“Remaining unpaid of Mr. Adams Debt to the Town”

A couple of days ago I recounted how in March 1771 the Boston town meeting appointed the merchant William Whitwell and four other men to look into the town’s finances.

That committee finally reported on its inquiry on 9 Mar 1772. Among its conclusions was:

We also find that there still remains to be paid into the Province Treasury on Account of Mr. Samuel Adams the Sum of Fifty Pounds and from the information given us by Mr. Robert Peirpoint it appears that there is no probability of any part of the Sum of £1149 10 0 1/4 remaining unpaid of Mr. Adams Debt to the Town, will ever be received and paid into the Treasury——

Adams had been one of Boston’s tax collectors from 1756 to 1765. He turned over a lot less money than he was supposed to collect. No one believed Adams had kept funds for himself, however. Rather, he hadn’t pressed citizens for everything they legally owed. If the townspeople pressured him for more money, they knew he’d have little choice but to squeeze them back, and no one wanted that.

According to Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, John Hancock had spurred that inquiry while knowing it could harm Adams. The finding that Adams owed more than £1,000 might indeed have been embarrassing except that the town meeting had already voted to sue him for uncollected taxes back in 1767. Hutchinson had presided over an appeal of that suit. Boston had granted Pierpont, one of Adams’s bondsmen, authority to collect back taxes on his behalf. In sum, the outstanding sum was old news.

Whitwell and his committee also found that a couple of more recent tax collectors owed £148 and £432, minus their premiums. The town was in legal negotiations with another former tax collector, Jonathan Payson. Such disputes weren’t uncommon, though Adams’s deficit was much bigger than others.

In addition, the committee found that Thomas Cushing owed £155 and John Ruddock £82 from selling lottery tickets for the town. Both those men were politically active Whigs. Hutchinson suspected Cushing had been another of Hancock’s targets.

Yet later in the same afternoon, the meeting considered the even older debt of “the Linnen Manufacturing Company” that had built the Manufactory building beside the Common. Three “Surviving Members” of that company—Lt. Gov. Andrew Oliver, commissary general Thomas Hubbard, and Dr. Silvester Gardiner—asked the town to write off the remaining amount. The meeting refused. Those gentlemen were on Hutchinson’s side in the political disputes.

One more financial question remained: William Molineux petitioned the town for more money for his spinning enterprise, which provided employment for poor women and children. Or at least to forgive the £300 it had loaned him years before. Molineux was among the Boston Whigs’ most radical leaders.

That question was so involved that the discussion was adjourned to the next day. A “printed Paper” criticizing Molineux was spread around by persons unknown. “After considerable debate,” the meeting heard justice Richard Dana’s judgment that the law wouldn’t let the town forgive Molineux’s debt. So the men at the meeting voted to take no action at all beyond rejecting “unjust Reflections on Mr. Mollineuxs Character” and thanking the man for “his faithful discharge of a Contract.”

Meanwhile, Massachusetts’s royal judges took advantage of how Molineux and his supporters were busy in Faneuil Hall on that 10 March to deliver a royal pardon to convicted murderer Ebenezer Richardson so he could slip out of town unnoticed.

All in all, I see the 1772 inquiry into debts owed the town as fairly ordinary business. I’m sure Hutchinson was pleased that people had to pay attention to Samuel Adams’s “defalcation.” But I doubt the governor was accurate in believing Hancock was secretly, deliberately poking at Adams’s sensitive spot.

TOMORROW: Mr. Adams’s debt.

“An inquiry into the state of the finances of the town”

Even as he served as royal governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Hutchinson was writing the third volume of his history of the colony.

Before he died in 1780, Hutchinson cut down that manuscript. Interestingly, he removed some passages defending his own conduct, though of course what survived presented his view of events.

Hutchinson’s grandson published the edited text in 1828. In 1936 the Harvard College administrator Lawrence Shaw Mayo (shown here) republished all three volumes in a scholarly edition.

In 1947, Mayo married Catherine Barton, a “friend and companion of long standing who shared his scholarly interests,” according to Clifford K. Shipton. Six weeks later, Mayo took his own life, to his friends’ shock.

Meanwhile, Shipton was tracking down a collector who had bought Hutchinson’s earlier manuscript. He asked Catherine Barton Mayo to study it, and she published the excised passages in the American Antiquarian Society Proceedings in 1949.

One of those passages stated about the spring of 1772:

The breach between [Samuel] Adams & [John] Hancock was apparently about this time greater than ever. The latter in a town meeting, a few weeks before, had intimated his design to move for an inquiry into the state of the finances of the town, in which the former had occasioned a great deficiency, and also into the state of monies raised by lottery for the benefit of the town of which lottery Mr. [Thomas] Cushing, the speaker of the House and a kinsman and fast friend of Mr. Adams, was one of the Trustees, and reported to be deficient.

As a town selectman, Hancock had a solid reason to push for an audit of Boston’s finances. The governor hinted that this concern was actually a clever way to distance himself from Adams and Cushing.

I’m not convinced Hutchinson’s presentation of events was accurate. To start with, although Adams and Cushing were personally close, Cushing’s politics were closer to Hancock’s, especially as the 1770s went on. On the question of how much to protest the Massachusetts General Court being convened outside of Boston, the issue that reportedly first divided Adams and Hancock in the spring of 1772, Cushing was on Hancock’s side.

Then there’s a matter of timing. Boston’s town records show that the meeting created its committee to look into financial matters on 27 May 1771. (Those records don’t say who proposed that measure.) The committee chairman was the merchant William Whitwell, and the other members were Thomas Dawes, Melatiah Bourn, Alexander Hill, and Ezekiel Price, political and business insiders.

That committee offered an interim report in June but didn’t deliver its full findings until 9 Mar 1772. Even that was, as Hutchinson’s own account says, “a few weeks before” the disagreement in the General Court led to Hancock’s first noted resentment of Adams.

Now according to Hutchinson’s unnamed sources, all the way back in June 1771 Hancock “wished to be seperated from Mr Adams.” And in December Adams sensed it necessary to assure Hancock that he hadn’t said certain things about him in a conversation about James Otis. So it’s possible that Hancock was chafing under Adams’s influence, set up the financial inquiry in May 1771, and finally openly objected to something Adams said the following April.

If so, Hancock was playing a really long game.

TOMORROW: Following the money, counting the votes.

“Told John Hancock Esqr. that he heard me say in a threatning manner”

The newly released first volume of The Papers of John Hancock, covering the years 1754–1769, doesn’t even have an index entry for Samuel Adams. Hancock was politically active in that time, as a Boston selectman and representative in the Massachusetts General Court. But he did his politicking in person, not in (preserved) letters or newspaper essays.

In contrast, the first volume of the Writings of Samuel Adams, covering 1764–1769, includes a couple of items defending Hancock from charges of fomenting riots: a 1768 letter written for the signature of House speaker Thomas Cushing and a 1769 newspaper essay signed “Candidus.” Hancock also served on several committees with Adams, but Adams gets the credit (via a descendant’s biography) for creating those committees’ documents.

In those corpuses, the first sign of a rift between Hancock and Adams appears in a 15 Dec 1771 “Memorandum” that Adams wrote for himself after a conversation with the colony’s deputy treasurer:

This day I waited on Mr. Harrison Gray junr. to acquaint him that I had been informd that he had told John Hancock Esqr. that he heard me say in a threatning manner that Mr. Hancock might think as he pleasd, Mr. [James] Otis had friends & his (Mr. Hancocks) treatment of Mr. Otis would prejudice his (Mr. Hancocks) Election.

Mr. Gray declard to me that he did not hear me mention a Word of Mr. Hancocks Election—that a conversation happend between Mr. John Cotton [deputy secretary of Massachusetts] & myself (Mr. Gray being present) relative to Mr. Otis—that Mr. Cotton said Mr. Otis’ Conduct must be the Effect of Distraction or Drunkeness—that I said I did not think so—but that it rather proceeded from Irritation—that he (Mr. Gray) said if Mr. Otis is distracted why should Mr. Hancock pursue him—& that I answerd that Mr. Hancock might be stirred up by others to do it, but I thought he had better not or it was a pity he should.

This Mr. Gray declared was all that I said relative to Mr. Hancock, in answer to his Question as is before mentiond & that it did not appear to him that I discoverd the least Unfriendliness towards Mr. Hancock. He further said he was willing to give his oath to the truth of this his declaration.

Upon which I told Mr. Gray that it was far from my Intention to make Mr. Hancock displeasd with him, that I was satisfied that Mr. Hancock understood him differently & I should let Mr. Hancock know what he now said, & asked him to repeat it which he did precisely as before—& told me he was freely willing that I should repeat it to Mr. Hancock that if Mr. Hancock & myself desired it he would thus explain it in presense of us both.

Here’s the scan of that document from the New York Public Library.

At this time, Boston had reelected James Otis, Jr., to the House after a year off, hoping he would regain his sanity and efficacy as a legislative leader. Instead, Otis became more inclined to support royal policy and then more irrational, as I discussed back here.

In November, acting in his capacity as a probate judge after a request from the Otis family, Gov. Thomas Hutchinson asked the Boston selectmen to assess whether Otis was “a Non Compos Distracted or Lunatick Person.” The selectmen, including Hancock, decided he needed a guardian. On 3 December, Otis was “carried off…in a post chaise, bound hand and foot,” for treatment.

Samuel Adams’s memorandum doesn’t say when he discussed Otis with Cotton and Gray. Adams had tried to gloss over the situation: Otis was acting from “Irritation,” he insisted, not “Distraction or Drunkeness.” As to why Hancock thought otherwise, he “might be stirred up by others.”

This episode belies the common picture, pushed by Loyalists and adopted by many authors since, that Adams was the savvy politician pulling Hancock’s strings. Not only was Hancock breaking from Adams, but the merchant had a better sense of the situation. Otis needed help, and he was losing popular support. In the spring of 1772, the North End Caucus (in my reading) and then the Boston town meeting chose never to vote for him again.

The memorandum does show Adams’s keen judgment about what could annoy Hancock, however. Adams had heard, quite possibly from Hancock himself, that Gray had described him as speaking “in a threatning manner.” And what was Adams supposedly threatening? Hancock’s popularity and prospects for reelection. Adams recorded this evidence to show Hancock that he’d said no such thing.

Without this memorandum in writing, we’d have no evidence of Adams worrying that Hancock thought he’d revealed “Unfriendliness” in the fall of 1771.

TOMORROW: Matters come to a head.

Mapping Samuel Adams’s Declining Opinion of John Hancock

Among the intriguing questions posed to the A.I. program on the John Hancock Papers website is: “What did Hancock think about Sam ADams”?

The relationship of John Hancock and Samuel Adams fascinated people during their careers, and it continues to be interesting.

I even consulted on a picture book about the two men: Most Wanted, written by Sarah Jane Marsh and illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham.

When I thought about how I’d answer the question, my mind went to several historical moments:

• The Rev. William Gordon’s anecdote about how Adams “artfully nominated” Hancock for the Massachusetts General Court ahead of John Rowe.
• Adams’s 11 May 1770 letter to Hancock when the merchant wanted to resign from that legislature after not receiving a unanimous vote in the town meeting, assuring him he was “a most valueable Member.”
• Gov. Thomas Hutchinson’s (probably unrealistic) hope in the early 1770s to woo Hancock away from Adams with a seat on the Council, a militia command, and other rewards.
• The Boston Whigs’ choice of Hancock to deliver the Massacre memorial oration in 1774, cementing his place in the radical camp.
• Hancock and Adams’s activity on 18–19 Apr 1775, including Gordon’s “glorious morning” anecdote.
• The disagreement between Hancock and Adams over whether they should let the crowd pull their carriage as they entered New York City—at least as reported later by the Adams family.
• Adams’s opposition to a ball in honor of Martha Washington which John and Dorothy Hancock planned to attend.
• The growing divide between Hancock and Adams during the Second Continental Congress, as recalled by John Adams in his autobiography’s comment about March 1776: “Mr. Samuel Adams had become very bitter against Mr. Hancock and spoke of him with great Asperity, in private Circles, and this Alienation between them continued…”
• The dispute within the Congress over whether it should thank Hancock when he resigned as chair in October 1777.
• Samuel Adams’s catty comments about politicians susceptible to flattery in letters to James Warren that same month.

All those data points, however, come from Samuel Adams or others. The question posed is what Hancock thought of Adams.

TOMORROW: Ups and downs.

Hopestill Capen’s Last Decades in Boston

Before the Revolutionary War, Hopestill Capen regularly advertised British dry goods in Boston newspapers.

After his two years in jail on suspicion of being inimical to the newly independent state, Capen kept a lower profile. He ran no ads—though he may not have had many goods to sell, either.

Nonetheless, Capen’s shop sign, the Cornfields, continued to be mentioned in the newspapers as a landmark in central Boston.

On 26 July 1786, Boston’s selectmen met to draw names of citizens in good standing to serve as jurors “for a Maritime Court” the next month. The first name chosen was Paul Revere, now with “Esq.” after his name.

The second name was Hopestill Capen, showing he had been fully reintegrated into Boston society.

Interestingly, the third name was David Spear. Capen and Spear had married sisters, Patience and Sarah Stoddard.

Hopestill and Patience Capen had had eight or nine children between 1761 and 1774. Most died in their first year, and only one, Thomas, was still alive when the British left.

Sarah Spear and Patience Capen died within a few days of each other in January 1791. Patience was 57 years old.

On 21 Nov 1795, Hopestill Capen placed this advertisement in the Columbian Centinel:

A Theft.

On Tuesday Evening last, between the hours of 6 and 10 o’clock, was stolen from the Subscriber’s house, the following PLATE, marked as follows, viz

Three table Spoons, one H.C. to P.C. made by Mr. HOMES, one d[itt]o A.B. to P.S. made by A. OLIVER; one d[itt]o. T. S. S. and 1 Porringer, marked T. S. A. Engish mode. Whoever will discover the person, so that he or she may be brought to justice, and the property restored, shall receive TEN DOLLARS reward.

I rather hope Hopestill Capen got his family silver back, including the spoon with his and his late wife’s initials on it.

On 2 Mar 1807, Hopestill Capen died at the age of 76. His funeral proceeded from the house his son Thomas had inherited, 47 Hanover Street—now the Union Oyster House.

The Capens were buried in the Copp’s Hill cemetery. Patience and Hopestill’s gravestones were still readable in the late 1800s, but they no longer appear to exist.

Fighting Fires Inside Besieged Boston

On 18 Nov 1775, Gen. William Howe issued instructions for fighting fires in Boston.

The town had had its own rules about fires since the early 1600s, with all households required to bring out their own buckets and competing companies pulling in water-pumping engines.

But by late 1775 most of the town’s population were British soldiers or people attached to them. There was also a hostile enemy outside, which might have prompted worry about saboteurs.

Gen. Howe needed to ensure the remaining civilians and his troops didn’t get in each other’s way, so in his general orders he wrote:

Upon the Discovery of a Fire, Notice is to be given as Usual, by the Ringing of Bells & the Cry of Fire in the Streets, at which time the Regts. will Immediately get under Arms on their Regimental Parade & wait there for further Orders, Unless when a Fire may break out in the Quarters of the Regt; & in that case, the Corps is to quit the place, to make Room for the Inhabitants, who are to Repair to the Fire with all the Buckets in their possesion to give their Assistance, every House holder putting up a Light in a Front Window. A Caution to be observed upon all Alarms whatever.

All persons failing so to do, will be punished in a most Exemplary Manner.

The Bells are not to Ring for the Alarm more than One quarter of an Hour.

The Fire Wards, the Engine Masters & Men Acting under them, are not to be interrupted by any Officer or Soldier in the Execution of their Duty. The Firewards, known by Red painted Staffs, with Heads of Brass are to have the whole Management & Conduct of the Engines & People Assembled to Extinguish a Fire.

Neither are the Inhabitants to be Stopped or impeded in Times of Fires, by the Milatary unless they are Armed, in which case they are to be taken into Custody.

All the Associated Companies, from the essential Service they may be of, are to Attend the Fires without Arms: the Royal North British Volunteers excepted, who have been already Appointed to a particular Duty with Arms.

(The Associated Companies meant the recently established Loyalist militia. The Royal North British Volunteers were primarily Scotsmen; on 29 October Howe had assigned them to patrol the area around Fanueil Hall.)

Women belonging to the Army will not be Allowed to be present at any Fires that may happen.

A Premium of Twenty Shillings Sterling will be given to the Men who bring the first Engine, & work it, at the Fire.

The Firewards are to take into their possession, all Buckets found in Vacated Houses, & to Distribute them among the Residing Inhabitants.

Later, on 10 Mar 1776, as the British military started to load their evacuation ships, Gen. Howe ordered:

the strictest care taken that the Town be not set on Fire; by Accident or by Design. Any Person detected setting Fire; to the Town without Authority will suffer immediate Death.

There were occasional fires in Boston during the military occupations of 1768–1700 and 1774–1776, but no more than usual. The soldiers and civilians worked together to contain them.

After the siege, returning Bostonians found the biggest fire-related damage to the town wasn’t from conflagrations but from people pulling down fences, trees, and even buildings for firewood.

“We have esteemed him to be an honest and peaceable citizen”

In May 1777 Boston had a series of town meetings concerned chiefly with its military defenses.

On 17 May that discussion went further to assembling a list of “Persons belonging to this Town, as have been endeavouring since the 19th. of April 1775, to counteract the united Struggles of this & the neighbouring States.”

The town meeting voted to have those twenty-nine men “apprehended & confined”—while recognizing that would require an order from the Massachusetts Council.

Boston’s official list of suspected Loyalists included the Rev. Dr. Mather Byles, Dr. James Lloyd and four other physicians, William Jackson of the Brazen Head, and others. Three of those men were already in jail: Hopestill Capen, Thomas Edwards, and Benjamin Davis, Sr.

On 22 May the town elected seven representatives to the Massachusetts General Court, with John Pitts and Ellis Gray getting the most votes—more than 500.

Some prominent people disagreed with the town’s list of Loyalists. Soon after the new legislative session started, the Council received a petition “praying the Court to give Orders for the Removal of Hopestill Capen, a Prisoner in Boston Goal.” That petition came from a group headed by Robert Pierpont, a Roxbury merchant and official with impeccable Patriot credentials.

Furthermore, it appears Patience Capen had collected ninety signatures on this statement, transcribed in American Archives:

We, the subscribers, inhabitants of Boston, do hereby certify, that Mr. Hopestill Capen is well known to us, and we have esteemed him to be an honest and peaceable citizen; some of us in particular, have experienced his kind and faithful services in securing and saving our interest and property when we were out of the town; and we all join with the petitioner that he may be released from gaol and restored to his family.

The phrase “when were were out of the town” referred to the siege of Boston. Capen had evidently looked after other shopkeepers’ goods or real estate.

Again, those signers included some men deeply involved in Boston’s Patriot movement and town government: William Dawes, Samuel Dashwood, Moses Grant, Timothy Newell, Edward Payne, John Scollay, Pool Spear, Henry Bass, and so on. Other signers were more moderate Whigs—Ezekiel Price, John Andrews, Thomas Fleet, Thomas Handysyd Peck, Duncan Ingraham. But none of those names would raise political or religious suspicions.

Ninety signatures on a petition was a very impressive number. Nonetheless, those men would have been a decided minority in a town meeting attended by up to 500 citizens worried about the town being attacked from without or undermined from within.

On 18 June, Council member Dr. Samuel Holton brought the businessmen’s petition to the House with a proposal to form a committee “to examine the Commission of the Court of Enquiry, and their Doings thereon at large, together with this Petition, and report what is best to be done thereon.” The House approved that step the next day.

And then, it appears, nothing happened for months.

COMING UP: The repetition of Patience Capen.

“Transmitted to us, their Posterity, a fair and rich Inheritance”

The American Scholar just published Robert A. Gross’s essay “Gratitude Isn’t Everything,” considering the start of the American Revolution in contrast to Vice President J. D. Vance’s one-way demands for gratitude.

American Patriots felt obligations to their ancestors who established the colonies, and to their further ancestors who established the British constitution as they understood it. But to them those obligations called for resistance to Parliament’s new laws, not simple loyalty to the government.

In the Revolutionary movement it was a mark of militancy to appeal to the ancestors in protests against British policies. Such statements rehearsed the history of New England from the Puritans’ first settlements down to the latest generation.

Lexington elaborated on this narrative in January 1773. The saga opened as the Puritans fled the tyranny of Charles I and Archbishop Laud, made the hazardous Atlantic crossing, and carved out new homes in the American wilderness. “Our worthy ancestors … [endured] many Struggles with their Enemies in the Face of every Danger and at the expence of much Treasure and Blood,” the Lexington town meeting declared. They thereby “secured to themselves, & transmitted to us, their Posterity, a fair and rich Inheritance, not only of a pleasant fertile Land, but also of Invaluable Rights & Priviledges both as Men & Christians, as stated in the Royal Charter of this Province, and … [guaranteed] by the Faith of the British Crown & Kingdom.” So precious a legacy came as a sacred trust. It was the townspeople’s duty to protect and preserve this birthright of liberty and pass it on intact to the next generation. To do otherwise would betray their very character as a people.

The rhetoric of filial duty became ubiquitous in 1774–75 and with good reason. To punish the Bay Colony for the Tea Party and to curb what royal officials deemed a disorderly democracy, Britain effectively revoked the revered 1691 Massachusetts Charter. Under the Massachusetts Government Act (MAGA), the Crown took over the hiring and firing of all judicial officials and excluded the assembly from its previous role in choosing the provincial council, the upper chamber of the general court. Most important, the new law barred town meetings without the governor’s consent, except for an annual session to elect municipal officials.

MAGA was a direct attack on local autonomy and on popular influence in government. To the inhabitants, these arbitrary changes, imposed from above, amounted to disinheritance, and as worthy heirs of virtuous forefathers, they rose up in outrage.

One result of Parliament’s overreach, Gross argues, was to spur the Patriots into adopting a broader view of their cause, not linked to one nation’s history. The article quotes Dr. Joseph Warren’s praise for a “universal enquiry into the rights of mankind in general” as well as the rights of British subjects.

Eventually that produced the natural-rights argument of the Declaration of Independence, which could inspire many later movements, not bound to Britain or the limits of eighteenth-century society.

The current administration may invoke the Founding, but in disregarding the natural rights of anyone who’s not an American citizen, that administration is showing contempt for the philosophy the Founders came to champion.

A Boston Stone

This month the city of Boston announced a new finding about a stone in the Granary Burying Ground that reads:

HERE LYES Ye.
BODY OF BOSTON
AGED 70 YEARS
DECd. FEBy. Ye. 28
1 7 2 8

Kelly Thomas, director of the Historic Burying Grounds Initiative for the Boston Parks and Recreation Department, told WBZ: “I was reviewing the photos of headstones, and then I noticed that the stone only had one name.” A geographic name, at that. That hinted the person buried there had been an enslaved man.

Some documentary research turned up records of such a man. Indeed, Gloria McCahon Whiting discussed Sebastian’s marriage to Jane Lake at length in her 2024 book, Belonging: An Intimate History of Slavery and Family in Early New England. Judge Samuel Sewall helped to negotiate the terms of that union at the same time he was writing The Selling of Joseph, his pioneering but self-suppressed anti-slavery pamphlet.

On 13 Feb 1701, after protracted discussions between the couple’s two owners, the judge married the couple. Sebastian’s owner, John Waite, died the next year. Six years after that, when the Boston selectmen listed free black men in town they put to work mending roads (since those men were free/barred from militia training), one of those men was identified as “Bastion Waite.”

Interestingly, Sebastian’s wife came to be known as Jane Basteen and then Jane Boston, taking (or being assigned) her husband’s name while he was assigned his late owner’s surname. As Whiting pointed out, Sabastian would name his second son Joseph, echoing Sewall’s pamphlet. Meanwhile, Sebastian’s name evolved into “Boston.”

The issue of the New-England Weekly Journal dated 24 Feb 1729 included this death notice:

On the 14th. Instant [i.e., of this month] died here a Negro Freeman named Boston, in an advanced Age, and on the 17th, was very decently Buried. A long Train follow’d him to the Grave; it’s said about 150 Blacks, and about 50 Whites, several Magistrates, Ministers, Gentlemen, &c.——

He having borne the Character of a sober Virtuous Liver, and of a very trusty honest and faithful Servant to all that employ’d him, and having acquir’d to himself the general Love and Esteem of his Neighbours by a Readiness to do any good Offices in his power for every one; his Funeral was attended with uncommon Respects, and his Death much lamented.

The carved gravestone, whether paid for by Boston’s estate or by his friends, was another sign of his standing in the community. It is, Mayor Michelle Wu now notes, “one of the oldest gravestones of a free Black person in America.”

At first I was confused by the different death dates stated in the newspaper and on the gravestone. But then I realized the stone was written in the Old Style, Julian date system while the newspaper followed New Style, Gregorian dating decades before the British Empire adopted it officially.

“Touching the delivery of the Papers found upon Mrs. Hill”

As recounted yesterday, on 21 Oct 1776 Boston’s committee of correspondence, inspection, and safety questioned Elizabeth and Mary Hill about the documents they had tried to carry into British-occupied New York.

One of those letters was from Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr. The Patriot authorities were pretty certain he had spied for Gen. Thomas Gage, but they were still lacking solid evidence. If that letter had been incriminating, they would have used it.

In the second letter, Elizabeth’s husband John suggested that the merchant John Timmins was a fellow Loyalist.

And when asked who had brought John’s letter out of the Boston jail to her, Elizabeth said it might have been Richard Newton.

The committee sprang into action:

Collo. [Nathaniel] Barber and Mr. [Ebenezer] Dorr were appointed to go to Mr. [Alexander?] Orracks where Newton lodges in order to secure his Papers for the Inspection of the Committee.

A Complaint signed by the chairman [William Davis], was entered with Mr. Justice [Joseph] Greanleaff one of the Court of Enquiry; praying that the said Newton, might be immediately apprehended, & examined, touching the delivery of the Papers found upon Mrs Hill.

Richard Newton appears to have been a merchant, but not one who had been in Boston for long. He had evacuated Boston on the brig Elizabeth in March along with the Hills, William Jackson, Crean Brush, and other hopeful Loyalists. But Capt. John Manley captured that ship.

In April the Massachusetts Council had ordered Newton, Jackson, Brush, and a couple of other men to be detained in the Boston jail. Later they sent John Hill to jail, too.

In August, Newton signed a bond for good behavior, so he was presumably let out then. It seems quite plausible that Newton brought out a letter from Hill to his wife. That letter probably had more to say about the family’s survival than Boston’s defenses. After all, how much could Hill have learned over the summer in jail?

On 22 October the committee met “at their Chamber in King Street,” perhaps in the Town House. This time Ellis Gray chaired.

The Committee appointed to secure Mr. Newtons Papers Reported, that they had examined the same and could not find any one of a criminal nature among them.

Voted, that Mr. Newton shall have his Trunks of Papers returned him by the Committee — also —

Voted, that the Complaint entered with Mr. Justice Greanleaff, one of the Court of Enquiry against Richard Newton be withdrawn.

As for John Timmins, he was also a merchant. In 1768 he had married the young widow Mary (Olney) Greene, and they had children baptized at Trinity Church. During the tea crisis of 1773 he was agent for the cargo on the Beaver and publicly promised not to unload the East India Company’s tea.

The following year, Timmins signed the merchants’ addresses to Govs. Thomas Hutchinson and Thomas Gage. All of which is to say Timmins really did look like a Loyalist before the war. But he hadn’t left town with the British military.

The committee record says:

Mr. John Timmons name having been mentioned in one of the Papers found upon Mrs. Hill, the Committee sent for her Husband who gave the Paper, and having examined him strictly with respect to what he had written, together with his Wife and Daughter, and also made inquiry of Mr Timmins — the Question was put viz. — “Whether the Committee are fully satisfied, that Mr. Timmons conduct with respect to what passed between Mrs. Hill & himself has been quite unexceptionable — passed in the Affirmative unanimously.

The letters that Elizabeth and Mary Hill had been carrying therefore turned out to be less incriminating than first newspaper reports hinted. Yes, John Hill had communicated to them from the jail. Yes, he’d written about Timmins as a potential helper. Yes, Mary Hill and Ralph Cunningham, attached to the British army, were on their way to marrying. But the committee found no sensitive military information or the like.

Nonetheless, Elizabeth and Mary Hill were still locked up in the Boston jail in February 1777. According to John’s claim to the Loyalists Commission, the family “were all tried For their lives, but not Condemned.” Instead, “In November 1777, they were Exchanged, went to Halifax, and afterwards to New York…”

As for John Timmins and Richard Newton, both those men eventually left Boston for Britain. They decided to be Loyalists in the end.

Interrogating Elizabeth and Mary Hill at the Boston Jail

Back in April I wrote a series of postings about John Hill, his wife Elizabeth (?), and their daughter, captured on board the brig Elizabeth as they evacuated Boston in March 1776.

Recently I stumbled back across a source I may have seen before since I could have mentioned it in 2012. But I viewed it with new eyes.

As you recall, on 12 Oct 1776, Patriots in New London detected the two female Hills trying to carry secret letters onto British-occupied Long Island. They sent those women back to Boston, where John Hill was locked up, for questioning.

The records of the Boston committee, inspection, and safety, published by the New England Historical Genealogical Society in 1880, let us fill out that story.

On 21 October, the committee met at the house of Joseph Otis, the jailkeeper. The merchant William Davis chaired. They summoned “One Mrs. Hill Wife of one Hill now in the Jayl of this County examined together with her Daughter” about the incriminating papers they were carrying when detained.

The committee minutes say:

A Letter of recommendation given Mrs. Hill by Dr. [Benjamin] Church was read, together with the other Papers found upon her.

Mrs. Mary Hill the younger was brought in, and examined particularly with respect to Dr. Church, and one Ralph Cunningham mentioned in the Paper, the latter of whom appeared to be a Person who had made Courtship to the said Hill & supposed to be in the British Army at New York.

This source thus tells us that John Hill’s daughter was named Mary, and that she must have been the daughter of John Hill who married Lt. Cunningham of the Legion in 1779, as I guessed here.

Mrs. Hill the Mother was brought in & examined more particularly with respect to Mr. John Timmins of this Town Merchant, who was characterized by Hill the Husband, as a person who had been faithful to Government [i.e., Loyalist].

Mrs. Hill being asked who it was that delivered her the Paper wrote by her Husband answered. that she could not well recollect but thought it was one Richard Newton.

Well, of course we know what happened next: the authorities went on a hunt for Timmins and Newton.

TOMORROW: Further investigation.

“They talk of sinking Hulks by the Castle”

On 29 Apr 1776, one week after writing the letter to John Adams that I quoted yesterday, the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper wrote to Samuel Adams:

this Town…is now in some better Posture of Defence, but the Works proceed slowly. I must repeat what I said to you in my last, There is an absolute Necessity of some able active Commander here, such as [Nathanael] Green, [John] Sullivan, [Israel] Putnam &c upon other Accounts besides fortifying, tho this is of extreme Importance in our Situation— . . .

We have some good Lines, excellent Cannon at Fort Hill; this is all our Defence at present, except the Works thrown up at Dorchester Point which are said to be good—We are now going to erect Works at the Castle, & hope to have a Line of Guns well defended, on the Eastern Point; & are preparing to sink Hulks, between the Rocks of Castle Island, & the lower middle Ground.

The Enemy employ’d no little Time in ruining all the old Works there, and destroying the Guns…

Cooper still wanted someone besides Gen. Artemas Ward to supervise the defense of Boston, but his description of the town’s defenses was a little advanced from the previous week.

A 22 April letter from Boston quoted in the Connecticut Gazette of New London also said: “Tomorrow they talk of sinking Hulks by the Castle.” Those hulks were the keels of old ships, meant to impede Royal Navy warships from sailing easily into the inner harbor.

Of course, those same obstacles would also be a problem for merchant vessels, or American warships. On 30 April James Warren told John Adams: “No hulks as yet sunk; the people of Boston seem much against it; and whether it will be done or not I can’t say.” After all, Warren was merely the speaker of the Massachusetts house.

On 9 May that legislature directed its harbor defense committee “without delay to sink the Hulks.” But on 23 May the Boston town meeting voted (unanimously, it was later said) against that measure. The General Court on 5 June suspended the operation, though empowering the committee to proceed “upon any sudden Alarm or appearance of danger.”

Soon enough, fear of British warships invading Boston waned. No hulks were sunk in the harbor.

Thetford’s Most Famous Son

Thomas Paine was born in Thetford, England, in 1737.

In 1964 the town erected a statue of him, over the objections of a councilor who actually resigned after the vote.

Even so, I can’t help but wonder if the statue truly matches Paine’s ideas.

“What do you mean? We set it in a place of honor—on King Street, outside King’s House.”

“King Street? How does that reflect Paine’s views of monarchy?”

“Oh, we still have total respect for Thomas Paine and his writing.”

“Okay, good.”

“Why, back in 2020 we gilded him!”

(Now, to be fair, the Thomas Paine Society itself helped to pay for this gilding.)

“The officer (Crean Brush) who took my goods”

As quoted back here, on 10 Mar 1776 Gen. William Howe authorized Crean Brush to seize linen and woolen goods inside Boston to ensure they would be carried out of town and not fall into the hands of (or be sold to) the rebel army.

By that point, most of the wealthy people inside besieged Boston were Loyalists, and they planned to leave with the British military. But many adherents to the Patriot cause had left their goods in the town months before. And a few men had stayed to look after their property, their family, or their constituents.

Selectman Samuel Austin was in the last category. Nine years later he told John Adams, who had once employed his son as a law clerk and was now the U.S. of A.’s minister to Great Britain, what he remembered about those days:

I apprehend it needless to Say anything about the Rude, and insulting behavior of the officer (Crean Brush) who took my goods, all which I was oblidg’d to Submit to.—

Suffice it to say that on the 11th. March 1776 Crean Brush, an officer appointed by Genl. How, and by his written Orders…did by force and Arms, with near Twenty Soldiers, with their Guns and Bayonets enter my House and took from me in goods & Merchandize to the amount of Two Thousand Four hundred and Thirty Pounds 18/7 Neat Sterling Cost, to which I have aded Fifty per ct. Advance, which would not pay the Insurance & Freight, as also Interest on the same, untill paid. . .

I had an Opportunity of Conversing with [Gen. Howe] on the Subject of taking my goods from me in the manner he did, He Expressd himself with great Surprize and Indignation, that I should even think he mean’t to Alienate the Property of my goods, by no means he said, he mean’t no such thing, on the Contrary, he assured me in the most Sollemn manner my goods should all be Returnd me again, or the Cash paid for them. He aded it was a Common thing for an Army when Retreating and another army Pursuing, for the Retreating Army to take from the inhabitants, every thing that might any ways be servicable to the Pursuers, but that as soon as the Confusion was over, the inhabitants had their goods Return’d or the money paid them, to the amount of what was taken away, and this he Asur’d me should be the case with mine.—

He said further that what he had done was in Conformity to orders Rec’d from the Minster, to Prevent the Rebels as he calld them from being benifitted by them. Accordinly in a letter he writes Lord Dartmouth (which I have seen) given him an Accot. of Evacuating the Town, he has these words, “all the Woolen good also, that I could find Room for belonging to those who chose to stay behind, the want of which is more distress to the Enemy than any other Article whatever, has been shipd, Inventories of them taken in the best manner Possible, and Put under the Charge of proper persons, in order hereafter to be stor’d.”

Agreeable to this, is his Orders to Crean Brush when he took the goods (Coppy of which you’ll have withe Papers sent you from Congress) in which are these words, “You are hereby Authorizd, and Requir’d to take into your Possession, all such goods as Answer this discription, to give Certificates to the owners that you have Reciev’d them for their use, and will deliver them to the owners orders, Unavoidable Accidents Excepted.”

Both the above Extracts, Plainly Evince, that it was never the intention, or design either of Genl. How or the Minister, that such goods so taken, should be look’d upon as forfited goods, on the Contrary, they were to be inventoried and Stored, and taken Proper care of, for the bennefit of the owners, and to be deliverd to their Orders, all which is Exactly agreeable to Genl Hows declaration to me, that they or the money should be Return’d.

Austin’s point in 1785 was that the British government still owed him for the value of his confiscated goods. London merchants were pushing him to repay his debts from before the war, so he wanted that money—or he wanted to be able to tell those creditors that they should go after their own government for repayment instead of him.

TOMORROW: More complaints about Crean Brush.

“Without the leave of the Governor”

Earlier this month the Journal of the American Revolution ran an article by Ray Raphael about colonial Massachusetts’s constitution and how the royal government tried to curtail it.

Here’s a taste:

Of the four punitive acts passed in response to the Boston Tea Party, closing the port of Boston receives most attention in textbooks today—but at the time, with 95 percent of the colony’s population living outside Boston, it was “An Act for the Better Regulating the Government of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay”—known today as the Massachusetts Government Act—that sparked the people’s fury and led them to cast off British rule.

Under the 1691 Charter, “freeholders” could call a town meeting whenever they saw fit—but no longer: “Whereas a great abuse has been made of the power of calling such meetings, and the inhabitants have, contrary to the design of their institution, been misled to treat upon matters of the most general concern, and to pass many dangerous and unwarrantable resolves,” the 1774 act declared, “no meeting shall be called by the Selectmen, or at the request of any number of freeholders of any township, district, or precinct, without the leave of the Governor, or, in his absence, of the Lieutenant Governor, in writing, expressing the special business of the said meeting.”

Likewise, on the provincial level, power was wrested from the people. No longer would the incoming “general court or assembly” choose the Governor’s Council:

Whereas the said method of electing such counsellors or assistants. . . hath been so far from contributing to the attainment of the good ends and purposes thereby intended, and to the promoting of the internal welfare, peace, and good government of the said province, or to the maintenance of the just subordination to, and conformity with, the laws of Great Britain, . . . the said method of annually electing the counsellors or assistants . . . should no longer be suffered to continue . . .

Be it therefore enacted . . . that the council, or court of assistants, shall be composed of such of the inhabitants or proprietors of lands within the same as shall be thereunto nominated and appointed by his Majesty.

All other officers would also be appointed by the governor, who could remove them at will…

The voters of Massachusetts didn’t like to see Gov. Thomas Gage implement the new law. Soon they were protesting against it—and shutting down the colonial government to do so.

The next courts were scheduled for Springfield, shiretown of Hampshire County, two weeks later, on August 30—but some 1,500 citizens made sure they did not sit. One eyewitness, Joseph Clarke of Northampton, gave a vivid account: “The people of each town being drawn into separate companies marched with staves & musick . . . The trumpets sounding, drums beating, fifes playing and Colours flying, struck the passions of the soul into a proper tone, and inspired martial courage into each.”

The judges and justices of the peace offered no resistance to “the body of the county,” as Clarke called the men who marched with their town’s militia companies. When a committee asked them “whether they meant to hold their commissions and exercise their authority according to the new act of parliament for altering the constitution of the province,” they all said they would not.

One corrective for the article: The Boston Port Bill went into effect on 1 June 1774. The Massachusetts Government Act may have been drafted to start at the same time, but the final language said it took effect on 1 August. And then the text didn’t arrive in Salem until a few days after that.

In other words, it took only about two weeks from the start of the law for people in western Massachusetts to organize major protests and shut down a branch of the royal government. That’s how much people wanted to maintain their constitution.

“He would take no notice of it”

On 8 Mar 1776, 250 years ago today, three Loyalists walked out of Boston under a flag of truce.

Peter Johonnot and the brothers Thomas and Jonathan Amory handed a letter to the Continental Army officer commanding at the bottom of the Neck, Col. Ebenezer Learned (1728–1801) of Oxford.

That letter was signed by four Boston selectmen, and I quoted it in full here, a mere eighteen years ago.

The gist of the message was that “Genl [William] Howe…has no intention of destroying the Town Unless the Troops under his command are molested during their Embarkation.” The British army was ready to leave.

However, that gist was coated in verbiage and layers of intermediaries: the three gentlemen who brought the message, the four selectmen, Lt. Gov. Thomas Oliver, Gen. James Robertson. It wasn’t a letter from Gen. Howe himself or anyone he’d designated as his representative.

The next day, Col. Learned wrote back from Roxbury to the three Loyalists:

Agreeably to a promise made to you at the Lines Yesterday I waited upon his Excellency Genl [George] Washington and presented to him the Paper (handed to me by you) from the Select Men of Boston.

The Answer I receiv’d from him was to this effect “That as it was an unauthenticated Paper; without an address and not obligatory upon General Howe he would take no notice of it”

As Washington noted, Gen. Howe had put no promise in writing. He had also avoided acknowledging any legitimacy to Washington’s claim to be a fellow general.

Nonetheless, the reply Learned sent back assured the Loyalists, and the British officials behind them, that Gen. Washington had read the message.

Indeed, even as the Continental commander-in-chief was officially taking no notice of the letter, his staff was making several copies of it, and he was conveying its contents to Gov. Jonathan Trumbull of Connecticut and the Continental Congress.

When I spoke in Acton last month, someone asked if Washington and Howe had made an agreement about letting the British depart. This exchange of letters that wasn’t officially an exchange was why I had to answer, “Yes and no.”

“Possibly not the best man to colonize a new country”

I’ve been analyzing a letter from the Thomas Gage Papers at the Clements Library, written by Jonathan Hastings, Jr., on 11 June 1775.

Hastings addressed his correspondent as “Friend Jacob.” Their families were known to each other, and Jacob probably had connections to Harvard College.

Another clue to Hastings’s correspondent is his comment “Am happy you had so safe a Passage & found your Friends well.” Jacob was obviously traveling. Hastings then offered basic information about the siege, meaning he knew Jacob was far from Massachusetts. Crown forces probably intercepted the letter at sea, not on land.

I looked at the entries in Sibley’s Harvard Graduates for Harvard students in this period named Jacob who might have gone abroad. Almost all were settled down as ministers by 1775, usually inside Massachusetts.

One remaining candidate is Jacob Welsh (1755–1822) from the class of 1774. He was the son of John Welsh (1730–1812), a Boston jeweler and member of the club that used the silver punch bowl now called the “Sons of Liberty Bowl.” This Jacob had one brother, John, Jr., born in 1757.

Sibley’s says nothing about Jacob Welsh’s whereabouts between graduating in July 1774 and entering the Continental Army as an ensign at the start of 1776. (He served until late 1778, first at Fort Ticonderoga and then in the artillery.) Did Welsh leave Massachusetts in that stretch, missing the start of the Revolutionary War because he was in Europe, the Caribbean, or the west?

Jacob Welsh did prove more peripatetic than most of his peers. In addition, Sibley’s says, he “looked for the main chance wherever it might present itself.” After the war he settled in Lunenburg briefly, serving as the town’s legislative representative. But then he sailed to England, smuggling home a “carding and spinning machine” in hopes of securing a state patent for himself. In 1791 Welsh went to Philadelphia and applied to President George Washington to help build the new national capital. He invested in lots of land, as far afield as Louisiana.

In 1807, it appears, Welsh wrote to Gen. Henry Burbeck, a fellow veteran of the Continental artillery corps. According to Heritage Auctions, he submitted “suggestions for the defense of Boston,” including “substitutions for round cannonballs.”

By 1809 Welsh faced a legal judgment of almost a thousand dollars owed to a merchant in Salem. The authorities began to seize his local property. Welsh lit out for Geauga County, Ohio, to manage land that his father had bought a decade before. A county history published in 1878 stated:

Jacob Welsh was a native of Boston, of an old family, and reared in luxury, possibly not the best man to colonize a new country. At the time he came to Ohio, he was a middle-aged man; a gentleman of the old school, of medium height, fair complexion, dressed in small-clothes, with long hose and buckles at the knee, and shoe-buckles over the instep, liberally educated, of imposing appearance and stately address, quite fitted to the aristocratic drawing-rooms of Boston, but not appearing to especial advantage in the woods, trails, and cabins of the Western Reserve. While he was a good conversationalist, he had little energy, small business capacity, and a large disposition to spend money.

After another decade, enough people had settled around Welsh’s land to form a township. He promised his neighbors to “give glass and nails for a meeting-house, and fifty acres of land, to settle a minister.” In return, the township was named after him. In April 1820 Welshfield Township had its first election, and Jacob Welsh was chosen to be a trustee.

According to that county history, after Welsh died in 1822 locals found that he had “forgot” his promised bequests. Twelve years later, the community changed its name to Troy Township. That township’s website offers a more compact version of the story while Sibley’s says Welsh did make his promised donation. The county histories from 1878 and 1880 seem best documented, so I’ve relied on them.

Jacob Welsh’s gravestone appears above, courtesy of Find-a-Grave. The central, unincorporated part of Troy Township is still called Welshfield.

Reenacting Tea Meetings in Faneuil Hall and Old South

Bostonians had lots of public debates over what to do about the East India Company’s tea, both before and after persons unidentified destroyed it in the harbor on 16 Dec 1773.

Some of the meetings before that event lasted hours and attracted so many people that the crowd had to gather in the Old South Meeting-House instead of Faneuil Hall.

In 1774, after Parliament passed the Boston Port Bill, the town meeting had more sessions devoted to discussing whether the town or any of its citizens should pay for the tea.

Families can sample the arguments at those meetings in two ways this season, both within the buildings where Bostonians actually gathered to debate.

Saturday and Sunday, 13 and 14 December, 1 P.M.
252nd Boston Tea Party Anniversary Town Meeting
Boston National Historical Park
Faneuil Hall

In early 1774 Parliament responded to the destruction of over 90,000 pounds of property by closing the port of Boston until the East India Company was compensated for its loss. In May, Bostonians gathered in the Great Hall in Faneuil Hall to vote on their response. Should they pay for the destroyed property, either officially or by private subscription, and reopen the port? Or should they endorse a boycott of British goods and continue protesting Parliament?

At 3 P.M. on each day, the same space will host the “1873 Women’s Tea Party,” a rally by the New England Women’s Suffrage Association. Leading suffragists argued that they were inheritors of the legacy of the American Revolution.

All these programs at Faneuil Hall are free and open to the public for all ages. They last 30-45 minutes. Sign up to attend here.

Tuesday, 16 December, 5 P.M.
Reenactment of the Meeting of the Body of the People
Revolutionary Spaces
Old South Meeting House

Commemorate the 252nd anniversary of the Boston Tea Party with a live reenactment of the Meeting of the Body of the People—held in the very room where it all began.

Feel the tension rise as fiery patriots debate the fate of the East India Company’s tea before thousands of restless colonists. Hear the shouts, the arguments, and the call for action that set a revolution in motion. Watch history come to life as Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Paul Revere, and others grapple with the decision to take bold action, ultimately leading to the dramatic event that became known as the Boston Tea Party.

(The Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum will not host a reenactment of the destruction of the tea in Boston Harbor this year.)

Ticket prices for the Old South reenactment range from $60 for V.I.P. seating to $25 for members of Revolutionary Spaces. Order tickets through this page. Doors will open at 5 P.M., and the reenactment will start at 6:15.

A Tight Squeeze for the 1780–81 School Year

When we left the Boston selectmen yesterday, a town meeting committee had just told them that they’d heard the widow Rebecca Holbrook might have a room in her house suitable for teaching handwriting and arithmetic to 70–80 boys.

Since Widow Holbrook’s late husband and his brother had both been masters of the South Writing School, she would surely be willing to host scholars from that school while it was repaired after a fire, right?

The selectmen delegated two of their number, Gustavus Fellows and Tuthill Hubbard, to confer with Rebecca Holbrook. On 12 April they reported back “that Mr. [Samuel? Mrs.?] Holbrook was out of Town & they were of opinion that said Room would not accommodate the Schoolars of the South part of the Town, without very great expence.”

“Very great“ was the same level of expense that had prompted the selectmen to reject refitting the laboratory building as a school. With the war and wartime inflation both raging, the selectmen very much wanted to avoid spending a lot.

So the selectmen and town came to a decision about what to do with the South Writing School: nothing.

At least that’s how I interpret the record, which doesn’t include any moment of decision but shows the results. The boys appear to have been crowded into the town’s two other Writing Schools, on Queen Street and in the North End. The charred building was apparently left alone.

Normally in early July the selectmen led a big committee of officials and eminent male citizens on a visit to each of the schools. This was an end-of-school-year ritual, an occasion for the Writing School boys to show off their skills and for the Latin School boys to recite. The parents of the Latin School boys who were graduating after the full course of study (only about a third of those who had entered seven years before) joined the town notables for a dinner in Faneuil Hall.

I see no record of that ceremony in 1780—another likely sign of wartime austerity. The selectmen’s records say they visited the schools on 6 July, but there’s no list of invitees. That page left space for the count of boys in the South Latin School, North Latin School, Writing School on Queen Street, and North Writing School—but those spaces are blank. And the South Writing School wasn’t mentioned at all.

On 11 July 1781 the custom was back on, and the count was:

• South Latin School: 91 scholars
• North Latin School: 39
• Queen Street Writing School: 270
• North Writing School: 271

Back in 1773, the three Writing Schools held 674 students. Evidently Boston’s population was still low enough that all the Writing School boys could squeeze into two buildings.

But that population was growing. Inflation leveled off with the arrival of hard money from France. Bostonians wanted to go back to normal—even if that might cost a bit.

In May 1781 the town meeting authorized paying “Three hundred Pounds old Currency towards purchasing Repairs for South Writing School.” The next month, the selectmen reached an agreement with an experienced writing master to reopen that school, sixteen months after the fire.

John Vinal was moving back from Newburyport.

COMING UP: Vinal in the new republic.