Writ near a century ago, by the great Major Molineaux?

I was planning to write more about James Brewer tonight, but since I spent all afternoon at a concert of H. W. Longfellow poems set to music (more varied and entertaining than you might think), I’m going back to comment on another name that recurs in the records of Boston’s political conflict: William Molineux.

In Tales of a Wayside Inn, Longfellow used a framing device of people sitting around a Sudbury tavern telling stories. One of those stories, from the Landlord, was “Paul Revere’s Ride,” previously published in periodicals on its own. The book’s “Prelude” set the scene for the storytelling:

The fire-light, shedding over all
The splendor of its ruddy glow,
Filled the whole parlor large and low;
It gleamed on wainscot and on wall,
It touched with more than wonted grace
Fair Princess Mary’s pictured face;
It bronzed the rafters overhead,
On the old spinet’s ivory keys
It played inaudible melodies,
It crowned the sombre clock with flame,
The hands, the hours, the maker’s name,
And painted with a livelier red
The Landlord’s coat-of-arms again;
And, flashing on the window-pane,
Emblazoned with its light and shade
The jovial rhymes, that still remain,
Writ near a century ago,
By the great Major Molineaux,
Whom Hawthorne has immortal made.

In that last line, Longfellow gave a shout-out to Nathaniel Hawthorne, a friend from Bowdoin College. In 1832 Hawthorne had published a short story titled “My Kinsman, Major Molineaux.” As for “jovial rhymes,” Longfellow was also referring to an actual bit of verse scratched on a windowpane at the Wayside Inn; it’s still there, now on display instead of exposed to the elements.

What’s the actual relationship between the Boston radical leader William Molineux, Hawthorne’s character, and the verse on the pane of glass? Not nearly as close as Longfellow believed.

First of all, Hawthorne said his tale took place “not far from a hundred years ago,” which meant in the 1740s. Though separating the tale from Revolutionary times, Hawthorne clearly drew on Revolutionary history, both in the name of Molineux/Molineaux and in the climactic “tar-and-feathery” scene. In fact, that punishing ritual didn’t appear in Massachusetts until 1768, in Hawthorne’s home town of Salem, and was applied to low-level Customs workers rather than wealthy gentlemen—so the story is historically anachronistic.

The real William Molineux was in most ways the opposite of the fictional Major Molineaux. The real merchant never held a high militia rank (though at least one man who distrusted his street activism referred to him as “General Molineux”). The major in Hawthorne’s story is unpopular for being, the introductory remarks imply, a member of “the court party”; William Molineux was an opponent of Crown officials. The real Molineux led crowds rather than being attacked by them.

Indeed, there’s a bit of political reshaping in both Hawthorne’s tale and Longfellow’s allusion to it. Hawthorne disliked popular enthusiasms, whether they were eighteenth-century mobs, the witch scare of 1692, the Puritan morality in The Scarlet Letter, or Abolitionism in his own time. By taking a Revolutionary leader’s name and applying it to a Tory, then having a frightening mob punish that Tory, Hawthorne portrayed mobs as fearsome while at the same time symbolically punishing Boston’s crowd leader for the violence he encouraged—all without violating New England expectations of patriotism. Longfellow, on the other hand, took back the name of “Major Molineaux,” declared him “great,” and connected him to the Patriot leader.

Who actually scratched the verse on the Wayside Inn window? It’s clearly [!] signed:

William Molineaux, Jr.
Boston, 24th June, 1774.

So this wasn’t the Revolutionary leader at all. It was his eldest son, the one involved in the strange court case of 1771. And as for the verse itself—well, let’s just say it poses no threat to Longfellow’s rank as a poet:

What do you think?
Here is good drink.
Perhaps you may not know it.
If not in haste, Do stop and taste,
You merry folks will show it.

James Brewer: pump and blockmaker

Yesterday I listed James Brewer as one of the prisoners that the British military traded for captured soldiers in June 1775, shortly before the Battle of Bunker Hill. That was only one episode in his Revolutionary career.

James Brewer was born in Boston on 18 April 1742, the son of John and Dorcas Brewer. James appears to have grown up as the eldest son, his older brother John dying before he turned four. (The family named their next boy John as well.) James and his siblings, also including Sarah and Thomas, were baptized at Old South Meeting-House.

(I should acknowledge that there was another child named James Brewer born in Boston, in 1756, to parents Giles and Charity Brewer of King’s Chapel. And a man named James Brewer married Mary Burgess at King’s Chapel in 1748, almost a month before the baptism of their child. And yet another James Brewer, born to Moses and Elizabeth Brewer in Sudbury or Sherborn in 1756, was “reportedly brought up in the family of relatives in Boston.” But I think the James Brewer who kept popping up during Boston’s Revolution was the man born in 1742.)

John Brewer was a pump and blockmaker, and his son James went into that profession as well. I’ve been trying to come up with a modern equivalent, and the best might be a tool and die maker. A pump and blockmaker was a precision woodcarver, making two machines that ships needed to sail: the block-and-tackles that could lift heavy cargo or raise sails, and the pumps that kept water from building up below decks.

Pump and blockmaking wasn’t a luxury craft, like silversmith, japanner, or upholsterer, which brought mechanics into direct dealings with gentlemen. But it required advanced technical skills, and there was probably steady demand in the seaport town. John Brewer remarried in 1768 and died at the age of 95 in 1793, leaving a significant legacy to his grandchildren through his first wife.

James Brewer was responsible for five of those grandchildren. On the first day of 1765, he married Jane (or Jean) Black at the Presbyterian Meeting-House—perhaps a reflection of Scottish heritage for the bride. They named their children James, Henry, Thomas, Jane, and Dorcas (not necessarily in that order). Thomas was born on 8 July 1781, but I don’t have exact information on any of the other children.

In 1781 the Brewers lived in “an old wooden house at the foot of Summer Street” in central Boston. As an established manufacturer, James joined the Mechanics Society, formally the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, in 1801. Though one history of the Tea Party says he died in April 1805, death notices in the Boston Gazette and other newspapers make clear he died on 4 Oct 1806.

NEXT: James Brewer at the Boston Massacre.

American Prisoners Exchanged in June 1775

Last month I wrote about a prisoner exchange on 6 June 1775, and discussed the British officers who were exchanged for American prisoners. Here’s my long-promised look at those Americans, listed in a contemporary newspaper report as:

Messirs. John Peck, James Hews, James Brewer, and Daniel Preston, of Boston; Messirs. Samuel Frost and Seth Russell, of Cambridge; Mr. Joseph Bell, of Danvers; Mr. Elijah Seaver, of Roxbury, and Caesar Augustus, a negro servant of Mr. Tileston, of Dorchester

Shortly after the Battle of Lexington and Concord, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress had issued a report that listed five men as missing. I used to wonder what that meant. Had those men been wounded and died under a bush, still not found? Had they taken advantage of the battle’s chaos to sneak away from home?

No, it turns out that all five of those missing men must have been taken prisoner by the British column as it withdrew to Charlestown. In West Cambridge on the Nineteenth of April, 1775 (written in 1864), minister Samuel Abbot Smith would add a little more detail about the capture of two of those men, probably based on what they told their families and neighbors after returning home:

Seth Russell and Samuel Frost, of West Cambridge [now Arlington], were taken prisoners. They put Frost on a horse, and cut his waist-band strings so that he could not easily run away. They were carried on board a guard-ship in the harbor, and were soon afterwards exchanged.

So the British troops kept Frost with them by making sure that if he tried to run his pants would fall down.

One of the five provincials captured in April, Breed was exchanged for a wounded British lieutenant on 28 May 1775. The remaining four—Russell, Frost, Seaver, and Bell—were part of this exchange in June. So all the American missing from 19 April are accounted for.

What about the four other exchanged men? What had caused the British military authorities to designate them as enemy combatants and lock them up?

Caesar Augustus was almost certainly an enslaved man. Perhaps he had escaped to Boston, and the authorities insisted on his return. Perhaps he wanted to go back to Dorchester. The only further information I could find is that from 1779 to 1793, the town of Dorchester paid Samuel Pierce to provide room, board, and mending to a man named Caesar Augustus. The implication of that record is that by that time Caesar Augustus had become free, and a pauper.

The remaining four men were from Boston, so had presumably been arrested within the town rather than outside it. According to Boston schoolteacher James Lovell, merchant John Peck’s offense was receiving letters about politics. In a letter to an out-of-town correspondent dated 9-10 May 1775, Lovell said:

You must however give us no State Matters; for ’tis but “you are the General’s Prisoner,” and whip! away to the Man of War; as is the Case of poor John Peck. I carry’d him Breakfast to the main Guard yesterday, and again this Morning but he was carry’d off last Evening and put on Board Ship. Inquisitorial this!

Peck’s arrest was especially odd since he was not politically active and an Anglican member of King’s Chapel (shown above). Curiously, one sponsor of his son Frederick’s baptism in that church in 1772 was “Jacob Whippel,” presumably the man captured by the Americans on Long Island in July 1775 and immediately set free. (Last month a Boston 1775 reader alerted me to a different tale about John Peck’s activities, in a recent book, but I haven’t read and evaluated that yet. There may be more to come.)

Daniel Preston was a housewright living in the North End, according to real estate records from 1774. I’ve found no clue to why he was locked up.

As for James Hews (or Hewes, as in other newspapers), there was a James Hewes (or Hughs) who married a woman named Ann Williams at the New North Meeting-House in 1767 and had a child in 1769. I know no more about him. Then I tried the spelling “Hughes.” Was the exchanged prisoner a fifteen-year-old son of a Loyalist merchant? That James Hughes later complained about the war disrupting his education, and being locked up would do that. But he seems a less likely candidate.

Finally, there’s James Brewer. Again, I don’t know what he did to cause the British military to lock him up in June 1775—but he did plenty of stuff in the preceding years. More about him to come.

Boston's Own Battle of Long Island

On 12 July 1775, Boston selectman Timothy Newell recorded the battle of Long Island in his diary. No, not the big one in which Gen. Sir William Howe drove the Continental Army into Manhattan in 1776. This was a small battle over the nutritive resources of the much shorter Long Island in Boston harbor. Newell wrote:

Two men of war made a heavy fire on Long Island. The Provincials last night [i.e., the 11th] in 65 whale boats [like the one shown at left, courtesy of the New Bedford Whaling Museum] and 500 men went over to Long Island and took off 31 head of cattle, with a number of Sheep and quantity of hay and likewise seized on and brought off fourteen of the Kings Mowers with the family belonging to the Island—

The next day they returned again and set fire to the Mansion house and barn &c.—this within sight of the Man of war, who kept up a constant fire on them.

From outside the town, an eyewitness described the same fight:

While we were on Powderhorn Hill, back of Chelsea, we saw a skirmish between a party of our people, (one hundred and ten in number,) who went in whale boats to an island about twelve miles from Boston, and burnt a large quantity of hay, which was put up into bundles by the Regulars, and intended to be sent to Boston for their horses.

A great number of Marines, in schooners, men-of-war boats, and two ships-of-war, kept up a constant fire on our men, while they remained on the island; but this did not prevent them from destroying the hay.

The schooners and boats endeavoured to cut off their retreat, which brought on a very warm engagement, in which we had one killed and one wounded. The loss of the Regular is not known, but supposed to be considerable, as they were drove off several times, and finally obliged to retire; which would not have been the case, if they had not lost some men.

The provincial commander of this raid was Col. John Greaton (1741-1783) of Roxbury. At the time, Long Island was legally owned by Barlow Trecothick (1718?-1775), a former Lord Mayor of London who had started in business at Boston, married his employer’s daughter, and moved to England to make their fortune. (Or perhaps the property was tied up in Trecothick’s estate.)

One major consequence of this raid is that the Continentals suddenly had more prisoners. What to do, what to do? The staff at headquarters asked the Committee of Safety. The committee, deciding it didn’t have the authority to decide, sent the matter to the whole Massachusetts Provincial Congress. The Provincial Congress’s “Committee appointed to examine the fifteen Prisoners” came back with these orders:

That Jonathan Winship and Jacob Whipple, two of the prisoners, be discharged immediately; that Jacob Davis, another of the prisoners, be sent to the main guard at Cambridge, the Congress having great reason to suspect that he enlisted in, and deserted from the Army raised by this Colony, and that the officers of the guard be certified in writing of what crime the said Jacob now stands charged; that John Freeman, a negro man, said to be the servant of Mr. Joseph Howett, of Newburyport, be sent to the Jail at Cambridge, there to continue till further orders; that the other prisoners, with the said Jacob and John, be committed to Captain Crafts, to be kept under guard until further orders.

The next day, the congress ordered ten prisoners from Long Island distributed among towns in Worcester County:

• John Hayes and Thomas Bibby to Lunenburgh
• James Griffin and John Reef to Rutland
• Perez Merren and Michael Malony to Shrewsbury
• Patrick Hickey and Richard Nash to Brookfield
• Michael Mellows and John Fleming to Sutton

They were “to be received, employed, and provided for by the Selectmen of those respective Towns, in the best way and manner they can, till further order of this Colony.” No, I can’t make the numbers add up to fifteen, either.

That day the congress also gave the Committee of Safety full executive power through the end of the month, meaning that the smaller group could make these tough decisions on their own for a while.

One Random Fact About Me

A couple weeks back, a Boston 1775 reader with the Revolutionary nom de blog Hercules Mulligan “tagged” me with a meme, which is the fancy modern term for a sort of chain letter combined with “truth or dare.” In this case, the meme requested bloggers to post “8 random facts about themselves” and to “tag 8 other people.”

I sat on that for a while, trying to decide how to respond. And I finally decided that, flattered as I might feel, I don’t think folks come to Boston 1775 to find out eight random things about me, or even five. (And wasn’t this meme five things just a few weeks ago?) Nor could I identify eight other people I’d feel brave enough to tag in turn. (At least through this blog.) But I also realized I could share one important fact about me that holds some relevance to studying early American history.

I went to a college with a terrific History Department. Among the professors on campus during my undergraduate years were Edmund S. Morgan, John Demos, William Cronon, David Brion Davis, Harry S. Stout, Jon Butler, and many others who didn’t happen to write about early American history. And from them I learned...nothing.

That’s because I didn’t take any U.S. history classes. I took other history classes, to be sure, from ancient Sumer to the soon-to-expire Cold War. I took lots of classes in other fields: literature, history of art, history of science, astronomy, psychology, early film, several-variable calculus, probability. (I especially enjoyed probability.) I ended up in the college’s special Humanities Major, which I described as “for people who couldn’t make up their minds.” The program was actually quite structured, but it offered the advantage of letting me take nearly any course.

I thought I had much more to learn about the history of other countries and more distant times than about something that seemed as familiar as the American Revolution. Especially since I grew up in New England during the Bicentennial, I thought the start of the Revolution around here had been studied so thoroughly that there was little more to learn.

That choice of college major was right for me at the time. I learned a great deal. A general humanities education served me well as a book editor, the career I chose right out of college. There were very few courses I regret having sat through. But, looking back, I also regret missing the chance to learn from some of those fine historians. Then again, was I ready for them at the time?

So what’s the lesson there? Perhaps never to assume that there’s “little more to learn” about any major topic—and never to assume that it’s too late to start.

Burgoyne, Lee, and Enoch Brown's Tavern

On 8 July 1775, a trumpeter came out of occupied Boston with a letter from Gen. John Burgoyne (at right) to Charles Lee, a British officer who had served under him in Europe. Lee had become a general in the Polish army, then traveled to North America. In early June, a few days before receiving a commission as major-general from the Continental Congress, Lee had written a long, critical letter to Burgoyne. It said:

I sincerely lament the infatuation of the times, when men of such a stamp as Mr. Burgoyne and Mr. [William] Howe can be seduced into so impious and nefarious a service by the artifice of a wicked and insidious Court and Cabinet. . . .

What I have seen of Courts and Princes convinces me, that the power cannot be lodged in worse hands than in theirs; and of all Courts, I am persuaded that ours is the most corrupt and hostile to the rights of humanity. I am convinced that a regular plan has been laid (indeed every act since the present accession evinces it) to abolish even the shadow of liberty from amongst us. It was not the demolition of the tea, it was not any other particular act of the Bostonians, or of the other Province which constituted their crimes; but it is the noble spirit of liberty pervading the whole Continent which has rendered them the objects of ministerial and royal vengeance.

Burgoyne responded with a proposal that the two officers meet at Enoch Brown’s tavern to discuss matters. That tavern sat on Boston Neck between the town’s fortified gates and the provincial lines; the British army was using it as a forward base.

Lee wanted to take up this invitation, and asked the Massachusetts Provincial Congress to send someone along with him. The congress named Elbridge Gerry of Marblehead as their representative, but also expressed worry that the two generals might end up negotiating without due regard for Americans’ chosen representatives.

As it turned out, the New England army prevented any meeting from taking place, at least at Enoch Brown’s tavern. Boston selectmen Timothy Newell recorded what happened that night:

8th [July]. Saturday morning at half past 2 waked up with roaring of cannon and small arms upon the lines which continued two hours. Brown’s house burnt.

Gen. William Heath of Roxbury recorded the provincial attack in his diary:

A little after two o’clock in the morning, a number of volunteers, under the command of Majors [Benjamin] Tupper and [John] Crane, attacked the British advance guard at Brown’s house, on Boston Neck, and routed them, took a halbert, a musket, and two bayonets, and burnt the two houses.

Crane led an artillery company with two brass field-pieces that raked the tavern with grapeshot, forcing the British soldiers inside to run away.

Newell also described the British response on the 9th: “The Regulars last night made an advance battery near Browns on the Neck.” And then the American response to that: “10th July. Provincials last night attacked the Centinels at the lines, and burnt Brown’s shop.” Burgoyne and Lee never had their meeting.

Paul Revere and the 181st Infantry Regiment

In reporting on the deployment of C Company, First Battalion of the 181st Infantry Regiment to Iraq this month, the Boston Globe stated:

The historic unit, which Paul Revere led against British forces on Lexington Green and in Concord in 1775,...

Similar remarks were aired by WBZ on TV and WBUR on radio.

But Paul Revere (shown here around 1800) didn’t lead any troops on Lexington Green. He was busy moving a trunk of papers that John Hancock had left behind. Revere never reached Concord at all that night. And he held no military rank or command in April 1775.

Furthermore, Revere’s military experience came in the artillery, not the (light) infantry. First he was a lieutenant under Col. Richard Gridley in 1756, not seeing much action. In 1779 he became commander of the Massachusetts militia artillery regiment (succeeding Col. Thomas Crafts), and led that force during a calamitous attempt to take the British-held fort on the Penobscot River.

Revere’s role in the Battle of Lexington and Concord should be extremely easy to check. It’s not one of the forgotten details of the Revolutionary War. Unfortunately, the misinformation about Revere seems to have come from the Massachusetts National Guard itself. A December 2006 press release downloadable here stated:

The 181st Infantry (Light) is one of the five oldest units in the U.S. military, tracing its lineage back to 1632. It was formed in 1636 as part of the Massachusetts Militia. The unit fought during the King Phillips War, repulsing various raids by Native Americans. In 1775, Paul Revere led the regiment against British forces on Lexington Green and in Concord.

We can see a public-relations stretch for historical significance in how this paragraph contradicts itself. If the 181st Infantry (Light)’s first predecessor “was formed in 1636,” then it could not go “back to 1632.” Or, if we decide that a 1632 precursor to the legislated Massachusetts militia counts, then why not trace the lineage back even earlier to England? The answer is, of course, that the “lineage” of military units is a bureaucratic fiction that selects historical facts to construct an inspiring heritage. An extra four years is a little more inspiring, but roots in another country are not. The name of Paul Revere resonates more now than that of the actual commander at Lexington, Capt. John Parker.

There’s no practical harm in such historical inaccuracy, of course. But when soldiers and other people are being put in danger, the government and the news media should get the facts right.

Noah Eaton Brings Home a Prisoner

Last week I might have appeared to be picking on Framingham, but I just happened to see some boosterish comments about that town. I could just as easily have written about the local traditions of any other Middlesex County municipality since most local histories find inordinate importance in local events and people. What really mattered in the Battle of Lexington and Concord was how those towns worked together.

As I quoted yesterday, in February 1775 British officer Henry DeBerniere wrote sarcastically about the Framingham militia’s lack of “coolness and bravery” and their “pot-valour.” But the locals got the last laugh. On 19 Apr, DeBerniere was with the advance companies of the British column in Concord, and thus had to endure the whole withdrawal back to Boston under attack from town militia companies—including Framingham’s.

While looking into that history, I stumbled across this intriguing anecdote from William Barry’s history of Framingham, published in 1847:

Noah Eaton, 2d, and his brother Jonas, were at Lexington. The former, having discharged his piece, retired behind a knoll to reload, where he suddenly encountered a British regular, with a loaded gun.

Noah presented his empty musket, threatening to kill the soldier; when the latter surrendered, returned with his captor to Framingham, and lived in his service.

I’ve read of two other British regulars defecting like this on 19 Apr 1775, melting into a Middlesex County community. It’s fun to imagine the conversation when a militiaman returned with his prisoner:

“Darling, I’m home!”

“Oh, I thank the Lord you’re safe! Ever since you went out with your gun this morning, I’ve been worr— Who’s this?”

“Oh, yeah. I brought home a grenadier! His name’s Tom. Right?”

“Actually, it’s Tim, sir.”

“Tim. His name’s Tim, Sarah. He says he’s ready to help around the farm. You always wanted me to have a hired man, right? You’ll have to sew him a new set of clothes, but in exchange you can cut up that big red coat and use it for something.”

“Yes. Silas, may I speak to you privately?”

“Of course, Sarah. Please excuse us, Tom.”

“Yes, sir. It’s Tim, sir.”

“Silas, I truly wish you would ask me before making such big decisions that affect the house.”

“Come on, Sarah! Do you expect me to run home in the middle of the battle? ‘Darling, may I take a prisoner? No? Then I’ll go back and shoot him!’ No offense, Tom.”

“None taken, sir. And, it’s Tim.”

In at least one of those other cases, the former British soldier ended up marrying into the family he worked for. Barry doesn’t name Noah Eaton’s prisoner or say what happened to him, but perhaps the answer lurks in Framingham’s vital records.

From what I can tell, in the spring of 1775 Noah Eaton (1733-1814) was married to his second wife, May (or Polly) Tilton. Their daughter Molle (Molly) was baptized 11 Nov 1771, three days short of nine months after the couple had married on 14 Feb. With his first wife, Noah had a son named Noah, born in 1758. He may have had other children, but since there were two sets of Noah and Hannah Eaton in town—this man and his parents—it’s hard to separate out the baptisms. Did Noah have a daughter or sister in her teens or early twenties when he brought this soldier home? Is there a man marrying into the family who doesn’t seem to come from anywhere else in the vital records?

(Evocative thumbnail from Patrick Donnelly’s shots of a reenacted Battle of Guilford Courthouse.)

When British Spies Came to Framingham

On 22 Feb 1775, Gen. Thomas Gage (shown at left, courtesy of NNDB.com) ordered two British officers, Capt. William Brown of the 52nd Regiment and Ensign Henry DeBerniere of the 10th Regiment (both men’s surnames are spelled differently in different documents), to scout the road to Worcester while disguised as local civilians. They took an enlisted man as a servant, set out on foot, and were promptly recognized by a serving-woman at a tavern in Watertown.

Not letting such a little thing bother them, Browne and DeBerniere pressed on. Eventually they reached the town of Framingham. This is what DeBerniere later wrote about that night:

We arrived at [Joseph] Buckminster’s tavern about six o’clock that evening, the company of militia were exercising near the house, and an hour after they came and performed their feats before the windows of the room we were in; we did not feel very easy at seeing such a number so very near us; however, they did not know who we were, and took little or no notice of us.

After they had done their exercise, one of their commanders spoke a very eloquent speech, recommending patience, coolness and bravery, (which indeed they much wanted) particularly told them they would always conquer if they did not break, and recommended them to charge us cooly, and wait for our fire, and every thing would succeed with them—quotes Caesar and Pompey, brigadiers [Israel] Putnam and [Artemas] Ward, and all such great men; put them in mind of Cape Breton [i.e., the capture of Louisburg in 1745], and all the battles they had gained for his majesty in the last war, and observed that the regulars must have been ruined but for them.

After so learned and spirited an harangue, he dismissed the parade, and the whole company came into the house and drank until nine o’clock, and then returned to their respective homes full of pot-valour. We slept there that night and no-body in the house suspected us.

In his 1847 history of Framingham, William Barry repeated only the part about “a very eloquent speech, recommending patience, coolness and bravery.” He overlooked the fact that DeBerniere was writing sarcastically.

Later local historians have read this passage as evidence that Framingham’s militia was unusually large, but the numbers don’t support that assumption. In fact, “the whole company” managed to fit inside the tavern, so they couldn’t have been that numerous. DeBerniere and Browne admitted that “did not feel very easy at seeing such a number [of militiamen] so very near us,” but they were spies. Worrying about being suspected as Crown agents wasn’t the same as feeling nervous about whether your army could defeat rebels in battle. On that score, frankly, the officers seemed pretty confident.

Browne and DeBerniere’s report made no recommendation to Gage about whether an army column could march successfully to Worcester. Scholars have therefore had to guess why the general ordered a raid on Concord instead. The enthusiasm of the local militia is one factor people have suggested; others include how Worcester was much farther away, the road to it offered less shelter, and (my own pet theory) the field-pieces that Gage wanted to recover were in Concord. Browne and DeBerniere located those guns on their next scouting mission, a month later.

The Framingham Militia [citation needed]

“Wikipedian Protester” from xkcd.com.

I did a little rewriting in the “History” section of the Framingham entry on Wikipedia yesterday. Previously, its paragraph of Revolutionary history said:

Framingham has been at the center of rebellion on two occasions. Prior to the beginning of the American Revolution, Framingham had the largest contingent of Militia outside of Boston. In 1774, the British General Thomas Gage had sent spies out to survey the situation beyond Boston. Two spies, while having a drink in Buckminster Tavern, watched with foreboding as the local villagers mustered in the square. Their report back to General Gage was to avoid Framingham or be prepared for a fight.

There was no citation for these statements, which were entered in November 2006.

Calling Framingham the “center of rebellion” reminds me of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.’s remarks in The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table about the way Bostonians looked at their home:

A jaunty-looking person...said there was one more wise man’s saying that he had heard; it was about our place, but he didn’t know who said it. . . . “Boston State-House is the hub of the solar system. You couldn’t pry that out of a Boston man, if you had the tire of all creation straightened out for a crowbar.”

Sir,—said I—I am gratified with your remark. It expresses with pleasing vivacity that which I have sometimes heard uttered with malignant dulness. The satire of the remark is essentially true of Boston,—and of all other considerable—and inconsiderable—places with which I have had the privilege of being acquainted. Cockneys think London is the only place in the world. . . . It is quite as bad with smaller places. I have been about, lecturing, you know, and have found the following propositions to hold true of all of them.

1. The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each and every town or city.

2. If more than fifty years have passed since its foundation, it is affectionately styled by the inhabitants the “good old town of” ——— (whatever its name may happen to be.)

3. Every collection of its inhabitants that comes together to listen to a stranger is invariably declared to be a “remarkably intelligent audience.”

4. The climate of the place is particularly favorable to longevity.

5. It contains several persons of vast talent little known to the world.

This passage gave Boston its nickname of the Hub, but Holmes’s point was that every city and town’s native inhabitants believe that the known universe revolves around it.

Was Framingham really “at the center of rebellion” in 1775? Specifically, did it have “the largest contingent of Militia outside of Boston”?

Militia service was legally required of almost all white males between ages sixteen and sixty, so the larger the town, the more militiamen. The Massachusetts census of 1765 found 306 white males over age sixteen in Framingham, plus 84 black males of all ages. (Since blacks weren’t supposed to be in the militia, the census-takers didn’t bother dividing out the males old enough to serve—even though black men were beginning to drill in arms alongside their white neighbors.)

By comparison, the three largest towns in Middlesex County were Charlestown (486 white men), Sudbury (436), and Reading (400). Also larger than Framingham in that year were Concord, Cambridge, Woburn, Marlborough, Groton, and Newton. Billerica was exactly the same size, and then there were many small towns, including Lexington (228), Watertown (179), and Natick (99, plus 10 black and 13 Indian males of all ages). In other words, Framingham was middling in size.

According to William Barry’s history of Framingham and Samuel Adams Drake’s history of Middlesex County, on 3 Oct 1774 the town voted to organize “two Militia Companys beside the Troop.” (I think “the Troop” refers to a small cavalry unit, but that’s just a guess—citation needed.) One company contained 70 men, the other 60. On 19 Apr 1775, one militia captain marched with 77 men, the other with 49. So we can put the number of the Framingham militia at about 130.

As a comparison, Drake wrote that in March 1775 the larger town of Sudbury mustered 60 men in the North Company, 75 in the East Company, 92 in the Lanham Company, 21 in the Troop—248 in all.

So Framingham did its part, like most other Middlesex County towns. But it did not have “the largest contingent of Militia outside of Boston”; it had a militia proportional to its size. It was not a “center of rebellion” in 1775; it was one of many Massachusetts towns behaving the same way.

(I also added more detail to the Wikipedia article on Abolitionist meetings in Framingham before the Civil War. In that period, the town was a significant gathering-place.)

TOMORROW: What about those spies in Buckminster’s tavern?

Britain's American Revolution: was it a Good Thing?

Gen. Sir Michael Rose, retired from the British army, offers an interesting opinion essay in today’s New York Times. He argues that Britain’s defeat in the Revolutionary War actually helped its empire by forcing reforms from the top. He also states, without fully arguing the case, that a stronger British Empire benefited the world as a whole.

Up through the 1770s, the king of Britain chose his Prime Minister with an eye toward parliamentary power, but wasn’t required to pick the leader of the majority party. That system began to change in March 1782 when Parliament reacted to news of Gen. Cornwallis’s loss at Yorktown with an unprecedented motion of no confidence in the government of Lords North and Germain. George III had little choice but to give power to the Earl of Rockingham and the Whig opposition, who started peace talks with the U.S. of A. After almost two years of revolving-door ministry, William Pitt the younger (shown above) became Prime Minister in December 1783 and held office for seventeen years.

Rose’s essay argues that Pitt was visionary enough to see that Britain should become an industrial empire instead of a trade empire, and that it needed military and administrative reforms. I think that glosses over some of that government’s less democratic moves. The French Revolution caused Pitt’s government to crack down on Britain’s radical reformers, some of whom had also supported the American Revolution. It would take another generation after Pitt before Parliament really started to reform itself.

Rose says the India Bill of 1784 ensured “that the sort of poor administration that had soured relations with the American colonies would not be repeated in Britain’s other territories.” Many people from south Asia would argue that British colonial rule in that region was harsher than it had been in North America. Or perhaps it would be better to analogize Britain’s treatment of Indians to its treatment of North American Indians, not to its treatment of its own colonists. It’s true that India, Britain, America, and Canada are all among the world’s leading democracies today. Is that a result of British imperialism or a reaction to it? That gets into much larger considerations about the spread of democracy and human rights ideology in the world.

In any event, the essay concludes with why Rose is addressing American readers:

Today, of course, the United States finds itself in much the same position as Britain in 1781. Distracted and diminished by an irrelevant, costly and probably unwinnable war in Iraq, America could ultimately find itself challenged by countries like China and India.

Unless it can find a leader with the moral courage of Pitt, there is a strong probability that it will be forced to relinquish its position as the global superpower — possibly to a regime that does not have the same commitment to justice and liberty that the United States and Britain have worked so hard to extend across the world over the past two centuries.

Again, it’s arguable whether America and Britain have always shown a “commitment to justice and liberty” across the world for the last two hundred years. More often than not they did, I think, but we mustn’t forget the extension of those empires by force, slavery within them, two-tiered justice systems, rapacious trade wars, &c. Nonetheless, Rose clearly offers a more nuanced and encouraging understanding of the Revolution’s outcome than George W. Bush’s attempts.

The legacy of Parliament’s 1782 no-confidence vote is also relevant to our situation today. The Bush-Cheney administration has clearly lost the confidence of Congress and the American people, but our system forestalls an immediate change in the executive branch. That means America will not get a new direction for years. The immigration bill defeated by the administration’s own party last month appears to have been its last major legislative initiative. Commuting Lewis Libby’s jail sentence before he had served a day and stonewalling on several important investigations show that the administration’s final year and a half will be taken up mostly with trying to protect itself through any power it still holds.

Independence Day Display from NEHGS

The New England Historic Genealogical Society has posted an online display of four items from its collections related to Independence Day. There’s a letter from John Hancock, a 1778 militia muster roll submitted to his younger brother Ebenezer, Samuel Hovey’s poorly spelled but enthusiastic description of the first reading of the Declaration of Independence in New York, and an almanac-diary entry recording its publication in Massachusetts. Slow downloading today.

Sheriff Greenleaf and Col. Crafts Read the Declaration

In October 1841, Daniel Greenleaf (1762-1853) wrote to a Boston newspaper from his home in Quincy. He was correcting some recollections of Revolutionary Boston from Thomas Handasyd Perkins (1764-1854), who he thought was too young to remember events clearly:

The Declaration of Independence was read by William Greenleaf (my father), the sheriff. . . . My father was so proud of that proclamation that he had the paper from which he read it framed and glassed, and it hung over his parlor fireplace as long as he was a housekeeper.

As his voice was rather weak, he requested Colonel [Thomas] Crafts to act as his herald; they stood together at the front of the balcony, and my father read a sentence, which was immediately repeated by Crafts, and so continued to the end, when was the huzza. . . .

The lion and unicorn [from the Town House] were burnt on the evening of the declaration on a bonfire, in front of the Bunch of Grapes [tavern], as were the king’s arms from the Court-House, and all signs bearing emblems of royalty that could be found.

This first public reading of the Declaration in Boston took place on 18 July 1776, when its text reached Boston from Philadelphia. Col. Crafts’s artillery regiment and other military units were drawn up in the streets below the balcony on the Town House, now called the Old State House. Also among the listeners were a couple of British officers captured aboard a transport ship.

The lion and unicorn were heraldic symbols of the British king. Though they were burned in 1776, when the Old State House was preserved from being dismantled and was instead “restored” in 1882, reproductions went back up, as shown above, courtesy of iBoston.org. Here’s a color photo of the lion and unicorn, and a close-up of the unicorn.

Greenleaf’s letter appears to have been published first in the Boston Transcript on 2 Aug 1855. I think it’s a reliable picture of the event because he wasn’t just puffing up his father, who as sheriff did indeed have the duty of reading important proclamations. He also acknowledged that Papa had a weak voice and needed Crafts’s stentorian help.

A Myth in the Making in Framingham?

Sunday’s Boston Globe West Weekly section (i.e., stories that aren’t even important enough for our whole readership, just one region) ran a story headlined:

Revolutionary secrets unfold
Researchers' finding: Framingham had independent spirit of its own

Revolutionary secrets? Of course I’m interested! Unfortunately, it turned out to be a case of trying to make 1 + 1 = 6. Or perhaps even 0 + 1 = 6.

The research started here:

[Framingham] Homeowners Rollin and Betsy Johnson were looking through a folder of historical notes on the house that had been assembled by a previous owner.

The notes included an intriguing suggestion—that [John] Trowbridge, who owned the house during colonial times, may have hosted secret meetings of the Committee of Safety—a group founded by rebellious colonists in 1772 to galvanize towns outside of Boston against the British.

So there are no primary documents yet, just unsourced notes from an interested party. Furthermore, if that’s an accurate description of the notes, they should immediately have raised doubts. In late 1772 Samuel Adams urged Boston to form a “Committee of Correspondence,” which wrote to other Massachusetts towns inviting them to do the same. “Committees of Safety” weren’t formed by the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and some individual towns until late 1774 when there was a threat of imminent war.

Framingham’s town meeting responded to the Boston Committee of Correspondence’s letter by forming an ad hoc committee to draft a reply on 1 Mar 1773. (Boston’s committee answered in turn on 13 April, the same day it responded to many other towns.) Framingham created its sitting Committee of Correspondence on 18 May 1774, when Massachusetts was hearing about the Boston Port Bill and Massachusetts Government Act. Those were official, public acts of the town, which was the point of such committees—they were supposed to have the force of law behind them, and to represent the whole town.

John Trowbridge (1730-1807) wasn’t selected for either of those committees. In 1776 he was commissioned as an officer in the Continental Army, and on 23 June 1777 Framingham voted “that Maj. John Trowbridge inspect any that shall be thought inimical to the U.S. of America.” So by that year the town clearly considered him important and reliable. But the question being investigated was whether Trowbridge had been involved in something like a “Committee of Safety” in 1772.

The Globe describe’s one researcher’s results this way:

[Kevin] Swope found a tantalizing mention of town moderator Captain Josiah Stone contributing muskets to Boston safety committee members. But nothing more.

As town clerk, Stone carried out business for Framingham. (For example, the Boston Committee of Correspondence’s letter in April 1773 was addressed to him.) This mention might refer to town business or private business, therefore. But this description offers no source, no date, and no connection to Trowbridge.

The Globe gave more importance to another researcher’s discovery:

[Fred] Wallace finally hit paydirt in the Framingham town clerk’s office, where he spent hours poring over original Town Meeting minutes from 1772 to 1776, recorded in amber-colored quill-and-ink script.

It was in a brief entry marked Oct. 9, 1775, recording that [Joseph] Buckminster had asked to be relieved of his Committee on Correspondence duties and that Trowbridge was named to take his place.

This is “paydirt”? A change in committee assignment in October 1775 says nothing about Trowbridge’s activities in 1772. Or about the prewar activity of anyone else in Framingham.

It’s reasonable to consider whether Trowbridge might have hosted town Committee of Correspondence meetings after late 1775. How centrally located was his house? Did he have a liquor license (as Buckminster had)? Significant meetings at Trowbridge’s house were even more likely in 1777 once he was appointed to “inspect” national enemies. But that wasn’t leading the way toward Massachusetts’s independence before the war; that was enforcing loyalty to the new nation during it.

The Globe article positions this historical question as whether Framingham deserves to have the same place in history books as towns where the first fatal battle of the Revolution was fought. It’s no reflection on Framingham (good or bad, colonial or modern) that the war began elsewhere. Gen. Thomas Gage sent troops to Concord because he had good intelligence about Provincial Congress weapons there. Simple as that.

A Few Cannon Exchanged on Both Sides

Selectman Timothy Newell’s biggest worry in early July of 1775 was cannonballs flying into Boston. Here are two more excerpts from his diary:

July 1st. A few cannon exchanged on both sides—one 24 pounder came into the lines, knocked down one Man with the wind of it.

2nd Sabbath morning. I waked up by a cannonade from the lines, which continued two hours. A house on the Neck burnt down thereby, which belonged to the town.

A “twenty-four pounder” was a cannon big enough to shoot iron cannonballs that weighed twenty-four pounds. A table prepared at the Royal Military Repository by William Congreve in 1778 listed three types of brass twenty-four pounders: light, medium, and heavy. They were from five feet long to nine and a half feet, and could weight between 1,600 and 5,300 pounds.

As a New Englander, Newell was probably offended by the Royal Artillery’s choice to fire their guns for two hours on a Sunday morning. And as one of Boston’s highest officials, Newell had to keep track of town property, like that burned house on the narrow Neck leading out of town.

John Leach and the "Aides-de-Diable"

As I mentioned last month, British officers apparently found letters from Boston schoolmaster James Lovell on Dr. Joseph Warren’s body after the Battle of Bunker Hill. (At left is a detail from an engraving of the Death of Warren as painted by John Trumbull, courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society.)

But whatever evidence pointed to Lovell doesn’t seem to have been exact because on the same day the authorities detained him, they also arrested Boston’s other Patriot teacher with the initials J.L.

That was John Leach (1724-1799), a native of England who had settled in Boston’s North End after spending several years at sea. He wasn’t a public school teacher like Lovell, but rather offered private lessons in navigation and mathematics to aspiring sea captains. He and his wife Sarah had seventeen children, the youngest born in 1774. Among those children, son John, Jr., had witnessed the Boston Massacre in 1770. According to Annie Haven Thwing’s Crooked and Narrow Streets of Boston, Leach was known for wearing his hats until they wore out because he disliked taking on any debt.

Maj. Edward Cairn (whose Scottish name Bostonians insisted on spelling “Kane” or, more biblically, “Cain”) arrested Leach on the afternoon of 29 June 1775, seizing his papers—probably maps and other drawings that seemed suspicious. About twenty minutes after Leach arrived at Boston’s jail, the new Suffolk County sheriff, Joshua Loring, Jr., and Cairn brought in Lovell as well.

At some point Leach began to keep notes on his confinement with the help of eighteen-year-old printer’s apprentice Peter Edes, who had been locked up since 19 June. Both Leach and Edes recorded this incident in their diaries for 1 July 1775:

Major Harry Rooke took a Book of Religion from Mr. Joseph Otis, the Gaol keeper, who told him the Book belonged to some of the Charlestown prisoners, taken at Bunker’s Hill fight, and was given them by a Clergyman of the Town.

He carried it to Show General [Thomas] Gage, and then brought it back, and said, “It is your G–d Damned Religion of this Country that ruins the Country; Damn your Religion.”

Rooke was one of the general’s aides de camp—or “Aids-de-Diable,” as Edes would have it. (I’ve seen Rooke’s formal rank stated as lieutenant.) Leach, the Englishman, added:

I would only add this remark, that this Pious officer holds his Commission by a Sacramental Injunction, from his most Sacred Majesty King George the 3d.

British army officers had a hard time understanding New England Congregationalism. They often confused it with Presbyterianism, the established church in Scotland. They couldn’t figure out why Congregationalist ministers weren’t supporting the king, who was head of the Church of England back home. And they distrusted the fervency of New England’s Puritan descendants—the fervency that inspired young Edes to label his enemy as the “Diable.” But as Leach remarked, both sides thought God was on their side.

Another Delightful Digital Database (sort of)

As I dug into the story of the Rev. John Morrison this week, I ended up using this helpful page of downloads from the state of New Hampshire. It offers the complete forty-volume set of New Hampshire State Papers as PDF files. The downloads aren’t swift, but the files load quickly considering how many pages they contain.

No one’s done a transcription of these volumes yet, so their text isn’t searchable like the volumes on Google Books or other web-based resources. But you can identify what pages to study from other people’s footnotes (as I did) or from the downloadable unified index for all volumes. The series contains thousands of pages of colonial and Revolutionary records that remained in the state archives. Read free or die.

Peterborough Accuses Rev. Morrison

As early as July 1770, when there was some sort of embarrassing incident at John Taggart’s house (perhaps the incident recalled in yesterday’s post), the Peterborough Presbyterian church started to think they’d chosen the wrong minister in the Rev. John Morrison. On 18 June 1771 a Presbytery met in Peterborough to consider the congregation’s complaints. Extracts from the minutes of that meeting survive, which provide glimpses—but only glimpses—of the problem.

There were seven charges. Two involved intemperance, or sloppy drunkenness, at the homes of Taggart and Col. Stephen Holland. The committee of judges found Morrison guilty on both counts, though the first was “not so highly aggravated” as the second.

The next two charges involved “Profane swearing.” The committee felt Morrison was guilty in the first incident. As for the second, “a Single evidence [i.e., witness] appeard and for the Reasons offered the committee saw fit to indulge the evidence not to swear.” Perhaps the first charge was so clear that the committee didn’t need to consider the second. Perhaps they knew one witness wasn’t enough.

Another charge was “Buying a poor mans vote.” The committee decided, “Tho there was some inexpediency yet nothing unlawful and consequently nothing censurable.” This may have been a vote within the church rather than a civil vote.

Skipping ahead, the seventh charge was “Baptizing a Child contrary to our Constitution,” and the committee declared “there is nothing to support the sd. Charge.”

Now for the real controversy: the sixth charge was “Immodest conversation and Deportment” on fifteen separate occasions:

• Agnes Mitchel described one incident—the committee ruled it “not proved.”
• Whatever happened at Taggart’s house in 1770 made the charge “evident by his [Morrison’s] own confession.”
• Elisabeth Miller described behavior on two occasions that the committee agreed would warrant the charge, but there was no second witness to support her testimony.
• Witnesses ”Stone & Wilson” described another incident, but the committee decided it was “nothing that amounted to the shadow of a proof.”
• Another person described Morrison telling some story which the committee agreed “was unbecoming ministerial gravity,” but again that was the only witness.
• William Gilchrest testified, but his “Character” and “his Evidence being wholly unsupported by any corroborating Circumstances” meant the committee gave him little weight.
• Another witness “the Committee thought proper to sett aside” for unspecified reasons.
  
• John Mitchel and his wife testified about yet another event, but the committee felt they “declared nothing to support the Charge.”
• For the ninth incident, “Unanimously agreed that this Article if made evident is an instance of immodesty but is not judicially proved.”
• Articles 10 through 14 “supported by no Evidence,” in part because a witness named John Dicks did not appear.
• On the last charge “respecting immodest Conversation & Deportment the Committee unanimously find him guilty.”

So of fifteen incidents the committee basically delivered judgments of guilty in three, the Scottish verdict of “not proven” in three more, and acquittals in the rest. It also appears that the committee chose to keep some witnesses’ names off its record.

The judges concluded:

that in a Number of Articles tho not supported by such Proof as the Gospel requires yet some of them are attended with such Circumstances as to render the facts very suspicious—they would therefore in the bowels of Christ earnestly intreat the Revd. Mr. Morrison by every consideration that is weighty with impartial strictness to animadvert his Conduct...[and] to endeavour to humble himself in the dust before a Heart searching & holy God & to fly speedily to the Blood & righteousness of Jesus Christ for pardon & cleansing.

And with respect to the agrieved the Committee would be free to advise them with like earnestness as it is a very critical Time in Peterburgh to take heed to their spirits & while they are justly offended at their Ministers Crimes to beware of a spirit of Bitterness or personal hatred

The Presbytery then suspended Morrison for ten weeks. At another meeting on 29 August 1771, those elders restored Morrison to his pulpit.

But that didn’t satisfy the congregation. They retained attorney John Sullivan (shown above) and on 27 Nov 1771 petitioned the New Hampshire legislature to release them from their contract with Morrison. That petition accused him of “profane swearing, Drunkenness, Immodest Actions & conversation & other Lew’d wicked & Disorderly behaviour Quite unbecoming the christian character.” Thirty-four men signed this petition, including some named Mitchel, Miller, and Willson.

On 14 Dec the New Hampshire Council received the petition and sent it to the lower house, the Assembly. Those legislators voted to summon Morrison to a hearing on 15 Jan 1772. But four days later the Council disagreed. Sullivan understood they thought “it was a matter more proper for the Spiritual Courts.”

Sullivan then supplied a new document to clarify that the Presbytery had already met, and reviewing its findings, throwing in all the charges that committee had dismissed for lack of multiple witnesses. He wrote:

Though a Presbytery may Restore a Minister To his Standing yet they can by no means Reconcile the minds of a people to a profane Drunken & Debauched Minister nor Can they look upon themselves as Injoying their Religious Liberties while they are Compellable To Support Such a person.

On 20 Dec the Council decided that “the Selectmen of Peterborough” should be brought in. The Assembly disagreed, and finally voted to dismiss the petition—apparently to let the parties work it out among themselves.

Sullivan submitted another long document on 30 Dec (which I haven’t seen). Morrison finally resolved the dispute in March 1772 by resigning from the pulpit.

More About John Morrison

I knew if I whined enough, someone would help me with sources on what exactly caused the Presbyterians of Peterborough, New Hampshire, to dismiss John Morrison as their minister.

A kind Boston 1775 reader gave me a look at the Church History article that discusses this case among other New Hampshire dismissals. Its footnotes led to two more detailed sources, including Google Books’s copy of “An Address Delivered at the Centennial Celebration, in Peterborough, N.H., Oct. 24, 1839,” by John Hopkins Morison. He had this to say about the Rev. Mr. Morrison [whose last name he spelled like his own, just to confuse the search engines]:

From all that I can learn he was a man of decided talents; but it must be borne in mind, that the same ability will appear always more conspicuous in a bad than in a good man, just as a horse, or a building or perfect symmetry will always appear smaller than another of the same dimensions whose parts are out of proportion.

But after making all due allowance, we must, I believe, conclude that Mr. Morison possessed more than common powers, for good or for evil. But soon he proved himself an intemperate, licentious man, dangerous alike as the companion of either sex.

A charitable construction was put upon the first symptoms of intemperance. At a party he was found unable to walk, and it was necessary to take him through the room where the young people were collected, in order to place him upon a bed. This was managed with so much adroitness, that no suspicion was raised, except with three or four church-members who were disposed to view it as an accident, at a time when similar casualties were not uncommon.

But soon, while his bad habits in this line became notorious, his evil passions in another direction flared out, to the general scandal of the town. A Presbytery was held; he was suspended from his office for two or three months, a thing probably to his taste, as his salary was not suspended.

At length, however, the people could no longer tolerate him; he relinquished his connection with the society in March, 1772; visited South Carolina, returned and joined the American army at Cambridge in ’75.

He was present at Bunker-hill, but excused himself from entering the battle on the ground that his gun-lock was not in order. The next day he joined the British, and continued in some capacity with them till his death, which took place at Charleston, S.C., December 10, 1782.

He became a professed atheist. It is said that he spent his last days, when he was daily sinking to the grave, among profligate, abandoned associates, taking his part in every species of dissipation which his decaying strength would permit; and just before his death, gave a sum of money to his companions, requesting them to drink it out upon his coffin.

His wife, Sarah Ferguson, in every respect a true, exemplary women, never to the time of her death, (November, 1824, æt. 84,) lost either the interest or the confidence with which she had first joined her fortune to his.

It is refreshing to add, that their son, John Morison, who died more than forty years ago, was, by the uniform consent of all who knew him, one of the most pure-hearted and clear-headed men that our town has produced. I have never heard him mentioned by one who had known him except with strong affection and respect. He received his education at Exeter, where for a time he was also a teacher.

TOMORROW: Primary sources—Peterborough petitions to be allowed to dismiss the minister.

The Original Mount Whoredom

A year ago, Charles Swift at The City Record and Boston News-Letter and I exchanged posts about “Mount Whoredom,” the name documents and maps from around the Revolution gave to a hill that real-estate developers in the early republic renamed “Mount Vernon.” (Of course, saying “whoredom” over and over produced the first spike in Boston 1775’s page views.)

At this month’s Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife I met Christopher Lenney, author of Sightseeking: Clues to the Landscape History of New England. In that book he wrote:

Mount Whoredom, as the west summit of Beacon Hill was called until 1823, likely derives from a hill in London that bore the same name for the same reason. This designation...may have been military slang: the London Mount Whoredom (so mapped in 1745) was a place of soldiers’ resort near the Royal Artillery headquarters in Woolwich.

Chris based that statement on a literary description of a London map, but hadn’t found the actual map.

Putting Google to work brought me to an online map that includes the detail above. The “Mount Whoredom” label curls around a dark structure below the L in “Woolwich.” Chris tells me that Lt. Thomas Hyde Page (1746–1821), who put the same name on his 1777 map of Boston, was familiar with Woolwich because he’d been first cadet at the Royal Artillery training school there.

That British link makes me rethink the origin and meaning of the label. British officers seem to have taken pleasure in referring to “Mount Whoredom” and “Whoredom Hill” in letters from Boston in mid-1775. I thought that meant they enjoyed pointing out the hypocrisy of an old Puritan town having such a site. But what if British officers had brought that term with them during the French & Indian War, in the 1768-70 occupation, or in 1774?

On the other hand, American officers used the same term in military planning in early 1776. Were they simply adopting the enemy’s label for a fortified place? Or had the “Mount Whoredom” label been in circulation for years before? I haven’t found it in local sources, but it’s not the sort of term Bostonians would have put in print. And the area could have been the town’s center for prostitution without being formally labeled “Mount Whoredom.”

I should also lay out the steps I followed to find this image.

1) Search Google Books for “Woolwich” and “whoredom.” That brought up a 1931 issue of Archaeologia Cantiana, the journal of the Kent Archaeological Society, which says “Woolwich [was] a little riverside town, cut off from Charlton by open tracts with such interesting names as Hanging Wood, Sand Wharf, and Mount Whoredom.” The snippet view adds the information that that description is based on “John Rocque’s fascinating map of the environs of London in 1741-5.”

2) Search Google for “John Rocque” and “London.” That brings up many reproductions of Rocque’s 1745 map of the capital. This was one of the best. However, after using Google Maps’ modern view, I realized that Woolwich wasn’t on that map. It’s further downstream on the Thames. So books that referred to a 1745 London map lead down a false path.

3) Search Google again for “John Rocque” and “Woolwich.” That brought me to ideal-homes.org.uk. That sounds like a real estate broker, but it’s actually a historical examination of “the origins and significance of suburbia as revealed through the history of South London,” created by the University of Greenwich. And it provides an online view of Rocque’s 1746 map of Woolwich, which must be what the Kent journal and Chris’s source were referring to.

4) Overlook the crucial label on that Woolwich map, spend another half-hour trying to find more London and Woolwich maps, get frustrated, go back to the Kent journal to review the other sites it mentions, find them on the Woolwich map, and finally spot “Mount Whoredom.” (This last step is optional.)

Cannonballs and a Deserter Come into Boston

Here’s another snatch of selectman Timothy Newell’s diary of the siege of Boston. These entries came a week after the Battle of Bunker Hill, as rumors flew that the British army would try to push back the provincial forces on the other side of the town as well.

24th [June]. About 12 oClock at noon began a Cannonade of Roxbury and set fire to one or two houses which was extinguished. Two Men killed at Brown’s house from a small party of Regulars. Great expectations from this day’s operations, as last night four Transports, Gondaloes &c. full of Troops, as was said, intended to land at Dorchester neck to attack the Provincials, but an alarm gun was said to be fired and fires kindled to alarm the Country—the great force said to be collected prevented this expedition. This account was given by one Morrison who deserted and came in this day from the Provincials. It is said he was in the Redoubt at Bunker Hill.

“Brown’s house” was on Boston Neck, the narrow strip of dry land that then connected Boston to the rest of Massachusetts. “Dorchester Neck” was a peninsula off Dorchester. All that topography has changed greatly since 1775 because of landfills. As for Morrison, he was John Morrison of Peterborough, New Hampshire. The New Hampshire Churches (1856) says he was born in Pathfoot, Scotland, in 1739. Leonard Allison Morrison’s The History of the Morison or Morrison Family (1880) says he had graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1765. The next year, Morrison came to Peterborough, which was largely settled by people of Scottish origin or ancestry, several of them also named Morrison or Morison. In November 1766 he became the first official Presbyterian minister there. But the Rev. Mr. Morrison served only until March 1772, when the congregation dismissed him for cause. Now that’s the kind of gossip Boston 1775 enjoys! Unfortunately, the sources I can find aren’t very juicy. That Morrison family history says, “His abilities were good, but by disreputable practices he lost the respect of the people.” Too vague. George Abbot Morison’s 1876 History of Peterborough calls Morrison an “object of intemperance.” That’s more like it. But I believe that Albert Smith’s competing History of the Town of Peterborough would have more to say about “scandalous behavior.” Smith’s history, in the short extract downloadable from here, says Morrison was with the Peterborough militia company on the day of Bunker Hill, but “remained in camp, and excused himself from accompanying his friends, alleging that the lock of his gun was so injured as to be useless. Shortly after he passed over to Boston and joined the British.” So Morrison wasn’t in the redoubt on Breed’s Hill, and his remarks about the alarm in Dorchester might be suspect as well. By late 1776 he was a commissary with the British army, a position he held until his death in 1782. Newell would cross paths with Morrison in Boston months later. In the meantime, he had artillery fire to worry about.

26th [June] PM. Many cannon fired on both sides from the lines &c. 27th. Tolerable quiet; only a few cannon exchanged from the lines. 30th. Cannonade from Roxbury and the lines.

Newell’s diary shows how the New England troops had cannons well before Col. Henry Knox brought guns from Fort Ticonderoga, and they weren’t shy about using them. ADDENDUM: This article by George B. Kirsch in Church History says that the John Morrison scandal also involved sex. But I can’t get to the good bits through Google. ADDENDUM #2: I have always relied on the kindness of Boston 1775 readers.

Fun with John Quincy Adams's Diary

“Fun” may not be the right word for any document young John Quincy Adams created. He seems to have written very self-consciously, often apologetically, with his parents looking over his shoulders.

But here’s an interesting passage from his diary for 18 Dec 1779, put online by the Massachusetts Historical Society. On that date twelve-year-old John was in Spain with his father, who was on a diplomatic mission for the Continental Congress. Also in the party were John’s tutor; his younger brother Charles; an eleven-year-old boy from Boston; and some other American men. This journal entry starts on this page and continues here.

I look’d this morning out of our chamber window and saw a beautiful sight the waves all foaming upon the Beach & Breaking made a terrible noise and as beautiful a sight as I ever saw in my life.

We expected to see a Nun made to day, but we were disappointed the Nuns are shut up in Convents & never see any men but Except the friars.

John wrote eight more lines, but later crossed them out more thoroughly than any other words in his journal. Did he write more about nuns and friars? A dirty joke? A prejudiced remark? Something his father or tutor corrected, or something his mother would dislike when word got back to her?

The diary entry resumed:

this afternoon the Gentlemen all went to see the armory but I was writing a Letter & therefore could not go.

I wish I knew what letter was so important that it kept a twelve-year-old boy from going to the armory with the men. I suspect John was writing to Mama or one of her sisters back home in Massachusetts.

Building Blocks of the American Revolution

YouTube hosts a handful of short animated films about the Battle of Bunker Hill, most apparently made as school assignments. I have to give the edge to this stop-motion Lego® version. It’s not wholly accurate (Americans wouldn’t build a tower on Breed’s Hill until decades after the battle), but it reproduces more of the day than the other offerings.

And don’t Lego people remind you of Davy on Davy and Goliath?

Having Fun Yet Again

Zippy the Pinhead hops on the Bunker Hill bandwagon with today’s strip, which must mean the topic’s too cool for me. Something new tomorrow.

The Shape of the Redoubt on Breed’s Hill

This picture shows a detail of a map I found in the New York Public Library’s Mid-Manhattan Picture Collection Online. I haven’t found the secret to linking directly to the image, but it’s number 808558, titled “A Plan of the Action at Bunker’s Hill, on the 17th of June 1775.” The map was published in the late 1800s by G. P. Putnam’s Sons.

The box in the upper left quadrant shows the redoubt on top of the rise known as Breed’s Hill. Provincial troops under Col. William Prescott started to fortify that area during the night of 16-17 June 1775, and it became the focus of the British military’s attack the next day. It’s where the Bunker Hill Monument now stands.

The inset in the lower right quadrant is labeled as the same redoubt. Even at this resolution, it’s easy to see that the two shapes don’t look anything alike.

The main map with the rectangular redoubt was copied from a plan of the battlefield created by Lt. Thomas Page of the Royal Artillery and published after he returned to London. Page was a trained surveyor who was actually on the field in 1775. He remained in Boston for months, continuing to help map and lay out fortifications without people shooting at him from nearby, which cartographers agree is a big help when it comes to concentrating on details.

The inset on the right was copied from an image published in The Gentleman’s Magazine in London in September 1775. The Dublin edition of that magazine published a similar image later that year. It shows an irregular shape between two lines of fortifications. So far as I know, the magazine gave no source or authority for that image.

In fact, I don’t think there is any reliable source for the Gentleman’s Magazine image. All the sources from both sides of the battle say that the provincials laid out a small, rectangular redoubt, not the strange, elaborate shape shown there. I think the magazine knew that its readers were eager for news of this shocking battle in the colonies, so it published or perhaps even created unreliable material to fill that demand. A British marine lieutenant named John Clarke also published a detailed account of the battle for Londoners; they didn’t know that he’d been court-martialed for drunkenness, collected secondhand information, and embellished freely.

The Gentleman’s Magazine image was rediscovered and reprinted in the mid-1800s by American historians. In the 1851 edition of his History of the Siege of Boston (and perhaps in the 1849 edition as well), Richard Frothingham copied the image on page 198, calling it a “curious memorial of the battle”; he gave more space to Page’s map, and his text described a square redoubt. Also in 1851, Benson J. Lossing’s Pictorial Field-book of the Revolution copied the image on page 540; Lossing wasn’t rigorous about sources if they stood in the way of a good story or a good picture, and he included none of Frothingham’s skepticism.

As a result, the strange picture of the redoubt was recopied into more American books and maps in the late 1800s, though no one seems to have tried to reconcile it with the sources showing and describing a square structure. I don’t think anyone who was in Charlestown in 1775 would have recognized the structure portrayed in The Gentleman’s Magazine.

Oddly enough, that strange shape does appear on a powderhorn displayed by a museum in Boston as an authentic artifact of the war. A powderhorn that has a number of other odd features, and can’t be traced back earlier than 1933.