The Barber and the Ship Captain

As I said yesterday, I searched for more information from American sources about the conflict between a New York barber and a British ship captain reported and illustrated in Britain in early 1775.

I couldn’t find any mention of that dispute in the New York press. I spotted no trace in American newspapers of a captain named “Crozer.” 

The British newspaper article claimed that “the worthy sons of liberty in solemn Congress assembled…voted and unanimously” to praise the barber. There was no New York Provincial Congress yet, so that could only mean the Continental Congress, which did no such thing.

For a while I wondered if this anecdote was completely fictional, made up to make the Americans look petty and hateful but then assumed to be true by some British readers. Slowly, however, I was able to nail down some surrounding details.

The barber in the print did exist. On 9 Feb 1769 “Jacob Vredenburgh, Peruke-maker,” was registered as a freeman of the city of New York.

Later that year, on 23 October, the banns were published for “Jacob Vredenburg” to marry Jannetje Brouwer at the Reformed Dutch Church. There were no surviving children from that marriage.

Vredenburgh shows up in records related to his wife’s family: at the baptism of a niece in 1771, as a co-executor with John Brower in November 1798, and in his own will proved in September 1800, with his wife (now called Jane) and John Brower among the executors.

There’s also a 1788 will of “John Vredenburgh, hairdresser, of New York City,” that names one heir as that man’s brother “Jacob Vredenburgh, of Elizabethtown, New Jersey, hairdresser,” so he may have moved out of the state for a while.

Furthermore, the captain in the print did exist. Or rather, had existed.

On 30 June 1774, the Massachusetts Spy printed this item:

Last Saturday arrived at Marblehead, the Schooner Dove, Ebenezer Parker from Newfoundland, who spoke with the ship Empress of Russia, John Crosier master, from Ireland, out six weeks bound to Boston with the 38th regiment on board.

The next day, that regiment arrived, along with the 5th and Adm. Samuel Graves’s flagship.

After the “Powder Alarm” on 2 September, Gen. Thomas Gage began moving all his troops in New York City up to Boston, too. The Empress of Russia might well have been part of that operation, putting Capt. John Crozier in New York in late September or early October, when he reportedly had his dispute with Vredenburgh. But then he would have headed back to Boston.

The Boston Evening-Post for 21 Nov 1774 listed among the people who had died in town:

Capt. Crozier, Commander of the Empress of Russia Transport Ship.

The records of King’s Chapel include the burial on 19 November of:

John Crozier / Captain of the King of Prussia Transport / [age] 51

(Empress of Russia—King of Prussia—all the same, right?)

Thus, less than two months after Jacob Vredenburgh allegedly kicked John Crozier out of his barber shop in New York, the captain died in Boston. By the time a satirical print was made to illustrate that story, he had been dead for nearly three months.

TOMORROW: A letter from a dead man?

A Print of a “Patriotick Barber”

On 14 Feb 1775, 250 years ago today, Robert Sayer and John Bennett published a satirical print, probably created by Philip Dawe, titled “The Patriotick Barber of New York.”

As I discussed back here, that was one of several images Sayer, Bennett, and probably Dawe produced for British customers interested in American affairs.

The artist appears to have taken inspiration from news stories printed in British newspapers. In this case, the article appeared in the 7 January Kentish Gazette, the 13 January Edinburgh Advertiser, and perhaps elsewhere.

As quoted by R. T. H. Haley in The Boston Port Bill as Pictured by a Contemporary London Cartoonist, it said:

The following card, copies of which were circulated at New York, is too singular not to merit insertion:

“A Card,
“New York, Oct. 3rd.

“The thanks of the worthy sons of liberty in solemn Congress assembled, were this night voted and unanimously allowed to be justly due to Mr. Jacob Vredenburgh, Barber, for his firm spirited and patriotic conduct, in refusing to complete an operation, vulgarly called Shaving, which he had begun on the face of Captain John Crozer, Commander of the Empress of Russia, one of his Majesty’s [troop] transports, now lying in the river, but most fortunately and providentially was informed of the identity of the gentleman’s person, when he had about half finished the job.

“It is most devoutly to be wished that all Gentlemen of the Razor will follow this wise, prudent, interesting and praiseworthy example, so steadily, that every person who pays due allegiance to his Majesty, and wishes Peace, Happiness, and Unanimity to the Colonies, may have his beard grow as long as ever was King Nebuchadnezzar’s.”

The picture showed the barber, well wigged but ugly and sneering, pushing the handsome but half-shaved captain out of his chair. “Orders of Government” poke from the captain’s pocket while another man tries to hand him a letter marked “To Capt. Crozer.”

The print carried the subtitle “The Captain in the Suds,” and underneath it was the verse:

Then Patriot grand, maintain thy Stand,
And whilst thou sav’st Americ’s Land,
Preserve the Golden Rule;

Forbid the Captains there to roam,
Half shave them first, then send ’em home,
Objects of ridicule.

On the barbershop wall are engraved portraits of the Earls of Camden and Chatham, British politicians who spoke up for the colonies’ cause, plus Chatham’s recent speech. Beside them hangs the Continental Congress’s Articles of Association, a boycott that hadn’t actually been announced when this incident took place.

In the top and bottom of the picture are wig boxes with the names of local Whigs: “Alexander McDugell,” John Lamb, Isaac Sears, and so on. One says, “Welle Franklin.” Was that the royal governor of New Jersey?

Perhaps the most striking detail of this print is that I can’t find any mention of the incident in the American press, nor of the men involved. The event appears to have been recorded only in the British newspaper reports, and those would have been long forgotten if not for this picture.

But because the print was so dramatic, 200 years after publication it inspired Ashley Vernon and Greta Hartwig to create a one-act opera, The Barber of New York.

TOMORROW: More about the barber.

“Lurks about the wharves of this city”

Page 3 of William and Thomas Bradford’s Pennsylvania Journal for 13 Oct 1773 included a notice of a meeting of the American Philosophical Society and a proclamation from Gov. John Penn that the Crown had approved two bills the colonial assembly had passed back in March 1772 (a divorce and a naturalization).

In between those items was this announcement:

WHEREAS the infamous EBENEZER RICHARDSON, convicted of PERJURY and MURDER, has, at the instance of his special friend, Charles Paxton, been sent to this city as a pensioner to the —honorable Commissioners at Boston; and in consideration of his many special Services, has by them been rewarded with a quarterly payment, out of the money levied on the Americans, by an Act of Parliament, without their consent:

And whereas the said RICHARDSON, rioting in the spoils of his country, lurks about the wharves of this city, seeking an opportunity to distress the Trade of Philadelphia, and enslave America: And, in order more effectually to answer his vile purpose, has intimately connected himself with a certain T———, a Tide-Waiter here, who publicly declared “he would not only associate with the VILLAIN, EBENEZER, but with the DEVIL himself, if so ordered by the COMMISSIONERS,”

Now it is expected, that all Lovers of Liberty, in this Province, will make diligent search after the said RICHARDSON, and having found this Bird of Darkness, will produce him, tarred and feathered, at the Coffee-House, there to expiate his sins against his country, by a public recantation.

TAR AND FEATHERS.

N.B. The above RICHARDSON appears to be a man of 40 years of age, is about 5 feet 4 or 5 inches high, pretty thick and broad a-cross the shoulders, has a very ill countenance, and down look, [Cain’s Phyz,] mostly wears a flopped hat, a piss burnt cut wig, and a blue surtout coat, with metal buttons.

That’s quite a display of rhetoric. It makes something sinister from Richardson’s job in the Customs service: he “lurks about the wharves,” aims to “distress the Trade,” receives “a quarterly payment” (i.e., his salary). The item links him to “the DEVIL,” “Cain,” and a “Bird of Darkness.” It also contains the only physical description of the man that I’ve seen, not at all flattering. 

This article appears to have been written in Philadelphia by someone not fully familiar with Richardson’s long history in Massachusetts, picking up cues from Boston newspapers. The man was never “convicted of PERJURY,” to my knowledge. Bostonians called him a perjurer, including at the start of the riot at his house, because he’d deceived the public about his child with Kezia Hincher for several crucial months, and because painting him as a habitual liar let them cast doubt on his reports about smuggling and other activity.

The invocation of “TAR AND FEATHERS” is also striking because that public punishment hadn’t shown up in Philadelphia yet. Indeed, many Americans, even Whigs, viewed those incidents as New Englanders going too far. But the next month a broadside warning river pilots against bringing tea into Philadelphia would be issued by “THE COMMITTEE FOR TARRING AND FEATHERING.” (Or “Committee of Taring and Feathering,” as the next paragraph put it, showing the locals behind this threat were still working out details.)

Lastly, this newspaper notice overtly confronts the royal Customs service. It names one of the agency heads in Boston, verges on calling those men “[dis]honorable,” and refers to a local tide waiter by an initial everyone on the Philadelphia waterfront would recognize. That last seems like a clear threat.

TOMORROW: Results.

The Hive Symposium, 17–18 Feb.

On the weekend of 17–18 February, Minute Man National Historical Park will host its annual symposium for living history interpreters, The Hive.

Cosponsoring organizations include the Friends of Minute Man, Revolution 250, Freedom’s Way National Heritage Area, and the Massachusetts Army National Guard, which will host the gathering.

Though this series of presentations and workshops is designed primarily for people who participate in the park’s colonial reenactments, including the Battle of Lexington and Concord, they offer valuable information for anyone interested in local Revolutionary history.

The schedule of presentations includes:

Overview of the Minute Man 250 Thematic Framework with Park Rangers Jim Hollister and Jarrad Fuoss: The 250th anniversary of the American Revolution is well underway! The staff at Minute Man have developed an interpretive framework that carry our program through the next several years.

1774: The Empire Strikes Back, and Resistance Becomes Revolution with Prof. Bob Allison of Suffolk University: Parliament responded to Boston’s destroying the tea by closing the port and suspending the 1691 charter. The people of Massachusetts would no longer have control over their municipal governments. Instead of silencing the local resistance, these moves brought the other colonies into an alliance with Massachusetts to begin a revolution against Parliament's authority. Find out what went wrong for the Empire in 1774.

By His Excellency’s Command: General Gage, the British Army and the People of Salem in 1774 with Dr. Emily Murphy: In June of 1774 the newly appointed royal governor of Massachusetts, Gen. Thomas Gage, was eager to escape the political turbulence of Boston. Therefore, he took the drastic step of removing himself and the provincial legislature to the seemingly calmer waters of Salem. Two regiments of British regulars came with him. That summer the people of Salem came into direct contact with a display of royal power on a scale they had never before experienced. What was the social and political landscape of the town like in 1774? How did the people deal with their new neighbors?

Lives of the Embattled Farmers: The Towns of Lexington, Lincoln and Concord in 1775, a panel discussion with Alex Cain, Don Hafner, and Bob Gross: The towns of Lexington, Lincoln and Concord were farming communities. Many of the families who called these towns home had been there for multiple generations. In this panel discussion we will look at the social and economic dynamics of these three towns, their similarities and their differences.

Practical, often hands-on workshops will cover these topics:

• “Techniques for Informal Visitor Engagement” with Park Ranger Jarrad Fuoss
• “Too Clean!: Incorporating Appropriate Levels of Garment Distress into Your Historical Impression” with Adam Hodges-LeCaire
• “A Pressing Matter: Media Literacy & 18th Century Newspapers” with Michele Gabrielson
• “Women’s Hair Styles and Cosmetics” with Renee Walker-Tuttle
• “Men’s Hair Styles” with Neils Hobbs and Sean Considine
• “‘Fitted with the Greatest Exactness’: The Material Culture of Appearance of the 18th-Century British Soldier” with Sean Considine and Niels Hobbs
• “Pinning Gowns & Filling Pockets: How to Wear Women’s Clothing Well & Have Fun Pulling from Your Pockets!” with Ruth Hodges

Plus, the program includes time for sewing circles, infantry drill, consultation on kit, and lunchtime conversations.

The 2024 spring season at Minute Man will includes some events about the crucial year of 1774 in addition to the traditional Patriots Day battle reenactment. That event will be practice for the Sestercentennial in 2025, which may very well be insane.

Register to attend the 2024 Hive symposium through the Friends of Minute Man Park.

“Whose black and bushy beard he had paid him for letting grow”

A couple of years ago I wrote about how the painter Joseph Wright of Derby employed a particular model when he wanted to portray bearded men.

Because beards were well out of fashion in eighteenth-century Britain, it wasn’t easy to find models for paintings of events in the past, when artists knew men wore beards.

I just ran across a relevant anecdote about Sir Joshua Reynolds, from his friend the Rev. William Mason.

Reynolds was painting “The Death of Cardinal Beaufort,” a scene taken from Henry IV, Part Two. That would have been in the late 1780s. Mason wrote:

He had merely scumbled in the positions of the several figures, and was now upon the head of the dying Cardinal. He had now got for his model a porter, or coalheaver, between fifty and sixty years of age, whose black and bushy beard he had paid him for letting grow; he was stripped naked to the waist, and, with his profile turned to him, sat with a fixed grin, showing his teeth.

I could not help laughing at the strange figure, and recollecting why he had ordered the poor fellow so to grin, on account of Shakespeare’s line,

Mark how the pangs of death do make him grin.

I told him, that in my opinion Shakespeare would never have used the word “grin” in that place, if he could have readily found a better; that it always conveyed to me a ludicrous idea; and that I never saw it used with propriety but by Milton, when he tells us that death

 grinned horribly
A ghastly smile.

He did not agree with me on this point, so the fellow sat grinning on for upwards of one hour, during which time he sometimes gave a touch to the face, sometimes scumbled on the bedclothes with white much diluted with spirits of turpentine.

After all, he could not catch the expression he wanted, and, I believe, rubbed the face entirely out; for the face and attitude in the present finished picture, which I did not see till above a year after this first fruitless attempt, is certainly different, and on an idea much superior. I know not whether he may not have changed the model. Yet the man who then sat had a fine, firm countenance of the swarthy kind…

I remember I told him so; and a few days after, when I called upon him, he had finished a head of St. Peter, which he told me he took from the same subject.

It’s a pity we don’t have the perspective of the porter himself, getting a few days’ off manual labor in exchange for letting his beard grow and contorting his face for a painter man.

TOMORROW: Another face revealed in that painting.

“Quite exasperated with your conduct relating to your amour”

As the year 1750 began, it was more than three years since Andrew Pepperrell and Hannah Waldo had become engaged, over a full year since their intentions had been formally announced in Kittery, Maine.

Since their fathers were two of the richest, most prominent men in Massachusetts, their relationship was big news all that time. 

Andrew and Hannah had both turned twenty in 1746, young for marriage. But by 1750 they would both turn twenty-four, they still weren’t married, and the talk became more pointed.

Andrew’s brother-in-law Nathaniel Sparhawk (shown here) wrote to Sir William Pepperrell in London on 8 Mar 1750: “The love affair between Andrew Pepperrell and Miss Waldo, now of four years’ duration, is still pending, much to the annoyance of both families as well as trying to the patience of the young lady.”

Other gentlemen told Pepperrell that he couldn’t keep putting off the wedding. The older merchant Stephen Minot, who was related to the Waldos, wrote to him on 3 June 1750:

I hope, my friend, it will not be long before we have the pleasure of seeing you in town to disappoint the enemies as well as to complete the approaching pleasure which you have in view, in enjoying the society of so charming and desirable a lady as is Miss Hannah. I beg leave only to add, that could you be fully acquainted with the steady and proper behavior in your long absence (amid the ill-natured queries of the world with respect to each of you) it would ever heighten your affections for her, and endear her to you as it has done to me, and all her relations and friends here. I really wish each of you, as I believe you will be, happy, if it shall please God to bring you together in the matrimonial state.

On 14 August, Andrew’s first cousin William Tyler wrote to him about a visit to Boston by another first cousin, Joel Whittemore. “His wig was powdered to the life,” Tyler said, and at the Sunday afternoon church service “he sat and stood looking first this way and then that way to find out Miss Hannah.” (She wasn’t there.) Was that just a silly story, or a nudge that other young men might be interested in her?

Sparhawk visited Andrew Pepperrell in Maine late that summer, and on returning to Boston wrote back on 11 September:

I…have not had time to deliver your letter, or to see your lady. Let me take the liberty to inform you that the country, especially the more worthy and better part of it, are very much alarmed at, and appear quite exasperated with your conduct relating to your amour, and your friends and those that are much attached to your father and family, are greatly concerned about you, being fully of opinion that if the matter drops through and you lie justly under the imputation of it, that your character is irretrievably lost. I am sorry to say so much, but a tender concern for you obliges me.

You can’t imagine how I was attacked in a large company of gentlemen and ladies at Salem, where I was invited to spend the evening on Sunday; and what you may imagine will pass still for a justification of your conduct, that you “intend nothing but honor in the case, and will be along soon” is perfectly ridiculed.

I find you must be published again if you marry in this province, and if you intend ever to marry the lady, my advice to you is, by all means to be republished and to finish the matter at once, unless you can prevail on the lady to meet you at Ipswich, and from there proceed to Hampton [New Hampshire], which is very much questioned, though when I know your intentions it may be attempted, if there is occasion, from your ascertaining the lady’s mind and her friend’s, that you will be quite punctual, and agree to the arrangement in case she is good enough to comply. But I cannot add further than that I feel a real concern for your welfare and the support of your honor.

Massachusetts couples who were eloping from their families, or who needed to marry in a hurry, went over the border to New Hampshire. Of course, that wasn’t the most respectable sort of wedding. But by this time, Sparhawk and the Waldos were ready for anything.

All that pressure forced Andrew Pepperrell to finally make a move. He agreed to a wedding in Boston on a specified date.

TOMORROW: Can this marriage be saved?

“Styling: Historic Hair” at Historic Deerfield, 29 Apr.

Historic Deerfield is hosting a symposium on historic hairdressing and wigs tomorrow, and it’s still possible to register for online viewing by 1:00 P.M. today.

“Styling: Historic Hair and Beauty Practices” explores the visual and material culture of hairdressing in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Atlantic World.

At the start of that period, influential men like the Rev. Increase Mather and Samuel Pepys expressed misgivings about the new fashion for wigs. Eventually wigs for men became de rigueur, a style we have a hard time understanding now. But maybe this one-day forum can help.

The event description says:

For the fashionable, interest in hair and hairdressing became as integral as clothing to the creation of a cosmopolitan appearance. The resulting confections reached new literal and figurative heights in the quest for distinction on both sides of the Atlantic.

Influences on hair and head dressing came from many sources. France was an acknowledged leader in all things à la mode, but other countries also contributed styles, materials, talent, and inspiration to dress the head. As important as appearance was, the question of who had access to the latest news and services of hairdressers and fashion merchants, and who did not, is also noteworthy. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, people traditionally marginalized from the dominant fashion conversations nonetheless expressed themselves through hair and inspired others in equally inventive ways.

The presenters are:

• Debbie Turpin, Colonial Williamsburg, “18th Century Wig-Making, From Shaven Head to Style.”
• Philippe Halbert, Yale University, “War Paint and Rouge: Keeping up Appearances in New France.”
• Ned Lazaro, Historic Deerfield, “‘This famous roll’: New England’s Hairstories.”
• Jonathan Michael Square, Parsons School of Design, “Hair, Headwrapping, and Black Beauty Culture.”
• Kimberly Chrisman Campbell, fashion historian, “Poufs and Politics: Women, Hair, and Power in the Reign of Louis XVI.”

For the schedule and registration information, go to this webpage by 1:00 P.M. today

“The variety of reasons a play might be deemed inappropriate”

Prof. David O’Shaughnessy of the National University of Ireland in Galway just won this year’s British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Prize for Digital Resources for his website The Censorship of British Theatre, 1737-1843.

O’Shaughnessy’s website explains itself this way:

This digital resource hosts a selection of manuscripts of plays submitted to the Examiner of Plays, the office established by the Lord Chamberlain in the wake of the Stage Licensing Act of 1737, who had the primary responsibility of safeguarding the morals of theatre audiences. The manuscripts are drawn from the Larpent Collection (Huntington Library, San Marino) and the Lord Chamberlain’s Plays (British Library) and have been carefully selected to show the variety of reasons a play might be deemed inappropriate through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. . . .

It contains high resolution scans of 40 manuscripts from the period 1737-1843—from the Stage Licensing Act to its successor the Theatres Act—in order that scholars can get a sense of the line-by-line attention given to plays by the Examiner’s office. Each scan is accompanied by a brief note (2000-5000 words) that gives an author bio, a plot summary, a succinct note on the play’s reception history, a commentary on the censorship imposed on the manuscript, and some suggestions as to further introductory reading related to that play.

The U.R.L. for the website is tobeomitted.tcd.ie, and a significant part of the analysis focuses on what the government officials insisted should not go on the stage. Sometimes they marked passages to change, sometimes they just forbade any performance. Impresarios and playwrights also made cuts, and so did audiences—there are numerous anecdotes about producers assuring first-night crowds that certain disliked aspects of a show would be removed.

One can flip through the website to get a sense of British theater in this period beyond the plays that entered the canon. Class distinctions were important, subtlety not. Here’s a clip from the summary of Thomas Holcroft’s He’s Much to Blame (1798):

Maria, disguised as a man and accompanied by her resourceful maid Lucy, is seeking Sir George Versatile. She had been his lover up until he inherited his title but, at the inn, Maria is informed by the comical German quack Dr Gosterman that Versatile is now in love with Lady Jane Vibrate. . . .

The framing material also offers choice glimpses of the time’s show business and its more showy players, such as this remark about Charles Macklin, author of The Man of the World (1770):

He gained a certain degree of notoriety in 1734 when he was convicted of the manslaughter of a fellow actor after a backstage scuffle over a wig: an unexpected result of this was that he gained a taste for the law and the remainder of his career would see him involved in some high profile cases where he would represent himself.

And Elizabeth Griffith, author of The Platonic Wife (1765):

She stopped acting after becoming pregnant with a second child and [her husband] Richard’s business interests collapsed around the same time. Forced into desperate action, the Griffiths published their courtship correspondence as A Series of Genuine Letters between Henry and Frances in 1757. It went through a number of editions and there were follow-up publications. 

Boston of course forbade public theater until years after the Revolutionary War, part of its Puritan legacy. And if the pre-Revolutionary town fathers could see this website, they would undoubtedly feel they were making the right decision.

Filling the New England Seat on the U.S. Supreme Court

For more than a century the U.S. Supreme Court had a seat reserved for New Englanders.

The early Presidents had two good reasons for that. First, by appointing justices equally from all regions of the country those Presidents—especially all those Virginians—avoided charges of favoring their home region.

Second, in its early years the Supreme Court justices also rode circuit, hearing federal cases in their districts. So a New Englander covering the northeastern states wasn’t so far away from home.

For the first two decades, that New Englander was William Cushing, formerly chief justice in Massachusetts. In 1795 President George Washington promoted him to be the chief justice, and the Senate confirmed him. But Cushing declined the commission. Being chief justice just wasn’t as prestigious and powerful as the job has become.

Justice Cushing remained on the bench longer than any of the other original court. He was also the last to wear the full judicial wig inherited from the British system. When Cushing died in 1810, President James Madison needed a replacement from New England. He also wanted someone from his own Republican party. Which was difficult because most New England lawyers were Federalists.

Madison’s first choice was Levi Lincoln of Hingham—former U.S. attorney general under Thomas Jefferson, former lieutenant and acting governor of Massachusetts (shown above). The Senate voted its approval. But Lincoln declined, citing bad eyes. Again, being a Supreme Court justice wasn’t that great.

Madison then nominated Alexander Wolcott of Connecticut, mentioned in yesterday’s posting. Wolcott had practiced law, but he was primarily known as the leader of his state’s Republicans. He engaged in harsh political disputes and oversaw patronage appointments. The closest he’d gotten to judicial experience was in his own patronage position as a Customs inspector. The Federalist Columbian Centinel called Wolcott’s nomination “abominable.”

Nonetheless, the Republicans were firmly in charge of the U.S. Senate, 28 votes to 6, and Supreme Court nominees usually got approved within a week. In Wolcott’s case, the Senators referred the court nomination to a committee for the first time. Then they didn’t take a vote until nine whole days later, on 14 Feb 1811.

The U.S. Senate rejected Alexander Wolcott’s nomination to the Supreme Court by a vote of 24 to 9. This was the largest percentage against any court nominee ever. Even Republican Senators voted against the nomination by a margin of at least 2:1.

Wolcott went back to Connecticut politics. President Madison looked around for another New Englander to nominate to the high Court. Again, he needed a prominent Republican—but one with a less partisan history.

Madison’s third choice was John Quincy Adams, former Federalist Senator from Massachusetts. Adams had bucked his party’s foreign policy on several issues under President Thomas Jefferson and ended up a politician without party backing. In 1809 Madison appointed him the U.S. minister to Russia, a country Adams had first visited as a teen-aged secretary for the Continental Congress’s envoy, Francis Dana.

As with Lincoln, the Senate gave their advice and consent in favor of President Madison’s nominee. And as with Lincoln, the nominee declined the job. Adams would go on to be U.S. Secretary of State, President, and a long-time Representative from Massachusetts.

Once again President Madison scanned the New England legal landscape. The best candidate he could find was a lawyer from Marblehead, only thirty-two years old, with one term in the U.S. House of Representatives under his belt. This was Joseph Story, still the youngest person ever nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Story was confirmed and served thirty-three years. As an associate justice, law professor, and author, he exercised more influence over the U.S. legal system than anyone else in the early 1800s but Chief Justice John Marshall.

When Story died in 1845, President James K. Polk nominated Levi Woodbury of New Hampshire to succeed him. After Woodbury, the justices in that line were Benjamin Curtis of Watertown; Nathan Clifford of Maine; Horace Gray of Boston; and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., of Boston. The replacement for Holmes was Benjamin Cardozo of New York, though by that time Louis Brandeis—a native of Kentucky who had established his legal career in Boston—was representing New England on the high bench.

“But now a crew for constitution”

As I wrote yesterday, Pennsylvania ratified the new U.S. Constitution in December 1787. But that didn‘t end debate in the state.

Many people were still wary of a stronger federal government, especially in counties to the west—not coincidentally, the areas where the Whiskey Rebellion would challenge President George Washington’s administration in 1791–94.

The town of Carlisle was divided on the issue while the surrounding rural areas of Cumberland County were largely against it.

On 26 December, Federalists in Carlisle celebrated the ratification. Anti-Federalists showed up and told them “their conduct was contrary to the minds of three-fourths of the inhabitants.” That argument blew up into a full-scale riot.

The next day, the two sides had separate rallies. The Federalists, now armed, finished toasting the Constitution. The Anti-Federalists paraded with effigies of jurists James Wilson and Thomas McKean, who had favored the document.

Many in town wanted that to be the end of the affair, but officials took depositions about the riot, and on 28 January issued warrants for the arrest of twenty-one Anti-Federalists. Seven of those men refused to post bail as a protest. Tensions grew.

On 3 Mar 1788, John Shippen wrote to his father from Carlisle about the next confrontation:

On Saturday, by daylight, a company from the lower settlement entered the town, singing “Federal Joy,” (a song composed by one of their party, and published in the newspapers,) took possession of the Court-house, and rung the bell all the morning. (I should have mentioned, they were armed.)

Several other companies came in from different parts of the country, the last of which about ten o’clock. They then marched to the jail, and demanded the prisoners; upon which, they received them, placed them in their front, and marched through town huzzaing, singing, hallooing, firing, and the like. It is thought there was upwards of eight hundred. Such a number of dirty, rag-a-muffin-looking blackguards I never beheld.

Indeed, back on 23 January the Carlisle Gazette had published a four-column Anti-Federalist essay signed “The Scourge” which started with a verse from the Book of Judges and ended with a song titled “The FEDERAL JOY, to the tune of Alexander, hated thinking.” Using the melody of that drinking song, the poet parodied the Federalists’ attempted celebration the previous month.

AWAKE my muse in copious numbers,
Sing the federal joy compleat,
The loud huzzas the cannon thunders
Announce their triumphs to be great.

Behold they march with curls flying,
Weary steps, and powdered heads,
Soften’d hands, with eyes espying
Crowds of whigs assembled.

But see they halt, & now are forming
Regular as veteran bands,
Breathing defiance, scoffing, scorning,
The low opposers of their plans.

But now a crew for constitution,
Harshly then began to treat them,
Despising federal institution,
Nor aw’d by powder or pomatum.

This Anti-Federalist author referred to his side as “a crew for constitution” and “whigs,” as opposed to the “federal” party that was trying to replace the American constitution with, well, the Constitution.

From words to blows, those vile aggressors,
Rudely drove our harmless band,
Despoil’d the work of their hair-dressers,
Daring assumed the chief command.

Now helter skelter in disorder,
Flew our heroes to their homes,
Happy their legs were in good order,
To save from geting broken bones.

Lawyers, doctors and store-keepers,
Forsook their general in his need.
And from their windows began peeping
Viewing their valliant hero bleed.

But like veterans in the morning,
Appear’d in arms bright array,
Revenge, Revenge, they cry’d when forming
We ne’er again will run away.

Full thirteen rounds for federal honor
Shall thunder loud, tho’ hell oppose;
Display our new terrific banner,
To intimidate our scurvy foes.

Undauntedly three rounds they fir’d,
When lo a drum, most dreadful sound
Awak’d new fears, courage retir’d,
Paleness in every face was found.

Again their shanks were put in motion,
With rapid strides they homewards stretches,
Or to avoid another portion,
Or s--t a second pair of breeches.

And now the pannic being over,
When not afraid of club or rope,
Descends to law for to recover
Money for to purchase soap.

But not a souse for all their swearing,
Tho’ shirt and breeches both were foul’d;
Liberties sons are presevering,
Nor will by fed’rals be controul’d.

And if those harpies seek preferment
Thro’ their countries streaming blood,
They’ll dig graves for their interment,
Or smother in the purple flood.

This song has little to say about policy but a lot about class and masculinity. And the Shippen letter from six weeks later shows that the Carlisle Anti-Federalists liked it.

Joseph Akley as an Adult

Being sued for tarring and feathering a Customs officer wasn’t the only big event in Joseph Akley’s life in the spring of 1771.

On 16 May, still aged only nineteen, Joseph wed Margaret Durant, according to Boston’s list of intentions to marry.

I can’t find a record of what church the couple married in or anything more about Margaret Durant. But there’s no record of a child coming quickly.

Instead, the couple’s first recorded children were baptized at King’s Chapel:

• Joseph on 5 May 1773.
• Margaret, 12 Mar 1775. [Transcribed “Skeley” in some publications.]

Later there was Sarah, baptized 25 Oct 1778 at Trinity Church, when that was the only functioning Anglican church in town.

Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War lists only one “Joseph Akeley.” He did twenty-one days active service in Capt. Hopestill Hall’s company of Col. Lemuel Robinson’s Massachusetts militia regiment. That was in February 1776, when Gen. George Washington was desperate for any men to shore up the siege lines.

That “Akeley” was recorded as enlisting in Roxbury. But that would be consistent with the Akely family having left Boston after the war started. It’s also understandable that Joseph Akley, father of young children, didn’t go into the Continental Army full-time.

By the 1790s we see Joseph Akley listed as a hairdresser in the Boston directories. He owned real estate, having overcome the poverty of his early years.

Indeed, the Akley family seems to have gained a little stature. When Joseph’s mother, Tabitha Akley, died in 1790 at the age of seventy, her death was noted in newspapers across the state. Only twenty years earlier she had been in the Boston almshouse.

On 13 Nov 1794 the American Apollo reported this death:

At Point-a-Petre, Guadaloupet Mr. Joseph Akely, jun. of this town—a worthy young man, whose death is much lamented by his most cursory acquaintance, Æt. 22.

Presumably the Akleys’ oldest child was on some sort of mercantile voyage when he died.

On 1 Nov 1808, the New-England Palladium reported that the barber Joseph Akley had died the previous day at the age of fifty-six. His widow Margaret was appointed executrix.

The 1810 U.S. Census lists Margaret Akely living alone on Hanover Street in Boston. That could be the widow or her eldest daughter, unmarried.

TOMORROW: The Akely brothers at war.

“Informed against for his participation in the destruction of the tea”

In the late nineteenth century, the Boston historian Francis S. Drake collected lore about the Boston Tea Party from lots of families.

Drake published those stories, along with many documents, in the book Tea Leaves (1884). One entry read:

——— ECKLEY,

A barber, was informed against for his participation in the destruction of the tea, and committed to prison. The Sons of Liberty supported him while in confinement, and also provided for his family. He was finally liberated, and the person who informed against him was tarred and feathered, and paraded through the town with labels on his breast and back bearing his name, and the word “informer” in large letters.

Some books on the Tea Party repeated this information without adding to it. No one has brought forward more evidence to corroborate this oral tradition, even from places we should expect to find it.

People don’t get “committed to prison” for long enough to need outside support without getting put on records. We know royal authorities in both Boston and London were very eager to find out who organized the destruction of the tea. Gen. Thomas Gage and Adm. John Montagu even secretly transported Samuel Dyer across the Atlantic because they thought he had useful information. But no source at the time mentioned this barber or the dismissal of his case.

To tar and feather someone and parade him through town was also a highly public act. When a Boston mob abused John Malcolm that way in January 1774, it was widely discussed in both New England and Britain. That same period offers no record of a tarring and feathering connected to the Tea Party like this.

Here’s my theory: This is a distorted memory of Joseph Akley’s dispute with Owen Richards in 1770-71, attached to the Tea Party because by the mid-1800s that was Boston’s most famous and respectable Revolutionary protest, the one families wanted to have an ancestor participating in.

This lore reversed the order of events, and probably exaggerated Joseph Akley’s tribulations, but we can recognize those events from the story of the mobbing of Owen Richards.

First, we know Richards was tarred, feathered, and paraded around town. People called him an ”informer.“ He recalled, “they also fix’d a paper on my breast, with Capital Letters thereon, but [I] cannot Recollect what it contained.”

The tradition referred to “ECKLEY…A barber.” Joseph Akley, whose name was spelled many different ways, was a barber later in life, after the peruke wigs he was first trained to make went out of style.

There’s no evidence Akley was accused of helping to destroy the tea or locked up, but Owen Richards did accuse him of a crime and haul him into court in 1771. Boston’s Whig leaders, including John Adams, John Hancock, and newspaper writers, did get involved in fighting against Richards’s accusations.

I suspect that some stories about that documented dispute, overshadowed by bigger Revolutionary events, got passed down in the Akley family or circle. Over time they faded until people in the late 1800s didn’t even remember the barber’s name precisely. But they remembered something about tarring and feathering, and legal jeopardy, and help from the Sons of Liberty. They hung those baubles of memory off the larger story of the Tea Party, and Francis S. Drake conglomerated the “Eckley” story with the rest.

TOMORROW: Joseph Akley in the war.

What Would Become of Young Joseph Akley?

When Timothy Winship died at the end of 1767, the apprentice he’d taken in for Boston’s Overseers of the Poor, Joseph Akley, was fifteen years old.

Though Joseph had been living with and working for the peruke maker for five years, he was still five years short of his majority.

He didn’t have the legal standing, and he probably didn’t have all the skills, to set up his own shop.

Joseph did have parents nearby in Boston. However, that family had its own troubles. In the spring of 1768, three younger Akley children were admitted into the alsmhouse, to be bound out to masters outside Boston by the fall.

So what happened to Joseph? I haven’t found many clues from the next few years, and that’s a good thing. Because Joseph did not reappear on the Overseers of the Poor records, unlike his parents and his brother Thomas.

It seems likely that Joseph was a bright lad. Winship chose him as an apprentice ahead of his older brother, and for a profession that required social graces.

Furthermore, the Winship shop was still a going concern when the peruke-maker died in 1767. Timothy Winship still had his shop and his tools. His estate owed wages to George Bellamy, presumably a journeyman.

As executrix, the widow Elizabeth Winship collected on debts; paid off creditors like Bellamy, landlord Hugh Hall, Dr. Nathaniel Perkins, and Dr. Joseph Warren; and came out ahead. She still had her husband’s goods and a pew at King’s Chapel. She continued to sponsor friends’ baptisms there.

I suspect that Elizabeth Winship or other wigmakers in her husband’s circle saw potential in Joseph, already partly trained, as well as an obligation. Someone kept him on as an apprentice, but because that was a private arrangement we don’t know who.

The biggest clues about how Joseph Akley weathered the death of his master is how he appeared in Boston records after the Revolutionary War. As of 1796, he was established as a hairdresser on “Hanover street, corner Wing’s Lane.” He owned a little real estate.

Furthermore, in adult life Akley was an Anglican/Episcopalian. His parents were Congregationalists, like most Bostonians, but he joined the denomination of the Winship family. That suggests how much influence his apprenticeship had on him.

No doubt Joseph Akley faced some challenges after Winship’s death. Being sued for tarring and feathering a royal official was one. Joseph may have had to grow up quickly. He married in May 1771, a few weeks short of his nineteenth birthday, and was a father before he turned twenty-one. But he was able to support that family with the skills he learned.

COMING UP: What about that lawsuit?

What Timothy Winship Died With

When peruke-maker Timothy Winship died, he made his third wife, Elizabeth, his executrix.

Late in 1767 she filed an inventory of her husband’s property with the probate judge, Thomas Hutchinson (who was also Massachusetts lieutenant governor and chief justice of the superior court).

Winship wasn’t a rich man. He owned no real estate, and a lot of his goods were assessed as common or old. On the other hand, his household had touches of gentility: four feather beds and four pillows, a “Square Mahogany Table,” two pictures under glass, two wineglasses and a decanter, six teacups and saucers, a silver watch.

Required by law to serve in the militia, Winship owned two guns with bayonets and two swords.

The inventory listed Winship’s books:

• “1 Bible” (3s.)
• “Hervey’s Life and Letters, 2 books, 1 lost” (4s.), probably Collection of the Letters of James Hervey, to which is prefixed an account of his Life and Death, by Thomas Birch (1760, reprinted in Boston two years later by Zechariah Fowle and Samuel Draper). The Rev. James Hervey (1714-1758) was an Anglican theologian. 
• “Life and Reign of Queen Ann” (2s.8d.), probably Abel Boyer’s History of the Life and Reign of Queen Anne (1722).
• “1 Companions the Feasts & Fasts of the Church of England” (2s.8d.), or Robert Nelson’s A Companion for the Festivals and Fasts of the Church of England (1704), which Brent S. Sirota describes as “arguably the most popular and important Anglican devotional work of the eighteenth century.”

In her study of colonial New England probate inventories from 1774, Alice Hanson Jones found that only the top fifth of inventoried estates contained non-religious books. Winship’s book about Queen Anne was therefore unusual.

Another page of Winship’s inventory detailed what the assessors found in his shop. So this is what you might find walking into a middling peruke-maker’s workspace in 1767 Boston:

• “6 ounces of white Horse hair @ 1/6”
• “3 lb. Brown ditto 16/ p lb.”
• “1 lb. Grey & Brown”
• “18 oz. Goat ditto 2/ p oz.”
• “7 oz. Mo. Grown hair”
• “4 Blocks @ 6/”
• “1 Card & brush 8/”
• “1 pr. brushes 3/”
• “1 doz. Razors @ 7/”
• “1 Hone”
• “7 Wiggs @ 12/”
• “7 1/2 Pewter More [?] @ 10”
• “1 Looking Glass”
• “1 Lamp Lanthorn”
• “1 Table”
• “2 old Chairs”
• “1 Round Do.”

All told, Winship’s tools and inventory were worth a little less than £14.

TOMORROW: Where did Winship’s death leave young Joseph Akley?

Timothy Winship, Peruke Maker of Boston

Yesterday I described how in October 1762 the Boston Overseers of the Poor indentured ten-year-old Joseph Akley to a man named Timothy Winship.

The Akley family was falling on hard times. In the following years Joseph’s parents would end up (separately) in the Boston almshouse, and most of his siblings would be bound out to other households across the province, from Springfield to Maine.

Joseph’s placement was unusual in several ways. He was the first Akley child to be apprenticed even though he wasn’t the oldest. He remained in Boston instead of being sent to a smaller town. And he was to learn a trade that catered to the genteel class rather than housework or making wheels and barrels.

Timothy Winship was a “peruke maker,” meaning he made wigs and shaved gentlemen so they looked good wearing them. In an eighteenth-century British seaport, that meant steady work.

There are two genealogical sources of information about Timothy Winship. One consists of the records of Boston and its Anglican churches. The other is the Barbour Collection’s index of vital records from Middletown, Connecticut, even though there’s no sign Timothy Winship ever lived in that town. I’m guessing that descendants settled there and inserted their family’s backstory into the local record.

According to the Barbour Collection, Timothy Winship was born on 3 May 1712 in Westminster, England. That’s close but not an exact match to the Boston report that he was fifty-seven years old in 1767. Not being from an old, Puritan New England family explains why he was an Anglican.

Boston records state that Winship married Margaret Mirick of Charlestown on 5 Aug 1731, with the Rev. Hull Abbott of that town presiding. The bride appears in the Connecticut data as Margaret Merrick. Their children listed in the Middletown records were:

• Samuel, born 3 May 1732
• Sarah, 20 Jan 1734
• Margaret, Nov 1735
• Timothy, 3 Dec 1737
• Joseph, 2 Oct 1739
• John, 30 Mar 1742
• Jacob, 6 Jan 1744
• Anna, 26 Apr 1746

Of those, King’s Chapel recorded baptisms of Timothy, Jr., on 30 Dec 1737; Joseph on 12 Oct 1739; and Jacob on 9 Feb 1744.

Timothy Winship never advertised in Boston’s newspapers, but there are signs that he became an established tradesman. He owned an enslaved man named Caesar, who on 23 Sept 1742 married a free black woman named Margaret Codner at Old South. That same year, Winship took in a couple as tenants from Cambridge, which we know because Boston cited him for not informing the selectmen. In 1748, the Boston town meeting elected Winship as one of the Scavengers responsible for keeping the streets clean.

The peruke maker also suffered losses. Margaret Winship died “about one hour after birth of Anna,” the couple’s youngest, according to the Barbour Collection. King’s Chapel records state that Timothy Winship’s wife was buried on 29 Apr 1746.

A little less than a year later, on 9 Apr 1747, Timothy Winship married Sarah Rogers at King’s Chapel. That was none too soon because the couple had a son, William, baptized less than eight months later on 28 November. A second son, Benjamin, was baptized on 1 Jan 1750.

Sadly, that new Winship family did not thrive. William died before age seven and was buried from the new King’s Chapel building on 1 June 1754. Timothy’s wife Sarah died on 23 Jan 1755 at age thirty-eight. Their surviving son Benjamin died on 10 Jan 1758 at age eight. (The Connecticut records say nothing about this family.)

This time, Timothy Winship found a new wife even more quickly. On 25 Aug 1755, seven months after becoming a widower again, he married Elizabeth Vila of Watertown at Christ Church in the North End. I see no sign of Timothy and Elizabeth having more children of their own.

Thus, when Timothy Winship took in Joseph Akley in 1762, the peruke maker was about fifty years old and thrice married. His youngest surviving child, Anna, was in her mid-teens. His oldest, Samuel, had married Sarah Miller of Glastonbury, Connecticut, in October 1758 and had twin girls with several more kids on the way.

We can see in the King’s Chapel records that Timothy Winship and his wives were in a network of other Boston Anglicans, sponsoring the baptism of each other’s babies. Notably, on 6 Sept 1765 Timothy, Elizabeth, and Timothy’s daughter Sarah all sponsored the baptism of a baby born to James and Mary Vila, probably from Elizabeth’s family.

That eventful year of 1765 brought big changes to the family. The brothers Timothy, John, and Jacob Winship all died in their twenties. On 28 October, Sarah Winship married Nicholas Butler, a twenty-seven-year-old barber, at King’s Chapel. As the eldest daughter, she had most likely shouldered the household and childrearing responsibilities after her mother had died. Now, at age thirty-one, she was leaving to start a family of her own.

On 3 Mar 1767, Timothy Winship wrote out his will. He declared that he was in good health but wanted to tend to his business and his soul. Owning no real estate, he left all his personal property “unto my Beloved Wife Elizabeth Winship,” to be shared after her death among his children Samuel, Joseph, and Anna Winship. For Sarah Butler, about to give birth to her first child, Winship left only five shillings, to be paid out after her stepmother’s death.

On 12 Nov 1767, Timothy Winship, “Peruke Maker,” was buried out of King’s Chapel.

TOMORROW: A wigmaker’s estate.

The Beard of John Stavely

Beards were not fashionable in the British Empire during the eighteenth century.

This fact is sometimes regretted by reenactors who don’t want to shave their modern beards, but the artistic record is clear.

That doesn’t mean there were no bearded men in Revolutionary America. Rather, they were few, and people saw them as unusual. The Boston shoemaker William Scott grew a long beard for religious reasons, and it scared children on the street.

Another man of the period noted for his full beard was John Stavely. We know him as a model for the painter Joseph Wright of Derby. And we know his name only by the inscription on the back of a Wright drawing now in the collection of the Morgan Library:

Portrait of
John Stavely
who came from Hert-
fordshire with Mr. French
& sat to Mr. Wright in the character of the old man & his ass in the
Sentimental Journey

We can spot the same bearded face in other Wright paintings and drawings, such as his two versions of The Captive and various studies as the man aged.

The Sotheby’s site says:

Wright’s practise of employing old men as models in the 1760s and early ’70s is well documented and the artist’s account book, now preserved in the archives of the National Portrait Gallery in London, includes the details and addresses of several local Derbyshire characters that sat for him on a regular basis. . . . Perhaps his favourite model, however, was a character known as Old John Staveley…

Stavely’s most famous role for Wright was as the scientist in The Alchymist, in Search of the Philosopher’s Stone, Discovers Phosphorus, and prays for the successful Conclusion of his operation, as was the custom of the Ancient Chymical Astrologers. Wright finished this painting in 1771, then went back over it in 1795.

Unfortunately, we don’t appear to have any account of what John Stavely’s family and neighbors thought of his beard. We know only that when Joseph Wright of Derby wanted to paint bearded men, he had a limited pool to choose from.

Asians in the Continental Army

The Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia just shared a blog post about evidence of Asian soldiers in the Revolutionary War.

This doesn’t mean the thousands of soldiers who fought battles in India when the British, the French, and their local allies went to war there. That’s another seldom-told story.

Rather, interpreter Daniel Sieh quoted two sources showing how Continental Army officers identified certain enlisted men as from South Asia:

• “Charles Peters…is an East-India Indian, formerly the property of Mr. Thomlinson in Newbern.” —advertisement for deserters, North-Carolina Gazette, 15 May 1778.
• John Newton, a barber from “Bengaul, yellow complexion, talks good English” —size roll of Capt. Matthias Ogden’s company in the First New Jersey Regiment, 1779-82.

It’s intriguing to note that on 13 July 1776 Dixon and Hunter’s Virginia Gazette included this advertisement for a man named John Newton of the same age and skills as the “Bengaul” in Ogden’s company:

a Servant Man named JOHN NEWTON, about 20 Years of Age, 5 Feet 5 or 6 Inches high, slender made, is an Isiatic Indian by Birth, has been about twelve Months in Virginia, but lived ten Years (as he says) in England, in the Service of Sir Charles Whitworth.

He wears long black Hair, which inclines to curl, tied behind, and pinned up at the Sides; has a very sour Look, and his Lips project remarkably forward. He left his Master on the Road from Williamsburg, between King William Courthouse and Todd’s Bridge, where he was left behind to come on slowly with a tired Horse (which I have been informed is since dead) but has never made his Appearance at Home. . . .

He has been at Richmond, Williamsburg, and in other Parts of the Country, in the Service of Mr. George Rootes of Frederick, and Colonel [Thomas?] Blackburn of Prince William, of whom I had him; and as he is a good Barber and Hair-Dresser, it is possible he may endeavour to follow those Occupations as a free man.

The same notice appeared in other Williamsburg newspapers through September, some referring to Newton as simply “an Indian by birth.” (I first learned of that first ad through Ned Hector’s webpage.)

Sir Charles Whitworth was a Member of Parliament remembered for his use of statistics.

As for Charles Peters, Sieh writes:

Historian Justin Clement has done extensive research into Peters’s years of servitude, court battle for freedom, and subsequent military service. At his querying, historian Todd Braisted discovered that Charles Peters was born around 1757 in Madras (present-day Chennai, India). We can posit that he was born in territory controlled by the British East India Company, and that he was sent as an enslaved person to the Carolinas, where he joined the Continental Army and gained his freedom.

Unfortunately, Peters’s story gets a bit murky after his desertion, and while he occasionally appears in later records, we are still researching what happened to him next. He may have rejoined the Revolutionary forces in time for the reorganization of the North Carolina Line in the spring of 1778. We have tantalizing evidence that Peters participated in the Siege of Charleston, became a prisoner-of-war, and even joined a Loyalist regiment, after which time he died in Kingston, Jamaica.

I must note that, according to the 7 Aug 1783 Pennsylvania Packet, a “pioneer” in the Duke of Cumberland’s regiment named Charles Peters was killed on Jamaica; his murderer, Pvt. John Griffin, was hanged in June 1783.

As Sieh says, both Peters and Newton came to America enslaved. Both had been assigned British names that don’t indicate Asian origin; we need other sources to learn where they came from. And both made multiple moves to gain their freedom.

(It’s a delight to see so many familiar names contributing to the research on these two men: John U. Rees, Don N. Hagist, Robert A. Selig, and Todd W. Braisted.)

Miles Sherbrook in the Flesh

Lately I’ve been noodling on John Singleton Copley’s portrait of the New York merchant Miles Sherbrook (1738-1815), now at the Chrysler Museum. As you can see above, Copley painted Sherbrook without a wig.

Copley made several other pictures of men not wearing wigs or powdered hair. The most famous are his portraits of the Boylston brothers. Other examples show Ebenezer Storer, Nathaniel Hurd, Thomas Hubbard, and Joseph Sherburne.

In all those pictures, however, the gentlemen wore nightcaps and banyans in a studious form of casual dress. Viewers could glimpse their shaved scalps, showing how the men kept themselves prepared for formal dress, but for their portraits they made a show of not being dressed for the world, of staying at home to do the work of wealthy scholars. (The Rev. Thomas Cary also posed in a banyan with no wig, but his head wasn’t shaved.)

In contrast, Sherbrook is dressed for a day at the counting-house. He holds a piece of correspondence dated 1771, not a scholarly book, architectural drawing, or artwork.

The pose and costuming are a lot like Copley’s 1764 painting of Benjamin Hallowell, but that Customs official wore carefully curled, “lightly powdered” hair, probably not his own. 

Another comparison is Copley’s portrait of John Bours, who also wore a gentleman’s suit and his own hair. But Bours’s pose, apparently lost in thought about the book he’s reading, seems more scholarly than mercantile.

Sherbrook displays his own receding, thinning, graying hair. Other details of the portrait eschew luxury as well: no gold buttons or trim, no watch or buckles. The jacket has “coattails that Copley made progressively slimmer in the course of painting—as pentimenti evidence,” according to John Singleton Copley in America. Another sign of lack of vanity: Copley included the pockmarks left on Sherbrook’s face by smallpox.

Why did Copley create such an unusual picture? I considered the possibility that Sherbrook’s aesthetic represented a different culture from his neighbors’. But he wasn’t Quaker like Thomas Mifflin, another gentleman Copley painted without a wig. Sherbrook had come to America from Britain as a young man and remained the agent of his London firm, so was he displaying a more progressive fashion from the imperial capital? By 1771, though, he had been in New York for fifteen years, enough time for to marry a local woman and assimilate to local manners.

We know that Sherbrook signed up for a portrait by Copley through Stephen Kemble even before the painter came to New York in 1771. Furthermore, in his house Sherbrook had what Copley called his portrait of “Capt. Richards”—most likely Sherbrook’s wife Elizabeth’s late uncle and guardian, Paul Richard, who was referred to with the rank of captain in a 1746 legislative act. Copley also painted Richard’s widow on his 1771 visit.

According to Copley, that Richard portrait was “so much admired that vast numbers went to see it.” Sherbrook even let the painter display it at his own rooms to attract more customers. That picture is lost, so we have no clue about how Richard was clothed or wigged, but we can be sure that Sherbrook knew and valued Copley’s work and that Copley was grateful to him.

Thus, Copley’s painting of Miles Sherbrook shows the man as he wanted to be preserved, pocks and all.

“I also Seized the schooner, and her appertunances”

As recounted yesterday, on the afternoon of 18 May 1770, Customs service land waiters Owen Richards and John Woart spotted a schooner being unloaded on Greene’s Wharf. They went over to that ship, the Martin, and found Capt. Silvanus Higgins in charge.

Inviting the Customs men into his cabin, Higgins showed them his official papers. Richards, the more experienced of the Customs men, said he suspected the ship was carrying more cargo than that. Higgins offered punch and a friendly bribe. Refusing, Richards and Woart searched the forehold and discovered many containers of undeclared sugar.

“Mr. Richards then asked me for a piece of Chalk,” Woart stated. Richards started marking the barrels and kegs with an upward-pointing arrow—the sign of royal property. “I seized as many Casks as I could come att,” he wrote; “then we both went on Deck, and I also Seized the schooner, and her appertunances, for a breach of the Acts of Trade.”

Leaving Woart on board, Richards reported everything to William Sheaffe, Deputy Collector of the Port of Boston. Sheaffe went through the legal ritual of seizing the Martin again, then “ordered Mr. Woart to go to the tide Surveyor, and desire him to send Two more tidesmen onboard.” Josiah King and Joshua Dutton arrived. That evening, between 6:00 and 7:00, “the schooner was transported to Mr. [James] Pitts Wharf at the town dock.”

The Customs office now had the Martin both legally and physically. Capt. Higgins and his crew were about to lose all their goods and their vessel. Those men hailed from New London, Connecticut, but they turned out to have support on the Boston waterfront—particularly now that there were no soldiers patrolling the town.

Richards described what happened next:

between seven & Eight OClock I went to my house to bring my great Coat—a little after Nine as I was Returning onboard, near the draw Bridge I was Violently assaulted in the Street by a great Number of disorderly men & Boys & Negroes, also, with Clubs & Sticks, Crying out, and Informer, an Informer; Repeating the word Informer continually.

That was the same term Bostonians used for Ebenezer Richardson, convicted the month before of murdering a child. Richardson had actually started out as a secret informer, but Richards had been working openly for the royal government.

I must note that thirteen years later, when applying for compensation from the Loyalists Commission, Richards testified that “a Tumultuous Mob of near 2000…came to your Petitioners House, Broke his Windows, and distroyed his Furniture.” That wasn’t how he described the attack immediately afterwards—but the British government was compensating Loyalists for lost property, and it was easier to put a money figure on that than on suffering.

Richards’s 1770 account continued:

they set upon me furiously, and I defended myself, as long as I could, with my Stick, but being at last overpower’d, by numbers of murdering Villains, they beat me out of measure, and Halled and Dragged me thro’ the Streets, and being intirely overcome, and faint, thro’ loss of blood, and my Sense quite gone, I could make no more resistance.

they then gott a Cart and dragged me into it, in a barbarous manner, and Carried me into King’s Street, and there right against the Custom House, in a Most Cruel & Violent manner, they Robb’d me of my Hatt, Wigg & Coat, waistcoat & Shirt, and stripped me naked down to my breeches, they poured Tarr on my head, and tarr’d my body all over, and then putt feathers thereon, repeating an Informer:

This was the second tar-and-feathers attack in Boston, following the October 1769 assault on George Gailer, another man who worked for the Customs service. And it wasn’t over yet.

TOMORROW: Coming for the rest.

When John Piemont Set Up Shop in Danvers

At the website of the Danvers Archival Center, part of the town’s public library, Richard B. Trask shared his essay “Discovering Paul Revere in the Dried Prunes Box,” also published decades ago in Family Heritage.

It involves the engraved billhead shown here.

It was the summer of 1969, and I was working for the local Historical Commission as a summer cataloguer and researcher, trying to put into order the thousands of town records. Most of the loose, individual town papers were enclosed in nailed wooden boxes as a result of a W.P.A. project in the 1930s when the records were roughly sorted into various departmental categories. The boxes had originally been used in food relief during the depression and were clearly, and to my eyes humorously, marked, “Dried Prunes–For Relief–Not to be Sold.” Unfortunately, the boxes were not good for storing manuscripts, and many of them had become nesting areas for all sorts of vermin. . . .

Among these handwritten slips of paper, I noticed a very handsome item containing a fine engraving of the shoulders and head of a turbaned and mustachioed man with banners about him proclaiming, “John Piemont. Turk’s Head, Danvers.” The item was a trade bill of John Piemont’s eighteenth-century Turk’s Head Tavern, which was located on the old post road near what is now the junction of Pine and Sylvan Streets in Danvers.

Subsequent to discovering the identity of the trade bill’s printer, I learned from Dr. Richard P. Zollo, who wrote an interesting study on the life of John Piemont titled, “Patriot in Exile,” that Piemont was a Frenchman who settled in Boston in about 1759 and took up the trade of peruke [wig] maker. While residing in Boston, Piemont apparently became enmeshed in the patriot cause. He was a member of St. Andrew’s Lodge of Masons and was actively involved in the events leading up to the Boston Massacre of 1770. In 1773, partly as a result of losing Tory patronage at his wig shop, Piemont moved to Danvers and took on the management of a tavern.

To be exact, apprentices from the shop Piemont shared with another barber and wigmaker were involved in the first violence on King Street on the evening of 5 Mar 1770. One of those teens, Edward Garrick, criticized a passing army officer, and Pvt. Hugh White called the boy over and clonked him on the head.

There’s also a complaint from Pvt. John Timmins about Piemont and some other barbers clonking him on the head, as I quoted way back here. I still can’t make sense of this unmotivated attack, especially since Piemont’s business catered to royal officials and army officers. He even employed a moonlighting private, Pvt. Patrick Dines. I suspect Timmins came up with the complaint after the Massacre when he knew his superiors were eager for complaints about the locals whose names had come up in that dispute.

As Trask writes, Piemont later left Boston and opened a tavern in Danvers. When the war broke out in 1775, some locals “called him a Tory,” and the local committee of correspondence had to vouch for him. But back to the essay.

Months later, while browsing in a local book store I was looking through a book titled Paul Revere’s Engravings by Clarence S. Brigham. A plate in the chapter on trade cards caught my eye. A bill from Joshua Brackett’s “O. Cromwell’s Head” tavern on School Street in Boston, was reproduced. The design, format and size of this Revere engraving was almost identical to the Piemont bill that I had found.

I quickly looked in the index for “Piemont” and was referred to page 175, which stated that Paul Revere’s day book included many charges for engraving advertising cards and bill heads, but that no specimen remains of many of them. In June 1774 Revere made two hundred prints for a charge of 8 shillings to Mr. John Piemont.

Check out Trask’s essay to see the clue that confirmed his suspicion that Paul Revere had engraved this image for the former barber from Boston.