“Swelled to three times his size, black as bacon”

Here’s another account of anti-epidemic measures from the Adams family papers, this one a 17 Apr 1764 letter from John Adams to his fiancée, Abigail Smith.

John had gone into Boston to be inoculated with smallpox under the care of Dr. Nathaniel Perkins, and he reported:

Messrs. Quincy’s Samuel and Josiah, have the Distemper very lightly. I asked Dr. Perkins how they had it. The Dr. answerd in the style of the Faculty “Oh Lord sir; infinitely light!” It is extreamly pleasing, says he, wherever we go We see every Body passing thro this tremendous Distemper, in the lightest, easiest manner, conceivable.

The Dr. meaned, those who have the Distemper by Inoculation in the new Method, for those who have it in the natural Way, are Objects of as much Horror, as ever.

There is a poor Man, in this Neighbourhood, one Bass, now labouring with it, in the natural Way. He is in a good Way of Recovery, but is the most shocking sight, that can be seen. They say he is no more like a Man than he is like an Hog or an Horse—swelled to three times his size, black as bacon, blind as a stone. I had when I was first inoculated a great Curiosity to go and see him; but the Dr. said I had better not go out, and my Friends thought it would give me a disagreable Turn.

My Unkle [Dr. Zabdiel Boylston?] brought up one [John] Vinal who has just recoverd of it in the natural Way to see Us, and show Us. His face is torn all to Pieces, and is as rugged as Braintree Commons.

This Contrast is forever before the Eyes of the whole Town, Yet it is said there are 500 Persons, who continue to stand it out, in spight of Experience, the Expostulations of the Clergy, both in private and from the Desk, the unwearied Persuasions of the select Men, and the perpetual Clamour and astonishment of the People, and to expose themselves to this Distemper in the natural Way!—

Is Man a rational Creature think You?—Conscience, forsooth and scruples are the Cause.—I should think my self, a deliberate self Murderer, I mean that I incurred all the Guilt of deliberate self Murther, if I should only stay in this Town and run the Chance of having it in the natural Way.

Smallpox continued to spread well into the age of photography, so there’s graphic documentation of how victims look when the blisters break out. I don’t recommend it.

Colonel Louis, Caesar Marion, and More

Here are a couple of new online resources exploring aspects of the first months of the Revolutionary War in New England.

The Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site has posted Dr. Benjamin Pokross’s article “General Washington in the Native Northeast.” It begins:

It had been ten days since the Caughnawaga Mohawk men had arrived at the camp in Cambridge with their wives and families, and George Washington was still not sure what he was going to do. This was the second time that one of their leaders, Atiatoharongwen (also known as Col. Louis Cook), had come to Cambridge, and he had again made it known that he could raise four or five hundred men to fight for the colonists if he was given a commission in the Continental Army. But Washington was unsure how he would pay for all these additional soldiers if Atiatoharongwen did what he said, and even more apprehensive about the idea of engaging Indigenous allies at all. At least it had stopped snowing on the clear, cold, morning of January 31, 1776; this was the day Washington had promised to meet the Mohawk delegation outside.

Washington’s “Out-Door’s Talk”, as he called the subsequent conversation in a letter to General Phillip Schuyler, would be the most extensive of several interactions with Indigenous people he had had while he lived in the Vassall House. These visits did not result in decisive alliances or enduring treaties. They matter, however, for two reasons. The first is that they emphasize how the Revolution—normally thought of as a conflict between American colonists and the British—occurred on Native land, in areas that had long been stewarded by Indigenous communities and where Native people continued to find ways to survive in spite of colonial upheaval. Secondly, these visits highlight the unsettled and transitional character of the very early days of the Revolution. For both Washington and the Native diplomats who came to visit him, this was a moment of experimentation, of exploring what a possible relationship between the Continental Army and Indigenous Nations could look like.

At the HUB History podcast, Jake Sconyers shared an episode on “The Well Known Caesar Marion.”

In this somewhat brief episode, we’re going to look at why Mr. Marion was thrown into Boston’s notorious jail 250 years ago this week, and then we’ll compare his treatment inside British-occupied Boston with the experience of Black volunteers in the Continental Army outside Boston, once Virginia enslaver George Washington took command.

Both Pokross and Sconyers explore moments when Washington was pushed out of his comfort zone by encounters with men of color. And in both cases, while he never stopped being a planter with aristocratic ambitions, Washington was able to shift his habits and show respect for allies.

(Hearing the podcast also reminded me that I broke off a short series about Marion, promising more was “COMING UP,” nine years ago. I won’t get back to that story this week, but it’s back on my to-do list.)

“Are you serious, Dr. Church?”

In a letter to the Rev. Dr. Jeremy Belknap, Paul Revere recalled a dramatic moment on 21 Apr 1775:

The Friday evening after [the Battle of Lexington and Concord], about sun set, I was sitting with some, or near all that Committee [of safety], in their room, which was at Mr. [Jonathan] Hastings’s House at Cambridge. Dr. [Benjamin] Church, all at once, started up—

Dr. Warren, said He, I am determined to go into Boston tomorrow—

(it set them all a stairing)—

Dr. [Joseph] Warren replyed, Are you serious, Dr. Church? they will Hang you if they catch you in Boston.

He replyed, I am serious, and am determined to go at all adventures.

After a considerable conversation, Dr. Warren said, If you are determined, let us make some business for you. They agreed that he should go to git medicine for their & our Wounded officers.

He went the next morning; & I think he came back on Sunday evening.

As part of his medical mission, Dr. Church carried in a note from Dr. John Homans of Brookline to his mentor Dr. Joseph Gardner, asking for surgical knives.

Revere recalled speaking to Church after his return:

After He had told the Committee how things were, I took him a side, & inquired particularly how they treated him? he said, that as soon as he got to their lines on the Boston Neck, they made him a prisoner, & carried him to General [Thomas] Gage, where He was examined, & then He was sent to Gould’s Barracks, & was not suffered to go home but once.

In Igniting the American Revolution, Derek W. Beck guessed that the Gould of “Gould’s Barracks” was Lt. Edward Thoroton Gould, who on that day was a wounded prisoner of war outside of Boston. But I think the answer appears in a letter of merchant John Andrews on 11 January:

This morning the soldiers in the barrack opposite our house, left it, and took quarters with the royal Irish in Gould’s auction room or store—in the street leading to Charlestown ferry.

Bostonians often referred to barracks by the name of the local landlord who had rented those buildings to the army, making “Gould’s barracks” a big building on Back Street in the North End.

Robert Gould was a merchant who in August 1773 announced that the Boston selectmen had authorized him to set up as an auctioneer. He advertised heavily over the next several months (usually signing those notices “R. Gould”) before the Boston Port Bill hit. Renting his store to the army might have seemed like the best possible deal.

Robert Gould had also invested in Maine land along with Francis Shaw, Sr., a settlement that became Gouldsboro. He had trained Francis Shaw, Jr., in business, and newspaper ads in 1770 show that the younger man was selling ceramics out of “the store lately improved by Mr. Robert Gould.” In June 1776, Francis, Jr., and his wife Hannah had a boy they named Robert Gould Shaw. That man would pass the name on to his grandson, the Civil War hero.

Robert Gould remained in Boston after the British evacuation, but the Patriot authorities were suspicious of his dealings with the king’s army. The selectmen recommended detaining him for questioning, but the Massachusetts General Court decided to drop him from the list. Gould went back to advertising as a regular merchant in late 1776. But then he died unexpectedly, intestate and in debt, in January 1777, aged 57.

TOMORROW: The doctor’s documents.

“3 Sloops and one cutter had come out”

In May 1775, the people of Hingham and other towns along the South Shore from Boston weren’t really worrying about protecting livestock on harbor islands.

As a 3 May petition from selectmen in Braintree, Weymouth, and Hingham to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress put it, those towns felt “in great danger of an attack from the troops now in Boston, or from the ships in the harbor.”

They worried that the British military would attack the towns themselves, not off-shore pasturage—perhaps to seize food but mostly to punish the rebellious population.

The congress therefore authorized those towns to raise two and a half companies of men for their defense through the end of the year, on the same terms as the provincial soldiers being signed up to keep besieging Boston. In Hingham, James Lincoln took a captain’s commission and started recruiting.

On the morning of Sunday, 21 May, vessels were spotted maneuvering through the islands off the Weymouth shore. Abigail Adams described the response in north Braintree:

When I rose about six oclock I was told that the Drums had been some time beating and that 3 allarm Guns were fired, that Weymouth Bell had been ringing, and Mr. [Ezra] Welds [churchbell in Braintree’s middle precinct] was then ringing.

I immediatly sent of an express to know the occasion, and found the whole Town in confusion. 3 Sloops and one cutter had come out, and droped anchor just below Great Hill. It was difficult to tell their design, some supposed they were comeing to Germantown others to Weymouth. People women children from the Iron Works flocking down this Way—every woman and child above or from below my Fathers.

My Fathers family flying, the Drs. [Cotton Tufts’s] in great distress, as you may well immagine for my Aunt had her Bed thrown into a cart, into which she got herself, and orderd the boy to drive her of to Bridgwater which he did. The report was to them, that 300 hundred had landed, and were upon their march into Town.

The allarm flew [like] lightning, and men from all parts came flocking down till 2000 were collected

In Scituate, Paul Litchfield was home from Harvard College, his senior year cut short by the war. He wrote in his diary:

Just before meeting began in morning, hearing the King’s troops were landing near Hingham, the people in general dispersed, so no meeting.

The 25 May New England Chronicle, newly moved to Cambridge, reported this military response:

Last Sabbath about 10 o’clock A.M. an express arrived at General [John] Thomas’s quarters at Roxbury, informing him that four sloops (two of them armed) were sailed from Boston, to the south short of the bay, and that a number of soldiers were landing at Weymouth.

Gen. Thomas ordered three companies to march to the support of the inhabitants.

But the first newspaper report of the action was the 22 May Newport Mercury:

An express arrived here this morning, from Providence, with advice, that a party of soldiers from Boston had landed at Weymouth, and burnt the town down, and were ravaging the country when the express came away. Troops from all parts of the country were going to oppose them.——The particulars not yet come to hand.

TOMORROW: The particulars of what really happened.

Planning for the Sestercentennial of Battle of Lexington and Concord

As the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord approaches, I’ve gotten requests for information about where the commemorations will happen.

The answer is that they’ll happen all over because that battle didn’t take place on one field, but spread out over twenty miles.

Furthermore, we New Englanders like our traditions. Many towns and organizations have their own time-honored ways of celebrating the anniversary: local parades, marches, pancake breakfasts, and the like. We’re not going to cancel those just because this anniversary ends in 50.

That said, because of the Sestercentennial many of our commemorations this year will be much bigger than usual: more participants, more spectators, more traffic. And that’s not counting the potential complications from the weather and from Washington, D.C.

Therefore, my only recommendation is to choose a couple of events to enjoy from the many on the schedule. But don’t assume that when I say “schedule,” there is one master schedule. Oh, no, that’s not how we operate here. Here are multiple sources to consult, and I don’t claim this list is exhaustive.

Battleroad.org is a venerable website [check out that coding!] which is updated each year with the latest details about events in Middlesex County. These include celebrations on the weekend before the big anniversary, such as Bedford’s pole-capping and Lincoln’s Paul Revere Capture ceremony. More events in early April appear on Minute Man National Historical Park’s page.

On Friday, 18 April, the National Parks of Boston, the Paul Revere House, and the Old North Church all have events linked to the start of Paul Revere’s ride to Lexington. Those three links go to overlapping lists of offerings, which include a reading of the play Revolution’s Edge, a reenactment of Revere’s movements, the lighting of two lanterns in the steeple, a talk by Prof. Heather Cox Richardson, and a talk by me. It’s impossible to see all those since the whole point is that they’re on opposite sides of the Charles River.

Saturday, 19 April, will start with the confrontation on Lexington common; see the Lexington 250 events calendar. Then the action moves into Minute Man Park for the clash at Concord’s North Bridge, followed by what promises to be the largest, most authentic reenactment ever of the fighting along the Battle Road. The best information on those happenings and how to enjoy them safely comes from the park.

This year the reenacting continues on Sunday afternoon with the Battle of Menotomy along Massachusetts Avenue in Arlington. The setting looks modern, but it’s the actual ground of the bloodiest fighting in April 1775.

Monday is of course Patriots’ Day, the state holiday best known for the Boston Marathon. And the celebrations aren’t over yet. It looks like the Lincoln Salute for fife and drum corps has been pushed to 27 April, for example. So choose your fighters.

Anderson on Rebellion 1776 in Cambridge, 1 Apr.

Laurie Halse Anderson’s latest novel about the American Revolution is set in Boston: Rebellion 1776.

Anderson has won awards for her Seeds of America Trilogy (Chains, Forge, and Ashes), as well as her earlier novel Fever 1793 and the picture book Independent Dames: What You Never Knew about the Woman and Girls of the American Revolution.

She’s even better known for her contemporary novel Speak, which is frequently challenged in public schools and libraries because it addresses the problem of rape. She’s one of the handful of American authors who have won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for children’s literature.

In an interview with Publishers Weekly, Anderson described the scope of this new book:

My book covers the traumatic effects of the Siege of Boston, the growing political divide within families and communities, and the frightening smallpox epidemic, which threatened everything. One reason I continue to write about this era is because I think we could do a better job depicting the state of the colonies at the start of the Revolution in recognizing that independence was not a done deal.

As a protagonist Anderson created a thirteen-year-old girl named Elsbeth Culpepper, orphaned but taking advantage of the chaos and need for labor in Boston after the British evacuation to keep herself away from the Overseers of the Poor.

Anderson’s long conversation with Horn Book editor Roger Sutton goes deep into her research and storytelling processes:

First I had to understand what the cultural, financial, and sociological constraints were then on a thirteen-year-old kitchen maid. But then came the chaos of the siege, then the changing of the armies, and then it took a while for Boston's government to get up and running again. That chaos opened the door for me and my character to break some rules, some constraints. And then as society gets its act back together, the walls and rules come back up again.

I recommend that interview for anyone writing historical fiction.

Anderson will be speaking and signing books at a ticketed event for Porter Square Books on Tuesday, 1 April. That will happen at the Marran Theater in Cambridge. Admission is $25 (which includes a signed book) or $10 (which doesn’t).

Sconyers on Boston’s Street Lamps, 18 Mar.

Old North Illuminated is living up to its name by hosting an online presentation by Jake Sconyers on the topic “They Burnt Tolerable Well: The Tea Party & Boston’s First Street Lamps” on Tuesday, 18 March.

The event description says:

In the 1770s, Boston was in a state of transformation and upheaval. While we mostly think of the American Revolution as the driver of this whirlwind of change, a technological revolution was happening at the same time. The introduction of street lamps in Boston had a profound effect on how people behaved at night.

The political revolution and the technological revolution were intertwined, with the effects of one impacting the other—including at pivotal moments like the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party.

Sconyers will touch on these “burning” questions:

• How did Boston’s very first street lamps survive a shipwreck and the Boston Tea Party?
• Why did Boston decide to buy English oil lamps for the streets but fuel them with American whale oil?
• Why did Boston vote to let its new street lamps sit dark after just a few months of illumination?
• How did the Boston Port Act affect the cost of street lighting?

Not to mention how the events of April 1775 might have been different if Boston’s main streets had been lit up at night.

Jake Sconyers is the host of the HUB History podcast, formerly cohosted by Nikki Stewart, executive director of Old North. The podcast has discussed these lamps, but I don’t recall it addressing all these details.

Register for this online event with a donation of any amount to Old North Illuminated through this webpage.

Starr and Starr vers. Starr and Phillips, executors of Philip Mortimer

In the Connecticut Superior Court’s December 1795 court term, George and Ann Starr sued Elihu Starr and George Phillips as executors of Philip Mortimer’s estate, seeking to overturn the validity of the man’s will.

George and Ann’s young son, Philip Mortimer Starr, was in fact the main beneficiary of that will. But to inherit his great-uncle’s property, he’d have to change his surname to Mortimer on coming of age.

Before then, the will required the estate to grant land and £1,000 to the city of Middletown, Connecticut, to expand a cemetery and build and stock a granary. Maybe the Starrs opposed those plans.

The Starrs’ arguments that the will of Ann’s uncle was invalid were:

• Philip Mortimer was “not of sound disposing mind and memory” when he set up the will and codicils.
• The codicils weren’t completely signed and witnessed.
• Elihu Starr was too entangled in the situation as an heir, a witness, and an executor, not to mention the man who wrote out one of those codicils for Mortimer.
• The other witnesses to the will, Timothy Starr and Joseph Sage, were also heirs inasmuch as they were citizens of Middletown and therefore stood to benefit from that granary.

The court decided that Philip Mortimer was mentally capable of composing the will and codicils. Implicitly, the judges therefore agreed that Mortimer wanted to give the town a granary, to leave most of his money to his great-nephew with the name-change stipulation, and to free his enslaved workers.

However, the majority of the court found that the technical violations of the law invalidated the will. Apparently someone should have told Philip Mortimer that he needed out-of-town witnesses, that he shouldn’t have made even small bequests to his witnesses and executors. Though I have a sense that telling Philip Mortimer what to do wasn’t easy.

Judge Jesse Root (1736–1822, shown above), a veteran of both the Continental Army and the Continental Congress, dissented from the court’s ruling. In fact, Root’s dissent took up most of the official report on the case. But his argument that the court should respect Philip Mortimer’s clear desires and overlook legalities didn’t carry the day.

In January 1796 the court negated the Mortimer will, ruling that he had died intestate. It appointed the husband of his nearest relative to administer the estate. The 12 February Middlesex Gazette carried this notice:

THE Subscriber, being appointed Administrator on the Estate of PHILIP MORTIMER, Esq. late of Middletown, deceased, hereby gives public Notice to the several Creditors, That the hon. Court of Probate for the District of Middletown has limited Twelve Months from the 30th Day of January, 1796, as the Time for exhibiting their respective Claims against said Estate. Those who neglect to exhibit the same to the Subscriber within that Time will be legally debarred of their Demands. All Persons indebted to the Estate are requested to make Payment, to
GEORGE STARR, Administrator.
Middletown, Feb. 5, 1796.

COMING UP: The fallout.

Independence and Enslavement in Middletown

At the end of the Revolutionary War, lots of things changed in Middletown, Connecticut.

In 1784, Hugh White left that town to start surveying an area of upstate New York that would become Whitestown. Relatives and neighbors would follow. The central part of that area would take the name Whitesboro and for a long time have an unfortunate town seal.

Other Middletown residents also moved west to lands made available by the U.S. victory over Britain and its Native allies. Retired general Samuel Holden Parsons became a director of the Ohio Land Company. He traveled to western Pennsylvania in November 1789 and drowned while canoeing.

There were also legal changes at home. The area around the Connecticut River port, where the merchants and ship-builders lived, incorporated itself as a city in 1784. Instead of a town meeting with nearly every farmer eligible to vote, the city of Middletown had a mayor, four aldermen, and ten “common-council-men” chosen from the upper class.

The first set of aldermen included two former generals—Comfort Sage and the ill-fated Parsons—plus Col. Matthew Talcott and, for old times’ sake, former militia captain Philip Mortimer.

Among the first common-council-men was the husband of Mortimer’s favored niece, George Starr, as well as Col. Return Jonathan Meigs.

Also in 1784, the state of Connecticut passed a Gradual Emancipation Act—so gradual that it didn’t actually emancipate anybody for another twenty-five years. Children born into slavery after 1 Mar 1784 would become free on their twenty-fifth birthdays.

The 1790 U.S. Census counted 2,648 people enslaved in Connecticut, alongside 2,771 free blacks. The person who owned the most other people in the state—eleven by official count—was Philip Mortimer.

Back in Boston, as we know from newspaper advertisements, Mortimer employed at least one Irish teenager at ropemaking in 1738, and he imported young indentured servants from Ireland in 1740 and 1741. Maybe he enslaved Africans then, too, but he was doing so in a big way (by New England standards) in 1790.

That number grew to seventeen by July 1792. Mortimer then listed the people working for him for free as:

• Bristol, married to Tamer
• Hagar and her daughter
• Jack, Sophy, and Sophy’s sons Lester, Dick, and John, all under age fourteen
• Amarillas and her children
• Silvy
• Peg, still under the age of twenty-six
• Peter and Prince

That first census also found that Mortimer was the only white person on his estate, the biggest in Middletown. Most of the people he claimed as property must have been his household and farm help. But Peter and Prince worked at his ropewalk as spinners.

TOMORROW: Freedom, but not yet.

“He will do every Thing any Man can do towards a full Supply”

Philip Mortimer was not from an old New England family and he was Anglican, two traits that might have made him more likely to support the Crown in the pre-war political conflict.

Instead, Mortimer served on the Middletown, Connecticut, committee of correspondence. On 6 Mar 1775, the Connecticut Courant announced that he and George Philips would oversee the public sale of molasses and coffee brought in from Jamaica “agreeable to the 10th Article of said Association.”

That part of the Continental Congress’s boycott agreement said that goods landed between 1 Dec 1774 and 1 Feb 1775 could “be sold under the direction of the committee” covering that region, with “the profit, if any, to be applied towards relieving and employing such poor inhabitants of the town of Boston, as are immediate sufferers by the Boston port-bill.”

Mortimer was also a selectman for the first two years of the war and a justice of the peace.

In 1781, French troops on their way to Yorktown camped on Mortimer’s land in Middletown, according to an article by Allen Forbes for the Massachusetts Historical Society.

The young merchant who married Mortimer’s niece Ann Catharine Carnall, George Starr, was even more active in supporting the American cause. In 1778 Starr, who had the militia rank of captain, became a deputy commissary of hides for the Continental Army. On 26 October Gen. Samuel Holden Parsons wrote to the commander-in-chief from Middletown:

I find Capt. George Starr of this Town is appointed by the Board of War to take Charge of the Leather belonging to the Continent, purchase Shoes, Cartouch Bozes & other Military Accoutrements, by the inclosd Order you will find the Board have impowerd him to contract for those Articles in Exchange for raw Hides; I am fully Satisfied he will do all that any Man can do in that Department;

he informs me he Shall be able to send on about Twelve Hundred pair of Shoes within four Weeks about Seven Hundred of which are now On Hand & will be forwarded as soon as he can procure Buckles for about 300 or 400 Cartouch Bozes which are made and with the Shoes will compleat A Load for One Waggon; he Says he will take every Measure in his Power to procure a large Quantity of Shoes & thinks tis probable he Shall be able to furnish about 1000 or 1500 Pair a Month if the Leather can now be had in exchange for Hides as he is a Man very assiduous in his Business I have no Doubt he will do every Thing any Man can do towards a full Supply—

As to Caps he Says tis impossible to make an Estimate of the Quantity of Leather on Hand suitable for that Business which is not fit for Shoes or to be Usd for Accoutrements or in the Quarter Master’s Department as ’tis not in whole Sides, but part of most of the Leather in working is found unsuitable for other Business which will well Answer for this.

Starr did that job for three years. Even after stepping down he sent George Washington two pairs of boots for his personal use in 1783, though the general was unsatisfied.

TOMORROW: The new postwar order.

(The photo above shows Samuel Holden Parsons’s house in Middletown, now gone, from Damien Cregeau’s article “Top Ten Demolished Houses of Revolutionary War-Era Connecticut” for the Journal of the American Revolution.)

Philip Mortimer, from Waterford to Boston to Middletown

The Mortimer brothers arrived in Boston from Waterford, Ireland, in the early 1700s. They appear to have come with a bit of money since they quickly set themselves up in businesses.

James Mortimer (c. 1704–1773) was a tallow chandler. On 16 Aug 1741 at King’s Chapel he married another arrival from Waterford: Hannah Alderchurch, twelve years his senior.

James Mortimer advertised “Good Dipp’d Tallow CANDLES” and “the best of IRISH BUTTER by the Firkin” from his shop near Clark’s Wharf, later Hancock’s Wharf. He prospered enough that by the 1760s he owned at least one enslaved worker, named Yarrow, and Apple Island in Boston harbor.

Peter Mortimer (c. 1715–1773) was a ship’s captain.

The middle of these three brothers, Philip Mortimer (c. 1710–1794), was a ropemaker. He married Martha Blin (1716–1773) on 14 Nov 1742, also at King’s Chapel. Though she was said to be “of Boston,” she came from a Wethersfield, Connecticut, family.

Philip Mortimer had a higher profile than his brothers. He was in Boston by 1735, when he witnessed a deed. Two years later, he was one of the founders of the Charitable Irish Society. On 17 Oct 1738 Philip Mortimer shared an advertisement with two other ropemakers, each seeking the return of a teen-aged indentured servant.

On 11 Aug 1740, the Boston Gazette carried this notice:

Just Imported and to be Sold by Edward Alderchurch and Philip Mortimer, on board the Schooner Two Friends, Thomas Carnell Master, now lying at the Long Wharfe near the upper Crane, Choice Welch Coal, a Parcel of likely Boys and Girls; good Rice, Virginia Pork, good Cordage, Cod-Lines and Twine, all at a very reasonable Rate, for ready Money.

A year later a similar ad appeared in the Boston Evening-Post, this one adding that the “likely Boys and Girls” were “fit for Town or Country; the Girls can spin fine Thread, and do any sort of Houshold Work.” They were evidently more indentured youths from Ireland.

By 1749, according to the American-Irish Historical Society’s Recorder in 1901, Philip and Martha Mortimer had moved from Boston to Middletown, Connecticut. As the name implies, that was an inland town, halfway between the towns of Hartford and Wethersfield and the Connecticut River’s mouth at Saybrook. Nonetheless, Middletown had small shipyards, and Philip Mortimer saw the potential to build a ropewalk running perpendicular off the main street.

Mortimer quickly became a big fish in that small pond: town official, militia captain, Anglican church warden, Freemason. He owned the grandest house in town, shown above.

Eventually Philip Mortimer also owned an enslaved rope spinner named Prince. If the man later known as Prince Mortimer was indeed born in 1724, as calculated from his reported age when he died, and brought to Connecticut as a child, then he was in his late twenties and had been worked in Middletown for almost two decades before Philip Mortimer arrived. On the other hand, if Prince Mortimer was born later, then he could have arrived at the ropewalk as a child or teenager, fresh from being kidnapped and transported across the Atlantic, and immediately put into training to make rope.

COMING UP: Deaths and marriages.

“The Only Method to secure peace in the Town”?

At the end of his 23 Apr 1775 letter to George Rogers, and in a second, undated letter preserved in the same archive, Lt. John Bourmaster, R.N., turned from reporting stories he’d heard from army officers back to a topic he was experiencing first-hand: what it was like inside besieged Boston.

Bourmaster wrote:

The number of the Country People who fired on our Troops might be about 5 Thousand ranged along from Concord to Charlstown but not less than 20 Thousand were that day under Arms and on the March to join the Others. their loss we find to be nearly on a footing with our own

This count of militiamen who had turned out was reasonably accurate. However, the Crown had lost about three times as many men killed, wounded, or missing as the provincials.

three Days have now pass’d without communication with the Country; three more will reduce this Town to a most unpleasent situation; for there dependence for provision was from day to day on supply from the Country that ceasing you may conceive the consequences.

preparations are now making on both sides the Neck for attacking and defending the Hampshire and Connecticut Militia have join’d so that Rebel Army are now numerous. Collins is well and stationed between Charls Town and the end of this Town to assist in the defence. The General [Thomas Gage] and Earl Percy shall have the perusal of your Letter.

John Collins and Bourmaster had both been lieutenants on HMS Valiant years earlier. Collins had become commander of HMS Nautilus, which arrived in Boston harbor in early April.

Under the date of 20 April, Adm. Samuel Graves wrote in his Narrative:

The Captain of the Nautilus off the Magazine point, was directed to arm a flat bottomed Boat, and with the assistance of Boats from other Ships to take care that Guard should be rowed every night as high up the [Charles] River as possible.

In his later letter, Bourmaster discussed Gage’s quandary of how to deal with Boston’s civilian population. Was it safer to let them leave or to keep them in town to forestall a provincial attack, knowing most were hostile to the occupying army and had militia training?

Propositions have been made on the part of the General to the Select Men for disarming the Inhabitants but this I find they are unwilling to comply with; so that if we begin at the Lines we shall have it on both sides of our Ears they being at least 3000 strong in Town, with Arms in their possession; a pretty pass we are come to, Ah poor Old England how my heart feels for her present dishonourable situation—

Ultimately Gage and the selectmen reached a deal: once Bostonians had stored their firearms in Faneuil Hall, they could leave. Later Gage curtailed the departures, prompting complaints. Later still, Gen. George Washington grew suspicious of people leaving the town, worrying they were meant to spread smallpox or collect information.

Bourmaster shared his own idea for how to deal with this set of zealous civilians:

The following I have proposed as the Only Method to secure peace in the Town there are Churches and meetings sufficient to contain all those before mentiond, they with the Select Men, and Preachers, should be put in their at daylight in the Morning, their doors well secured, a strong guard round each, with Bagonets fixt; and then would I begine the Attack on Roxbury and Open a way again for us besieged Britons, but this is only a little presumption in an Old Valiant who becaus he has seen great things don expects to see such days again.

That plan was never implemented, of course.

Again, the surviving text of Bourmaster’s letters, as copied for the Marquess of Rockingham, was published in the William & Mary Quarterly in 1953.

Mapping Boston in 1795

ARGO (American Revolutionary Geographies Online) offers a new article by John W. Mackey titled “Practical Knowledge and the New Republic.”

It begins:

Perhaps what is most visually striking about Osgood Carleton’s recently rediscovered 1795 map of Boston is its sheer size. At approximately seven feet by six and a half feet, this wall map dwarfs many other Boston maps of the late eighteenth century, including Carleton’s own 1797 work, which until recently was considered the largest Boston map from this period known to be extant in a collection.

This isn’t a printed map but a drawing. The Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association donated it to the Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library in 2021. Based on a cartouche dedicating the map “To the Select-Men of the Town of Boston,” curators deduced it was originally town, then city property.

Indeed, volume III of a report on Documents of the City of Boston, for the Year 1879 (published 1880) had an appendix listing “Plans of Boston in the City Surveyor’s Department,” and that included:

Boston, 1795.—An original map. Surveyed by Osgood Carleton for the Select-men.

As for the cartographer:

Osgood Carleton was born to a New England farming family in 1742 and had little schooling. At age 16, he began military service in Nova Scotia during the Seven Years’ War, and he later served in the Continental Army during the American Revolution. While he was born in New Hampshire and appears to have lived for a time in Haverhill, Massachusetts and in Maine, it was in Boston that Carleton made his mark and built the bulk of his career. Armed with mathematical skills presumably gained during his military service, Carleton earned his living putting these skills to practical use: he became a surveyor, a contributor to the ubiquitous almanacs of the era, and the leading cartographer in Massachusetts during his lifetime. . . .

he also left a legacy in his role as a teacher of young men in the City of Boston. . . . he offered on an array of practical mathematical skills from navigation to surveying and mensuration to gunnery, bookkeeping, and the projection of spheres and maps.

Mackey’s article discusses and displays Carleton’s maps of Massachusetts, one of which was eventually printed with state approval, as discussed back here.

The 1795 Boston map captures the town’s post-war transition. Carleton marked the place for the “New State-house” on “State Land.” That new government building would be dedicated that year.

Mackey also discusses how this map didn’t label Oliver’s Dock, though Carleton had used that as a landmark in advertising his school. By 1795 he may have moved to “an unfinished building in Merchant’s Row,” where Robert Bailey Thomas remembered studying under him. Nonetheless, “Oliver’s Dock” was still the official name of that location, preserving the memory of the unpopular royal appointee Andrew Oliver.

Tracking the Lovells from Nova Scotia to Natchez

Continuing my exploration of the Creating a Federal Government website, I looked up another man active among Boston Whigs before the war who I knew received a federal appointment afterward: James Lovell.

I found him, but found that his name was amalgamated with his son’s. Poking around more, I saw a good genealogy website mixing that son up with another son.

At the same time, the Creating a Federal Government site has filled in some information about the Lovells that I didn’t have when I wrote about them back in 2008. So I’m going to try to sort things out.

James Lovell (1737–1814) was the respected usher, or assistant master, at Boston’s South Latin School in the 1760s and early 1770s. He delivered the first official oration in memory of the Boston Massacre. In the summer of 1775, the royal authorities arrested him for corresponding with Dr. Joseph Warren and at the end of the siege took him to Nova Scotia as a prisoner.

Released in an exchange, Lovell was chosen by the Massachusetts General Court to be a delegate to the Continental Congress. He was very active there, basically managing the diplomatic corps for a few busy years.

When Lovell went home to Massachusetts, the national government rewarded his service with an appointment which may not have required a lot of work: naval officer for the port of Boston. He kept that post until his death, through both Federalist and Jeffersonian administrations. In January 1809, for example, he placed an advertisement in the newspapers warning that he would follow his duty in enforcing the Embargo Act, unpopular or not. (It was about to be replaced, anyway.)

Lowell signed that advertisement with his full name: “James Lovell.” However, he’s been entered into the Creating a Federal Government website under the name of his son James S. (for Smith) Lovell (1762–1825).

James S. Lovell was a merchant in Boston, selling tobacco, sugars, alcohol, and other commodities from his shop on State Street and then beside the Town Dock. By the 1790s he was investing in ships. In February 1793 he was moderator for Boston’s Civic Festival supporting the French republic, and three years later on the committee of the chamber of commerce.

James S. Lovell’s most visible governmental appointment was a local one: Inspector of Police in 1798. In that capacity he made regular reports to the public about the yellow fever epidemic. The following year, the selectmen authorized him to deal with people who wanted to buy “the Manure, to be taken from the streets of Boston.”

But then in 1801 James S. Lovell was judged bankrupt. He kept a lower profile for several years. In 1820, according to the Creating a Federal Government website, Lovell was appointed gauger, weigher, and inspector in the Boston Customs office. Two years later someone signing himself (or herself) “Radical” in the Boston Courier reported the Customs department salaries, including “James S. Lovell, weigher and guager, [$]3466.99.” At that time Lovell was helping to sell a cotton factory in Connecticut, advertising that he could meet with people “at the Custom-House, Boston, or his residence, Newton Plain.”

James S. Lovell died in Newton in December 1825, described in Boston newspapers as “the eldest and only surviving son of the Hon. James Lovell, deceased.”

But that wasn’t true. James S. Lovell had an older half-brother still living, and to add to the confusion that man was also named James.

While he was a student at Harvard College back in the 1750s, the future schoolteacher James Lovell had fathered a child with the daughter of the college steward, Susanna Hastings. That boy was born in 1758 and grew up for several years in Cambridge as James Hastings. About 1770, he came into Boston, joined his father’s household, and assumed the Lovell surname.

The younger James Lovell graduated from Harvard College himself in 1776 and then joined the Continental Army. He served under Col. Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee, gained the rank of major, and married Ann Reid, a rich South Carolina widow.

In 2008 I wrote that this James Lovell “lit out for New Orleans” when he couldn’t get his hands on his wife’s inheritance. His years in the new Louisiana Territory, from 1806 to 1811, exactly correspond to the tenure of a James Lovell in the Customs office at New Orleans. Newspapers confirm he was appointed Surveyor in May 1806, Inspector of the Revenue in 1807. So now we know how he supported himself.

The younger James Lovell went back to South Carolina in 1811, prompting his wife to take legal steps to preserve her property. Eventually they quarreled again, and he left. But he lived in Orangeburg until 1850, far outdistancing his younger half-brother.

Finally, in researching these men, I came across information to fill another hole in my old post. The senior James Lovell had another son named John Middleton Lovell, born in 1763 and thought to have died around 1799 (shown above). I didn’t have much to say about him. Now I can report that he was also in business in Boston in the early 1790s, with a shop on Long Wharf; his brother James S. handled business for him while he invested in Dedham real estate.

In March 1795, John M. Lovell joined the U.S. Army as lieutenant and adjutant of the Corps of Artillerists and Engineers. That appointment is also noted at the Creating a Federal Government website. In that capacity he advertised for deserters in the Columbian Centinel and other New England newspapers. He administered a movement of troops from Pittsburgh to Fort Adams in the Mississippi Territory in 1798.

In March 1799 Lt. Lovell was still in the Mississippi Territory, negotiating an agreement with Manuel Gayoso de Lemos, Spanish governor of neighboring Louisiana, to discourage desertion. His commander, Gen. James Wilkinson, wrote to Alexander Hamilton to boast of the results.

On 7 Jan 1800 the Massachusetts Mercury ran this death notice:

At the Natchez, JOHN LOVELL, Esq. Aid-de-Camp to Gen. Wilkinson, and son of the hon. James Lovell, of this place.

According to a 21 Apr 1800 letter from Caleb Swan, paymaster general of the army, “Mr Lovell died on the 24 of October 1799.”

“Once cut for the Simples, but never cured”?

I can easily recognize some of the Revolutionary Bostonians being lampooned as “Characters” in a supposed “Tragi-comic Farce” announced in the 8 May 1770 Nova Scotia Chronicle, but not others.

For example:

Samuel Plunder, a Senator, formerly a Receiver of the Tribute of the Parish, Master of the black Art, can cheat without a Mask of Honesty, supported by Contribution, and the Votes of a Mobb.

That’s Samuel Adams, whom political opponents often criticized for his performance as a tax collector in the early 1760s.

And “Charles Spiritual, Guide and Protector of the Junto,” surely meant the Rev. Dr. Charles Chauncy, minister of the First Meeting and a close ally of the Boston Whigs.

But does that make “Samuel Tubb, private Chaplain to Simple John,” the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper, minister of the Brattle Street Meeting that included John Hancock, already called “John Dupe”?

That seems almost certain, but right after “Samuel Tubb” comes “John Simple, a mighty Coxcomb, very important and bigg with Nothing, well known for the Drubbings he has received.” So is “Simple John” in one sentence different from “John Simple” in the next? This “John Simple” doesn’t resemble Hancock, but who is he?

Speaking of Hancock, that “John Dupe” is called “remarkably melancholy on his Loss of Lady Beaver.” A couple of months earlier, on 22 February, the printer John Boyle wrote in his journal:

Married, Mr. Henderson Inches, Merchant, to Miss Sally Jackson, Daugh. Of Joseph Jackson, Esq.—Mr. John Hancock hath paid his addresses to Miss Jackson for about ten years past, but has lately sent her a Letter of Dismission.

So was Sarah Jackson (1739–1771), shown above, courtesy of the Huntington) “Lady Beaver”? If so, does that let us interpret this entry among the characters:

Alderman Hemp, Son of the transported Cobler, well known for his great Judgment as a Politician, Chief of the grand Committee, by his wond’rous Capacity has cut off John Dupe’s Pretensions to Miss Beaver.

Henderson Inches (1726–1780) was a selectman (“Alderman”?) and active on merchants’ committees. He was born in Dunkeld, Scotland, and his father, Thomas Inches, brought the family to Boston when Henderson was a child. The town meeting voted to make Thomas Inches a sealer of leather for several years in the 1730s, so was he indeed involved in making shoes? But what might “transported” have meant? And why the name “Hemp,” which first made me think of ropemaker and selectman Benjamin Austin?

And as for profiles like these:

Edward Shallow, Friend and Neighbour to Squire Lemon, once cut for the Simples, but never cured, Carrier of Intelligence, full freight’d with Absurdities.

William the Gunner, or the one ey’d Philosopher, Brother to Shallow, formerly kept a chop House in one of the Danish Islands.

William Homer, Esq; the Jew, famous for his Treatise on Cuckoldom, well known for his Humanity and publick Spirit.

I’m at a loss.

TOMORROW: Did John Mein write this article?

“You justly observe that he has a difficult card to play”

Yesterday I started quoting from Loyalist merchant Richard Lechmere’s 22 May 1775 letter about the beginning of the Revolutionary War, as transcribed and shared a few years ago at Heritage Auctions.

Lechmere was notably ambivalent about the performance of Thomas Gage as both commander of the British army in North America and royal governor of Massachusetts.

On the one hand, he thought the ministry in London was hamstringing Gage by not sending him enough troops and limiting his autonomy:

The fine friends of Government that are hear [sic] impatiently long, for the Arrival of the Troops from Ireland, The Marines and recruits are arriv’d about 1100 in all, when the others arrive we hope, the Rebels may be drove to some distance from the town, tho’ we have our fears that the General has not and will not have Sufficient power from the Minister to act offensively, we form this Opinion from what has (or rather has not) been done, ’tis a pity he had not discretionary powers, the want of this, has, and I fear will again produce some bad Consequences.

On the other hand, Lechmere suspected that Gage was holding his forces back. After describing the previous day’s fighting over Grape Island, the merchant wrote:

in the Hay Expedition ’tis said both the Troops and Schooners had orders not to Fire, this seems very strange, indeed there has been several instances of their firing upon Boats and their not returning it, these little attempts and not succeeding in them, give the Rebels great sprit, and I wish it may not have the opposite Effect upon the Troops, the General is one of the most humane good men that lives, and I wish his tenderness may not in the end hurt him, and the Cause, he feels and Pitys the distresses of the Country

In particular, Lechmere thought Gage had erred in not calling on his Council—a body that Lechmere himself had been appointed to.

As to the Council we have not been call’d together since I wrote you, nor it is it I believe the wish of any one member so to be, but I can’t help saying, the Gov.r miss’d the best Opportunity of having them recogniz’d by the People the day after the 19 April,

town Meeting was call’d with a design to choose a Committee to wait upon the Gov.r to Ask his Leave that the Inhabitants might remove out of town with their Effects, this Committee was [composed?] of the Select Men with the Addition of Mr [James] Bowdin as their Chairman, they went to the Governor towards Evening, and after being with him some time, he Consented that they might remove with their Effects, whenever they pleas’d,

it woul’d have been a lucky circumstance if he had said, he should as it was a matter of a civil nature consult his council, and in the Next day give his answer but unluckily he was in my poor opinion a little to precipitate, in giving his Answer immediately, and they have been constantly moving out every day since I really believe he has done this from good principles, because he could not render us more obnoxious than we were before but in this once instance, I think he was wrong.

you justly observe that he has a difficult card to play, but when he is invested with powers, I hope he will convince the Rebels that he does not want [courage?] to execute them

Gage did cancel permission for people to leave Boston and then negotiated an agreement that they would deposit their firearms with the selectmen at Faneuil Hall before reopening the gates. Naturally, people criticized him for both decisions.

TOMORROW: News from outside.

“For the workmen here to go on with building barracks”

Like Richard Lechmere, quoted yesterday, the merchant John Andrews watched the conflict over housing the king’s troops in Boston in the fall of 1774.

Unlike Lechmere, Andrews leaned a little toward the Whigs. He, too, had protested the Boston committee of correspondence’s actions earlier in the year, but in a more mild way. He supported resistance against the Crown—as long as it didn’t threaten his business or his health.

In writing to his relative in Philadelphia on 25 September, Andrews emphasized how the people of Boston weren’t making life easy for the soldiers. He didn’t want people in other colonies to get the idea that Bostonians weren’t worthy of their support.

The example of our worthy brethren of New York, in not letting their vessels for Government service, as well as that their Carpenters would not engage in any work for ’em, has induc’d the country people to think seriously whether they were right in supplying with timber, joice, and Straw for the Barracks here.

They accordingly met and determin’d in ye. negative; sent committees to the severall contractors to let them know if they supply’d any further they would incur the resentment of the whole country; and at the same time signified to our committee of correspondence that they did not think it eligible for the workmen here to go on with building barracks or preparing houses for the reception of the troops, as we might possibly, by persisting, not only incur blame from our sister colonies, but essentially affect the union now subsisting between town and country; which circumstance caus’d the Committee to get together Saturday P.M., when they pass’d a vote, that it was not prudent for ye. workmen to go on with ye. frames, &ca., nor in any shape to contribute towards the accommodation of the soldiery, as they might themselves give offence to their country brethren.

The purport of which coming to the Governor [Thomas Gage], he sent his compliments to the Select men, and beg’d their attendance at six o’clock this evening, when he requested of them that they would not take any measures to prevent the workmen from going on with the barracks.

They reply’d it was not in their power to influence the country, and it lay principally with them whether the workmen should proceed or not: that they themselves were dispos’d to have the barracks go on, as they conceiv’d it much more for the benefit of the town (if the Soldiery must be here) to have them kept together, rather than to be scatter’d over the town, as in that case it would be a very difficult matter to keep them in order.

The Governor seem’d a great deal worried about ye. affair, and am told that in the course of the conversation he express’d himself thus—“Good G—d! for G—d’s sake, Gentlemen! they have got two months work to do, and the Soldiers ought to he in barracks in one. Do consider, Gentlemen!”—Thus the tables are in some measure turn’d. Formerly they solicited the Governor, but now it seems he solicits them.

As Andrews pointed out, that discussion happened on a Sunday, when Bostonians weren’t supposed to do any business unless it was really urgent.

TOMORROW: Trying to strike a bargain.

“A proper Person to be employed in the REVENUE”

On 10 Mar 1772, as described yesterday, Massachusetts’s high court delivered a royal pardon to Ebenezer Richardson, convicted twenty-three months earlier of murder.

According to one of the judges on that court, Peter Oliver, “The Prisoner fled the Town immediately on his Discharge; the Rabble heard of it, & pursued him to execute their own Law upon him, but he happily escaped.”

Gov. Thomas Hutchinson reported to his predecessor, Sir Francis Bernard, that the “poor fellow who has been in close prison more than two years…hapned to be discharged when the Inhabitants of the Town were engaged in an Affair at their annual meeting & by this means we saved a tumult at least if nothing more.”

Richardson still had family north of Boston in the Woburn/Stoneham/Reading area, so he probably lay low there. I haven’t found clues about his second wife Kezia and their children.

For a decade before his conviction Richardson had worked for the Customs service. The Commissioners of Customs appear to have eventually found another place for him—a distant place.

Or, as Edes and Gill’s Boston Gazette put it on 24 May 1773:

As an additional Affront to the Feelings of his Countrymen; as an aggravated Outrage on the Sensibility, Humanity, Virtue and Justice of this People; as a Master Stroke of rancorous Enormity, to put to the Rack the most obstinate Quietist: BE IT KNOWN;

that the cringing, smiling, fawning, bowing CHARLES FROTH, Esq; a Wretch, who from his earliest Puppy-hood, thro’ the lingering Progress of a too-long protracted Life, to a Period when he withers on the Crutch of Decrepitude, might challenge his recording Angel to produce one single Action, that sifted to it’s Motive, would not effectually consign him to eternal Infamy; has, O! unparalelled Effrontery! O! the detestable Parricide! has appointed that execrable Villain, the condemned Vagabond; the rank, bloody, and as yet unhanged EBENEZER RICHARDSON, an Officer in the Customs in the Port of Philadelphia.

And what is infinitely aggravating, and renders the Transaction much more atrocious; the Murderer is distinguished by a particular Recommendation to the Collector and Comptroller of that Port; declaring the Miscreant to be a distinguished Friend to Government, a proper Person to be employed in the REVENUE, and ordering them to reward him with a Guinea per Week.——

As the said Ebenezer Richardson is now placed on the Ladder of Promotion, we may expect him one of the Honorable Board of Commissioners, in a few Years; where he may probably make as distinguished a Figure as the Rest of his BRETHREN.

“Charles Froth” was the Whigs’ usual insult for Customs Commissioner Charles Paxton (shown above), who had employed Richardson as a confidential informer soon after he moved to Boston. As you might guess, Paxton was about as unpopular as Richardson himself.

TOMORROW: Shifting to Philadelphia.

The Sentencing of Ebenezer Richardson

On 21 Apr 1770, as recounted back here, a Suffolk County jury found Ebenezer Richardson guilty of murdering young Christopher Seider.

The judges had instructed the jurors that all the evidence indicated Richardson had fired his gun in self-defense as a crowd attacked his house and family, so the worst they could convict him of was manslaughter. Judge Peter Oliver insisted that the facts showed Richardson was innocent of any crime.

The jurors ignored those instructions and came back with a guilty verdict. And the law provided only one punishment for a convicted murderer: death.

Instead of passing that sentence immediately, the judges adjourned the court.

The next time they met, one judge was ill, so they once again didn’t pass sentence.

In September, the judges called the jurors back into court to ask about their deliberation, whether the angry crowd in the courtroom had influenced them. The judges were seeking any reason to overturn the verdict. But no opportunity presented itself.

Gov. Thomas Hutchinson wrote to his superiors in London, seeking a royal pardon for Richardson. He could have issued a pardon himself as governor, but he didn’t want to take all the heat for that decision.

In February 1771, the London ministry responded by sending back notice that the king (which really meant the privy council) had put Richardson in for a pardon.

Ever the stickler, Hutchison thought that paperwork had to be complete to stand up to scrutiny. He asked for something clearer, more legalistic.

Meanwhile, Richardson was still in the Boston jail. That was when the press referred to him by such epithets as “the rank, bloody, and as yet unhanged Ebenezer Richardson.”

Richardson’s mother died while he was imprisoned.

On 10 Mar 1772, the Boston town meeting scheduled a discussion of William Molineux’s petition that he shouldn’t have to pay back money the town had loaned him to fund a public-works spinning project. Molineux brought supporters to Faneuil Hall to press for his case. Ultimately, justice Richard Dana stated the law didn’t allow for a loan like that to be forgiven. But the town didn’t press for the overdue repayment, either.

That same day (which wasn’t a coincidence), the royal judges summoned Richardson from jail. On 3 March, new paperwork had arrived from London, and Hutchinson passed it on to the judges. The 12 March Boston News-Letter reported what followed:

The Case of Ebenezer Richardson, who by Verdict of a Jury was found Guilty of the Murder of Christopher Seider, having been certified and laid before the King, His Majesty has been pleased to grant his most gracious Pardon, the Evidence of which, in the usual Form being laid before the Judges of the Superior-Court on Tuesday last, and the said Richardson having then entred into Recognizance to plead the said Pardon, when called upon, he was liberated from Prison where he has been confined above two Years.

Ebenezer Richardson was free. But of course he was still the most hated man in Boston.

TOMORROW: Fleeing the town.

The Broad Base of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress

The main point I make about the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, convened 250 years ago this month, is that it had more support and participation from the men of Massachusetts than the colony’s chartered legislature.

The provincial census of 1765 listed 186 towns and districts, and more were formed in the following decade. Here’s what I wrote in The Road to Concord about how those towns usually made up the legislature:

Under Massachusetts’s official charter, most towns were invited to send two representatives to each General Court. Very small towns, with fewer than 120 voters, could send only one and did not have to send any. In many places, especially those farthest from Boston, the inhabitants might have trouble convincing a gentleman to leave his farm, or balk at paying that gentleman’s expenses.

Most towns therefore sent a single representative. If a town of moderate size sent no one at all, it was supposed to pay a fine, but that penalty was never levied. As a result, only about two-thirds of the towns participated in a typical General Court before the Revolutionary turmoil.

In contrast, over 180 Massachusetts towns were represented at the first meeting of the Provincial Congress in Salem on October 7, 1774, with only 21 towns listing as having sent no delegate. There was no cap on the number of men who might represent a town in the Provincial Congress, so several towns sent three or more delegates. All told, there were 293 men at the first congress, about twice the legislature’s usual number.

In other words, even though towns had been legally obligated to represent themselves in the General Court, many chose not to. Even though towns had no legal obligation to this new Provincial Congress, many more chose to participate, in defiance of the law, the general, and Parliament. The Provincial Congress was thus a more representative, broader-based body than the preceding legislatures.

Looking back, I’d revise that passage to say that we don’t know how many towns had elected representatives in Salem on 7 October. The newspapers of the time said there were ninety men in all, so the count of towns must have been lower.

However, after the Provincial Congress got down to business in Concord four days later, its official record listed 180 towns. It’s likely that not all elected representatives made it to that start of that session, so that list could have grown a bit over time to that number. Nonetheless, it’s obvious that the congress had a broad popular base and thus, for democrats, more legitimacy.