Horace Walpole’s 300th Year

The year 2017 marks the tercentenary of the author and aristocrat Horace Walpole’s birth, as well as the 220th anniversary of his death.

The Lewis Walpole Library in Farmington, Connecticut, has launched what it’s calling “Walpolooza”—a yearlong exploration of the man’s life and work, including displays, seminars, panel discussions, and a dramatic performance.

The library is now featuring the exhibition “Global Encounters and the Archives: Britain’s Empire in the Age of Horace Walpole.” It presents “conflicting visions of empire in the 18th century through the domains of political economy, diplomacy, slavery, and indigenous peoples.”

On 9-10 November, the library will host a “Literary Walpole Weekend” mini-conference organized by Jonathan Kramnick, the Maynard Mack Professor of English at Yale University, on Walpole’s ground-breaking gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto, and other writings.

Another conference will take place on 9-10 Feb 2018 at the Graduate Club in New Haven about “new archival-based research on Britain’s global empire in the 18th century.”

On 2 May 2018, the Yale Center for British Art will host a staged reading of Walpole’s controversial verse tragedy The Mysterious Mother, “a tale of incest and intrigue that Walpole initially circulated only among his friends, and never permitted it to be performed during his lifetime except as a private theatrical.” That will be followed by a scholarly symposium featuring the director of the performance, Misty G. Anderson, the Lindsay Young Professor of English at the University of Tennessee.

Online, the weekly Horace Walpole at 300 blog is sharing items from the Lewis Walpole Library’s collection. These include rare books he owned, others he had printed at his own press, artworks, and manuscripts.

Tea Party Seeking Tea, of All Things

The Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum has started to publicize this year’s reenactment of Boston’s last meeting about the East India Company’s tea and the destruction of that cargo which followed.

That press release refers to the commemoration as “one of the largest moving historical reenactments in the U.S.” I think that refers to how the event starts at the Old South Meetinghouse and then goes through the nighttime streets to the waterfront for the second act. A logistical challenge for the organizers, to be sure.

This year the museum has a new feature:

NEW IN 2017: Inviting one and all to send loose tea to be thrown into Boston Harbor as part of this year's reenactment.

HOW TO SEND TEA:
Send dried loose leaf tea (NO used tea bags) to: Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum, ATTN: 'Toss That Tea', 306 Congress St, Boston, MA 02210. Include name, address, e-mail & phone number. An official certificate of participation will be sent to each partaker sending tea. Deadline to send tea: December 1, 2017.

London’s East India Company will provide over 220 pounds of “Expired Loose Tea” to be thrown into the harbor. The original event involved, as Charles Bahne documented here, 92,616 pounds of tea. So even if we’re looking at dumping only one ship’s worth, we’ve got a way to go before matching the original total.

That said, I have a problem with this form of promotion. Sending loose tea in to this event would leave one with less tea. I’m struggling to find a way around that problem. Maybe I could get rid of that fake-aristocratic bergamot-doused stuff.

A Fifth of November Wagon Rolls Again

It’s been nearly twenty years since I started to research Revolutionary Boston intensely. At first my goal was to develop a sense of what it was like for a young apprentice to live in Boston in 1770.

Among the early books I read was Patricia Bradley’s Slavery, Propaganda, and the American Revolution. Almost in passing, Prof. Bradley mentioned that there were sketches of Boston’s Pope Night festivities at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. On-the-spot pictures of what an apprentice would have seen on 5 Nov 1767!

At the time I had grandparents living outside of Philadelphia, so during a visit to them I took a day to go into the city and research at that organization. Sure enough, its documents from the Swiss-born artist Pierre Eugène du Simitière included several sketches of youths tugging decorated wagons like this one, from Boston’s South End gang.

The first time I attended the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife, I mentioned those pictures to director Peter Benes. He invited me to write an article analyzing them for the seminar collection slated for 2003. The H.S.P. sent me photographs—on actual glossy paper, not pixels—and gave permission for them to be published for the first time. That was my first journal publication.

In 2006 I began this blog. I continued writing articles, chapters for books, a big study for the National Park Service, and eventually The Road to Concord. Folks at local historical organizations whose job is to look ahead as well as back noticed that the sestercentennial of the American Revolution in Massachusetts was upon us and started Revolution 250, and I joined that effort.

This past weekend, I was speaking about where Gen. George Washington slept in Cambridge, a result of the N.P.S. study. That required being at Mount Vernon, and it was a great experience, both educational and fun. Most unfortunately, that meant I had to miss the “Devil and the Crown” reenactment on the streets of Boston the same afternoon.

And look at what that event’s amazing volunteers and interpreters did!

Photograph from Jim Hollister’s Facebook feed. Check out the Facebook pages of Minute Man Park and The History List for videos.

Henry Hulton and “twenty Devils, Popes, & Pretenders”

I’ve focused on Charles Paxton as the chief target of Boston’s Pope Night processions in 1767, but two other new Commissioners of His Majesty’s Customs arrived in Boston on that same Fifth of November.

One was Henry Hulton, born in 1732 in Hampshire, England. He became one of the British Empire’s civil servants, eventually winning the post in Boston. Which turned out to be a lot more trouble than he anticipated.

Hulton wrote back to his family on his arrival, and his sister Ann Hulton passed on his news in a 17 Dec 1767 letter:

He says they happen’d unluckily to arrive on the most riotous day in the year, the 5th. Novr believes the Mob carried twenty Devils, Popes, & Pretenders, thro the Streets, with Labels on their breasts, Liberty & Property & no Commissioners, he laughed at ’em with the rest.

Later Henry’s wife and children joined him, as did Ann. She observed:

The Mobs here are very different from those in O[ld] England where a few lights put into the Windows will pacify, or the interposition of a Magistrate restrain them, but here they act from principle & under Countenance.

The Hultons moved into a house on Walnut Street in Brookline. According to Ann, a Scottish man named Logan “purchased this House & Land for my Bro[the]r in his own name, at the time nobody wou’d Lett or Sell to a Commissioner.” That estate provided Hulton with a rural retreat from the political turmoil in Boston. But on at least one occasion the mob visited him out there, and he had to flee to Castle William.

Ann Hulton’s reports home were published in 1927 as Letters of a Loyalist Lady. Henry Hulton’s political writings remained unpublished until 2010 when the Colonial Society of Massachusetts issued Henry Hulton and the American Revolution: An Outsider’s Inside View, edited by Neil Longley York. It contains Hulton’s letters; his first-hand history of the coming of the Revolution, owned by Princeton University; and a collection of essays and poems, held at the Clements Library. The complete text is now available online.

“He fitted himself with a Pair of Women’s Shoes”?

I’ve been discussing the public image of Customs official Charles Paxton (shown here in the Massachusetts Historical Society’s portrait).

Paxton’s neighbors teased him for his elaborate courtesy and his bachelor status. A big part of those criticisms, I suspect, was that Paxton didn’t fit New England’s model of masculinity.

That becomes quite clear in this anecdote, which appeared in the 18 Dec 1769 Boston Gazette:

Whereas a Sett of naughty Boys, not having the Fear of the reforming Justice, nor of his M[ajest]y’s Troops here stationed, before their Eyes, did in a very tumultuous and outrageous Manner assemble themselves together in Order to Tar and Feather a rascally Informer [George Gailer on 28 Oct 1769], to the great Terror of sundry of his M[ajest]y’s timorous Subjects usually distinguished by the opprobious Name of C[o]mm[issione]rs;

and whereas the right valiant and right worshipful and right noble Charles Froth, Esq [the way Whig newspapers had referred to Paxton since 1761]; on seeing the woful Spectacle exhibited, was then seized with an unusual panic and trepidation to the great discomfort of his delicate Nerves, and to the evident Disorder of his weak Intellects, insomuch as to Occasion a precipitate Retreat thro’ Back and By-Ways to his Kinsman Ph—ps’s, and when there thro’ the Excess of bodily Fear, all pale and trembling, he betook himself to a close Chamber, which was fast shut and barricaded strong, and to the disordering of the grisly Locks and gallant Apparel of the said antiquated Beau, he was necessitated for further Security to conceal himself beneath a huge Feather Bed, where he sweat most profusely for several Hours, to his great Damage, as he saith, and was at last with great Difficulty perswaded to emerge from Durance to take some Refreshment:

And further to the Loss of his necessary Repose there continued at his Cousin’s till near Day-break, at which Time having collected some small Share of Resolution, he formed the bold Design of venturing to his own Home; to which Purpose he fitted himself with a Pair of Women’s Shoes borrowed of Mrs. C—— [perhaps Paxton’s sister Susannah Cunningham], and a Ridinghood supplied him by his humane Cousin, and thus accoutred sallied forth under the Auspices of the Night, and the friendly Attendance of a brawny African, and without further Damage reached his own House.

This is therefore to caution these unruly Boys, that at any Time hereafter when they propose a Game of Foot-Ball, or any other noisy Diversion, that they take timely Care to advertise the said Charles Froth, Esq; that they intend him no Injury.

I doubt Paxton really tried to disguise himself in women’s shoes and a “Ridinghood.” But his enemies were happy to portray him as an “antiquated Beau” who could be scared by a football game and needed the protection of “a brawny African.” Eighteenth-century British society didn’t think about gender and sexuality exactly as we do today, but that newspaper item looks a lot like gay-baiting.

Paxton’s personal manners probably wouldn’t have made the newspapers if he hadn’t thrown himself into his work as a Customs officer and become one of the Commissioners of His Majesty’s Customs. But the other men appointed to that board never got the sort of personal criticism that Paxton did.

Three of those Commissioners disembarked from Britain on 5 Nov 1767 (as reenacted this afternoon around Faneuil Hall). Paxton was the only one whom the Pope Night processions individually lampooned. And his effigies bore labels like “poor charles the bachelor.”

“Poor Charles the batchelor that was once master of the ceremonies”

When I say that Customs official Charles Paxton was “queer,” I’m not claiming to know whom he had sex with, or wanted to have sex with. I’m saying that Bostonians saw something odd in Paxton’s lifestyle and manners, and they teased him for supposedly lacking masculinity. From 1761 on, Whig newspapers referred to Paxton as “Charles Froth, Esq.,” bubbly and insubstantial.

Paxton never married. That stood out in New England society, which encouraged men to find a wife and have lots of children. Of course, there were other lifelong bachelors in Revolutionary Boston, such as the Boylston brothers and Dr. Joseph Gardner.

But Bostonians made a big deal out of Paxton not marrying. During the 1767 Pope Night processions, one of the signs recorded by the artist Pierre Eugene du Simitière in the drawing above read, “poor charles the bachelor.” (Those drawings are in the collection of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.)

That label continued, “…that was once master of the ceremonies.” Another sign read, “everybody’s humble servant & nobody’s friend.” Locals evidently knew what those lines alluded to without needing to read anything more.

For those of us from farther away, we have an explanatory anecdote printed in the 6 Nov 1769 Boston Gazette:

one day, after having fleeced a very worthy gentleman, [Paxton] met him, and with the impudence of Beau Nash and Tobit’s Dog, but in the antique, aukward air of the last century, accosted him with “Mr —, your most obedient humble servant, Sir!”

Yes, yes, answered the other, “every man’s humble servant, but no man’s friend.”

Lots of people must have repeated that story because as late as 1809 Bostonians still remembered Paxton as “no man’s friend.”

Beau Nash meant Richard Nash, noted dandy and master of ceremonies at Bath in the early and mid-1700s. As for “Tobit’s Dog,” it looks like eighteenth-century authors used that Biblical figure as an emblem of slavish devotion. According to Samuel Johnson, “impudence” meant shamelessness.

Thus, Bostonians looked at Paxton and saw a fawning courtier with overly elaborate manners and the “antique, aukward air of the last century.”

TOMORROW: A cross-dressing anecdote from 1769.

Charles Paxton, Customs Commissioner

Charles Paxton (1708-1788, shown here in a portrait at the American Antiquarian Society) was a major figure in Boston’s 1767 Pope Night procession.

Not as a member of the North End or South End Gangs, to be sure. Paxton was the target of those processions, which became a protest against the Townshend duties and the new Commissioners of His Majesty’s Customs. (The daytime protest will be part of the “Devil and the Crown” reenactment this Saturday.)

Paxton was one of those five Commissioners, having risen in the Customs service in Massachusetts. He had tried to join that agency as early as 1734, proposing a new office at Plymouth with himself in charge. He got a post in Marblehead and Salem in the early 1740s.

Paxton also became marshal of Boston’s vice-admiralty court, which helped to enforce the Customs laws. So he made money from seizures of smuggled goods in all sorts of ways. Some said he played favorites with whose goods he seized, though it’s possible they just meant he should be as lenient as other Customs officers.

Naturally, Paxton’s work made him unpopular with the maritime community in Essex County. In 1752 he gained the post of Surveyor of Customs in Boston, allowing him to become just as unpopular with an even larger maritime community.

When Boston’s merchants sued to overturn writs of assistance in 1761, Paxton was the nominal defendant. He won that case, and others, in the Massachusetts courts. The fact that Chief Justice Thomas Hutchinson was one of Paxton’s oldest friends didn’t mollify their opponents.

During the first Stamp Act riot on 14 Aug 1765, Paxton reportedly offered shelter to the stamp agent, Andrew Oliver. So during the second Stamp Act riot on 26 August, a mob went to Paxton’s home and threatened to pull it apart.

Paxton’s landlord, Thomas Palmer, came out and convinced the crowd not to harm his property. He bought them a barrel of punch at a nearby tavern. So instead those people headed to the North End and ripped apart Hutchinson’s house, among others.

In July 1766 Paxton sailed for London, nominally for his health. He happened to be in the capital when Chancellor of the Exchequer Charles Townshend proposed new tariffs and a new board to enforce them. Bostonians blamed Paxton for suggesting those measures, but there’s no evidence for that. He no doubt did lobby to be named as one of the Commissioners, and succeeded.

Thus, when Paxton arrived back in Boston on 5 Nov 1767, he had made himself into the most unpopular royal appointee in the colony. In 1768 Samuel Adams would look back on Paxton’s trip in a newspaper essay published under the name of “Candidus”:

Happy for America’s sons had mother Ocean taken him into her bosom (father Abra’m surely never will)

happy I say had it been for America, nay thrice happy for the mother country had he never reached Albion’s shore: less treasure had been expended by her; less animosity had taken place between the mother and her children; less villainy had been perpetrated here, had he never returned.

When your neighbors publicly wish you had drowned at sea for the good of the nation, you are not popular.

Another thing made Paxton a target of Boston’s crowds: he was queer.

TOMORROW: Poor Charles the Bachelor.

How Bostonians Pledged Not to Buy Imported Goods

A few days back, I quoted from the town meeting on 28 Oct 1767 that set out Boston’s response to the Townshend Act. (That meeting is part of the inspiration for the “Devil and the Crown” public-history event in the works for this Saturday.)

That reaction took the form of printed sheets like the one above, which the selectmen were directed to distribute “among the Freeholders of this Town.” Those papers spelled out this pledge:

We therefore the Subscribers being sensible that it is absolutely necessary, in Order to extricate us out of these embarrassed and distressed Circumstances, to promote Industry, Oeconomy and Manufactures among ourselves, and by this Means prevent the unnecessary Importation of European Commodities, the excessive Use of which threatens the Country with Poverty and Ruin, DO promise and engage, to and with each other, that we will encourage the Use and Consumption of all Articles manufactured in any of the British American Colonies, and more especially in this Province; and that we will not from and after the 31st. of December next ensuing, purchase any of the following Articles, Imported from Abroad…

And below that text was lots of space for people to sign. Because a boycott like this works only if everyone participates.

A few years back, the Harvard librarian John Overholt spotted eight signed copies of this sheet in the university’s collection. He fast-tracked them for digitization, and now we can read those pages here.

Dr. Sam Forman then spearheaded an effort to transcribe all the names on the documents. As his analysis shows, fifty-two women signed the pledge. That’s about 8% of the total—a small slice, but one that shows women as business owners and consumers were part of Boston’s movement against new taxes.

“My hair rose on end, and seemed to lift my hat from my head”

Since this is Hallowe’en, I’ll relay a story from the newspaper publisher and politician Benjamin Russell (1761-1845), who grew up in Boston before the Revolutionary War.

The printer Joseph T. Buckingham set down and published Russell’s story “as near as can be recollected”:

It was a part of my duty as an assistant in the domestic affairs of the family, to have the care of the cow. One evening, after it was quite dark, I was driving the cow to her pasturage,—the common. Passing by the burial-ground, adjoining the Stone Chapel, I saw several lights that appeared to be springing from the earth, among the graves and immediately sinking again to the ground, or expiring. To my young imagination, these lights could be nothing but ghosts. I left the cow to find her way to the common, or wherever else she pleased, and ran home at my utmost speed.

Having told my father the cause of my fright, as well as I was able, while in such a state of terror and agitation, he took me by the hand and led me directly to the spot, where the supposed ghosts were still leaping and playing their pranks near the surface of the ground. My hair rose on end, and seemed to lift my hat from my head. My flesh was chilled through to my very bones. I trembled so that I could scarcely walk. Still my father continued rapidly marching towards the spot that inspired me with so much terror.

When lo! there was a sexton, up to his shoulders in a grave, throwing out, as he proceeded in digging, bones and fragments of rotten coffins. The phosphorus in the decaying wood, blended with the peculiar state of the atmosphere, presented the appearance that had completely unstrung my nerves, and terrified me beyond description.

I was never afterwards troubled with the fear of ghosts.

So nothing to worry about, kids! Just the sexton digging up old bones and glow-in-the-dark coffins to make room for new bodies.

And since I’ll speak at Old North Church tomorrow about Revolutionary Boston’s schools, here is Buckingham on Russell’s education:

When quite a child Russell was noted for a remarkably retentive memory and more than ordinary facility in learning the tasks prescribed by his teacher. He was placed at the public school taught by Master [James] Carter, whose aptness in teaching and mildness of discipline were somewhat celebrated. Nothing was then taught in the common schools of Boston but the simplest elements of education. The tasks, that Russell had to perform, embraced nothing but easy lessons in reading, writing, and arithmetic.

No science, history, geography, or other subjects.

“Then let Adams be sung by each patriot tongue”

Today is John Adams’s birthday (under the Gregorian Calendar, as he observed most of his life).

In his honor, here are the lyrics that Jonathan Mitchell Sewall (1748-1808) wrote in President Adams’s honor in 1798. Sewall followed the tune of “Hail, Columbia,” composed in 1789 and originally titled “The President’s March.” (It’s now the entrance music for the Vice President.)

SONG FOR JOHN ADAMS’ BIRTHDAY.

AMERICA, shout! thy own Adams still lives!
The terror of traitors and pride of our nation!
’Mid clouds of detraction, still glorious survives,
Sedition’s dread scourage, and his country’s salvation
Let his fame then resound
The wide universe round,
’Till Heaven’s starry arch the loud chorus rebound!
Such honors, pure worth must from gratitude claim,
Till the Sun is extinct and the Globe all on flame!

As bright Sol, whom the planets exulting obey,
Darts thro’ clouds those glad beams that enliven creation,
So Adams, midst tempests and storms, with mild sway,
Of our system the centre and soul, holds his station.
Tho’ dire comets may rise,
Let them meet but his eyes.
And in tangents they whirl, and retreat thro’ the skies.
Our Sun, Regent, Centre! then ever extol,
Till yon Orb cease to shine and those Planets to roll.

As gold try’d by fire leaves the dross all behind,
So, slander’d by Jacobin sons of sedition,
Adams bursts forth refulgent as Saints are refin’d
From the furnace of Satan, that Son of perdition!
Then let Adams be sung
By each patriot tongue,
And Columbia’s loud lyre be to exstacy strung!
These honors such worth must from gratitude claim
Till the Sun is extinct and the heavens on flame!

On Neptune’s vast Kingdom where oceans can flow,
Display’d is our Standard, our Eagle respected,
This change to great Adams and wisdom we owe—
Now our Commerce rides safe, by our Cannon protected.
Then three cheers to our Fleet!
May they never retreat
But with prize after prize their lov’d President greet!
And ne’er may Columbians grow cold in his praise
Till the Sun is extinct and the Universe blaze! 

But while our young Navy such rapture excites,
Our heroes by land claim our warm admiration.
With manhood and youth, ev’n the infant unites,
Sons of Heroes! boast, pride and defence of our Nation!
Such a spirit’s gone forth
Of true valor and worth,
’Twould be arduous to tame it, all pow’rs upon earth!
’Twas Adams inspir’d it—to him be the praise
Long as Cynthia shall shine or the Sun dart his rays!

But turn us to Europe—how fares it with France?
What! confounded, amaz’d, such astonishment ne’er rose!
From the North bursts Suwarrow! I see him advance,
That Victor of victors, that Hero of heroes!
Hardy Russian, Mon Dieu!
If this course you pursue
You will leave Mighty Washington nothing to do.
At that name the Muse kindles, and twining fresh bays
Blends with Adams’s glory, great Washington’s praise!

Not a nation on earth would we fear with such aid
(Heav’n save us alone from internal commotion!)
Not Britain, France, Europe—Columbia would dread
Their forces by land, their proud fleets on the ocean,
Our Heroes prepar’d
Would their progress retard,
Sage Adams to guide and great Washington guard.
Their Glory increasing as nature decays
In Eternity’s Temple refulgent shall blaze!

Sewall was raised by his uncle, Massachusetts Justice Stephen Sewall, and started his legal training under his cousin Jonathan Sewall, once a close friend of Adams but later a Loyalist opponent. The young man then moved to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, for further training with John Pickering. He was an ardent Federalist in the early republic, best known for his verse “War and Washington.”

“The Devil and the Crown” at Faneuil Hall, Nov. 4

On Saturday, 4 November, Faneuil Hall will host a reenactment of the Boston town meeting I described yesterday, setting up a non-importation boycott against the Townshend duties.

Meanwhile, in the surrounding marketplace volunteers will reenact an outdoor public demonstration against the royal officials who came to Boston to collect those duties. That protest took place on 5 Nov 1767.

Boston 1775 readers will recognize the Fifth of November as when Boston youths enjoyed raucous processions, with giant effigies representing the British Empire’s Catholic enemies and the political scapegoats of the day.

By coincidence, on 5 Nov 1767 three new Customs Commissioners, including Henry Hulton, William Burch, and the already unpopular Charles Paxton, disembarked from London. Lord George Sackville, later Secretary of State Germain, described how that worked out:

They landed on the 5th of November, and the populace were then carrying in procession the Pope, the Devil, and the Pretender, in order to commit them to the flames in honour of Protestantism. Mr. Paxton’s name being Charles, it was fixed in large letters upon the breast of the Devil, and these figures met the Commissioners at the water side and were carry’d before them without any insult through the streets, and whenever they stopped to salute an acquaintance, the figures halted and faced about till the salutation was over, and so accompany’d them to the [Lieutenant] Governor [Thomas] Hutchinson’s door…

The combined reenactment will be called “The Devil and the Crown.” Here’s the full schedule:

11:00 A.M. to 2:00 P.M.
Goods for Your Master, Taxes for Your King
Come try your luck as a young apprentice in this colonial marketplace game. Whether you buy, barter, or smuggle, the goal’s the same: bring all your goods back to your employer and get promoted! This drop in program is best for ages 6-10, Faneuil Hall, Education Space, basement.

1:00 to 4:30 P.M.
Talk of the Town
Meet reenactors portraying Bostonians of different social classes in Samuel Adams Park, directly in front of Faneuil Hall, and learn about why they are protesting the new laws.

2:30 and 4:00 P.M.
Revolutionary Town Meeting: Stand Up! Speak Out!
Join a lively meeting to debate Boston’s response to the hated Townshend Acts. Character cards are available. Free, 30 minutes, Faneuil Hall, Great Hall, second floor.

4:30 P.M.
Procession
Join a rowdy street protest and process around Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market to the Old State House.

5:30 to 6:30 P.M.
Museum Open House
Dive into Boston’s Revolutionary past and explore the galleries inside the Old State House. Admission is free to all.

The program will thus explore the formal politics of a town meeting and the informal politics of the street, the economy of transatlantic trade and the choices of local consumers, particularly women. (Recall how the list of goods that Bostonians were supposed to boycott included a lot of women’s garments and household items.)

This reenactment is being organized through Revolution 250, the coalition of local organizations commemorating the sestercentennials of events in Massachusetts leading up to the break with Britain. In this case, the sponsoring organizations are Boston National Historical Park, Minute Man National Historical Park, The Bostonian Society, and the Massachusetts Historical Society.

I started pushing for this event last year, saying that Revolution 250 shouldn’t miss the anniversary of a big political event involving giant puppets. But Jim Hollister of Minute Man Park really got the wagon rolling, along with such dedicated reenactors as Niels Hobbs, Matthew Mees, Ruth Hodges, and many others. It will be a once-in-a-lifetime anniversary!

Boston’s Urgent Town Meeting 250 Years Ago

On 28 Oct 1767, two hundred fifty years ago today, Boston held a special town meeting in Faneuil Hall to discuss an urgent threat. As stated in a broadside issued after the meeting:

the excessive Use of foreign Superfluities is the chief Cause of the present distressed State of this Town, as it is thereby drained of its Money: which Misfortune is likely to be increased by Means of the late additional Burthens and Impositions on the Trade of the Province, which threaten the Country with Poverty and Ruin:

In its post-Puritan way, Boston had made such official pronouncements against spending money on luxuries and “Superfluities” for a long time. Town leaders also promoted local manufacturing capability so people would spend less on cloth and other material shipped from Britain. Both campaigns dated back well before conflicts with the British government had started to grow in the mid-1760s.

Thus, the men at this town meeting promised they would

adhere to the late Regulation respecting Funerals, and will not use any Gloves but what are Manufactured here, nor procure any new Garments upon such an Occasion, but what shall be absolutely necessary.

But there was a bigger threat at this time. The phrase “the late additional Burthens and Impositions on the Trade of the Province” referred to how Parliament had imposed tariffs on the import of tea, glass, lead, paper, and painters’ colors into the North American colonies. Those new taxes came to be known as the “Townshend duties.” So private transactions were no longer the only thing taking hard money out of Boston; the government in London was about to do so as well without Massachusetts having a say in the decision.

Therefore, this town meeting went beyond issuing yet another call to do without “foreign Superfluities.” It sought to cut down on all imports from Britain as a strategy to pressure London merchants into lobbying Parliament to repeal those new tariffs. After all, that boycott strategy had worked against the Stamp Act.

The meeting appointed a committee to draft terms for a boycott. Those men included many of the town’s leading merchants: John Rowe, William Greenleaf, Melatiah Bourne, Samuel Austin, Edward Payne, Edmund Quincy tertius, John Ruddock, Jonathan Williams, Joshua Henshaw, Henderson Inches, Solomon Davis, Joshua Winslow, and Thomas Cushing. Leading politicians who weren’t in trade, such as James Otis, Jr., and Samuel Adams, didn’t make the list. At this moment the merchants were steering Boston’s political course.

That committee followed the meeting’s instructions and drew up a subscription for people to sign, pledging not to import any of these goods after the end of 1767:

Loaf Sugar, Cordage, Anchors, Coaches, Chaises and Carriages of all Sorts, Horse Furniture, Men and Womens Hatts, Mens and Womens Apparel ready made Houshold Furniture, Gloves, Mens and Womens Shoes, Sole-Leather, Sheathing and Deck Nails, Gold and Silver and Thread Lace of all Sorts, Gold and Silver Buttons, Wrought Plate of all Sorts, Diamond, Stone and Paste Ware, Snuff, Mustard, Clocks and Watches, Silversmiths, and Jewellers Ware, Broad Cloths that cost above 10s. per Yard, Muffs Furrs and Tippets, and all Sorts of MillenaryWare, Starch, Womens and Childrens Stays, Fire Engines, China Ware, Silk and Cotton Velvets, Gauze, Pewterers hollow Ware, Linseed Oyl, Glue, Lawns, Cambricks, Silks of all Kinds for Garments, Malt Liquors and Cheese.

The committee also called on people to use glass and paper made in North America, not Britain—though the supply of either commodity manufactured in America was still very small.

“Religious Spaces” at the 2018 Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife

Next year’s Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife will take place on 22-24 June 2018 at Historic Deerfield. The subject will be “Religious Spaces: Our Vanishing Landmarks.”

Here’s the call for papers and similar material in that program:

The Dublin Seminar is now accepting proposals for papers, presentations, tours, exhibits, and workshops on New England meetinghouses, churches, and other religious spaces of all denominations in the period 1622 through 1865.

We are interested in theoretical approaches to the region’s architectural and religious history, specifically questions dealing with houses of worship as an Atlantic phenomenon; European, North American, or Caribbean building styles; design, construction, and furnishing techniques; private versus collective worship; the decline of the “parish” system; issues involving seating, legal jurisdiction, and musical events; and the influence of Anglican, Catholic, Quaker, Baptist, Unitarian, and Mormon sects.

Additional subjects of interest include camp meetings, campgrounds, cemeteries, convents, and intentional communities like the Shakers. A principal focus of this conference is how communities and scholars can take advantage of new digital resources, new approaches to historical archeology, and new gateways to the region’s social, cultural, and ecclesiastical history.

Simultaneously, the conference will address the continuing survival of extant structures. As these buildings’ original religious functions become less sustainable, their future is imperiled. The Seminar plans to offer a historic preservation workshop that will also examine adaptive reuses of these buildings. Many survivals have come to serve their communities as museums, libraries, town halls, schools, fire stations, granges, barns, and performing arts centers. To help place meetinghouses, churches, synagogues, and other religious spaces on track to permanent survival, the Seminar invites church groups, communities of faith, civic associations, architectural preservationists, and the general public to share their stories of successful conservation and multiple-use approaches to securing their future.

The Seminar encourages papers that reflect interdisciplinary approaches and original research, especially those based on primary or underused resources such as material culture, archeological artifacts, letters and diaries, vital records, federal and state censuses, as well as newspapers, portraits, prints and photographs, business records, church records, recollections, and autobiographies, some of which have recently become available online.

The Dublin Seminar committee hopes to assemble a program of approximately seventeen lectures of twenty minutes each, with related tours and workshops. There will be professional development points for public school teachers. The best papers will be printed in an upcoming volume of the seminar’s annual proceedings series.

To submit a paper proposal, please send a one-page prospectus that cites sources and a one-page vita to the seminar director by February 10, 2018. He would prefer emails with attachments sent to pbenes@historic-deerfield.org. For paper proposals the address is:

Peter Benes, Director
The Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife
Historic Deerfield
P.O. Box 321
Deerfield, MA 01342

“Military Theaters” Symposium in Schenectady, 11 Nov.

The American Revolution Round Table of the Hudson and Mohawk Valleys is hosting a free symposium in Schenectady, New York, on Veteran’s Day, 11 November.

The symposium is on the topic of “The Military Theaters of the American Revolution” and will feature the editors and most of the contributors of the recent book on that topic.

There are presentations scheduled from 8:30 to 4:15, with a break for lunch. The speakers and their topics are:

• David L. Preston, Professor of History, the Citadel, opening remarks.
• James Kirby Martin, Ewing Visiting Professor, U.S.M.A., West Point, on “The Northern Theater.”
• Mark Edward Lender, Emeritus Professor of History, Kean University, on “The Western Theater.”
• Charles Neimeyer, Director and Chief of U.S. Marine Corps History at Marine Corps University, Quantico, on “The War at Sea.”
• Jim Piecuch, Professor of History, Kennesaw State University, on “The Southern Theater.”
• Lender and Martin together on “The Middle Theater.”
• All presenters in a discussion about “Which theater was most crucial to the outcome of the American Revolution?”

The event will take place at the Schenectady County Community College, located at 78 Washington Avenue. Specifically, participants will gather in the lecture hall of the Stockade Building.

Space is limited, so attendees must register in advance by sending an email to arrthudsonmohawkvalleys@gmail.com or by phoning 518-774-5669. Visit the website of the Fort Plain Museum for further details. The event is free, and attendees must provide their own lunch.

The symposium is co-sponsored by Siena College’s McCormick School of the American Revolution, S.U.N.Y. Schenectady County Community College’s Community Archaeology Program, the PastQuest Research Group, Westholme Publishing, and Alpin Haus. The Hudson and Mohawk Valley Round Table is supported by the Fort Plain Museum, the Friends of the Saratoga Battlefield, the Mohawk Country Association, the Pundits Military Association, the Saratoga National Historical Park, the Washington County Historical Society, and the Recreated 34th Regiment of Foot.

Abigail Adams Birthplace Tour in Weymouth, 4 Nov.

On Saturday, 4 November, the Abigail Adams Historical Society will welcome visitors for “Behind the Scenes at the Abigail Adams Birthplace,” a tour of the building with preservation carpenter Walter Beebe-Center.

The organization says:

The Abigail Adams Historical Society concludes its year-long commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the rescue of the ca. 1685 Abigail Adams Birthplace from demolition with this special behind-the-scenes tour. Led by Walter Beebe-Center, owner of Essex Restoration, the program will feature an overview of the 2012–2013 restoration which Beebe-Center oversaw and which confirmed the building’s 17th-century construction date. It will also include a structural tour of the home from basement to second floor, sites usually not shown to the public.

There will be two tours, the first from 10:00 A.M. to noon and the second from 2:00 to 4:00 P.M. Each tour is limited to fifteen people. Tickets are $25 per person, or $20 for members.

Tickets must be reserved in advance through AAHS1947@yahoo.com. People who register will receive a reply email stating whether they have a reservation or are wait-listed. All attendees receiving a confirmation should be prepared to pay by check or cash at the door.

The Abigail Adams Birthplace is at 180 Norton Street in North Weymouth. Its last day this year open for regular tours is Sunday, 12 November, from 1:00 to 4:00 P.M.

False Anniversaries for Equiano and Wheatley

Earlier this month, on 16 October, Google’s doodle of the day featured the eighteenth-century author Olaudah Equiano, as shown above.

Which was great, except that the company said it was doing so to celebrate Equiano’s 272nd birthday. Many websites and Twitter feeds picked up that factoid and repeated it around the globe.

But we don’t know that Equiano’s birthday was on 16 October. We don’t know what year he was born. Indeed, there’s a historical debate about whether Equiano was born in western Africa, as he stated in his memoir, or in South Carolina, as two documents from earlier in his life say.

Equiano’s memoir never states the year or day of his birth, and the chronology of his early life is fuzzy. Look at his Wikipedia page, and [as of right now] it says he was born around 1745, kidnapped into slavery around the age of eleven, and sold to a particular master in 1754—so the numbers aren’t adding up.

Sure, we can celebrate Equiano on 16 October, or any other arbitrary day. But to declare that’s his birthday isn’t just a claim without evidence. It normalizes Equiano’s life by modern standards when the whole point of his anti-slavery writing was that he was wrenched away from his life, family, and home. He was renamed multiple times and shipped around the globe. He had legally become property, and we don’t make a big deal about property’s birthday.

Celebrating Equiano’s birthday as if we had records about his early life the way we have records about, say, Oliver Ellsworth (born 29 Apr 1745) glosses over a huge difference between those two people’s lives. Indeed, it glosses over a crime.

Likewise, two days later on 18 October, a number of Twitter accounts tweeted that that date was the anniversary of Phillis Wheatley becoming free. The year they gave for that event ranged from 1773 to 1778, which should cast doubt on the dating.

In fact, we don’t know when exactly the Wheatley family of Boston freed their young slave Phillis. Instead, we know that on 18 Oct 1773 she wrote a letter that described herself as having become free. So Phillis Wheatley was free by that date; she wasn’t freed on that date.

That’s closer than what some other tweets have claimed about the poet—that she was born in 1753 or even on 21 Jan 1754. The sad fact is that she was kidnapped as a small child, so young as to still be losing teeth, and therefore came with no knowledge of her age and birthday.

Again, we can celebrate Phillis Wheatley’s accomplishments and the fact that she won her freedom through sheer intellectual accomplishment. The 18th of October seems like an appropriate day to do that because of the evidence we have. But we don’t have clear documentation of when the Wheatley family restored her freedom, and that in itself is significant. Such an emancipation was entirely up to the owners, reflecting the slavery system. The family may have given Phillis Wheatley a document declaring her freedom, but most of her later papers vanished after she died, a reflection of her relative poverty. We shouldn’t fog over those facts about her life.

Call for Papers on “Monumental Narratives”

The Grace Slack McNeil Program for Studies in American Art at Wellesley College and Historic Deerfield are teaming up to sponsor a one-day symposium on “Monumental Narratives: Revisiting New England’s Public Memorials.”

This event will take place on Saturday, 10 March 2018, at Wellesley College.

The symposium’s call for papers is out, asking for proposals by 10 November. It says:

As southern Civil War memorials have become a flashpoint for politics and protest, it is vital that we turn the same critical gaze to New England’s public monuments. This day-long symposium will explore commemorations of people, places, and events in New England’s past, with attention to design, construction, naming/renaming, reception, preservation, destruction, and/or reconfiguration. How do these public acts of memory tell a particular story of New England? What histories might they celebrate or, whether explicitly or implicitly, conceal, devalue, or erase? How can historians recast these monumental narratives without simultaneously sweeping aside uncomfortable histories of colonialism and discrimination?

We invite papers that critically examine memorials in New England from the 17th century to the present. We look for explorations of a diverse range of media including (but not limited to) sculpture, mural programs, buildings, and landscapes. Discussions of proposals for contemporary commemoration or for interventions in existing monuments should explicitly address the ways in which these activities fit into a broader historical context.

Papers should be theoretical or analytical in nature rather than descriptive and take approximately 20 minutes to present.

Scholars interested in presenting at this symposium should submit a 250-word proposal and a two-page c.v. via electronic mail to Martha McNamara (mmcnamar@wellesley.edu) and Barbara Mathews (bmathews@historic-deerfield.org). Proposals should include the title of the paper and the presenter’s name.

The call says, “Speakers invited to present papers are expected to participate fully in the symposium program.” Which means you’re not supposed to deliver your talk and then duck out for some other event. The symposium will offer overnight accommodation for people delivering papers.

“Washington Slept Here” Symposium at Mount Vernon, 3-4 Nov.

On 3-4 November, Mount Vernon will host the 2017 symposium of the Washington Library, which has the theme of “George Washington Slept Here: Travel, Rest, and Memory of the First President.”

The speakers include:

• Philip Levy, “Where George Washington Slept: The Early Years”
• John Maass, “Soldier and Surveyor: George Washington on Virginia’s Frontier”
• Ed Redmond, “George Washington’s Manuscript Maps and Surveys, 1747-1799”
• Joseph Stoltz, “Washington’s World Interactive Map”
• Warren Bingham, “The People and Places of George Washington’s Southern Tour”
• Natalie Larson, “Battlefield to Bed Chamber: Exploring George Washington’s Beds”
• Karl Watson, “‘Hospitality and a Genteel behaviour is shown to every gentleman stranger’: George Washington’s Impressions of Barbados and Barbadians in 1751”
• Thomas Reinhart, “‘Got into Annapolis between five & Six Oclock’: George Washington among Maryland’s Architectural Trendsetters”

And toward the end of the two days I’ll speak about “General Washington’s First Headquarters and What He Learned There.” Here’s the description of that talk:

George Washington took command of the Continental Army in Cambridge, Massachusetts in July 1775. Soon he moved into a mansion that served as his headquarters for nine months – longer than any other site until Newburgh, New York. This talk explores why the general chose that house, now a National Park Service site; how he used it; and what he learned about leading the Continental cause while inside those walls. It will also discuss how later owners – the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and his family – helped to preserve the public memory of the Revolution and Mount Vernon in particular.

This is, of course, quite an honor. It grows out of a historic resource study I wrote a few years back for the National Park Service. I’ll try to speak about the Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site as enthusiastically as the N.P.S. staff there does.

Registration for the 2017 Washington Symposium is available starting here.

“Colonial Boston’s Public Schools” at Old North, 1 Nov.

On Wednesday, 1 November, I’ll speak at the Old North Church on “Classes and Forms: The Landscape of Colonial Boston’s Public Schools.”

This talk is part of the Old North Foundation’s Speaker Series focusing on the ordinary people of Boston. The event description explains:

Colonial Boston took pride in its free public schools, which educated young Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Paul Revere, and thousands of other boys before the Revolution. But a close look at those five grammar and writing schools reveals that they provided only limited opportunities for middling-sort boys, not to mention no place for girls or non-white boys. Colonial Boston’s schools thus reflected and reinforced the town’s social and economic divisions. The creation of a new nation spurred major reforms in 1789, eventually leading toward today’s public education.

This talk is based on research I’ve presented at different scholarly conferences, most of which will appear in an upcoming volume from the Dublin Seminar on New England Folklife.

I started to look into Boston’s public schools to understand how the town’s pre-Revolutionary children spent their days. That effort soon forced me to give up a lot of assumptions I’d had about those schools, such as what they taught—they didn’t cover reading and writing, history, geography, science, or other standard modern topics.

Likewise, I had to discard idea about who went to those schools—only about half of the eligible white boys. And about how long those scholars lasted—two-thirds of more of the seven-year-olds entering the South Latin School taught by John Lovell (shown above) dropped out before finishing.

Thus, while Boston can pride itself on having the oldest public school system in the U.S. of A., legally open from the start to (white male) students from all classes, that pre-Revolutionary system didn’t provide equal opportunity as we might think. In 1789 the town had its first major debate on school reform since adding writing schools to the grammar or Latin school—reform explicitly driven by new republican ideas.

This talk is scheduled to start at 6:00 P.M. Register for the program here; the price is a “pay what you will” donation to the Old North Foundation.

“Advise and Dissent” Panel in Boston, 23 Oct.

On Monday, 23 October, the Massachusetts Historical Society will host a panel discussion on the topic “Advise and Dissent? The Role of Public History in Modern Life.”

The society asks:

What is the role of historical organizations in a politically polarized environment, a world of “alternative facts” and a social fabric that is being torn apart by political and class divides?

Many historians and public historical organizations are changing the way they work, offering their talents and skills as advocates and healers. Yet, they face a complex public. Some audience members embrace the opportunity to engage in dialogue over difficult issues. Others seek a more entertaining, escapist experience. Still others are alert to activities that appear to overstep the traditional role of museums or to signal that their own perspectives might be unwelcome. Some visitors yearn for the inclusion of minority viewpoints but consider museums too inherently biased to present these narratives.

It is all a challenging prospect for organizations that are seeking to be truly inclusive and build broad public support. Join us for a compelling conversation.

The panelists will be:

• Karilyn Crockett, Office of Economic Development, City of Boston
• Brian W. J. LeMay, consultant specializing in museum projects and operations, former head of the Bostonian Society
• Richard Rabinowitz, American History Workshop and author, Curating America: Journeys through Storyscapes of the American Past
• Katheryn P. Viens, director of research at the Massachusetts Historical Society and moderator of this discussion

There is a $10 registration fee for this discussion, but it’s waived for all “Historical Colleagues” working or studying in the field.

The event begins at 5:30 P.M. with a reception. The discussion is scheduled to last from 6:00 to 7:30.