refers to.

“Praising and glorying in Lieutenant Jonathan Folsom”

In July 1898, The Spirit of ’76 magazine devoted much of its front page to a poem by Mary M[elissa]. Durgin Gray (1848–1939).

The poem was illustrated by a photo of Betsey Folsom Durgin, as shown here. She was the poet’s grandmother and herself the granddaughter of the poem’s subject.

Lieutenant Jonathan Folsom.

GRANDMOTHER dear, in the picture there,
With snowy cap and silvery hair,
Delighted to talk of the days of yore
And the part her honored grandsire bore,
First, in the great battles under the King,
And subsequently in the following
Of Washington and the heroes bold
Of the Revolution, and ever told
With a touch of pride her grandsire’s name,
Lingeringing [sic] slightly over the same,
Lieut. Jonathan Folsom.

Grandmother, in truth, was really quite small
When he died, at her father’s, his looks to recall;
Her big brother Isaac had doubtless instilled
In her mind the facts which their grandsire drilled
Into his; and her stories, eagerly learned
By me, (while my spirit with strong ardor burned)
Familiar as even the Bible tales grew;
I felt as if I had known Jonathan, too.
In school, the word lieutenant being given
To define, I, by artless child-logic driven,
Made answer, Jonathan Folsom.

His brother Nathaniel, more widely known,
To rank of Colonel rose under the Crown;
In General Congress, with Washington
And others, fame for sagacity won;
Then, after Lexington’s bloody affray—
Became Major General early in May.
Full due for his bravery Grandmother paid
Nathaniel, and praise, yet greater stress laid
On her grandsire’s service at famed Bunker Hill;
A volunteer, crippled—yet calling him still
“Lieutenant Jonathan Folsom.”

That Bunker Hill service!—Grandmother thrilled
My soul as she talked of the brave soldiers killed
Around him—her one-legged grandsire brave—
As he toiled in the fray, his loved country to save.
How, firing the mortar, of which he had charge,
Sending bombs on the deck of a man-of-war large
In the harbor, he caused her at last to retire.
(Had they known the projector, how great were their ire.)
The Stamp Act’s repealing, some nine years before
He had sought to announce with an old cannon’s roar;
It burst, and one leg was forever despoiled;
Yet think you his work for his country was foiled,
Lieutenant Jonathan Folsom’s?

Do you think that a man who, when scarce twenty-two
(Commissioned Lieutenant) the French to subdue,
Engaged in the siege of Louisburg when
The untutored troops against disciplined men
Small chance had of winning, (yet they did.
Though their work ’neath the boast of the Red-coats was hid);
Do you think such a man could abide in the rear
When he saw his old comrades gathering near,
When those Louisburg drums (after Lexington’s fray)
Were used in the battle on Bunker Hill day;
When Gridley who Pepperell’s batteries laid
Likewise the intrenchments at Bunker Hill made,
Lieutenant Jonathan Folsom?

At Duquesne, Crown Point and Niagara, you
See the War Rolls record him and Nathaniel, too.
Historians tell how the Exeter men
The French force defeated again and again.
Brave Jonathan, shot through the shoulder, yet bore
His part in the capture of prisoners and store;
Therefore, when Nathaniel was given command
Of the troops in this region, could Jonathan stand
Inactive because he was minus a leg?
Ah no, he had gotten a fine wooden “peg,”
And he strayed into the battle, enlisted or no,
Performing his part in routing the foe;
Lieutenant Jonathan Folsom.

Years have passed—all these patriots lie in their graves;
The banner of Liberty over them waves;
For Freedom they fought and in Freedom they died;
The country they gave us is glorious and wide;
Their memory many essay to revive;
Societies vieing in keeping alive
Accounts of their deeds and the fields where they fought,
And I, in the wave of enthusiasm caught,
The record of Jonathan hastened to find,
Because, I confess, it was more to my mind
To enter the line with a title, though slight;
(Another great grandfather gave me a right.)

He with Stark, as a private, to Bennington went;
But in Jonathan’s name my papers I sent;
What though as a private I found him enrolled?
By epaulets only is bravery told?
His previous record and service proclaim
The man, and I quote, “What’s there in a name?”
But Grandmother, low in her far-away grave?
Did she know that her hero, her grandsire brave,
As “Jonathan, private,” recorded had been
All those years she was praising and glorying in
Lieutenant Jonathan Folsom?

Most of this poem is a retelling of the family lore about Jonathan Folsom, as discussed yesterday—and a depiction of how that story was passed down and embedded in younger generations’ minds.

The phrase “To enter the line” clearly places this composition during the period when it was new and fashionable to join the Daughters of the American Revolution and Sons of the American Revolution. Gray made clear she was eligible for membership (“Another great grandfather gave me a right”).

However, the last stanza takes an amusing swerve into how Jonathan Folsom is not listed as a lieutenant on any rolls from the Revolutionary War. How embarrassed Gray’s grandmother might be to learn her grandfather was a mere private in 1777!

Except he wasn’t. The Jonathan Folsom in the poem had a son of the same name, much more eligible for emergency militia service against the Burgoyne campaign than a one-legged, fiftysomething retired lieutenant. Indeed, that younger Jonathan Folsom was Betsey Folsom Durgin’s father, so she probably knew about his short Revolutionary service.

Lt. Jonathan Folsom was unquestionably an officer in one of the North American colonial wars. The General Society of Colonial Wars had been founded in 1893, making some of his descendants eligible for membership—but the National Society Daughters of Colonial Wars wouldn’t arise until 1917.

On her death, Mary M. Durgin Gray was described by her daughters as an “author of children’s stories.” I’ve found two poems attached to that name in the Granite Monthly in 1900 as well as a sketch in the Boston Home Journal. Those magazines also published some items credited to Mary M. Gray in a similar style, so I bet those are hers, too. But I can’t find any published stories for children.

“He hobbled into battle on his wooden leg”

Jacob Chapman’s 1882 Genealogy of the Folsom Family: John Folsom and His Descendants, 1615-1882 devoted an apprendix to Jonathan Folsom, sharing this bit of family lore:

when the Revolutionary war commenced, he set out for another campaign, and found his way to Bunker Hill. Here he hobbled into battle on his wooden leg, and took charge of a mortar

It is said that at the second shot he threw a bomb upon the deck of a British man-of-war, which led her to draw off as soon as possible into safer quarters.

There’s no supporting evidence for this story. No other American account says the provincial forces at Bunker Hill had a mortar. (They had six four-pounder cannon, though only one trained gun crew at the height of the battle.)

No American veterans described a man with one leg amputated above the knee joining the fight. Nathaniel Folsom didn’t mention his brother in the letters he sent back to New Hampshire.

No British naval sources complained about provincial mortar fire or blamed a shell for pulling back from the battle.

One source for this tale, if not the only one, was Jonathan Folsom’s granddaughter Betsey, born in 1792. She could have known her grandfather directly since he died around 1800. Betsey Folsom married a man named Daniel Durgin and then outlived him by three decades, dying in 1878. Her son Mark William Franklin Durgin of Medford appears to have been one of Chapman’s sources on the family.

After the Chapman book, the story of Jonathan Folsom firing a mortar at Bunker Hill appeared in a few publications of the Sons of the American Revolution. Though Lt. Folsom’s service in the French & Indian War was well documented, descendants joining that organization needed to say he fought in the next war as well.

TOMORROW: Versifying.

“The Past and Present Here Unite” and “Who Are My Ancestors?”

If you’re interested in seeing and hearing me as a talking head in a documentary film, check out “The Past and Present Here Unite,” a video introducing the Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site created by Argentine Productions.

A decade ago, I wrote a study for the National Park Service about Gen. George Washington’s use of that house in 1775–76, and most of my commentary for this movie pertains to that period. But I also shared some observations on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and how he shaped American memory.

Alongside that video, the same filmmakers produced “Who Are My Ancestors?: The Descendants of Cuba Vassall,” which you can watch at this page. It explores the family of Cuba Vassall, a woman enslaved by the Royall and Vassall families until the Revolutionary War. She had a longer connection to that site than Washington did, and her son Darby was prominent in Boston’s antebellum campaigns for human rights.

Nominees for the 2025 George Washington Book Prize

The finalists for the 2025 George Washington Book Prize, all history titles published last year, have been announced.

In alphabetical order of the author’s surname, they are:

• Jane E. Calvert, Penman of the Founding: A Biography of John Dickinson (Oxford University Press)
• Francis D. Cogliano, A Revolutionary Friendship: Washington, Jefferson, and the American Republic (Harvard University Press)
• Michael D. Hattem, The Memory of ’76: The Revolution in American History (Yale University Press)
• Tyson Reeder, Serpent in Eden: Foreign Meddling and Partisan Politics in James Madison’s America (Oxford University Press)
• Cara Rogers Stevens, Thomas Jefferson and the Fight against Slavery (University Press of Kansas)

The sponsors of this prize are Mount Vernon, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and Washington College. Mount Vernon will host an event featuring all the authors on 12 August, and the winner will be announced at a gala dinner in New York on 8 October.

“You saved my son’s life in Ameriky!”

Here’s an entry from Literary Anecdotes and Contemporary Reminiscences of Professor Porson and Others, from the Manuscript Files of the Late E. H. Barker, Esq. of Thetford, Norfolk, published in London in 1852.

CLXV. CAPTAIN LENTHALL.

July 12, 1837. C. Montagu told to me the following story of Captain Lenthall, a gentleman, who was formerly owner of Burford Priory in Oxfordshire.

He was at the battle of Bunker’s Hill, where the English were defeated by the Americans [sic].

Seeing that his countrymen were getting the worst, and that his own regiment was disorganized, Captain L. took refuge in a saw-pit. A common soldier, belonging to the same company, followed the example of his commanding officer, and both of them escaped alive.

Some years afterwards, when the Captain was returned to Burford, his residence, a poor woman one day gave him a hearty benediction, which led him to ask the reason of her good wishes.

“God bless you, sir,” said she, “you saved my son’s life in Ameriky!”

“And how did I save your son’s life?” replied the Captain.

“O, sir, he would never have thought of getting down into the sawpit, if you hadn’t done so first!”

John Lenthall was a twenty-five-year-old lieutenant in the 23rd Regiment (Welch Fusiliers) in 1775. I must note that he was actually wounded in the Bunker Hill battle. He saw more action that summer during the British attack on the Penny Ferry.

Richard Frothingham included this anecdote in his centennial history of Bunker Hill.

Lenthall’s family home, Burford Priory, is shown above. It’s now owned by a branch of the Murdoch family.

“The Ghost of Major John Pitcairn,” 24 June

Sticking with the saga of Henry Howell Williams and his quest for (over?)compensation meant I mustered only a brief mention of the Battle of Bunker Hill on its Sestercentennial.

But today I’m watching the reenactment of that battle in Gloucester, and I’ll discuss some aspects of the event in the coming days, both on this site and live.

On Tuesday, 24 June, I’ll speak on “The Ghost of Major John Pitcairn” for Old North Illuminated’s digital speaker series.

Our event description:

After Major John Pitcairn was killed in the Battle of Bunker Hill, he was remembered in Britain as “a Gentleman of universal good character.” In Massachusetts, however, people still accused Pitcairn of having ordered redcoats to fire at the Lexington militia two months earlier. The major’s body was laid in the crypt of the Old North Church, but his memory haunted American history through stories, rumors, and artifacts linked to his name.

In this talk, J. L. Bell, proprietor of the history blog Boston 1775, sifts through the evidence behind those legends before digging into how a church warden with a shaky reputation sent Maj. Pitcairn’s body back to Britain—or did he?

I suppose I should make clear that I know of no stories about Pitcairn’s spirit haunting people or places. Rather, his memory and Americans’ hunger to make meaning of that memory have produced several oft-repeated narratives.

I’ll talk about several legends of Maj. Pitcairn: his pistols and horse, who shot him at Bunker Hill, how Bostonians remembered him, and what happened to his body in the decades after his death. Some of those stories might even be true.

Register to hear this talk online with a donation through this Eventbrite page. It’s scheduled to begin at 7:00 P.M., and there will be time for questions afterward. Assuming the recording goes well, a video will appear online afterward.

The Last Years of Henry Howell Williams

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Panel on Bunker Hill Memory in Charlestown, 5 June

On Thursday, 5 June, Bunker Hill Community College in Charlestown will host a panel discussion on the topic “Two Nations, One Battle: Bunker Hill in British and American Memory.”

Representing New England will be Nathaniel Philbrick, author of Bunker Hill: A City, a Siege, a Revolution, winner of the 2013 New England Book Award for Non-Fiction, and other books.

Sharing the British perspective will be Oxford graduate Emma Hart, now professor of American History and director of the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

The moderator will be Brooke Barbier, author of King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father.

The event description says: “Through thoughtful dialogue and historical insight, the panel will explore how the Battle of Bunker Hill has been remembered, interpreted, and understood on both sides of the Atlantic over the past 250 years.”

The audience will have the chance to ask questions and “take part in a broader community conversation.”

This event is free with registration. Doors to the campus’s A300 auditorium will open at 6:00 P.M., and the discussion will start after half an hour of music. For directions, see Eventbrite page.

Partners in this event include the college, the Bunker Hill Monument Association, the Friends of the Charlestown Branch Library, the British Consulate-General in Boston, and the National Parks of Boston.

Another event looking ahead to the Sestercentennial of the battle will take place on Wednesday, 11 June, from 11:30 A.M. to 1:30 P.M. The intersection of Chelsea and Warren Streets in Charlestown will be dedicated as Joseph Warren Square after the physician and political activist who died in the battle.

This ceremony is co-sponsored by the American Legion Bunker Hill Post 26 and Abraham Lincoln Post 11 veterans organizations in partnership with the City of Boston and City of Boston Veterans Affairs. Plans include speakers and the unveiling of a plaque. Attendees can then repair to the Warren Tavern for an annual toast to Dr. Warren.

“When the stakes are as significant as life and liberty”

Earlier this week the president of Yale, Marie McInnis, offered inspiration to the graduating class from a work by much earlier graduate.

Here’s an article from the university:

A Yale-trained art historian, McInnis turned to an artwork from the Yale University Art Gallery collection for answers, focusing on John Trumbull’s celebrated painting “The Battle of Bunker’s Hill.” The canvas marks that moment, 250 years ago in June, when a band of American rebels stood their ground on a hillside in Charlestown, then just north of Boston, against the might of the British military.

In Trumbull’s painting, the scene unfolds beneath acrid plumes of smoke as British forces breach the revolutionaries’ lines. Joseph Warren, an American major general, lies mortally wounded in the arms of a comrade. A redcoat tries to bayonet the fallen general — but British Major John Small has stepped in to stop him.

“In that moment, one man preserves the dignity of a dying foe with an unexpected gesture of compassion amid chaos,” McInnis said. “One man, taming the passions of war, chooses mercy. Chooses to see the man who was his friend, instead of the general of an opposing force.”

In highlighting Small’s intervention, McInnis said, Trumbull invites viewers to recognize a frequently overlooked kind of courage: The ability to show compassion to a bitter adversary.

“Compassion, as I suspect Major Small understood, is not the absence of conviction. It is not weakness,” she said. “And it is certainly not retreat. It is, in fact, an act of radical strength in its rarest form. It is the idea that even in our most consequential disagreements — that even when the stakes are as significant as life and liberty — we must find ways to recognize our common humanity.”

And displaying compassion does not mean avoiding conflict or denying differences, McInnis said.

“In a vibrant, pluralistic society, disagreement is inevitable, indeed welcomed,” she said in her speech, titled “Overcoming divides and embracing our shared humanity.”

“But what I would like to impress on you today is that compassion can coexist with our most deeply held beliefs.”

Here’s the full text of President McInnis’s speech.

Historically, I have to point out that Trumbull constructed his scene to convey just such a message. According to Alexander Garden, Maj. Small himself said that the artist “paid me the compliment of trying to save the life of Warren; but the fact is, that life had fled before I saw his remains.”

Also, Trumbull produced multiple copies of this scene with subtle differences. The image shown above from Yale is one of his preliminary studies. The university also owns a finished, full-color version, as do the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Wadsworth Athenaeum. (Notably, the colors aren’t the same on those two canvases, particularly in the flags Trumbull inserted into the scene.)

“Commemoration of the 135th anniversary of the battle of Lexington”

As a sort of “guest blogger” entry today I’m running an article that appeared in the 19 Apr 1910 Boston Herald reporting on an anniversary oration in Lexington by Rabbi Charles Fleischer (1871–1942), then of Temple Adath Israel of Boston.

Exercises Begin at Lexington

Rabbi Fleischer Delivers Address on “Americanizing America” and Criticises Conditions Prevailing at Present Here.

“Is America American? Are we as a people, and as individuals, democratic? Are our institutions democratic? Have we made any serious effort to organize our national life on the basis of democracy?” These were the questions asked, and answered in the negative, by Rabbi Charles Fleischer in an address at Lexington last night.

The occasion was the commemoration of the 135th anniversary of the battle of Lexington, at the town hall, by the Lexington Historical Society. Rabbi Fleischer’s address was on “Americanizing Americans.” He said in part:

“Let us see what this process of Americanizing and democratizing America implies. In politics it means, not only war on the machine and on boss rule, but it means an end to discrimination against sex, the actual institution of universal suffrage, female as well as male, this being implied in a political democracy, in which the ballot is the symbol of social status.

“Also it means the elimination of business from politics, the cutting away of that cancerous growth, the corruption of corporate influence, which threatens the integrity of our political democracy. We don’t want the business man as such in politics. Nor, on the other hand, is the tariff to be considered a political question, but an industrial problem.

“The Americanization of America further involves the democratization of industry to the end of distributing more equably (not equally, of course), the fruits of the co-operation between capital and labor. This is demanded by the situation, not only to promote economic justice, but still more is it needed in order to prevent our degenerating into the most corroding type of human society, a soulless plutocracy—already prefigured in our worship of the almighty dollar.[”]

I share this not because it offers information about the Revolutionary War but because it shows what at least some Americans of 115 years ago thought that American history pointed toward.

Charles Fleischer was a Reform rabbi—radical Reform, some might say. He left Temple Adath Israel the year following this address in order to start a non-sectarian movement he called “Sunday Commons.” Here’s a Commentary article about Fleischer written by Arthur Mann in 1954.

“It was not disturbed, nor was any of their property taken”

I’ve now quoted two nineteenth-century accounts from descendants of Elbridge Gerry, Azor Orne, and Jeremiah Lee (shown here) saying that British soldiers searched the tavern in Menotomy where they were staying on the night of 18–19 Apr 1775.

The three men, all delegates from Marblehead to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, fled out the back of the tavern and hid outside in the cold.

Less than a month later, Lee died of an illness, which his family attributed to the stress of that night. That obviously made the men’s choices in the early hours of 19 April carry more weight.

There are, however, big problems with the story that part of the British army column searched Ethan Wetherby’s Black Horse tavern that night.

First, Gen. Thomas Gage’s orders for the march said nothing about looking for committee of safety members along the way. His intelligence files have no information on the whereabouts of those committee men. Rather, the general wanted his troops to get to Concord as quickly as possible.

Furthermore, none of the British army officers who wrote reports on that march described searching a tavern in west Cambridge, or anywhere else on their way out.

Finally, no contemporaneous accounts from the provincial side—neither depositions, letters, nor newspaper articles—complained about this search, either. And people made a lot of complaints in the wake of the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

There might be a seed of truth at the start of the story. Both versions say a small number of soldiers approached the tavern after the vanguard passed by. It’s conceivable that some redcoats turned aside to use the tavern’s well or outhouse before catching up with the column. But the lore goes much further than that, saying soldiers spent “more than an hour” searching every room in the building, “even the beds.”

The lore offers no corroborating evidence for that detail, such as the landlord’s testimony. In fact, the nineteenth-century versions specify that the committee men couldn’t point to anything missing as a sign that the soldiers had visited their room:

• “a valuable watch of Mr. Gerry’s, which was under his pillow, was not disturbed.”
• “Mr. Gerry’s watch was under his pillow, but it was not disturbed, nor was any of their property taken.”

Ordinarily if everything in a room looks the same as before, we treat that as a sign it wasn’t searched.

By 1916, Thomas Amory Lee might have spotted that weakness in the traditional tale because his article “Colonel Jeremiah Lee: Patriot” for the Essex Institute Historical Collections stated: “Gerry’s silver watch and French great coat disappeared.” That’s a direct contradiction of earlier Gerry family lore, and even that new version said Orne’s watch went untouched.

Given the totality of evidence, I think the Marblehead delegates were more worried about arrest than Gerry’s exchange of notes with John Hancock let on. Seeing hundreds of British soldiers outside their inn, perhaps seeing some of those soldiers coming closer to the building, they bolted for an exit.

There are reports Gerry and perhaps Lee sustained injuries in their flight. Then they stayed outside in the cold until it felt safe to return. Waiting for the whole army column to pass by and go out of sight may have felt like an hour, but it probably took less time than that.

Finally the three men came back inside, grateful to have escaped arrest. Then came news of the shooting at Lexington, the redcoat reinforcement column, the outbreak of war. The delegates fled the tavern again, this time with their possessions. Lee fell ill soon after, and died on 10 May.

Looking back on the episode decades later, Gerry and Orne—and perhaps even more so their and Lee’s descendants—would have resisted the thought that those sacrifices weren’t really necessary. That the three Marblehead men could have stayed in their warm bedroom, watched the glittering troops march by, and never faced arrest. That Lee might have lived longer.

So they convinced themselves that running outside had been necessary. Not just prudent but necessary. Which meant believing that soldiers came into the tavern and searched the bedrooms, leaving no sign of their presence.

“The soldiers searched for them, for more than an hour”

On 27 Apr 1861, the Cambridge Chronicle published an article headlined “Revolutionary Incident.” and signed “C.F.O.”

The first paragraph listed its “authentic and reliable sources,” including “the Records of the Provincial Congress, Austin’s Life of Gerry, and the niece of Col. Gerry, daughter in law of Col. Orne, and the grand-daughter of Col. Lee.”

“C.F.O.” was Caroline Frances Orne (1818–1905, shown here), a poet, local historian, and Cambridge’s librarian for seventeen years.

She was a granddaughter of Sally (Gerry) Orne (d. 1846), who was “the niece of Col. [Elbridge] Gerry, [and] daughter in law of Col. [Azor] Orne.” I believe “the grand-daughter of Col. [Jeremiah] Lee” was most likely either Louise Lee Tracy (1787–1869) or Helen Tracy (1796–1865).

Thus, this article was based on family lore, not first-hand witnesses, and the author was herself a member of the intertwined family. She consulted books like the Journals of Each Provincial Congress of Massachusetts and James T. Austin’s biography of his father-in-law, but used those to fill out a story she’d undoubtedly heard from her grandmother.

Caroline Frances Orne wrote of the British army march in April 1775:

Among the objects of this march one was to seize the persons of some of the influential members of the Provincial Congress, to hold them as hostages, or send them to England for trial as traitors, and thus to terrify and dismay their associates and friends.

Among others, Col. [John] Hancock, Col. [Azor] Orne and Mr. Elbridge Gerry had been in session, on the day preceding the march of the troops, in the village of Menotomy, then part of the township of Cambridge, on the road to Lexington, at [Ethan] Wetherby’s Black-Horse Tavern.

Col. Hancock, Samuel Adams, and some others went over to Lexington to pass the night, while Messrs. Gerry, Lee, and Orne remained at the village. The appearance of some officers of the royal army who passed through the village just before dark, attracted the attention of these gentlemen, and a message of warning was at once despatched to Col. Hancock. Of their personal danger they did not entertain an idea, but retired quietly to rest, without taking the least precaution.

As the British advance came into view of the dwelling-house, they arose and looked out of the windows, and in the bright moonlight saw the glitter of the bayonets, and marked the regular march of the disciplined troops. The front had passed, and the centre was opposite the house, when a signal was given, and an officer and a file of men marched towards it. Then the apprehension of danger first struck them, and they hastened to escape.

Rushing down stairs, Col. Gerry in his perturbation, was about to open the door in the face of the British, when the agitated landlord exclaimed, “For God’s sake, gentlemen, don’t open that door[.]” He then hurried them out at the back door, into a cornfield, where the old stalks still remained. Hastening along, Col. Gerry soon fell. “Stop, Orne,” he called in low, urgent voice, “Stop for me till I can get up; I have hurt myself.”

“Lie still,” replied Col Orne, in the same low tone, “Throw yourself flat on the ground,” proceeding at once to do the same himself, in which he was imitated by Col Lee.

This manoeuvre saved them. The soldiers searched for them, for more than an hour. Every apartment of the house was searched “for the members of the Rebel Congress,” and even the beds in which they had lain. Mr. Gerry’s watch was under his pillow, but it was not disturbed, nor was any of their property taken. The troops finally left, and the gentlemen returned, suffering greatly from cold, for it was a cold frosty night, and they were but slightly clothed.

Col. Lee never recovered from the effects of the exposure. He was attacked, soon after, by a severe fever, and died, May 10th, 1775, universally lamented. The others lived to render most important services to their country.

Three years later, the Rev. Samuel Abbot Smith (1829-1865) put a shorter version of the same story into his West Cambridge on the Nineteenth of April, 1775. He credited “Miss Orne, who received this account from the lips of her grandmother, who was niece of Elbridge Gerry, and daughter-in-law of Col. Orne.”

TOMORROW: The watch under the pillow.

“It means exactly what it says, it’s a declaration”

Back in early March, following reports that Donald Trump was demanding a Declaration of Independence to hang in the Oval Office, I wrote:

Donald Trump doesn’t want the Declaration in his office to honor that text or its values. He wants a rare, beloved national asset brought to him to glorify himself.

Eventually Trump did get a printed Declaration behind a curtain in his heavily guarded workspace, an odd way for it to be “shared and put on display,” as a White House publicist had claimed.

This past week the television journalist Terry Moran visited the Oval Office and asked Trump what the Declaration meant to him. Trump confirmed my reading of his character by offering this ignorant blather:

Well, it means exactly what it says, it’s a declaration, it’s a declaration of unity and love and respect and it means a lot and it’s something very special to our country.

Trump couldn’t explain the meaning of the Declaration, its historical significance, or its relevance to today. His comments reveal his desperation to believe that a rare copy’s presence in his office shows the country feels “unity and love and respect” for him.

Last month the White House issued a proclamation on the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, as a Boston 1775 commenter alerted me. This document was obviously not written by Trump since it was focused on the historical event, coherent, and grammatical.

Much of that proclamation landed within the realm of common accuracy. In other words, it made the usual mistakes: that Paul Revere rode to Concord, that the “shot heard ’round the world” happened at Lexington, and so on. But a lot of other cursorily researched descriptions of the 19th of April make those same mistakes.

This White House document, however, made some mistakes all its own. It described the opening skirmish as “The British ambush at Lexington.” It said that at the North Bridge “the startled British opened fire, killing 49 Americans.” The correct number is 2. (The number 49 refers to the total number of provincial dead over the whole day.) Obviously the team drawing public salaries to prepare that proclamation for signature didn’t value fact-checking.

Incidents like these show how hollow the Trump administration’s claim to value American history really is. Behind the rhetorical trumpery, the White House is trying to defund our national parks, museums, libraries, universities, humanities research, public schools, and public television. The only forms of history its occupant shows any sign of valuing are statuary and birthday parades.