The Myth of Provost William Cunningham

Boston selectman Timothy Newell took note of events large and small in his journal entry for 10 Oct 1775, but they had one theme in common: complaints about the British authorities’ treatment of locals.

A negro man belonging to [blank] wheeling a barrow load of [blank] in the Streets, the Provost came up to him and caned him to a great degree. The negro conscious of his innocence asked him why he did so—he was told it was for wheeling his barrow at the side of the street and not in the middle.

General [Thomas] Gage sailed this day for London and left several thousand Inhabitants in town who are suffering the want of Bread and every necessary of life.

Newell may have left out the name of the person who was keeping that black man in slavery because he didn’t know it. I’m pretty sure he left the contents of the wheelbarrow unnamed because it was full of dung. The town had a lot of horses, after all.

The “Provost,” or Provost Martial, was a man named William Cunningham. He worked for the British military administration in occupied Boston, Philadelphia, and New York, and made enemies among Americans wherever he went. Cunningham was in charge of prisoners of war, so it wasn’t hard for Continental sailors and soldiers to resent him. But several little episodes of unnecessary meanness like this one made him especially unpopular.

In early 1792 an article appeared in many American newspapers stating that Cunningham had been “executed in London, the 10th of August, 1791,” for financial crimes. The report then went on to quote the former Provost’s “life, confession, and last dying words,” a standard literary genre in those days of public executions. That document said Cunningham was born in Dublin in 1738, raised in a military family, and came to New York at the head of a shipload of Irish immigrants in 1774.

However, British historians later reported that there is no record of a William Cunningham being executed anywhere in Britain in 1791. The Old Bailey Proceedings of London criminal trials include no case against Cunningham. Revlist members Bart Reynolds and Bob Vogler found evidence that the man was still receiving a half-pay pension as a retired British army officer in 1792. A Philadelphian named John Binns reported meeting Cunningham in 1799 in Gloucester, England, where he was once again serving as a prison warden.

Furthermore, the New York historian Ferdinand S. Bartram wrote that Cunningham had been in New York well before 1770; he was part of the city’s Sons of Liberty movement, helping to buy land for the massive Liberty Pole. He broke from the Patriot movement by early 1775, when he got into a fight near that pole and was badly beaten. Then he left to join the British army administration in Boston.

In short, the “life, confession, and last dying words of captain William Cunningham” was a hoax, eagerly swallowed by resentful Americans but not credible in any detail. Even though its most basic statements can’t be confirmed, however, American authors have continued to rely on what that document said about Cunningham’s birth and background.

According to Binns, Cunningham had an American wife. A former prisoner remembered he had a brother who wasn’t so nasty. Contemporary British military records supplied by author Don Hagist say that he had at least one son, Capt. Ralph Cunningham, serving in the British army during the war. If anyone else has information to share about Provost Martial William Cunningham, I’d be delighted to hear it.

(It would be so much easier if William Cunningham were a less common name. The Provost Martial is not, for example, the Loyalist captain who became notorious in the southern theater of the war. Nor is he the Boston militia captain and painter.)

The Truth Comes Out about Dr. Benjamin Church

The disappearance of suspected double agent Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr., at sea in 1776 left a lot of unanswered questions for his contemporaries. Massachusetts hadn’t been able to convict him of spying for the British authorities. The state therefore had no information about when Church might have begun collaborating, what information he gave up, and how else he might have undercut the Patriot cause.

In the same 1798 letter in which he described his famous midnight ride, Paul Revere wrote that he’d seen reasons to wonder about Dr. Church’s loyalty before the war. However, there’s no evidence the silversmith spoke up at the time, so the doctor’s actions probably appeared more suspicious in hindsight.

Based on the evidence available through the nineteenth century, people could still have a little doubt about Dr. Church’s cooperation with the Crown. The letter he was caught sending into Boston in mid-1775 could indeed be read as the doctor insisted he meant it: as a back-door attempt to convince the British authorities to back down. That possibility informs this article by Tara Dirst and Allan Kulikoff from Common-place on using the American Archives website to explore the case. (Unfortunately, the article’s links to that database no longer seem to function.)

However, in the early 1900s we got a new source of information. A wealthy American manufacturer named William L. Clements bought the papers of Gen. Thomas Gage, as well as those of several other prominent Revolutionary War figures, and donated them to the University of Michigan. Instantly the Clements Library made Ann Arbor one of the centers for Revolutionary research. The novelist and historian Allen French examined those files, and his book General Gage’s Informers offered, as its subtitle promised, “New Material upon Lexington and Concord, Benjamin Thompson as Loyalist, and the Treachery of Benjamin Church, Jr.”

Gen. Gage’s files turned out to contain:

• A letter that Dr. John Homans, a young surgeon working for the provincial army, wrote to his mentor, Dr. Joseph Gardner, on 22 Apr 1775 and sent into Boston with Dr. Church. I wrote about this document in an article in New England Ancestors. It describes casualties and prisoners after the Battle of Lexington and Concord.
• A letter that Rachel Revere wrote to her husband, Paul, and gave to Dr. Church to take out of Boston. The University of Michigan offers an article about that document, as well as the image above.
  
• An anonymous letter to Gen. Gage on 24 May saying that the writer had been ordered to go to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, just as we know Dr. Church ordered to go to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia.

In short, we know much more about Dr. Benjamin Church’s correspondence with Gen. Gage than was available to Revere, George Washington, or other Patriots. There’s no longer any reason to doubt that Dr. Church was collaborating with the British, and did so since shortly after the war began.

Indeed, Gage’s intelligence files also show that the general suddenly knew a lot more about decisions by the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s Committee of Safety right after Church became a member of that committee in early 1775. I think we can therefore push the doctor’s collaboration that far back. However, I’ve seen no strong evidence that Church worked for the British even earlier.

COMING UP: One more wrinkle about the Dr. Church case and the quest for liberty.

Dr. Benjamin Church's Ciphered Letter

Yesterday I described how Gen. George Washington learned of a coded letter that Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr., had tried to send into British-occupied Boston. Three Patriots sat down to decipher it, and this is what they found.

To Major [Edward] Cane in Boston,
On His Magisty’s Sarvice—

I hope this will reach you; three attempts have I made without success. In effecting the last, the man was discovered in attempting his escape, but fortunately my letter was sewed in the waistband of his breeches. He was confined a few days during which time you may guess my feelings. But a little art and a little cash settled the matter.

’Tis a month since my return from Philadelphia. I went by the way of Providence to visit mother. The Committee for Warlike Stores made me a formal tender of 12 pieces of cannon, 18 and 24 pounders, they having to a previous resolution to make the offer to General [Artemas] Ward. To make a merit of my services, I sent them down and when they received them they sent them to Stoughton to be out of danger, even tho’ they had formed the resolution as I before hinted of fortifying Bunker’s Hill, which together with the cowardice of the clumsy Col. [Samuel] Gerrish and Col. [James] Scammon, were the lucky occasion of their defeat. This affair happened before my return from Philadelphia. We lost 165 killed then and since dead of their wounds; 120 now lye wounded. The chief [i.e., most] will recover. They boast you have 1400 killed & wounded in that action. You say the rebels lost 1500, I suppose, with equal truth.

The people of Connecticut are raving in the cause of liberty. A number from this colony, from the town of Stanford [Stamford], robbed the King’s stores at New York with some small assistance the New Yorkers lent them. These were growing turbulent. I counted 280 pieces of cannon from 24 to 3 pounders at Kingsbridge which the committee had secured for the use of the colonies. The Jersies are not a whit behind Connecticut in zeal. The Philadelphians exceed them both. I saw 2200 men in review there by General [Charles] Lee, consisting of Quakers & other inhabitants in uniform, with 1000 rifle men and 40 horse who together made a most warlike appearance. I mingled freely & frequently with the members of the Continental Congress. They were united, determined in opposition, and appeared assured of success.

Now to come home, the opposition is become formidable. 18 thousand men brave and determined with Washington & Lee at their head are no contemptible enemy. Adjutant General [Horatio] Gates is indefatigable in arranging the army. Provisions are very plenty. Cloaths are manufacturing in almost every town for the soldiers. Twenty tons of powder lately arrived at Philadelphia, Connecticut & Providence. Upwards of 20 tons are now in camp. Salt petre is made in every colony. Powder mills are erected and constantly employed in Philadelphia & New York. Volunteers of the first fortunes are daily flocking to camp. 1000 rifle-men (in 2 or 3 days recruits) are now levying to augment the army to 22 thousand men. 10 thousand militia are appointed in this government to appear on the first summons.

The bills of all the colonies circulate freely and are readily exchanged for cash. Add to this that, unless some plan of accommodation takes place immediately, these harbours will swarm with privateers. An army will be raised in the middle provinces to take possession of Canada. For the sake of the miserable convulsed Empire, solicit peace; repeal the acts or Britain is undone. This advice is the result of warm affection to my King & to the realm. Remember, I never deceived you. Every article here sent to you is sacredly true.

The papers will announce to you that I am again a member [i.e., a legislative representative] for Boston. You will there see our motley council. A general arrangement of offices will take place, except the chief [i.e., governor] which will be suspended but for a little while to see what part Britain takes in consequence on the late Continental petition. A view to independence gr[ows] more & more general. Should Britain declare war against the colonies, they are lost forever. Should Spain declare against England, the colonies will declare a neutrality which will doubtless produce an offensive & defensive league between them. For God’s sake prevent it by a speedy accommodation.

Writing this has employed a day. I have been to Salem to reconnoitre, but could not escape the geese of the capitol. To-morrow I set out for Newport to send you this. I write you fully, it being scarcely possible to escape discovery. I am out of place here by choice, and therefore, out of pay, and determined to be so unless something is offered in my way. I wish you could contrive to write me largely in cypher, by the way of Newport, addressed to Thomas Richards, Merchant. Inclose it in a cover to me, intimating that I am a perfect stranger to you, but being recommended to you as a gentleman of honour, you took the liberty to inclose that letter, intreating me to deliver it as directed, the person, you are informed, being at Cambridge. Sign some fictitious name. This you may send to some confidential friend in Newport, to be delivered to me at Watertown. Make use of every precaution or I perish.

(This version of the text is from Colonial Williamsburg’s history.org.)

Reading this must have pained Washington personally. He had traveled from Philadelphia to Cambridge with Dr. Church, and now he saw the doctor had tried to share information gathered on that trip with their enemy. Furthermore, Church was apparently using his hospital duties to “reconnoitre” around the lines.

Dr. Church insisted on a more benign explanation. He was exaggerating the American supplies, numbers, and fervor in order to intimidate the British authorities. He was urging the Crown to work things out before the war got worse and the Empire was torn apart. After all, wasn’t that (not independence) still the official American policy?

A court-martial convicted Dr. Church of corresponding with the enemy and removed him from his post. He was confined in Cambridge, in the Brattle Street mansion that belonged to Loyalist widow Penelope Vassall. (It’s still there, and the graffiti he wrote on a window frame has been preserved.) The American authorities weren’t sure what to do with the doctor. The evidence seemed too weak to hang him, too strong to let him go. Finally, they struck a deal: Dr. Church would go into exile.

In May 1776 January 1778, Church sailed out of Boston harbor. He and the ship were never seen again.

COMING UP: What Washington never knew about Dr. Church.

Deciphering a Mystery Letter

Sometimes in July 1775, a Massachusetts man entrusted a letter to his mistress—or perhaps one of his mistresses. He told her to send it into British-occupied Boston by way of Newport. That Rhode Island port was still open for business, with Patriot and Loyalist officials in a grudging stalemate and the Royal Navy, merchant ships, and smugglers all sailing in and out of the harbor.

That woman, who has never been identified, sent the letter to an old boyfriend, the Newport baker Godfrey Wenwood (sometimes spelled Wainwood), and asked him to pass it on. He became suspicious because the letter was in code; there was, after all, a war on. On the other hand, he was about to get married, and may not have wanted to reveal an old affair by taking the document to the authorities. So he sat on it.

In September, the lady wrote to Wenwood again:

i much wonder you never Sent wot you promest to send if you Did i never reseve it so pray Lett me know By the first orpurtunty wen you expet to be hear & at he Same time whether you ever senty me that & wether you ever got a answer from my sister i am alittle unesey that you never rote thar is aserten person hear wants to Sea you verey much. . . .

if you righ Direct your Lettr to mr Ewerd Harton Living on Mr. Apthorps farm in Littel Cambrig

“Little Cambridge” was then the name for Brighton. “Apthorp’s farm” was probably the estate of John Apthorp, youngest son of a wealthy Anglican family; he and his wife had been lost at sea in 1772, leaving three children to be raised by relatives. The name of Edward/Edmund Horton appears on official documents from Cambridge in this period.

Wenwood talked with a friend who taught school, and together they went to the Secretary of the Rhode Island colony, Henry Ward. In Massachusetts, the governor, secretary, and other executive-branch officials were appointed in London, but in Rhode Island (and Connecticut) they were elected by the legislature. Ward was therefore a Patriot, not a friend of the Crown. He sent Wenwood with his letter to Gen. Nathanael Greene, the highest-ranking Rhode Islander in the Continental Army around Boston.

Greene read Ward’s letter, heard Wenwood’s story, and quickly took the baker and his packet to army headquarters in Cambridge. After a private conference with Gen. George Washington and Greene, Wenwood agreed to visit his old girlfriend and try to learn who had given her that coded letter. He failed. Washington ordered the woman to be brought to headquarters. Gen. Israel Putnam personally delivered her, mounted behind him on his horse. Washington used the weight of his authority to convince her to reveal the man behind the coded letter: Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr.

For years, Church had been one of Boston’s leading Whigs, privy to their most secret meetings. In July, he had become the head of the Continental Army’s hospital. Washington summoned him immediately. Dr. Church admitted that he wrote the letter, saying it was really intended for his brother-in-law, the Loyalist printer John Fleeming. He declined to decipher it, though.

Washington sought men familiar with codes. One volunteer was the Rev. Samuel West, a big, untidy minister from Dartmouth (now New Bedford); he was attached to the Continental Army as a chaplain. Another was Elbridge Gerry, the Marblehead merchant and politician, who also recruited Col. Elisha Porter of Hadley. All were Harvard graduates; West was even in Church’s college class.

Dr. Church’s letter turned out to be in a simple substitution cipher, one symbol for each letter of the alphabet. And since he (unlike his mistress) wrote in standard English, the proportions and patterns of the symbols matched regular English prose. Trying out the most common letters in place of the most common symbols, West and the Gerry-Porter team produced two independent decodings of the text. On 3 October, Washington received the two translations. They matched exactly.

COMING UP: What Dr. Benjamin Church’s secret letter said. (Click on the image above for a large digital copy of its first page from the George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress.)

Americans Fortify Lamb’s Dam in Roxbury

We don’t usually think of Gen. George Washington’s American army having lots of cannons until Henry Knox brought heavy siege guns from Fort Ticonderoga in early 1776. But in fact the Continental artillery regiment (still under the command of Col. Richard Gridley) was large enough to keep up a steady bombardment of British military positions through the summer and fall of 1775. They were also strengthening their fortifications and moving closer to the British lines.

One of the artillery’s new positions was a spot in northern Roxbury called “Lamb’s Dam.” An 1876 review of the British evacuation stated:

The original line of American fortifications crossed what is now Washington street on the line of division between Boston and Roxbury, near the present Clifton place. On the 23d of August, 1775, the work of fortifying Lamb’s Dam was begun, and upon the completion of that work the line of fortification was advanced to a point a little south of the present Northampton street.

Lamb’s Dam extended from about the junction of Hampden and Albany streets to a point near the present Walnut place. It was originally built to keep the tide from overflowing the marshes, and followed very nearly the present line of Northampton street, diverging slightly to the southward as it neared the highway. At the termination of the Dam, on the upland, a strong breastwork was constructed, and from that the intrenchments extended across the highway.

The works were completed September 10, 1775, without opposition from the British, although within musket-shot of their advanced posts.

In 1796 the creek that Lamb’s Dam sat on was turned into the Roxbury Canal. Today this is the neighborhood slightly west and south of the Boston Medical Center.

It took a little less than a month before the artillery battery at Lamb’s Dam started to exact casualties. On 6 October, Boston selectman Timothy Newell recorded:

The Provincials from Lams Dam discharged their cannon at the Regulars, as they relieve guard at the lines—One Corporal killed with a cannon ball.

General Washington Negotiates for Flour

On the same day that Gen. George Washington was dealing with the fallout of Dr. Benjamin Church’s trial, he was still trying to make sure his troops were supplied. He wrote to the Committee of Safety at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on 5 Oct 1775:

I am to acknowledge the Receipt of your favor of the 2d Inst. [i.e., this month]; informing me that the Ship Prince George Capt. [Richard] Emms, from Bristol to Boston, with Flour for the Enemy, by a mistake of her Captain and the Spirited Conduct of some of the Inhabitants was now in your Possession.

I cannot but consider this as a most Providential Event, the State of this Army being alone defective in that Article, it would therefore highly Conduce to the Public Interest and to our relief, to forward it hither as soon as possible, which I apprehend may be done with Safety and ease by Water as far as Salem or Marblehead; in the mean time I will communicate the Matter to the Continental Congress for their Direction: as to the Compensation to be made the Captors and the determination of what Property arises by the Capture, and in whom Vested.

What ever Expenses may accrue in Complying with the above Request and whatever risque may be run by the Carriage by Water I will engage; but as I do not learn there are any of the Enemy's Ships on the Coast, I hope the Risque is very small.

There were 1,880 barrels and 24 half-barrels of flour on the Prince George. On the 10th, the New Hampshire Committee of Safety met again and decided the first thing to do with that flour was to supply its own troops. It ordered

George King, Esqr to take Charge of the Cargo of the Ship Prince George, & to deliver to Samuel Cutts, Esqr one hundred Bbls. [barrels] of Flour, at such Times & in such Quantities as he may need it to Supply the Soldiers at the Batteries in Piscataqua Harbour.

The next day, the committee wrote to Washington saying it had taken this step for “the Promotion of the Common Cause.” It also asked for approval to sell 500 barrels in Portsmouth, with the money held until the Continental Congress decided what to do with it. Finally, the committee said, “The Sailors appear to be pleased with the Capture, but are uneasy about their wages.”

On the 15th, Washington wrote:

I was yesterday favored with yours of the 11th Inst., wherein the Necessities of the Town of Portsmouth and the Garrison there, for some Part of the late Capture of Flour are represented; Had I known their Situation I should have made the Application unnecessary, by directing Mr. [Stephen] Moylan [muster master general] on the Subject, They have my Chearful Consent, to take what is necessary, but perhaps somewhat less than 600 Barrels may Answer the present Exigence; As our mutual Wants are now known to each other, I shall leave it to you to reserve what Quantity, you think indispensably Necessary.

I do not see any Impropriety in paying the Seamen their Wages, out of the Sales of some part of the Cargo and make no doubt it will be approved in the Settlement of this Affair.

Three days later the committee ordered King to sell up to 300 barrels of the flour at 20 shillings per hundredweight and

out of the money arising from the Sale, pay the Seamen of the Ship Prince George—Richard Emms, Master—the Wages that Shall appear due to them, agreeable to their original Contract.

Meanwhile, the commander-in-chief and the New Hampshire committee was still discussing the best way to move flour barrels from Portsmouth to Boston: a sailing ship was faster and cheaper, except that the Royal Navy might capture that ship and all its cargo. Should a ship go only as far as Ipswich? As Marblehead? This was the nitty-gritty of commanding an army.

Dr. Benjamin Church Put on Trial

On 4 Oct 1775, Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr. (1734-?), was brought before a Continental Army court-martial on the charge of carrying on a secret correspondence with the British military. Gen. George Washington himself presided. This was a bigger bombshell than anything the Royal Artillery was throwing at the American lines.

Dr. Church had been one of the top echelon of Boston Whigs since the late 1760s, known especially for his satirical political verse. In 1773 he had delivered the town’s oration commemorating the Boston Massacre, one of the movement’s most visible and honored tasks. In the first four months of 1775, whenever Samuel Adams and John Hancock were at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, leadership of the resistance in Boston fell to Church and Dr. Joseph Warren.

That spring, after the war began, Church had served as the chairman of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s Committee of Safety, which coordinated the military resistance of the whole province. Most recently, the Continental Congress had appointed Dr. Church to head its army hospital. He had traveled back to Boston with Gen. Washington himself.

The day after the court-martial, the commander-in-chief reported on the matter to Congress:

I have now a painful though necessary duty to perform, respecting Doctor Church, the Director of the Hospital. About a week ago, Mr. Secretary [Henry] Ward, of Providence, sent up one [Godfrey] Wainwood, an inhabitant of Newport, to me with a letter directed to Major [Edward] Cane in Boston, in occult [i.e., encrypted] letters, which he said had been left with Wainwood some time ago by a woman who was kept by Doctor Church.

She had before pressed Wainwood to take her to Captain [Sir James] Wallace [commander of the H.M.S. Rose patrolling off Newport], Mr. [Charles] Dudley, the [Customs] Collector, or George Rowe [later agent for all the Rhode Island Loyalists], which he declined. She gave him the letter with strict injunctions to deliver it to either of these gentleman.

He, suspecting some improper correspondence, kept the letter and after some time opened it, but not being able to read it, laid it up, where it remained until he received an obscure letter from the woman, expressing an anxiety as to the original letter. He then communicated the whole matter to Mr. Ward, who sent him up with the papers to me.

I immediately secured the woman, but for a long time she was proof against every threat and persuasion to discover [i.e., reveal] the author. However she was at length brought to a confession and named Doctor Church. I then immediately secured him and all his papers. Upon the first examination he readily acknowledged the letter and said that it was designed for his brother [actually brother-in-law, printer John Fleeming], etc. The army and country are exceedingly irritated.

Church steadfastly denied he had done anything wrong. But as soon as the general had received Dr. Church’s letter from the Rhode Islanders, he had sought out men to decipher it, and he had their evidence before him. (Click on the image below for your own digital copy of the first page of Church’s coded letter, part of the George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress.)

COMING UP: The investigation of Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr.

The Royal Navy Heads for Cape Ann

Two hundred thirty-two years ago, Boston selectman Timothy Newell wrote in his diary:

This morning two bomb Ketches and several armed vessels with some sailors sailed on a secret expedition, it is said to demand a Ship belonging to Portsmouth, retaken by our whale boats, and carried into Cape Ann—also to demand of that town 40 seamen which they took from the man of war—if not delivered in 24 hours to bombard the town.

Although the British and Continental armies had continued to make plans, build fortifications, fire artillery, and occasionally skirmish, the real action at this point in the war was at sea.

British naval vessels were trying to keep the army in Boston supplied by escorting transports and merchant ships from Britain. The first generation of American privateers were trying to capture those ships full of food and weapons. That meant the navy was trying to hunt the privateers.

In this case, the provincials had also apparently taken “40 seamen” from a naval ship. Perhaps those men had been impressed by the Royal Navy, perhaps they were simply tired of life in the navy, perhaps they wanted to try the American cause.

Admiral Samuel Graves was already eager to take aggressive action against the New England rebels. On 1 Sept 1775, he had written to Gen. Thomas Gage:

With your Excellency’s approbation and Assistance, I propose to lay Waste such Sea Port Towns in the New England Governments as are not likely to be useful to His Majesty’s Stores and to destroy all the Vessels within the Harbours. To this End I must beg your Excellency to assist me with such Men, Vessels, Artillery Forces &ca as His Majesty’s Squadron is not provided with, and are really requisite under for the intended Service.

Graves particularly resented having most of the Marines deployed on land instead of on his ships.

The small squad of ships that left Boston on 3 October was spotted off Gloucester later that week, as Newell feared. However, its commanders apparently thought that town would be too difficult to shell. The ships headed further up the coast.

Brook Watson: "worthy and steady friend"?

Last month I discussed Brook Watson (1735-1807), who was born in Boston, lost a leg to a shark in Havana, and went on to a very successful career in London as a merchant and politician. Because he was born in America and had a lot of business there, the British government viewed him as a bridge to the colonial leadership.

In January 1775 Watson sent the Earl of Dartmouth, Secretary of State for the colonies, a handwritten essay recommending how the government should peacefully reform the colonial governments. The secretary’s secretaries noted this as “Mr. Watson’s Thoughts on American Affairs.” In fact, he had copied it from “Thoughts on the dispute between Great Britain and her Colonies,” an essay by Judge William Smith of New York. The author’s brother, Dr. James Smith, had sent a copy to the earl the year before, and Smith himself would send another in July, saying he had written it in 1767.

Around the same time, Watson testified in Parliament against the government’s bill to bar Massachusetts fisherman from the Newfoundland fishing grounds. He spoke for the whole empire’s merchants, who earned a lot from carrying the fish to Britain’s Caribbean colonies. Despite his argument, the bill passed, part of Parliament’s efforts to punish Boston for the Tea Party and general naughtiness.

Watson then sailed for New York, arriving in May 1775 to find that war had broken out. The Patriot party dominated the city at that time, though there were also many Loyalists and men who were genuinely undecided (such as William Smith). Whatever Watson told people convinced them that he sympathized with the Patriots and hoped for a reconciliation between the colonies and Great Britain that would resolve all their problems. He set out for Canada, where he had extensive business.

Later in 1775, a couple of American armies also set out north, planning a quick conquest. One contingent, under Ethan Allen, was captured outside Montreal at the Battle of Longue-Point on 24 Sept 1775. But after that the local militias lost faith in British commander Guy Carleton and disbanded, letting a larger American force under Gen. Richard Montgomery take Montreal unopposed the next month. By then Watson was sailing back to London—but he had left some letters behind.

On 13 Nov 1775, Montgomery wrote to Gen. Philip Schuyler back in New York:

I send some choice letters of that worthy and steady friend of the Colonies, Brook Watson, whose zeal is only to be equalled by his sincerity. You will think them of importance enough, I believe, to be communicated to General Washington and the Congress. Your friend, Mr. William Smith, has been pretty well humbugged by this gentleman.

Montgomery enclosed four captured letters which Watson had written the month before. Among them was one to William Franklin, Loyalist governor of New Jersey (and son of Benjamin Franklin), dated 19 Oct 1775 and describing the results of the Longue-Point battle:

such is the wretched state of this unhappy Province [Quebec], that Colonel Allen, with a few despicable wretches, would have taken this city on the 25th ultimo [i.e., last month], had not its inhabitants marched out to give them battle. They fought, conquered, and thereby saved the Province for a while. Allen and his banditti were mostly taken prisoners. He is now in chains on board the Gaspee. This little action has changed the face of things. The Canadians before were nine tenths for the Bostonians. They are now returned to their duty, many in arms for the King, and the parishes. who had been otherwise, are daily demanding their pardon, and taking arms for the Crown.

Watson actually took charge of conveying Allen to Britain as a prisoner of war; the Vermonter later called him “a man of malicious and cruel disposition.”

Before the end of the war, Watson gained some lucrative military supply contracts through his close relationship with Carleton. In the following decades he retired from business and devoted his full-time talents to politics. (Thumbnail of the one-legged merchant and Lord Mayor courtesy of Britain’s National Portrait Gallery.)

Massachusetts Archeology Month, 2007

October is Massachusetts Archeology Month. This year’s theme is “Don’t Let the Past Slip Away,” and this year’s poster shows five examples of ceramic slipware, including a milk pan, two chamber pots, a shard of a platter, and a porringer.

These artifacts were found on the sites of privies (outhouses) dug around a house in Charlestown built in 1629-30 for Gov. John Winthrop before he moved the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s capital across the Charles River to Boston. Later that structure became a tavern, as lots of large houses did. In 1775 it was called the Three Cranes Tavern. At the start of the Battle of Bunker Hill, the British military set fire to central Charlestown to drive away provincial marksmen, and all the buildings there burned down. I imagine that fire is clearly marked on the archeological record.

There are many archeology-related events around the commonwealth in October. Most concern periods other than the late colonial, but here are some that caught my eye.

Parallel Lives, Common Landscape: Artifacts from the Royall House and Slave Quarters
Weekends thru 28 October, 1:00 to 5:00 P.M.
The Royall House and Slave Quarters, 15 George Street, Medford
$7 Adults, $5 Students & Seniors, discounts available for groups

From 1999 to 2001, a full-scale archaeological dig on the grounds of the Royall House and Slave Quarters revealed thousands of artifacts from the Royall period (1732-1775). These help to illuminate the meanings of freedom and independence in the context of a household of wealthy Loyalists and enslaved Africans. This new exhibit features a selection of compelling objects, including rare physical evidence of the lives of those held in bondage by the Royalls.


The Archaeology of Kids
Sunday, 14 October, 2:00 P.M.
Boston Public Library, Copley Square, Children’s Room
Free

Children in Massachusetts have been making and hiding and losing stuff (artifacts) for thousands of years. Come hear City Archaeologist Ellen Berkland talk about how kids show up in the archaeological record. Ellen will bring plenty of artifacts to see and a hands-on activity for the young ones. All ages welcome!


The Walls Did Talk! Come Hear What They Had to Say!
Sunday, 21 October, 2:00 P.M.
Blake House, 735 Columbia Road, Dorchester
Free

Did you know that the oldest house in Boston is in Dorchester? Over the past year, the Blake House (ca. 1650) underwent an entire exterior renovation. During this reconditioning and stabilization project, many artifacts and structural anomalies were uncovered. The many curious finds have contributed rich details on the construction of this gem, the original builders, the 1890s restoration campaign, and over 350 years of occupants. Dorchester Historical Society President Earl Taylor and Architectural Historian and Preservationist John Goff will present an illustrated lecture on the above-ground archeology at the Blake House.

Check out the rest of the month’s offerings by date and by town through the Massachusetts Archeology Month website from the Secretary of State's office.

McCain Misreads the Constitution and the Bible

Beliefnet’s interview with John McCain has been getting a lot of attention because of the Republican presidential candidate’s odd conception of the U.S. Constitution:

Has the candidates’ personal faith become too big an issue in the presidential race?
...I think the number one issue people should make [in the] selection of the President of the United States is, “Will this person carry on in the Judeo Christian principled tradition that has made this nation the greatest experiment in the history of mankind?”

It doesn’t seem like a Muslim candidate would do very well, according to that standard.
...I just have to say in all candor that since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles... personally, I prefer someone who I know who has a solid grounding in my faith. . . .

A recent poll found that 55 percent of Americans believe the U.S. Constitution establishes a Christian nation. What do you think?
I would probably have to say yes, that the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation. But I say that in the broadest sense. The lady that holds her lamp beside the golden door doesn’t say, “I only welcome Christians.” We welcome the poor, the tired, the huddled masses. But when they come here they know that they are in a nation founded on Christian principles.

I realize how hard it is for a political candidate, even one who claims to engage in “straight talk,” to say that 55% of the electorate is wrong. But in this case they are, and so is he.

The U.S. Constitution is very clear on the questions of whether it establishes a Christian nation and whether candidates’ faiths should be an issue in elections. It states: “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” Quite simply, Americans who vote on the basis of candidates’ religions behave unconstitutionally, though there’s no penalty for doing so. (Unlike elected officials like McCain, we ordinary citizens aren’t bound by oath to uphold the Constitution.)

Furthermore, the First Amendment reinforced that the federal government had no established religion in the U.S. of A., and could not favor one religious belief or practice over any other. Unlike the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution makes no mention of providence or a deity. McCain’s predecessors in the Senate and President John Adams recognized that basis for the country they had helped to found when in 1797 they ratified a treaty with Tripoli that stated, “the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.”

I suppose McCain would acknowledge those facts if pressed, or when his campaign is over. (Sooner or later he’ll recognize that he’s already lost the religious right because of his principled stand on campaign financing. They have their priorities, after all.) McCain wasn’t trying to be exclusionary. Rather, he seems to feel, as much of that 55% of us might as well, that the Constitution is “Christian” in the sense that it reflects values he also associates with his faith. In other words, Constitution = good; Christian = good; therefore, Constitution = Christian.

That approach shows as much wishful thinking about Christianity as about the Constitution because there’s so little overlap between the forms of good each aims for. Christianity is unlike the western world’s other major faiths in not having much advice on government in its holy scriptures. Those documents were written before any Christian rulers were in power. In contrast, at least part of the holy writings of Judaism and Islam were set down after adherents of those faiths started to govern societies. The Hebrew Bible and Koran thus contain advice, either explicit or in the form of stories, about how to govern, conduct war, decide legal disputes, and do other things that states usually do.

The early Christian scriptures are instead focused on another world. In fact, Jesus’s teachings, such as turning the other cheek and giving unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, are impractical for governing a society in this world. Even Paul, who had to grapple with the question of why that other world hadn’t arrived yet, wrote about how to run a small, oppressed cult, not a state. Christian theologians and politicians have been struggling to reconcile their Bible’s priorities with their societies’ for about 1,700 years. It’s not easy. Of course, Jesus never promised it would be.

As a result of that history, the U.S. Constitution and the Christian New Testament talk about separate activities with separate goals. There’s nothing in the Sermon on the Mount about the power to declare war. The Constitution does not endorse the economic system that the Apostles demanded of their followers in Acts 5. Paul’s Epistles say nothing about three branches of government with overlapping powers, and Revelations doesn’t depict a representative legislature in heaven. The New Testament has a lot to say about capital punishment, but not as part of a model justice system.

This country’s founders drew their ideas of national government from British traditions, Roman law, and Enlightenment philosophy. Among the elements of European governments that they discarded were those most closely linked to religion: established churches, legalized discrimination on the basis of faith, and divinely granted royal powers. They saw the purpose of government as securing a better life for “ourselves and our Posterity,” not as securing an immortal life.

There are, to be sure, some similarities that Christian politicians can be guided by, if they’re brave enough. Jesus’s emphasis on “the least of us” and “doing unto others” can be matched with the Bill of Rights’ emphasis on preserving rights against federal power and the Fourteenth Amendment’s promise of equality under law. However, that same tenet didn’t guide the original Constitution’s protection of slavery, exclusion of Native Americans, or omission of women. The document, and this country, would look quite different if they had indeed been “founded primarily on Christian principles” as Jesus expressed them.

Getting in Bed with John Adams

Prof. Larry Cebula at Northwest History blog directed me to this parodic mashup of 1776 and Brokeback Mountain, made all the more believable by hunky Ken Howard in the role of Thomas Jefferson.

But in fact, during the Second Continental Congress the fellow delegate whom John Adams slept with was not Jefferson but Benjamin Franklin. So Adams wrote many years later in his autobiography, describing their trip to the New York area to negotiate with Gen. William Howe.

Monday September 9, 1776.
At [New] Brunswick, but one bed could be procured for Dr. Franklin and me, in a little Chamber little larger than the bed, without a Chimney and with only one small Window. The Window was open, and I, who was an invalid and afraid of the Air in the night, shut it close.

Oh! says Franklin dont shut the Window. We shall be suffocated.

I answered I was afraid of the Evening Air.

Dr. Franklin replied, the Air within this Chamber will soon be, and indeed is now worse than that without Doors: come! open the Window and come to bed, and I will convince you: I believe you are not acquainted with my Theory of Colds.

Opening the Window and leaping into Bed, I said I had read his Letters to Dr. [Samuel] Cooper in which he had advanced, that Nobody ever got cold by going into a cold Church, or any other cold Air: but the Theory was so little consistent with my experience, that I thought it a Paradox: However I had so much curiosity to hear his reasons, that I would run the risque of a cold.

The Doctor then began an harrangue, upon Air and cold and Respiration and Perspiration, with which I was so much amused that I soon fell asleep, and left him and his Philosophy together: but I believe they were equally sound and insensible, within a few minutes after me, for the last Words I heard were pronounced as if he was more than half asleep. . . .

In Passionate Sage, his engaging study of the second President in retirement, Prof. Joseph Ellis pointed out how in this anecdote Adams managed to slough off what many folks have seen as his most costly character flaw. As Adams told the story, he was the amenable bedfellow and Franklin the man who was too insistent and long-winded.

Fife & Drum Muster in Sudbury, 29 Sept 2007

Saturday, 29 September, will bring the annual Colonial Faire and Muster of Fyfe & Drum opposite Longfellow’s Wayside Inn in Sudbury. I took today’s photo at a Sudbury Muster a few years back, before the William Diamond Junior Fife & Drum Corps got more authentic hats.

Many more groups will be playing at the muster, including the Middlesex 4-H Fife & Drum Corps, Middlesex County Volunteers, Regimental Music of Saintonge, &c. &c. Plus, there will be food, craft demonstrations, photogenic reenactors, children’s games, and many handmade goods and clothing for sale. All hosted by the Sudbury Minutemen and Sudbury Ancient Fyfe & Drum Companie.

For historical content, check out Boston 1775’s recounting of John Greenwood’s experiences as a young fifer in the 1770s.

Determined to Go Through with this Affair

On 26 Sept 1775, Capt. John Barker of the British army’s 4th Regiment wrote in his diary:

The Cerberus Frigate returned from England, with answers to the dispatches sent home after the Action of the 17th June, reports that England is determined to go through with this Affair for which reinforcements are to be here soon.

Several Deserters from the Rebels are lately come in; they all say that it is intended to attack us.

The Cerberus was the same royal warship that had brought Gens. William Howe, John Burgoyne, and Henry Clinton to Boston in May, and now it brought word of yet more troops. At the same time, people expected the American army to attack the town or the British lines. It appeared that both sides were still determined to break the stalemate by force.

But in fact the Cerberus had brought news of a major change on the British side. Boston selectman Timothy Newell heard about it the next day:

These several days have been tolerably quiet. The works at the Southward go on.

Yesterday the Cerberus Man of war arrived in 7 weeks from London—brings advices of coercive measures by Administration—5 Regiments—one thousand Marines, another Admiral with a fleet of men of war &c.—and General [Thomas] Gage called home.

Immediately after receiving Gen. Gage’s report on the costly victory at Bunker Hill, the ministry had scrapped its planned instructions for him and replaced them with these orders, dated 2 August:

From the tenor of your letters, and from the state of affairs after the action of the 17th, the king is led to conclude that you have little expectation of effecting anything further this campaign, and has therefore commanded me to signify to you his majesty’s pleasure, that you do, as soon as conveniently may be after you receive this letter, return to England, in order to give his majesty exact information of everything that it may be necessary to prepare, as early as possible, for the operations of next year, and to suggest to his majesty such matters in relation thereto as your knowledge and experience of the service enable you to furnish.

Gage was to turn over command of all British troops in North America to Gen. Howe (shown above, courtesy of NNDB.com). Howe had probably been making the important military decisions for weeks, though orders were still issued in Gage’s name as governor and commander-in-chief.

On 5 October, Gen. George Washington shared the intelligence with the Continental Congress:

That General Gage is recalled and last Sunday resigned his command to General Howe. That Lord Piercy, Col: [Francis] Smith and other Officers who were at Lexington, are Ordered home with Gage.

Washington was undoubtedly wondering what the new British commander’s strategy would be.

Capt. William Pawlett Loses a Leg

While looking into how Brook Watson lost his leg (to a shark), I neglected to mention how Capt. William Pawlett of the British army lost his leg (not to a shark) 232 years ago this week.

Once again I quote the diary of British army captain John Barker:

17 Sept: “A Soldier of the 4th or King’s Own had his leg shot off as the relief was going to the Lines at Boston; this is the first Man who has suffer’d by the Rebels Cannon.”

23 Sept: “Captn. Pawlett of the 59th Regt. had his leg shot off as he was sitting at breakfast at Boston Lines.”

It seems significant that although Capt. Barker almost certainly knew the private soldier who had his leg shot off, since they were in the same regiment, he didn’t record the man’s name. But he did name a captain who suffered the same injury. Similarly, officers sent home many lists of fellow officers killed at the Battle of Lexington and Concord and the Battle of Bunker Hill, but no comprehensive roll of casualties among the enlisted men.

Then again, Capt. Pawlett’s injury also seemed more significant to Boston selectman Timothy Newell, whose notes on 14-19 September read:

[The army] Began taking down houses at the South end, to build a new line of Works—A good deal of cannonading on both sides the lines for many days past. Several shots came thro’ houses at the South end. Capt. Poulet lost his leg, &c. &c. &c.

On 8 Dec 1781, the Norfolk Chronicle reported:

Last Sunday died, after a few hours illness, at Kenninghall Palace, in this county, William PAWLETT, Esq., late Captain in the army; much respected in the service, much lamented by his wife and family, and much esteemed by his acquaintance and the neighbourhood in which he resided—as an agreeable companion and a worthy man. He served in the last war with great reputation, and after being again called into service, after behaving on many occasions with great gallantry and address, lost a leg by a cannonball shot from the American lines, Roxborough-hill, whilst on duty in the trenches at Boston-neck. On his return to England he was ship-wrecked on the Isle of Scilly, and preserved with great difficulty.

His Majesty, in consideration of his eminent services, appointed him to a company of Invalids in the island of Jersey, which he enjoyed to his death.

According to the Annual Register, Pawlett was made “Captain of an independent company of invalids at Jersey” on 8 Oct 1776. He died at age fifty, and is memorialized in the church at Kenninghall.

Gov. Gage Needs "Judgment and Discretion of his own"?

I was just looking at the records of the Massachusetts General Court in 1774 this afternoon. (Ah, but weren’t we all?) I was struck by how that assembly protested new governor Thomas Gage’s announcement that he was calling the next legislative session in Salem, not Boston.

On 26 May 1774, the second day that the newly elected legislature met in Boston, Gage called the assembly members into the chamber of the Old State House where he met with his Council (the upper house) and told them to be aware that as of “the first of next Month,...I have the King’s particular Commands for holding the General Court at Salem from that Day, until His Majesty shall have signified his Royal Will and Pleasure for holding it again at Boston.” This move was part of punishing Boston for the destruction of the East India Company tea the previous December.

On 7 June, the General Court reconvened at the courthouse in Salem. The assembly’s only business that day was to appoint a committee to consider how to respond to being moved. The next day that committee recommended a resolution, which the legislators adopted:

Resolved, That by the Royal Charter of this Province, the Power of convening, proroguing and adjourning the Great and General Court or Assembly, from Time to Time, is vested in the Governor, to be exercised as he shall judge necessary, and for the Good of the People.

Therefore,

Resolved, That it is clearly the Opinion of this House, That whensoever the Governor of the Province doth convene or hold the General Assembly at any Time or Place unnecessarily, or merely in Obedience to an Instruction, and without exercising that Judgment and Discretion of his own, with which by Charter he is specially vested for the Good of the Province, it is manifestly inconsistent with the Letter, as well as the Spirit and Intention of the Charter.

In other words, the assembly agreed that the governor had the power to summon the legislature in Salem or anywhere else, whenever he pleased. But it said the governor had to make his own decision, not just follow the instructions of the king—even though the governor’s power came from the king’s “Royal Charter.” Do you sense the assembly was stretching for a justification? Complaints like this almost make me sympathetic for Gen. Gage.

In another couple of years, the Declaration of Independence would list moving of the General Court among the faults of the king:

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

The U.S. Constitution of 1787 laid out a new balance of power between the legislature and chief executive. Article 1 says that Congress decides it meets each year, and can “exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District...as may...become the Seat of the Government of the United States.”

There’s still a relic of the old royal power to summon legislatures. Article 2 says the President “may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he [sic] may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper.” But the word “extraordinary” signals that Congress has the upper hand, as Thomas Jefferson and other politicians of the time recognized.

Shark Politics in Parliament

Yesterday’s Boston Globe “Ideas” section featured an article by Prof. Marcus Rediker, author of the upcoming The Slave Ship: A Human History, titled “Slavery: A Shark’s Perspective.”

The article described a 1792 satirical essay by Scottish encyclopedist James Tyler, which Rediker says showed “a dark and daring kind of humor I had never known to exist among abolitionists.” Taking the form of a petition to Parliament, the document asks the government on behalf of “the SHARKS of AFRICA” not to outlaw the slave trade, which provided them with so much food in the form of ill, injured, or suicidal captives.

Thus benefited, as your petitioners are, by this widely extended traffic, a traffic which has never before been molested, it is with the utmost indignation they hear that there are in Britain men, who under the specious plea of humanity, are endeavouring to accomplish its abolition.— But your petitioners trust that this attempt at innovation, this flourishing of the trumpet of liberty, by which “more is meant than meets the ear,” will be effectually frustrated.

Should the lower branch of the legislature be so far infatuated by this new-fangled humanity as seriously to meditate the destruction of this highly beneficial commerce, your petitioners have the firmest reliance on the wisdom and fellow-feeling of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of Great Britain.

The Boston Globe website supplies an image of the document, and Jack Campin of Edinburgh has transcribed the text. At least three American newspapers reprinted the essay between 1792 and 1807, the last one being The Friend of Salem, Massachusetts.

I wonder if putting this argument into the gaping mouths of sharks had a special resonance because one of the slave trade’s defenders in Parliament had himself famously survived a shark attack. In 1793 Brook Watson (1735-1807) was an Alderman of London. He had grown up in Boston from 1741 until he went to sea as a cabin boy. In 1749 he was swimming in Havana harbor (where, legally, his ship should not have been trading) when a shark bit off his leg. The story of Watson’s injury was well known in London.

During the Parliamentary debates of the 1790s, Watson made much the same argument as the “Sharks of Africa”—that the slave trade so benefited his constituency that the government must not shut it down. Watson also argued that the Newfoundland fishing trade would lose its main market without the enslaved populations of the Caribbean, and put forward an early “positive good” argument for slavery:

He held that those who had brought them from their own country had brought them to happiness, and wound up by telling the House that there could not be a more delightful scene than that presented by the dancing and other amusements of the happy slaves on a well-managed estate.

It seems the “Sharks of Africa” agreed with Watson as much as Watson’s leg agreed with that Cuban shark.

Today’s image shows the painting that Brook Watson commissioned from John Singleton Copley in 1778 of his shark attack. This copy is in the National Gallery in Washington, and part of a very nice online exhibit. There’s another copy at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.

Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier

This month sees the 250th anniversary of the birth of Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, marquis de la Fayette, better known to his American fans simply as Lafayette.

On Monday, 24 September 2007, at 6:30 P.M., the New England Historical Genealogical Society on Newbury Street in Boston will be the site of a talk by James R. Gaines, author of the new For Liberty and Glory: Washington, Lafayette, and Their Revolutions. Gaines’s presentation will be followed by a book signing and reception. A minimum $25 donation is requested.

Also contributing to this event are members of the French Heritage Society, Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati, the Society of the Cincinnati in the State of New Hampshire, and the Consulate General of France in Boston.

New Light on "Paul Revere's Ride"

Last Wednesday, I had the pleasure of attending Charles Bahne’s lecture on “‘Paul Revere’s Ride’ Revisited” at the Old South Meeting-House. He gave a detailed account of how Henry W. Longfellow wrote that famous poem, including his artistic choice to deviate from his main source, Revere’s own account, in order to create a better story.

In Longfellow’s papers, Charlie found what appears to be the first complete draft of “Paul Revere’s Ride.” It includes an entire lost stanza about a “tall, gray rider,” inspired by the legend of Hezekiah Wyman. (Someday I’ll discuss the basis of that story.) I suspect Longfellow dropped those lines because focusing attention on that man—another rider, in fact—would have dimmed his poetic spotlight on Revere as a lone hero.

Charlie’s talk also made me rethink the political significance of “Paul Revere’s Ride” in its own time. The poem is usually interpreted as Longfellow’s call to arms to loyal Americans as the Civil War approached. It was published in the issue of The Atlantic Monthly that went on sale on 20 Dec 1860, the same day that the slaveholders who held power in South Carolina voted to secede. War was on its way.

However, Longfellow started writing his poem in early April 1860, before the Democratic Party split over slavery and before the Republican Party nominated Abraham Lincoln for president. Longfellow finished that first draft on 13 October, when the election was still more than three weeks away. Because he was pacifist, I doubt he would have looked ahead to a war while he could still imagine the country avoiding it. So although I believe Longfellow wrote “Paul Revere’s Ride” to inspire his contemporaries, I’m not sure the crisis he was thinking about was a future war.

Instead, I look at the political atmosphere that surrounded Longfellow as he wrote, under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and the Dred Scott decision of 1857. Longfellow was an Abolitionist, giving that movement both his Poems on Slavery and financial contributions for both organizations and escapees. (Read about the notations in his account books in this downloadable issue of the Longfellow House Bulletin.)

Read against the background of mid-1860, there’s a different historical resonance to Longfellow’s lines:

A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo for evermore!

The call in the night sounds like a call to help refugees, defying the authorities who might be marching after them. Of course, by the time “Paul Revere’s Ride” was actually in print, the U.S. of A. faced a crisis of a different form.

In a matter of weeks, Charlie Bahne’s presentation will be available at the WGBH Forum Network for everyone to enjoy. [ADDENDUM: Here it is.] This was the first time those lost lines of “Paul Revere’s Ride” were ever read publicly.

This month’s series of Longfellow lectures ends on Wednesday, 26 September, at 7:30 P.M. at the First Parish in Cambridge, right off Harvard Square. National Endowment for the Arts chairman Dana Gioia and Poetry Foundation president John Barr will talk about Longfellow’s legacy as a public poet. See the Cambridge Forum website for more details.

William Dall: apprentice schoolteacher, merchant

“Back to School” Week(s) at Boston 1775 comes to a close with this profile of a young schoolteacher caught up in the start of the Revolution.

William Dall was the son of William and Elizabeth (Bradford) Dall, born in Boston on 22 Dec 1753. He prepared for a career in business by attending the town’s Writing School on Queen Street, and apparently became a star student. In 1767, at the age of thirteen, he drew a writing sample, a design of ovals around the words “Viva la Plume,” that’s now part of the Abiah Holbrook collection at Harvard’s Houghton Library.

The following year, William went to work as the assistant to Master John Tileston at the North Writing School in Boston’s North End. He was probably no more than a few months older than the top class in the school. I suspect a large part of his job was cutting pens for the younger boys. The town allocated £34 to Tileston for William’s work, or two-thirds of what it usually paid a full-grown assistant teacher, or “usher.”

In December 1774, Dall turned twenty-one, no longer a minor. He was already seeking to earn some extra money for himself with this advertisement in the 26 Sept Boston Gazette:

Writing and Arithmetic
To be taught in Evenings.
The School to be open’d 1st Monday in October next,
at the Writing School House in Queen-Street,
and to be continued for the Season.
Where due Care will be taken for Instruction in its various Branches as usual, and it is hoped will meet with a like Acceptance, which shall be the Aim of the Subscriber, as Assistant in one of the public Schools.
WILLIAM DALL, Jun.

Six and a half months later, the war began, and Boston’s schools closed. The majority of the schoolteachers sided with the Patriots and left town, seeking some way to support themselves.

Dall went to New Haven, Connecticut, and in the 14 June 1775 Connecticut Gazette announced:

Writing & Arithmetick

William Dall, Respectfully informs the Public, That he has opened school, in the small building adjoining Deacon Abraham Abgur’s house; where youth will be taught the above branches in the most concise and methodical manner:—

He flatters himself, that he shall be able to give satisfaction, as he had been employ’d by the town of Boston, in one of the public schools, for several years past, and hopes he shall merit approbation, as he is determin’d to exert every faculty for the improvement of those put under his care.

N B. Reading and spelling likewise taught at said school.

After the British military left Boston, Dall returned and worked in the public schools until 1777. However, with a much smaller population than before the war, the town didn’t need so many teachers.

Dall became a merchant instead. In 1779 he was the first employer of Thomas Handysyd Perkins, who later became wildly successful in the China trade and opium business. In April 1790, Dall advertised “a general assortment of Spring Goods,” mostly cloth, just imported on the ship Neptune. The 1796 Boston directory listed him as owning a shop on Orange Street and a house on Washington Street.

In 1781 Dall married Mary Parker in the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper’s church; they had two children together, but she died in 1783. In 1791 he married Rebecca Keen in Pembroke, her home town; they had five children.

Dall served as a militia captain in Boston. In 1787 he became a member of the Ancient & Honorable Artillery Company, but he never held any office in that private group.

William Dall died on 18 Sept 1829. Some of his correspondence with his sons William and James after 1810 is in the University of Massachusetts library. The Bernard & S. Dean Levy galleries have recently offered portraits of Dall (thumbnail above; note that he’s holding a pen) and his second wife.