“Altho’ he made his living by crying, he was always in a most jovial mood”

Last week History.com published Elizabeth Yuko’s article “Town Criers Were the Original Social Media.”

The scope of this survey ranges from medieval period to the early nineteenth century, in Europe and various parts of America. Yuko quoted my observations on the town criers of Boston.

The 1796 Boston directory listed only John Weare as a crier, a post that Laurie Halse Anderson found he’d held since 1782. But Weare died in 1800. The 1809 Boston directory listed James Wilson as the town crier, living “over 23 Cornhill” near the center of town.

In Old Boston Town: Early in This Century (1883), James Hale wrote:

The steps of the Exchange Coffee House were much used by James Wilson, the town crier, to announce the auction sales of Whitwell & Bond, Thomas K. Jones & Co., David Hale (afterwards of N. Y. Journal Commerce), and other auctioneers, who did chiefly congregate in Kilby street, near State.

Jimmy was a great humorist, and altho’ he made his living by crying, he was always in a most jovial mood. He generally closed the formal announcement of an auction by some quizzical remark to a bystander, for he knew everybody, and was on familiar terms with all sorts and conditions of men.

Jimmy Wilson was often at his post about nine o’clock in the evening, ringing his bell loudly for several minutes to collect a large crowd, and then announcing a lost child, or a lost pocket-book. His account of the agony of bereaved parents would be heart-rending, when he would suddenly explode a joke which would start the crowd off, roaring.

In Rambles in Old Boston (1886), Edward Griffin Porter added:

James Wilson…for nearly half a century was better known probably among men, women, and children than any other person in the town. He was a short, thick-set, red-faced man, with keen eyes and a powerful voice. Although commonly known as the crier, he was a brush-maker by trade, and a good one too. The writer has seen a pair of clothes-brushes made by him, which have been in constant use in Boston for over seventy years, and are as good apparently as ever.

Wilson’s shop was in the basement of the Exchange Coffee-House, fronting upon what is now Congress Square. At one period he sold ale, after the English fashion, in pewter mugs, and had a foaming “toby” painted on his door to indicate it; but his chief sign was this bell in hand, said to be a correct copy of the bell he carried so many years.

Wilson’s retailing establishment eventually developed into today’s Bell in Hand tavern.

“I hereby revoke all and every Sentence”

Recently I came across this advertisement in the 13 Oct 1768 Boston News-Letter:

Whereas the Wife of me the Subscriber has eloped from me, and I am apprehensive she will run me in Debt. I hereby forbid all Persons from trusting her on my Account, as I will not pay any Debt she may contract from the Date hereof;—and all Person are forbid harbouring, entertaining or carrying her off at the Peril of the Law.

Thomas Baker.
Boston, October 4 1768

That was a standard legal formula for abjuring an estranged spouse’s obligations, usually deployed by men. Can this marriage be saved?

Evidently it could. This appeared in the News-Letter on 10 November:

WHEREAS I the Subscriber here undermentioned has through the Innovations and groundless Suspicions of ill-minded Persons, treated my Wife Elizabeth Baker in a scandalous manner, by publishing her in the public Prints, and by the Cryer of this Town; be it known to all persons whatever, that I hereby revoke all and every Sentence that has been printed or said by the Cryer of this Town in my Behalf.

Boston, November 3, 1768.

Witness my Hand, THOMAS BAKER.

It is further expected that no Person will attempt casting any Reflections on my Wife for any Thing that is past, as they will answer the Consequence.

Alas, I haven’t found any more about this Thomas and Elizabeth Baker. In fact, as of January 1769, there was another couple in Boston with exactly the same names, which rather confuses matters.

“The Cryer proclaiming at every Corner”

Yesterday I quoted John Rowe’s brief and disapproving description of a political parade in Boston on 24 July 1770.

A more detailed and positive account appeared in the 13 Aug 1770 New-York Gazette, an extract of a letter from Boston dated 26 July:

The Sons got a Union [flag], on which they inscribed, Immediate Exportation without Exception, on Royal Paper [19" x 24"]: This was preceeded by the Cryer [probably Thomas Webber], and a French-Horn, and immediately followed by two Drums; the most reputable North-End Sons being principal Tradesmen, &c.

To these succeeded two Pair of Colours, and two more drums, and thus proceeded the whole Length of the Town, the Cryer proclaiming at every Corner, The Voice of the Trade and the People will be attended to this Afternoon at 3’Clock.——Now is the Crisis---Will you be enslaved by a Handful of Importers. Yea, or Nay? The Answer, NO! with the loudest Acclamations.—

The Meeting was very full, and a unanimous Vote passed, That whereas the Committee of Merchants had received a Letter from four Gentlemen in New-York, taking upon them the Stile of the Committee of Merchants of New-York, and that there was not sufficient Reason to believe, that the Contents of the said Letter (which was read in my Absence) were the Sentiments of the Committee of Merchants in New-York, the said Letter be torn to Pieces in the most indignant Manner, and committed to the Winds; and a Standing Committee was directed to write a respectful Letter to the remaining Seventeen Members, acquainting them with the above Vote, and a subsequent one, which obtained unanimously for supporting the [non-importation] Agreement.

A Committee was then appointed to wait upon all the Importers in the late Vessels, and take their Orders to the Truckmen, to take the Goods on board, and the Meeting was adjourned to Wednesday. Yesterday the Committee reported they had made great Progress in the Business, and did not doubt it would be happily effected in a short Time. Thus stands mercantile Matters here.

This correspondent urged colleagues in New York to go back to the boycott, insisting that they were hurting their trade relations with Connecticut and New Jersey, and that doing so would produce major results in Britain. “On Boston, my Friend, you can depend,” the letter promised.

To be sure, the same letter also reported this news from the shipmaster who had carried Boston’s Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre and other documents to London:

Capt. [Andrew] Gardner says, there were not less than a Thousand Scotchmen in London, who had come there with Design to embark for America, to take Possession of the forfeited Estates. What fine pickings this would be; but how sad the Disappointment! No wonder these honest Fellows hate us for behaving in such a Manner as to defeat such glorious Prospects!

Rumors of outsiders coming to take your property were a powerful political weapon, then and since.

The same day this merchant sent his letter to New York, the Whigs announced in the Boston News-Letter that all the importers who had stored their goods had indeed agreed to “Immediate Exportation.” I’m dubious—the letter said the committee had only “made great Progress.” But the Whigs had to maintain a public show of unanimity.

TOMORROW: Defections north and south?

“Expected that you personally appear at Liberty Tree”

Richard Clarke (1711-1795, shown here in a detail from a family portrait by his son-in-law John Singleton Copley) was one of Boston’s leading tea merchants.

Clarke’s son Jonathan happened to be in London when Parliament passed the Tea Act of 1773. That law mandated the East India Company to designate exclusive agents, or wholesalers, for tea in the major North American ports. Jonathan Clarke secured one of those valuable slots for the family firm, Richard Clarke & Sons.

News soon got back to Boston. Politicians immediately began to organize resistance to the new law. The idea that “taxation without representation is tyranny” was firmly established in people’s minds, and people knew that the tea tax would go toward salaries for Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, royally appointed judges, and the Customs service.

In the middle of November 1773, the Clarkes sent a long letter to their London contact, Abraham Dupuis, describing the pressure on them not to import tea. One part of the letter said:

in the morning of the 2nd instant [i.e., of this month], about one o’clock, we were roused out of our sleep by a violent knocking at the door of our house, and on looking out of the window we saw (for the moon shone very bright) two men in the courtyard. One of them said he had brought us a letter from the country. A servant took the letter of him at the door, the contents of which were as follows:

Boston, 1st Nov., 1773.

Richard Clarke & Son:

The Freemen of this Province understand, from good authority, that there is a quantity of tea consigned to your house by the East India Company, which is destructive to the happiness of every well-wisher to his country. It is therefore expected that you personally appear at Liberty Tree, on Wednesday next, at twelve o’clock at noon day, to make a public resignation of your commission, agreeable to a notification of this day for that purpose.

Fail not upon your peril. O. C.

Two letters of the same tenor were sent in the same manner to the other factors [i.e., wholesalers].

On going abroad we found a number of printed notifications posted up in various parts of the town, of which the following is a copy:

To the Freemen of this and the other Towns in the Province.

Gentlemen:

You are desired to meet at Liberty Tree, next Wednesday, at twelve o’clock at noon day, then and there to hear the persons to whom the tea, shipped by the East India Company, is consigned, make a public resignation of their office as consignees, upon oath. And also swear that they will reship any teas that may be consigned to them by the said Company, by the first vessel failing for London.

Boston, Novr. 1st, 1773. O. C., Secrey.

In this you may observe a delusory design to create a public belief that the factors had consented to resign their trust on Wednesday, the 3d inst., on which day we were summoned by the above-mentioned letter to appear at Liberty Tree, at 11 o’clock, A.M.

All the bells of the meetinghouses for public worship were set a-ringing and continued ringing till twelve; the town cryer went thro’ the town summoning the people to assemble at Liberty Tree.

By these methods, and some more secret ones made use of by the authors of this design, a number of people, supposed by some to be about 500, and by others more, were collected at the time and place mentioned in the printed notification. They consisted chiefly of people of the lowest rank, very few reputable tradesmen, as we are informed, appeared amongst them. There were indeed two merchants, reputed rich, and the selectmen of the town, but these last say they went to prevent disorder.

Summoning a royal appointee to publicly resign was an act that hearkened back to the anti-Stamp Act protests of 1765, when the great elm in the South End was first dubbed Liberty Tree. Since some of those protests had ended in property-damaging riots, the invitation carried a clear threat of violence.

Another ominous historical allusion in these notes appears in the initials at the bottom: “O. C.” seems to refer to Oliver Cromwell, the Puritan leader who overthrew Charles I in the 1640s. Most of the British Empire had come to see that revolution as having gone too far. New England was one of the few parts of the empire that still admired Cromwell and what he stood for.

TOMORROW: The tea agents’ response to this summons.

A Look at Boston’s Lost and Found

Last month at the African American Intellectual History blog, Jared Hardesty wrote about a surviving scrap of colonial Boston town records and what they reveal about the town’s black population.

The story starts in the Boston Public Library’s Rare Books and Manuscripts room:

Pasted onto the pages of the nineteenth-century bound volume were eighteenth-century town crier documents kept by Arthur Hill. Hill’s records consist of lists of goods lost and found, or “taken up,” by Boston’s residents between 1736 and 1748. . . .

Hill made fairly meticulous notes as to who found what goods. He recorded occupation and relationships. He also recorded race, often using the term “Negro” to describe people of African descent who took up lost items. Under that or related terminology (“Negro Fellow,” etc.), Hill recorded 36 items found by black Bostonians. That would mean they found 9.8% of the total items recovered, similar to Boston’s black population during this time period, which was roughly 10-12% of the total population. . . .

A wide range of goods appear throughout the records, but one category stands out. Of the 368 total items reported, 87 or 23.6% related to maritime activities and included naval stores, ship pieces, and, the largest in this category, small watercraft such as canoes. This trend should not come as a surprise as Boston was a bustling port city with a daily flurry of maritime activity. Other goods reported in large numbers were bulk amounts of cloth, hand tools, and livestock.

What is interesting, however, is that in the records concerning black men and women do not reflect the larger record. Only one, “Martha Grover’s Negro” found a small boat. Another found a handsaw. All of the others either found consumer goods such as gold buttons, jewelry, pocket books, and clothing items, or cash. . . .

Take for example “Joseph Williams Negro” who found “One Gold Ring” in June 1738. Did he report his find because he was attempting to be a good community member? Perhaps. Yet, we also have to consider he told Hill about the ring because, as an enslaved black man, owning a piece of gold jewelry would have brought suspicion about where and how he acquired it, forcing him to go to Hill to protect himself and his reputation.

Hardesty is the author of the new book Unfreedom: Slavery and Dependence in Eighteenth-Century Boston.

Samuel Adams on Samuel Adams

Yesterday I mentioned James Spear Loring’s Hundred Boston Orators, an oft-reprinted collection of profiles of prominent Bostonians from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. As his biographical subjects Loring chose the men who delivered public orations in Boston on the anniversary of the Massacre, Fourth of July, and other notable dates.

Gov. Samuel Adams never actually delivered such an oration. He wasn’t a powerful public speaker, preferring to make his arguments in print and to organize political strategy. But that Adams was so important that Loring had to discuss him along with the orators.

In that discussion, Loring interviewed the younger Samuel Adams, the wire-worker known for speaking at town meetings in the early 1800s and for being old enough to have lived through the Revolution. The resulting passage said:

Samuel Adams was emphatically the man of the people; and the editor, who has had conversation with his namesake, the ancient towncrier, now ninety-two years of age and with clear memory, was informed that Adams once remarked to him,—“We, the people, are like hens laying eggs; when they hatch, you must take care of the chickens. You are a young man, Samuel, and as you grow old, you must abide by our proceedings.”

At another time, our political patriarch observed to him,—“It is often stated that I am at the head of the Revolution, whereas a few of us merely lead the way as the people follow, and we can go no further than we are backed up by them; for, if we attempt to advance any further, we make no progress, and may lose our labor in defeat.”

Samuel Adams was ever at the head of Boston deputations before the Revolution, and conducted the correspondence with patriots in remote places; or, to adopt the language of the venerable town-crier, “Samuel Adams did the writing, and John Hancock paid the postage.”

Those quotations, especially the second, seem to reflect the younger Adams’s democratic politics. But they also seem characteristic of the older Adams. John C. Miller quoted the second quotation in his 1936 biography while the wire-worker’s remark about Adams and Hancock became “a popular saying” in S. A. Drake’s Our Colonial Homes (1894).

TOMORROW: So what did Samuel “Rat-trap” Adams do in the Revolution?

Wire-Worker Adams at Boston’s Last Town Meetings

The wire-worker Samuel Adams was a prominent character in nineteenth-century Boston, as Kathryn Griffith described in her recent profile for the Bostonian Society.

He started the century as town crier before going into the business of manufacturing screens and other wire objects. Later he became an indefatigable voice on the political left.

In 1884 James Mascarene Hubbard delivered a paper to the Bostonian Society about Boston’s transition from town to city in the early 1820s. His description of a town meeting in Faneuil Hall over the turn of the year 1822 offers glimpses of this Samuel Adams, as filtered through the Daily Advertiser:

[On whether to relabel Boston as a city.] Finally a hearing was obtained for Mr. Samuel Adams, wire-worker, that is, a maker of rat-traps, and late town-crier, who made a characteristic speech amid malicious “cries of Louder” although the orator appeared to labor excessively at his lungs. His opening words were, “Fellow citizens, you must consider me as on the brink of an eternal world,“ [Adams was then in his early sixties, but he would live three more decades] and the burden of his speech was, “Names is nothing. Only let us have Boston, and I care not what you call it.” Later on in the debate, which from this time took a more serious turn, he “rose and moved that the word ‘Boston’ be added to the word ‘city,’” to the great merriment of the assembly. . . .

[On what to call the new city’s top official.] Mr. Adams made a fresh appearance in the character of a New England Dogberry. “He was opposed to the term Mayor. A mare is a horse, and he had as lief be called a horse or an ass as a mare. He preferred the name President. There was dignity in the sound. He should count it an honor to be called President, but had he the wisdom of Solomon and the riches of the East, he would not accept the office to be called a Mare.” . . .

[On whether to hold elections in the neighborhoods or at Faneuil Hall.] As the irrepressible Adams puts it: “Many persons can’t attend here. For instance a journeyman who is in your employ. They feel so delicate in your employ, they are afraid of offending you. They are the sinners [sinews] of the State.” . . .

On the clause authorizing the City Council to sell or lease the property of the city,…Mr. Adams [was heard] to say, among other things, that “a new set of men might get together under the capacity of selling city property.” . . .

Our final quotation shall be from a speech by Mr. Adams, whose office as Town-crier seems to have given him a power and persistence of lungs which no cries of “Question” could overcome. “I would examine the act,” he exclaimed; “Like David of old, I would not give sleep to my eyes nor slumber to my eyelids until I had pondered it well. I have done it, have lain awake all night ruminating on these here things.”

Hubbard suggested that Adams belonged in a group he called ”mushroom town-meeting orators, and weak heads.” He showed more respect for upper-class figures, including such men as Benjamin Russell, William Tudor, James T. Austin, future mayor Josiah Quincy, and S. A. Wells, descendant and biographer of the other Samuel Adams.

Boston’s business elite had been pushing to incorporate the town as a city like New York since the early 1700s. The populace had long pushed back, preferring the town-meeting form of government, which didn’t turn over power to just a few elected men.

Wire-worker Adams appears to have been suspicious about concentrating power, to judge by his support for neighborhood elections and poorly expressed worry about a conspiracy to sell public property. But he also seems to have been fairly resigned to the change. Boston had grown to more than 40,000 people, nearly three times its size when he was a boy, and a city charter may have seemed necessary.

Ironically, by 1835 the term “wire-worker“ became a synonym for “wire-puller”—someone who manipulated politics or government from behind the scenes. Samuel Adams was a real wire-worker, and he never seems to have held significant power, despite all his efforts.

TOMORROW: What did this Samuel Adams do in the Revolution?

Samuel Adams the Wire-worker

In two postings on the Bostonian Society’s blog, Kathryn Griffith just profiled Samuel Adams the wire-worker, source of the striped cloth in the society’s collection that’s become known as the “Liberty Tree Flag.”

Harris wrote about this man:

Samuel Adams was born in 1759, reportedly in the North End, to a book-binder named Benjamin Adams and his wife Abigail. Samuel had an older brother, Abraham, who became a leather-dresser and a well-respected citizen. Samuel married Catharine Fenno in Boston in 1781. They had 8 children together, including a son named for Benjamin Franklin, and a daughter, also Catharine, who married William Fenno, and through whose descendents the flag passed to John Fernald.

Adams moved around quite a bit according to the Boston city directories and the advertisements he placed in newspapers. He had several occupations during his lifetime; in fact it seems he came late to wire-working. In the 1790s Adams owned a wharf at the end of Cross Street from which he sold various goods. In the early 1800s he became the town crier, and printed a number of interesting advertisements announcing things he had found throughout the town. As a wire worker, his business was known as the Sign of the Flying Man and Fender Manufactory, and his advertisements included beautiful designs of his work. His work in wire also earned him the nickname, “Rat-Trap Adams,” by which he was known affectionately (or not, depending on the source).

Because Adams was a minor public figure, his nineteenth-century life is fairly well documented. Indeed, his death in 1855 was reported across the country. One California newspaper ran this notice:

Death of a Veteran Citizen.—Mr. Samuel Adams, one of the oldest inhabitants of Boston, died at his residence on the 21st March, at the advanced age of about 96 years. The Traveller says: “He was a witness, and no doubt sometimes a participant, in the many exciting street scenes which occurred in Boston previous to the actual commencement of hostilities. He had in his possession as a relic of those glorious days, a flag which was hoisted on the liberty pole near Essex street, and which has of late been frequently displayed in this city. Mr. Adams was a mechanic—a wire worker by trade, and followed his business until within a few years. In religious matters he was an atheist, and in olden times a close attendant upon all town meetings and public gatherings, where his rather ultra democratic sentiments caused his opponents to taunt him with being a ‘French Jacobin.’”

Unfortunately, this Samuel Adams’s eighteenth-century activities, and his connection to Liberty Tree, are much less certain.

TOMORROW: Young Samuel Adams.

A Kidnapping in Colonial Boston

Yesterday I described how when Boston families realized that one of their boys was lost, the public criers would go through the streets, calling out the news. (Girls, who were expected to stick closer to home, don’t seem to have gotten lost so often.)

An interesting example appeared in the Boston News-Letter on 27 Oct 1768:

Monday last in the Afternoon, a Child of about 3 Years of Age, Son of Mr. Benjamin Goodwin, at the North-End, being missing from School, a Search was made, and the Cryer employed about the Town, but no Intelligence of it was had till late in the Evening, when upon its being cry’d in the Common, a Soldier’s Wife gave Information that such a Child had been bro’t to their Tent by a Woman belonging to the Town, and the Child being weary was lain down and asleep;

upon which the Child was carried home to its Parents, and a Search was made for the Woman, who was taken up; and proves to be one who had been released from Goal the Saturday before:

she kidnapp’d the Child, taken the Buckles out of its Shoes and Buttons, and intended to have disposed of it, or something worse, as the Child said it was going to be carried into the Water.

This search came soon after British regiments had arrived in Boston and camped on the Common. If a woman associated with those troops had kidnapped a child, the Boston Whigs would have trumpeted the story as an example of the danger of turning the town into a military garrison. As it was, a soldier’s wife helped to rescue and return a child kidnapped by a “Woman belonging to the Town.”

Another intriguing detail in this story is that this three-year-old went to school. That must have been a private reading school rather than one of the five town schools, which enrolled boys starting about age seven.

The Descendants of Francis Le Baron of Plymouth, Mass. suggests that this particular three-year-old was Charles Goodwin, born 3 Aug 1765. He died at age eighteen in St. Augustine, Florida, so he did wander.

(The photo above was taken by kthypryn during a Revolutionary era reenactment on Boston Common.)

Boston’s Town Criers and Lost Boys

One of the most important functions of the town crier, I was surprised to learn when I investigated the office, was to act as a municipal Lost & Found Department. People who had found things would bring them to the crier, who would file them safely until anyone came to claim them. People who had lost things would pay the crier to make announcements about that property. And when a child was lost, the public crier sprang into action—though he apparently expected a suitable fee.

Several times I’ve quoted from John Greenwood (1760-1819), who grew up in Boston’s North End, became a Continental Army fifer at age fifteen, and eventually became George Washington’s dentist. The preface to the published edition of his memoir, written by a descendant, says:

The earliest incident connected with John Greenwood’s life is what, when quite young, he was taken out one day for a walk, escorted by a negro boy belonging to the family; when, attracted by the music and brilliant show of some passing soldiers, they followed along until the tired child was told to wait awhile and rest in a neighboring shop. Oblivious as to where he had laid his charge, the negro finally returned home empty-handed, and Johnny had to be recovered by the aid of the town-crier.

That descendant suggests, “This incident evidently refers to the landing, on Saturday, October 1, 1768, of some regular troops.” However, Johnny would have been eight years old then, and might have been able to get home himself. I wonder if this happened a few years earlier when troops passed through Boston as part of the French and Indian War.

Lost children were still a major part of the town crier’s business when tavern-keeper James Wilson held the office in the early 1800s, according to this account from Rambles in Old Boston, published in 1887:

Never was a man better fitted for a town-crier. Nature had endowed him with ready wit, a good flow of language, an imposing presence, and a voice which could touch the tenderest feelings of the heart by its pathetic tones, or, if occasion required, could alarm a whole neighborhood like the roar of a bull. His custom was to appear on the street, and ring three times to attract attention. Then, putting his bell under his arm, he would produce a paper, and announce with great solemnity that somebody’s cow had strayed away, or that certain articles of value were missing.

Occasionally his cry would be like this: “Child lost! There’s a child lost! A boy, between the ages of five and six years, left his home on Salem Street about seven o’clock last night, and has not since been heard from. When last seen, he had on a black cloth cap and a short red coat. He had light hair and blue eyes. Whoever can give information of such a boy, either to his anxious parents at No. — Salem Street, or at the crier’s office, will be suitably rewarded.”

Wilson would then ring his bell again three times, and move on to repeat the process in other parts of the town.

Not every parent thought Wilson’s work was as valuable as he thought himself, as shown by this item in the Boston selectmen’s minutes on 24 Mar 1819:

The Chairman informed that Mr. Galen Holmes had complained to him, that the town crier had charged an exorbitant fee for crying two children that were lost some time since;—that he (the Chairman[)] had sent for Mr. Wilson and made enquiry on the subject;—that he had advised Mr. Wilson to return Mr. Holmes one half the sum which he had received, which he consented to do.—That Mr. Holmes had since received from Mr. Wilson two notes couched in very reprehensible language—and requested the Board would take the subject under consideration and afford him such redress as the nature of the offence demanded.

The board ordered Holmes and Wilson to appear before them the following Wednesday, but—alas!—there’s no record of what happened then.

TOMORROW: A kidnapped child?

“Accompanied by a drum and the common cryer”

In his 1845 history of Newbury and Newburyport, Joshua Coffin described an event he dated to 15 Nov 1774:

One Holland Shaw, having been detected in stealing a shirt, was immediately taken before a sort of ex tempore court, convened for the occasion, was sentenced as follows, namely, ‘that he parade through the principal streets of the town, accompanied by the town crier with his drum.’ The sentence was forthwith put into execution.

The town crier, William Douglass, with his brass barreled drum, and the thief with the shirt, headed the procession, which took up its line of march. The paper of that day informs us, ‘that he was compelled to proclaim his crime and produce the evidence, which was the shirt with the sleeves tied round his neck, the other part on his back,’ The proclamation, which he was compelled to utter with a loud voice, was, ‘I stole this shirt, which is tied round my neck from Mr. Joseph Coffin’s house in Salisbury, and I am very sorry for it.’

Having been thus marched through the principal streets, and satisfied the demands of this new court of justice, he was dismissed, and never, after that night, was he seen in Newburyport.

Coffin quotes from a “paper of that day,” which sent me to my favorite newspaper database to look for the original article. After several fruitless searches, I came across an item from the 16 Feb 1774 Essex Journal, published in Newburyport.

It’s a letter to the newspaper signed “Philo Publis Justicia” (Love of Public Justice). Most of the text is taken up with mild complaints about local magistrates (“very often out of town”) and more serious complaints about how the London government was paying salaries to the judges on the Massachusetts Superior Court, thus making them independent of the local people. And it closes:

it seem the public have lost confidence in the executive part of government since the Judges are pensioned by our step-mother for yesterday the posse assisted prestine justice in the arrest of a theif who had stole a shirt, and upon his trial before her bar confessed;

upon which, (similar to her sentences in other parts of the province, for justice is always the same every where) ordered the convict to parade the length [?] of this town, accompanied by a drum and the common cryer, who at the corner of each street [?] should proclaim his crime and produce the evidence, which was the shirt, with the sleeves tied round his neck, the other part on his back, making the appearance of a stripped jackcoat, which sentence was punctually performed to the satisfaction of the court.

This item doesn’t contain any of the names that Coffin listed—those of the thief, the victim, and the crier. It also suggests that the “common cryer” rather than the thief made the announcements of the crime, and that the “drum” was separate from that crier, most likely one of the militia regiment’s usual drummers.

So where did Joshua Coffin get the details he wove around into the newspaper account? The victim was his great-grandfather, so the full story might have been part of his family lore.

The photograph above shows the house, built starting in 1678, where both Joseph Coffin and Joshua Coffin lived. It’s now owned by Historic New England. The image comes courtesy of Newbury 375, which is preparing to celebrate the 375th anniversity of the founding of Newbury next year.

TOMORROW: More town criers at work.

More on Town Criers and Town Government

A look at Robert Seybolt’s Town Officials of Colonial Boston confirmed what I’d surmised back here: originally the job of town crier was one of Boston’s elective town offices, but it changed to being an appointment of the selectmen.

Specifically, this happened after the meeting on 9 Mar 1702. Bostonians voted then to make Thomas Davis, Robert Shelston, Gabriel Warner, and Ezekiel Gardner their town criers, and they never voted on candidates again.

Seventeen years later, the meeting instructed the Boston selectmen to “Introduce a Cryer” in Shelston’s place, and from then on men applied to the selectmen for official approval to do the job for whoever paid them.

That privatization of what was once government work makes it a challenge to find evidence of criers’ activities in the Revolutionary period. For example, I’ve seen statements that a Boston town crier spread word of a public meeting at Liberty Tree on 1 Nov 1773, during the tea crisis. However, I haven’t seen those statements in contemporaneous sources, such as newspapers; the trail goes back only to the mid-1800s.

It’s possible that the public crier was such a familiar part of daily life in the Revolutionary period that people didn’t feel a need to record his activities. Or it’s possible that when nostalgic Americans looked back on the Revolution, they added details that they considered authentically historic, like those vanished criers. In that regard, the image above, showing a town crier in a cocked hat, almost certainly dates from the late nineteenth century.

TOMORROW: A case study from Newbury.

Glimpses of Boston’s Town Criers

There are only sparse records about Boston’s town criers, even though they were licensed by the selectmen, as I described yesterday. I think that’s because they were essentially private businessmen, making announcements for whoever would pay them, rather than public officials.

John Tucker was Boston’s crier from before 1688 to his death in 1695. Historian Annie Haven Thwing reported that he applied for the job with two qualifications:

• “having been educated unto letters,” so he could keep records as the law demanded. (Though Charles Prosser, the New York crier in 1766, was unable to sign his name.)
• “being weake in Body,” so he needed a job with no heavy lifting, or else he might become a charity case for the town.

I suspect that being a town crier was usually a way to supplement income from another job, such as keeping an inn with one’s family.

On 13 Nov 1753, the Boston selectmen made the following appointment:

Voted, that Mr. John Jenkins be and here by is appointed public Cryer within the Town of all money Goods & Things lost, & he is ordered to keep an exact account of all such Money Goods & Things he shall Cry the time when and the person that shall employ him to cry the same and return such account to the Town Clerk once in three months.

Alas, there were at least two men named John Jenkins active in Boston at this time. One was baptized at Christ Church on 11 June 1727, the son of Robert and Elizabeth Jenkins, which would make him twenty-six when the selectmen made their appointment.

On 25 July 1748, one John Jenkins married a widow named Prudence (Marion) Taylor at Christ Church. They had a growing family: Elizabeth (1750), John (1753), Jeremiah (1755), Lewis (1757), and Prudence (1759).

Another John Jenkins and his wife Sarah had children Benjemin (1759) and Mary (1762) baptized at Christ Church. And there were also couples named John and Mary Jenkins in Boston slightly before and after this period, attending other churches.

In addition, in 1746 the selectmen refused John Jenkins of Paddy’s Alley from having a license to sell liquor. In May 1763 a John Jenkins was one of the “Town House Watch.” And in 1765 and 1766 a John Jenkins was elected one of Boston’s official “Cullers of Staves.”

So I’m not sure which John Jenkins was the town crier. But he filled the job for over a decade, until 7 May 1767. Then, as the Boston Gazette reported:

Thursday Morning Mr. Jenkins the Town-Cryer fell down just as he was going out to cry Fish, and died instantly.

The young printer John Boyle recorded that Jenkins was still “in his yard” at the time.

The selectmen had already appointed another crier, back on 20 Feb 1765:

Thomas Webber apply’d to the Selectmen for their approbation of him as a public Cryer in this Town, and he was accordingly approbated.

The next town crier appointment that Thwing noted came in 1782, so Webber may thus have held the job through the turbulent Revolutionary years. However, I haven’t found his name in connection with the many political events of the period. As a “common cryer,” he may well have acted as a “common carrier” today, staying neutral about the content of his announcements.

(The photo above shows Bill Turberfield, town crier of Ledbury in England, and was taken this past April by Pigsaw.)

The Laws Concerning Town Criers

A few years after the Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded, its General Court authorized towns to appoint public criers to announce the loss of property or the sale of goods. Making official government announcements and spreading the news were not listed among the public criers’ duties.

In 1642, the legislature further clarified the duty of a town crier when it came to lost things:

Ordered that hee who is to cry things lost shal keepe a booke, wherein hee shall write downe faithfully all such things, wth. the markes, the p’ties names & the dayes of crying it, for w’ch he shall have 2d. Hee is to crye at 3 severall times: & this order is to be observed in every towne.

When Boston’s selectmen appointed John Crosse the town crier in 1666, they also set his prices: “2d. for what he cryeth att the meeting house. And what he Crye upp & downe from street to street is to be allowed 6d.”

By designating one man to handle this job in each town, the Puritan society’s leaders accomplished two things. First, they made it easier for everyone to know how to handle lost things. Second, authorizing one man to yell about goods for sale at a set price made it possible to stop other people from doing so, and thus kept the peace.

Boston’s first town crier was William Corser, chosen by the town meeting in 1640 alongside other elected officials for a one-year term. Newport, Rhode Island, appears to have continued to use that system through the Revolutionary period.

But in Boston, the size of the town and its commercial activity apparently forced the system to evolve. In the 1690s the town meetings were designating two criers. Then those men seem to have faced unofficial competition. In June 1724 a Boston town meeting adopted this resolution to regulate the system further:

For Preventing the many Irregularities & Inconveniences that may happen through the Mutiplicity of Comon Cryers, every one that pleases takes upon him to Cry Lost and Stolen Goods &c.

It is therfore ordered

That no person whatsoever presume to be a Common Cryer, or Cry any Sort of Goods wares or Merchandize Lost or Found or Stolen goods, Strays, Publick Sales &c, within any of the Streets Lands, Alleys, or Market place or places of this Town, on Penalty of ten Shillings for every offence, Except only Such Person or Persons as Shall be Licenced by the Selectmen,

And every Person so Licenced Shall keep a true and perfect List of all matters and things by him so Cryed, and give into the Town Clerk once every month a true and perfect copy therof with the things by him Cryed, and the names of the Person that ordered him to Cry the Same,

And if the Cryer or Cryers Shall Cry any vain foolish prophain or Obscene matter, He Shal forfeit and pay Ten Shillings fine, and be Discharged from his Place or Office, And the Person that ordered the Crying thereof, Shall pay a fine of Twenty Shillings:

TOMORROW: Glimpses of Boston’s town criers through the years.

More than Puffy Shirts and Bells

This is a photograph from Hillsborough, New Hampshire’s first New England Town Crier competition, held this past July and promoted by the American Guild of Town Criers. The event was covered by WBUR-FM’s curious sports show, Only a Game, with an online slide show and audio podcast.

I had occasion to look into town criers earlier this year as we were planning the reenactment of the Boston Massacre. Boston had an officially designated crier during the Revolutionary period. But he wasn’t a town employee, like the watchmen, and most of his announcements weren’t official news.

Rather, I concluded that the town crier was a man who’d won the selectmen’s approval to make loud announcements for private clients, and in particular urgent situations. Over the next couple of days I’ll share what I found.