The Documented Life of Hezekiah Wyman

There really was a Hezekiah Wyman in Middlesex County on 19 Apr 1775. In fact, there were two, father and son.

The son was born in Woburn in 1747 and married in Weston in 1770. Daniel S. Lamson’s History of the Town of Weston (1913) lists this Hezekiah Wyman as marching with the Weston militia company on 19 April and serving seven days in all. But he was only twenty-eight years old, presumably far from having white hair. So we have to focus on his father.

At the start of this series of postings, what seems like so many weeks ago, I quoted David H. Fischer’s Paul Revere’s Ride: “On the morning of April 19, 1775, Hezekiah Wyman turned fifty-five.” I suspect that was a misreading of a sentence in Henry Smith Chapman’s History of Winchester (1936): “Hezekiah was fifty-five on the morning of the Lexington alarm.” Chapman meant only that Wyman was that age, not that he turned fifty-five on 19 April.

But Chapman’s math was wrong. The vital records of Woburn, published in 1890, say that Hezekiah Wyman was born on 5 Aug 1720. He was therefore fifty-four years old during the Battle of Lexington and Concord. Not “sixty years last November,” as “The White Horseman” says.

This Hezekiah Wyman was also living in the southern part of Woburn, which later became Winchester. But according to “The White Horseman,” he lived within sight of Lexington common: “the window of [his] house overlooked the ground where these murders were committed.”

Samuel Sewall’s History of Woburn (1868), one of the best nineteenth-century local histories of Middlesex villages and towns, has only one thing to say about this Hezekiah Wyman’s military service. As of 1777 he had been called up for service, but had either served or paid for a substitute. Sewall recorded no details about him on 19 Apr 1775, and his name doesn’t appear on the muster lists of Woburn’s companies that day.

Is there any detail that the real Hezekiah Wyman of Woburn shares with the hero of “The White Horseman”? Chris Hurley kindly sent me this quotation from Wyman’s will, which is docket #25880 in the Middlesex County Probate records:

I give unto my son Daniel my pair of red Oxen, my Stears coming two Years old, one red & two speckled Cows, & three Heifers one coming three, & two coming two years old, and my white mare

So Hezekiah Wyman really did have a white horse. He wrote that will shortly before dying in 1779.

TOMORROW: The literary life of Hezekiah Wyman.

Twitter Feed, 1-7 June 2010

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Fichter to Speak on So Great a Proffit

Prof. James R. Fichter of Lingnan University in Hong Kong is speaking at three New England historic sites this month on his book So Great a Proffit: How the East Indies Trade Transformed Anglo-American Capitalism. Here’s a review in The New Republic.

Britain started trading with east Asia through the East India Company in the 1600s, and that economic and political link eventually led to major battles on the subcontinent in the Seven Years’ War and War of American Independence, and to the Boston Tea Party.

After independence, American merchants found themselves shut out of the British Empire’s trading system. (Some of them had apparently not thought through what “independence” would mean.) Among the risky new business ventures they tried was the China Trade.

Fichter’s first venue is the Salem Maritime National Historic Site’s visitor center on Sunday, 13 June, at 2:00 P.M., which makes sense since Salem was a center of America’s China Trade. Among the pioneering merchants was Elias Hasket Derby, who had marched with the Essex County militia on 19 Apr 1775, arguing the whole way with his colonel, Timothy Pickering, about whether they should march faster.

On Wednesday, 16 June, at 7:00 P.M., Fichter will speak at the Forbes House Museum in Milton, in an event co-sponsored by the Shirley-Eustis House Association. That Milton mansion was built by Robert Bennet Forbes, who started work for his opium-trading uncle Thomas Handysyd Perkins in 1816 at the age of twelve. The lecture is free, but seating is limited, so the organizers request an R.S.V.P. There will be refreshments supplied by Prof. Fichter’s publisher, Harvard University Press.

Finally, Fichter will cross state lines on Thursday, 17 June, at 5:00 P.M. and talk at the Rhode Island Historical Society’s John Brown House Museum at 52 Power Street in Providence. In 1787 Brown sent the General Washington to Canton with a cargo of “anchors, cannon shot, bar iron, sheet copper, ginseng…, tar, spermaceti candles,” and several types of alcohol, thus launching Rhode Island’s direct trade with east Asia.

“An old woman, called Mother Barberick”

“The White Horseman,” the 1835 story in The Boston Pearl and Literary Digest, describes the surrender of a bunch of British soldiers on 19 Apr 1775 this way:

The party of soldiers who had the baggage in charge, ran to a pond and plunging their muskets into the water, surrendered themselves to an old woman, called Mother Barberick, who was at that time digging roots in an adjacent field. A party of Americans recaptured the gallant Englishmen from Mother Barberick, and placed them in safe keeping.

This was supposed to have happened in the western village of Cambridge called Menotomy, yet there’s no one in the Cambridge or modern Arlington records named “Barberick.”

But there is a family named Batherick, Bathrick, and Baverick, depending on the document. When the Rev. Samuel Abbott Smith collected versions of this incident in 1864, and Dr. Benjamin and William R. Cutter wrote their family and town histories around the same time, they all called the old woman “Mother Batherick.” They also said she had been out digging dandelions when the redcoats approached her. Other authors found that last detail too hard to believe.

In 1900, Edward Wheelwright of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts guessed that this old woman was Ruth Batherick, born Ruth Hook and married to John Batherick in 1747, when she was about thirty. That was six months after the death of his previous wife and seven months before the birth of their first child. Ruth and John’s first three children died before the age of seven, but Lydia (born 1752) and Ruth (born 1754) survived.

John Batherick died in 1769, leaving his widow and children from two marriages, who all seem to have been poor. One of his grandchildren was Phebe, born in 1757; according to Wheelwright, she was “bound out to John Wilson at the age of seven years” and continued to work for that extended family until she died in 1837. On 25 Sept 1773 John’s daughter Lydia Batherick gave birth to a son named as “Melotto” in the town records; that child was probably bound out as well.

The widow Ruth, who was Phebe’s stepmother and Lydia’s mother, died in the Cambridge poorhouse on 18 Sept 1795, aged 78.

Wheelwright knew Phebe Batherick when he was a child, and remembered her “compounding a nauseous liquid which she called dire drink and in which dandelions was one of the ingredients.” The term “dire drink” was a common form of “diet drink,” which Dr. Samuel Johnson defined as “medicated liquors; drink brewed with medicinal ingredients.” John Locke used the term metaphorically. William Thomas Brande’s 1842 Dictionary of Science, Literature, & Art defines diet-drinks as:

Alterative decoctions taken in considerable quantities; such as decoction of sarsaparilla, sassafras, dandelion, &c.

So it would have been quite easy for people who knew Phebe Batherick to imagine her step-grandmother out collecting dandelions on 19 Apr 1775. And perhaps she was.

Wheelwright said Phebe Batherick often spoke of her own memories of 19 April. In a 1880 speech John W. Candler also described hearing stories “from an old nurse, Phoebe Bathrick, of West Cambridge, who was sixty-two years a servant and dear friend in our family.” Candler recalled:

Before I was able to read the history, we children gathered about her, long years ago, to listen to her vivid recital of what that revolutionary year witnessed. We were with her when she was awakened in the night by the heavy tramp of the Redcoats as they passed my grandmother’s home on the road to Lexington. We were with her in the morning when the children were crowded into the ox-cart, and carried down to Spy Pond, away from the main street; and we were with her again in the day when she went back to look at the Redcoats with their glistening bayonets. And we went with her to see the dead soldier lying in the ditch, and when the sun went down we were taken back to the house that had been sacked by the British troops.

Though no one recalled Phebe talking about her step-grandmother capturing redcoats, she definitely contributed to Menotomy’s oral history of the Revolution.

The author of “The White Horseman” linked his (or her) story of Hezekiah Wyman to that tradition by stating that Wyman helped to ambush the British supply wagons and scare the soldiers into surrendering. The magazine tale called the old woman “Mother Barberick,” suggesting its writer was working off an oral tradition, not from a written source or close contact with the Bathericks.

So was that writer using already circulating stories to make a fictional hero named Hezekiah Wyman seem more real? Or was Wyman’s tale, like those of Ammi Cutter and Batherick, actually rooted in preceding tradition, and the writer embellished it?

COMING UP: Tracking Wyman from Lexington and Cambridge to Woburn.

Ammi Cutter and the Old Men of Menotomy

Yesterday I quoted the part of “The White Horseman,” the earliest known story about Hezekiah Wyman on 19 Apr 1775, which makes it also the earliest known story about Ammi Cutter on that same day.

We know that there really was a man named Ammi Cutter in the western part of Cambridge, now called Arlington. The Independent Chronicle newspaper for 1-8 Feb 1776 has an advertisement from “Ammi Cutter of Menotomy” about a two-year-old red steer he’d found.

Ammi Cutter (1733-1795) was a miller and farmer on his third wife, the former Hannah Holden. Like Asahel and Abigail Porter, the Cutters got married in Samuel Perley’s church in Seabrook, New Hampshire; Massachusetts couples went to that neighboring colony if they wanted to marry quickly with no questions asked. In Ammi’s case, the questions would have been:

• Isn’t Hannah the younger sister of your second wife, who died sixteen months ago?
• Are you sure you’ll be able to get home before the baby comes?

The marriage took place on 27 Oct 1774. Hannah gave birth to Joshua Cutter on 1 December.

There was, in fact, another Ammi Cutter in Menotomy at the time: the first one’s son (1755-1830). He was “a large man, broad in chest,” who at nineteen almost certainly marched with the town’s regular militia company on 19 Apr 1775. According to the family history, he “is said to have disabled three British foemen on the retreat from Concord.”

And that leads us from the written vital records into unverifiable oral traditions. In his early forties (and with an infant at home), the older Ammi Cutter was reportedly exempted, along with other older men, from marching off to confront the redcoats. Instead, he and a bunch of “exempts,” some of them war veterans, stayed in Menotomy and ambushed a British supply convoy.

How did that story come down to us? The first hint comes in “The White Horseman,” which credits “Ammi Cutter” with masterminding the attack. That 1835 story says, “Ammi had planted about fifty old rusty muskets under a stone wall, with their muzzles directed toward the road.”

A more detailed story appears in the Rev. Samuel Abbot Smith’s history of west Cambridge on 19 Apr 1775, published in 1864. Based on interviews with local residents about what they’d heard growing up, Smith said that the “old men…in all about twelve” chose David Lamson to lead that attack, but he credited Cutter with being part of it. For different parts of that story Smith cited Dr. Benjamin Cutter (1803-1864), the older Ammi’s grandson; Mrs. Lydia Peirce, actually alive in 1775; a Miss Bradshaw, granddaughter of the parish minister in 1775; and Col. Thomas Russell, grandson of Jason Russell.

Smith told two other stories involving Ammi Cutter, citing Dr. Cutter. The same stories appear in two books the doctor drafted and his son William R. Cutter finished: A History of the Cutter Family in New England (1871) and History of the Town of Arlington (1880). According to those books:

• After Lt. Edward Thoroton Gould was captured while riding to Boston for medical care, men took him to Cutter’s house. (Incidentally, Gould would have his own quickie wedding when he returned to Britain.)
• Cutter told Jason Russell that it was dangerous to try to shoot regulars from his house near the road. Russell persisted, and was killed.

That makes Ammi Cutter appear crucial to much of what happened in Menotomy on 19 Apr 1775. It may be safer to say that his family was crucial in preserving and publishing the town’s stories.

Because of the contemporaneous reports and the number of people in Arlington who recalled hearing about the event, it’s clear that a group of Menotomy men did ambush British supply wagon. (The “Old Men of Menotomy” historical marker appears above, courtesy of the Historical Marker Database.) Ammi Cutter was most likely in that group, and his family definitely passed down the tale.

One descendant, also named Ammi Cutter and born in 1777, became a prominent merchant in Boston and a captain in the town militia. If he told the story about his grandfather on lots of occasions in Boston, it could have become a well-known anecdote of 19 Apr 1775, attached to the name Ammi Cutter, even before it was printed. And that’s just as “The White Horseman” presents it.

COMING UP: What about “Mother Barberick”?

“Lingered for a Moment to Aid in a Plot”

In summarizing “The White Horseman,” the first published account of Hezekiah Wyman’s ride on 19 Apr 1775, I left out part of a paragraph that describes what he did in (west) Cambridge:

Hezekiah had only lingered for a moment to aid in a plot which had been laid by Ammi Cutter, for taking the baggage waggons and their guards. Ammi had planted about fifty old rusty muskets under a stone wall, with their muzzles directed toward the road. As the waggons arrived opposite this battery, the muskets were discharged, and eight horses, together with some soldiers, were sent out of existence. The party of soldiers who had the baggage in charge, ran to a pond and plunging their muskets into the water, surrendered themselves to an old woman, called Mother Barberick, who was at that time digging roots in an adjacent field. A party of Americans recaptured the gallant Englishmen from Mother Barberick, and placed them in safe keeping.

This apparently refers to an incident reported as early as April 1775 in Massachusetts newspapers:

At Menotomy, a few of our men attacked a party of twelve of the enemy, (carrying stores and provisions to the Troops,) killed one of them, wounded several, made the rest prisoners, and took possession of all their arms, stores, provisions, &c., without any loss on our side.

The Rev. William Gordon (shown above) also described that episode in his 1788 history of the Revolution:

Before they [the redcoats] reached this place [Menotomy], a few Americans, headed by the Rev. Mr. [Phillips] Payson, of Chelsea, who till now had been extremely moderate, attacked a party of twelve soldiers, carrying stores to the retreating troops, killed one, wounded several, made the whole prisoners, and gained possession of their arms and stores, without any loss whatever to themselves.

”The White Horseman” thus connects its hero, Hezekiah Wyman, to an already known anecdote of 19 Apr 1775.

In doing so, the writer drops a couple of names: “Ammi Cutter” and “Mother Barberick.” The text doesn’t introduce Ammi Cutter with any detail, implying that readers should already recognize him. The narrator, so overwrought in other passages, goes into little detail about this capture of wagons and men, again implying that many readers had already heard the full story. Did the writer pose Wyman next to those figures to add verisimilitude to an otherwise long-haired and overly interesting narrative? That’s a common tactic for writers of historical fiction.

Yet as far as I can tell, the piece in The Boston Pearl was the first printed source to describe the soldiers dunking their muskets and surrendering to an old woman, and the first to attach the names of “Ammi Cutter” and “Mother Barberick” to the attack. Perhaps there’s an earlier publication that doesn’t show up in the digital databases I searched. But that situation implies that the author of “The White Horseman” did draw on at least one circulating oral tradition about 19 Apr 1775.

TOMORROW: Ammi Cutter and the “Old Men of Menotomy.”

Hezekiah Wyman “Picking Cherries”

When we last left Hezekiah Wyman in “The White Horseman” (1835), he had assembled his rusty-barreled musket, mounted his white horse, and rode out to kill British regulars.

According to that story, Wyman’s first kills are on the road between Concord and his own town of Lexington. Then the withdrawing redcoats meet up with Earl Percy’s reinforcements, and the combined forces “kept off the Americans with their artillery while they took a hasty meal,” which agrees with historical accounts of the day. (Curiously, Wyman shows no worry about his aged wife, last seen in their house within sight of Lexington common.)

Then the regulars resume their march east, and Wyman resumes his sniping:

…the powerful white horse was seen careering at full speed over the hills, with the dauntless old Yankee on his back.

“Ha!” cried the soldiers, “there comes that old fellow again, on the white horse! Look out for yourselves, for one of us has got to die, in spite of fate.” And one of them did die, for Hezekiah’s aim was true, and his principles of economy would not admit of his wasting powder or ball.

It wasn’t just revenge driving Wyman—it was good old Yankee thrift!

There’s a short interlude in Cambridge that I’ll get to tomorrow, and then “The White Horseman” ends:

Even after the worried troops had entered Charlestown, there was no escape for them from the deadly bullets of the restless veteran. The appalling white horse would suddenly and unexpectedly dash out from a brake, or from behind a rock, and the whizzing of his bullet was the precursor of death. He followed the enemy to their very boats; and then turning his horse’s head, returned unharmed to his household.

“Where have you been, husband?”

“Picking cherries,” replied Hezekiah—but he forgot to say that he had first made cherries of the red coats, by putting the Pits into them.

Ba dump bump!

There’s evidence for riders harassing the British troops on their way east from Lexington, but I know of nothing to support the notion of mounted snipers continuing to attack those soldiers after they reached the easily-guarded Charlestown peninsula and prepared to board boats to Boston. That last scene’s impossible to believe, and few authors repeat it.

If that text was all there was to Hezekiah Wyman, people would have little problem taking his story as fiction. It appeared in a literary magazine, the writer made no claims about truth or sources, and the action and details are clearly chosen for narrative effect.

“The White Horseman” takes the prevailing American understanding of the Battle of Lexington and Concord—that the Middlesex farmers were peaceful until roused by an invasion of bloodthirsty soldiers, and then they became frightfully efficient warriors—and boils it down into a single figure. That’s what H. W. Longfellow did in his poem “Paul Revere’s Ride.” That’s often what a lot of good historical fiction does.

Yet there’s still the possibility that “The White Horseman” was a fictionalized, exaggerated version of a real incident. Paul Revere really did warn a lot of Middlesex villages and farms, for instance. Back in April I analyzed the story of Samuel Whittemore, another old man credited with shooting more than his share of British soldiers. The Whittemore story seems outlandish, was exaggerated in some details, and grew more impressive as time went on. Yet its core looks accurate.

So is there any evidence that the writer of “The White Horseman” drew on little-known anecdotes from local history? And is there any evidence to support Wyman’s existence and activity on 19 Apr 1775?

TOMORROW: Wyman in West Cambridge.

(Powerful white horse photographed by PhotographyGal123, via Flickr under a Creative Commons license.)

“An Old Man by the Name of Hezekiah Wyman”

As I discussed on Tuesday, the story about Hezekiah Wyman that appeared in The Boston Pearl and Literary Digest in 1835, titled “The White Horseman,” isn’t accurate history. The story’s first main character, a young militia captain named Roe who dies on Lexington common, is fictional.

However, the story is still based on history. The anonymous author was obviously inspired by what he (or she) had read about the actual shooting on Lexington common on 19 Apr 1775. Could that writer have also borrowed details of the actual Hezekiah Wyman’s activities?

If so, “The White Horseman” certainly built on those details in a high literary style. The paragraph that tells us of the death of “Captain Roe” continues:

There was an old man by the name of Hezekiah Wyman, the window of whose house overlooked the ground where these murders were committed; and no sooner did he see his brave countrymen fall, than he inwardly devoted himself to revenge the unhallowed slaughter.

“Wife,” said he “is there not an old gun barrel, somewhere in the garret?”

“I believe there was,” said she, “but pray what do you want with it?”

“I should like to see if it is fit for service,” replied he, “If 1 am not mistaken, it is good enough to drill a hole through a rig’lar.”

“Mercy on me, husband! are you going mad? An old man like you—sixty years last November—to talk of going to war! I should think you had seen enough of fighting the British already. There lies poor Captain Roe and his men bleeding on the grass before your eyes. What could you do with a gun?”

The old man made no reply, but ascended the stairs, and soon returned with a rusty gun barrel in his hands. In spite of his wife’s incessant din, he went to his shop, made a stock for it, and put it in complete order for use. He then saddled a strong white horse, and mounted him. He gave the steed the rein, and directed his course toward Concord.

He met the British troops returning, and was not long in perceiving that there was a wasp’s nest about their ears. He dashed so closely upon the flank of the enemy that his horse’s neck was drenched with the spouting blood of the wounded soldiers. Then reining back his snorting steed to reload, he dealt a second death upon the ranks with his never failing bullet. The tall gaunt form of the assailant, his grey locks floating on the breeze, and the color of his steed, soon distinguished him from the other Americans, and the regulars gave him the name of “Death on the pale horse.”

Obviously we’re in the realm of myth here. Wyman makes his own weapon from “an old gun barrel” and a new wooden stock. He must not have been shooting lately—yet he turns out to be a crack marksman, commanding a “never failing bullet,” and never getting hit himself. And all to avenge an “unhallowed slaughter” that takes place outside his very window.

I see Mel Gibson in the role, once all his hair turns white. Then again, he’s already tried this character in The Patriot; that movie wasn’t historically accurate, but it matches the tone of this story, doesn’t it?

TOMORROW: Hezekiah Wyman finishes his ride.

George Washington’s “Gods”

I’m going to keep Hezekiah Wyman waiting in the wings one more morning in order to note the scads of material on Peter Lillback’s self-published book George Washington’s Sacred Fire that Jonathan Rowe and his colleagues have been throwing up over at American Creation.

In particular, Brad Hart posted an analysis of Lillback’s appendix titled “George Washington’s Written Prayers.” At the outset Hart notes, “this collection of documents are not actual prayers but instead are an assortment of letters, general orders and presidential declarations, which Lillback passes off as Washington’s ‘written prayers.’” Then Hart shows that Washington most often used the term “Providence” and never the name “Jesus Christ.”

That in turn put me in mind of a line from Jeffry H. Morrison’s The Political Philosophy of George Washington, published last year by Johns Hopkins University Press, citing an earlier biographer:

Douglas Southall Freeman dryly noted that over the course of his life, Washington referred to Providence alternately as “he, she, and it,”—he being God, she being lady Fortune, and it some mysterious force that science might someday explain.

Washington also referred to that force as plural. On 15 Mar 1779, the commander-in-chief wrote this to Gov. Thomas Nelson of Virginia:

Unanimity in our Councils, disinterestedness in our pursuits, and steady perseverence in our national duty, are the only means to avoid misfortunes; if they come upon us after these we shall have the consolation of knowing that we have done our best, the rest is with the Gods.

That Washington was comfortable alluding to multiple deities like a common pagan discomfited Jared Sparks, compiler of the first edition of the President’s papers. He edited the end of that passage to read: “If they come upon us after these, we shall have the consolation of knowing that we have done our best. The rest is with God.”

Google Books shows me only one study of Washington that quotes this passage. That’s the book where I first saw it myself, Peter Henriques’s Realistic Visionary: A Portrait of George Washington, published by the University of Virginia Press in 2006. As its title suggests, Henriques’s goal was create an accurate picture of Washington, not just to examine the man’s religious views and discover that—what a surprise!—they match his own.

Quite a number of books have been published in the last few years focused on Washington’s religious thinking in that way. Yet oddly enough none appears to quote his remark about “the Gods.” For example, in Washington’s God: Religion, Liberty, and the Father of Our Country, Michael and Jana Novak quote other letters from Washington to Thomas Nelson multiple times, but not this one. I guess that quotation would appeal most to believers in plural gods.

Twitter Feed, 23-31 May 2010

• @jmadelman Yes, Texas history standards still include ancient Rome, but only the REPUBLICAN period. #stuffimakeup #
• Current reading – R. Arthur Bowler, LOGISTICS & THE FAILURE OF THE BRITISH ARMY IN AMERICA, 1775-1783. #
• "An army of up to 65,000 operating thousands of miles from its supply base…No European government had faced such a task since Roman times." #
• Profile of Elizabeth (Peck) Perkins, widowed businesswoman in Revolutionary Boston: bit.ly/d0a3un #
• NY TIMES columnist David Brooks pits Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke against each other: nyti.ms/cLZvbg #
• RT @PaulRevereHouse: Slight change for Sat, June 5 event – Henry Cooke, Tailor extraordinaire will be at the museum bit.ly/aRxUp9 #
• George & Martha Washington juggling their household staff in Philadelphia to ensure those slaves didn't become free: bit.ly/aAmB4U #
• From @lucyinglis, a profile of Peter the "Wild Boy" (c1710-1785), brought to England in 1725: bit.ly/9KBl8Q #
• Ladies' high hair fashions in Paris, 1777: bit.ly/bcwJE7 Of course, Paris was a long way from recently Puritan wartime Boston. #
• RT @2palaver: Concord lodge stumbles on Mason 'jewels' made by Paul Revere? bit.ly/9dIZGb // There were other silversmith Masons #
• RT @russeltarr: The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913: Great history resource: tinyurl.com/lrxk2w #
• RT @PaulRevereHouse: To honor the 150th anniversary of "Paul Revere's Ride" our summer Teacher Workshop features poetry bit.ly/a1TBUd #
• Someone actually made it thru the Revolutionary War with the name Polycarpus Snell: bit.ly/90Ts2q (Looks like a MAYFLOWER descendant) #
• Looking for iron cannon cast during Revolutionary War at Salisbury, Conn.: bit.ly/bnHyqc #
• Abigail Adams talks politics with Dr Benjamin Rush in an 1800 letter just bought by Massachusetts Historical Socy: bit.ly/amLhy6 #
• RT @JBD1: folks inventorying Hancock's library got bored. Entries toward end lump titles together (i.e. "Shakespeare and Spectator"), &c. #
• Via @JBD1, podcast lecture on the reconstruction of Thomas Jefferson's library: bit.ly/ag7vJE #
• BOSTON GLOBE urges Walpole, Mass., football fans to make mascots of Rebels of 1775, not those of 1861: bit.ly/9IVpUT #
• Honored US 6th Amendment and Massachusetts Declaration of Rights today: showed up for jury duty. #
• .@AlPike: "Walpole could've opted for Federalist Rebels of 1814." // True, but Walpole has a tradition of winning. #
• Call for papers for journal issue on Seven Years' War in a global perspective: bit.ly/czFrgO #
• From @LizB, review of two children's books about George Washington, George III, and spying: bit.ly/94BFSF #
• BOSTON GLOBE column with links on investigating Benjamin Franklin's kite-flying experiment: bit.ly/9JxYK7 #
• Pvt Augustus Barrett of the British 22d Regiment, the British 24th Regiment—and the 16th Massachusetts Regiment: bit.ly/aeNMYh #
• Visiting John Hancock's younger brother, who got a financial bailout and later a valuable Continental job: bit.ly/a8hFwl #
• Parallels between the politicization of debate over climate science with politicization of debate over relativity? bit.ly/c5DAIK #
• RT @wceberly: 256 yrs today, May 28, 1754, Lieutenant Colonel George Washington begins French & Indian War bit.ly/bz6Ys4 #
• RT @history_geek: Betsy Ross, Out of the Parlor bit.ly/bGPA3G #
• RT @jmadelman: Nifty take RT @KevinLevin Interesting post on historical movies at "Past in the Present" bit.ly/aPijSZ #
• RT @jmadelman: The post has John Adams about right on creating an environment, even if the inaccuracies and shortcomings bother me. #
• RT @universalhub: What if Boston had become an island city? bit.ly/9vex0x #
• RT @amhistorymuseum: Today in 1790: Rhode Island becomes 13th state to ratify Constitution. Spinning frame from 1790: ow.ly/1RmUO #
• May need to visit Museum of London during my next trip: bit.ly/bKctty #
• A regular podcast for living-history and SCA reenactors: bit.ly/b9HZWp #
• Rick Beyer & Lexington Historical Socy's FIRST SHOT film won award from American Association of State & Local History! bit.ly/d1C3cO #
• Learned that artist Jef Czekaj deserves credit for school-play concept in UNITE OR DIE picture book on Constitution: bit.ly/6nRaB #
• @historianess I ADORE Sir John Soane's Museum. I subject all my relatives to visiting it. That way they understand my decorating tastes. #
• RT @history_book: Sublime Invention: Ballooning in Europe, 1783-1820 (The Enlightenment World) - by Michael R. Lynn. amzn.to/bg4YYM #
• NY TIMES review of Jack Rakove's REVOLUTIONARIES: nyti.ms/duXmd5 #

The Mythical Captain Roe

I’ve been quoting from “The White Horseman,” an item that appeared in The Boston Pearl and Literary Digest on 22 Aug 1835. The first scenes of this story focus our attention on an unnamed girl and her beloved, a young militia officer called Captain Roe. He is killed in the British volley on Lexington common.

Except that no captain was killed on Lexington common; Capt. John Parker was in command, and survived. No one named Roe was killed, wounded, or, so far as we know, standing on Lexington common. No American named Roe was killed in battle anywhere on 19 Apr 1775.

A couple of months ago some researchers suggested to me that “Roe” could be a corruption of the name “Munroe.” There was a militia officer named Munroe killed at Lexington: Ensign Robert Munroe. However, while the story’s “Captain Roe” is a young unmarried man, Robert Munroe was sixty-two years old with a wife and grown children.

Other details of the start of “The White Horseman” don’t match the historical record, either. “Cambridge boys” did not march to Concord before the British troops. “Many squads of Americans” did not rush west past the Lexington militia. The British musket balls hit far fewer than “nearly half” of those men.

In sum, “The White Horseman” is not historically accurate. The unnamed “Soldier of the Revolution” who wrote it didn’t even try to be as historically accurate as possible; it wouldn’t have been hard in Boston in 1835 to find the names of the first casualties at Lexington, or to read accounts of the fight assembled by Elias Phinney or others.

The Boston Pearl writer fictionalized the famous story of the shooting at Lexington with new characters, details, and dialogue, in order to lay out a sentimental tale of young lovers torn apart by the nasty redcoats. Which naturally raises the question of what other details from “The White Horseman” we’re meant to believe.

COMING UP: Hezekiah Wyman enters the scene.

Of a Sentimental Nature

In examining the story of Hezekiah Wyman as it first appeared in The Boston Pearl and Literary Gazette, one detail that stands out for me is context. The Pearl was a literary magazine.

The first item in the 22 Aug 1835 issue was “A Love Tale” about a nice woman named Susan Black who finds a husband at age forty. The Wyman story is followed by the third letter in a series from “A Buckeye,” this one headed “Western Poets—Otway Curry.” After a couple of Curry poems the magazine prints a new poem called “The Unforgotten” from a Portsmouth writer signing herself Rebecca.

That content confirms how one bibliographical database has described the Boston Pearl:

A literary miscellany edited by Isaac Pray which pirated a good deal of its material. It published original and selected tales and poems, many of them of a sentimental nature, moral and humorous essays, legends, literary notices, and historical, biographical, and travel sketches. In addition, it contained much miscellaneous material and music for piano.

Thus, though the Pearl published “historical” sketches, they were a small part of its content. Its readers expected the magazine’s items to be literary foremost.

And indeed “The White Horseman” doesn’t present Hezekiah Wyman’s story in historical terms. Aside from the credit “By a Soldier of the Revolution,” the text offers no clue about sources or authenticity—no indication that the writer has spoken to witnesses or descendants, no quotations from documents, no explanations of how the writer came to know the story’s details.

Furthermore, the piece is in high literary style, starting in medias res:

The heavy tramp of the regulars, as their solid columns moved amid the darkness toward Concord, was heard with indignation by the waking inhabitants of the country.

At first the tale centers on “a large building a few miles below Lexington,” where “The girls assisted their brothers in putting on their equipments, and the old men saddled the horses for his sons.” In comes a local militia officer, “apparently, under thirty years of age; of middling stature, and dark eyes, which now gleamed with fire.” At his entrance, “one young and blooming lass…hung her head, and sighed deeply.”

The officer turns to go. The young woman sighs, “Not one word has he spoken to me.” But then—

Quick as thought, the young Captain sprung to the ground, and giving her a hearty embrace, promised to be with her in a few hours. No answer was returned by the despondent fair one, but she clenched her hands and raised her palid [sic] face to Heaven, as if engaged in inward prayer.—

There she stood in statue-like silence until the sound of the departing horses’ hoofs had died away. Then turning to her mother, who had remained at her side, she softly said, ‘I shall never see him more!’

And the lass turns out to be right. According to “The White Horseman,” this officer positions his company in Lexington “behind the village church” to be in position for “harrassing the enemy if they should attempt any damage.” Other companies rush past to join their comrades at Concord, but these Lexington men stand their ground.

Just as the morning dawned, the hasty tramp of men was heard by the little band, and in a moment afterward, the British commander wheeled his steed upon the plain where they stood, and waving his sword, commanded them to throw down their arms and disperse. The Americans were not fast in acknowledging the authority of the epauletted caitiff, and, in an instant, a shower of British balls cut down nearly half of the little company, and put the rest to flight. Captain Roe was among the slain.

TOMORROW: Captain Roe?!

Bringing Up the Boston Pearl

Investigating what Hezekiah Wyman did on 19 Apr 1775 meant finding the story about him published in the Boston Pearl sometime before 1840. That’s all that Henry Smith Chapman’s History of Winchester could say about the tale’s earliest source.

Not very long ago, that would have required someone to find every issue of the Boston Pearl from that period and read through them, hoping not to miss anything. This was time-consuming work with limited rewards. Usually it was left to the class of people called “grad students.”

Nowadays, digital archives make searching much, much quicker—though still not perfect, the quirks of rare publications, old type, and optical character recognition software being as they are.

In this case, a couple of years back I used Readex’s Archive of Americana service to find an item about Hezekiah Wyman in the Vermont Gazette for 6 Oct 1835; it was titled “The White Horseman” and said to be reprinted “From the Boston Pearl.” More recently I found the same article in the 14 Oct 1835 Rhode Island Republican.

Since then, Google Books digitized the first volume of the Army and Navy Chronicle, which reprinted “The White Horseman” on 8 Oct 1835. That cluster of reprints suggests that the story had appeared in the Pearl some weeks earlier.

Then it was up to Charles Bahne, using another database at a local university library, to find the original. “The White Horseman” made its debut on pages 398-9 of the 22 Aug 1835 issue of the Boston Pearl and Literary Gazette, credited to “A Soldier of the Revolution” and labeled as “Original” to that magazine. Charlie and I have gone through those early texts and found no significant differences among them.

TOMORROW: But there are some telling details.

Hunting for Hezekiah Wyman

The last tale of the Battle of Lexington and Concord I’ll address this season is one I first came across in David H. Fischer’s Paul Revere’s Ride. That book says:

Many on both sides remembered a middle-aged militiaman named Hezekiah Wyman, from the outlying hamlet of Woburn that is now the town of Winchester. This day was his birthday. On the morning of April 19, 1775, Hezekiah Wyman turned fifty-five. His wife told him he was too old to fight, but he saddled his “strong white mare” and galloped away. He collided with the British column on the Road east of Lexington, fired at an advancing Regular and brought him down.

Hezekiah Wyman became highly visible on the battlefield—a “tall, gaunt man” with long gray locks, mounted on a white horse. The British infantry saw him many times from Lexington to Charlestown, and grew to dread the sight of him.

Wyman was a crack shot. Again and again he rode within range of the British vanguard, jumped off his horse, and laid the long barrel of his musket across the saddle. As the Regulars approached he took careful aim, and squeezed off a shot with slow deliberation. Then he remounted and rode ahead to a new position—a grim, gray-headed messenger of mortality, mounted on death’s pale horse.

I remember being struck by how cinematic this episode was. Imagine the scene through the eyes of British soldiers: a white horse with its tall rider galloping across the hillsides parallel to the road. The soldiers anxiously watch the man bend his course slightly until he comes within the range they know will be fatal to one of them.

At that time, I wasn’t tracing footnotes, and there weren’t so many great digital resources to consult as there are now. Fischer offered one citation for this paragraph, to Henry Smith Chapman’s 1936 History of Winchester.

Chapman, in turn, cited as his main source a newspaper article reprinting an item about Wyman from an issue of the Boston Pearl published sometime before 1840. Woburn/Winchester records confirm that Hezekiah Wyman existed, but say nothing about his activities on 19 Apr 1775. For that, we need to find and evaluate the earliest accounts.

TOMORROW: Diving deep for the Boston Pearl.

“I Told Them My Errand”

Soon after his ride on the night of 18-19 Apr 1775, Paul Revere wrote out a deposition describing his experiences. This is how his first draft characterized the message he carried from Boston to Lexington:

I was sent for by Docr. Joseph Warren about 10 oClock that evening, and desired, “to go to Lexington and inform Mr. Samuel Adams, and the Hon. John Hancock Esqr. that there was a number of Soldiers composed of the Light troops and Grenadiers marching to the bottom of the common, where was a number Boats to receive them, and it was supposed, that they were going to Lexington, by the way of Watertown to take them, Mess. Adams and Hancock or to Concord.”

The second draft has somewhat different wording but the same sense. Revere wrote nothing in either version about carrying a written message.

Furthermore, there are significant differences between what Revere recalled that Dr. Warren knew when he left Boston and what the Rev. Jonas Clarke of Lexington wrote a year later. Clarke said the message from Boston included an estimate (much too high) of the number of soldiers, a different location for their landing across the Charles River, and a definite statement that they were headed to Concord. Those discrepancies indicate that Clarke was not quoting a message Dr. Warren had written before Revere began his journey, but working with additional information and perhaps some hindsight.

Revere also didn’t mention carrying a written message in his 1798 letter to the Rev. Jeremy Belknap about the start of the war. In fact, in that account the silversmith wrote: “I found Messrs. Hancock and Adams at the Rev. Mr. Clarke’s; I told them my errand,” implying that he delivered the warning from Boston orally.

Revere was nearly stopped by a British mounted patrol as he left Charlestown, but in none of his accounts did he describe worrying about being caught with an incriminating document. (After officers stopped him on his way from Lexington to Concord, Revere wrote, “they first searched me for Arms.”)

The Rev. William Gordon of Roxbury, who appears to have been close to Samuel Adams, didn’t mention a letter from Dr. Warren in his early account of the day. The traditions passed down in William Dawes’s family, published in 1878, say nothing about a written message.

Instead, the evidence indicates that Dr. Warren, Revere, and their colleagues worked to set up a network of messengers whom leaders could trust without needing written confirmation. Revere had worked with Adams, Hancock, and Warren for years. Hancock knew Dawes as adjutant of the Boston militia regiment, and Dawes was somewhat active in politics.

Revere visited Lexington a few days before 18 April to prepare the ground. On his way home, he arranged for colleagues in Charlestown to send a rider west based on a signal from the Christ Church tower; obviously, that rider starting on the other side of the river couldn’t have carried a letter from Dr. Warren. But with signals arranged and relationships established, he didn’t need to. At least that’s my interpretation of the evidence.

“It Was Shrewdly Suspected”

On Tuesday I quoted the Rev. Jonas Clarke’s 1777 account of events in Lexington on 19 Apr 1775, including this passage:

Between the hours of twelve and one, on the morning of the NINETEENTH OF APRIL, we received intelligence, by express, from the Honorable JOSEPH WARREN, Esq.; at Boston, “that a large body of the king’s troops (supposed to be a brigade of about 12, or 1500) were embarked in boats from Boston, and gone over to land on Lechmere’s-Point (so called) in Cambridge: And that it was shrewdly suspected, that they were ordered to seize and destroy the stores, belonging to the colony, then deposited at Concord,” in consequence of General Gage’s unjustifiable seizure of the provincial magazine of powder at Medford, and other colony stores in several other places.

As I noted yesterday, in 1825 local historian Elias Phinney repeated most of the words Clarke had put between quotation marks. He left out a few:

• “land on”
• “(so called)”
• “shrewdly”

The latter two are phrases that stand out of Clarke’s passage because they don’t seem to belong to the night of 18-19 Apr 1775. Would Dr. Warren, racing to send crucial information to his colleagues, have been so scrupulous as to add “(so called)” to the common name of Lechmere’s Point? Would he have patted himself on the back by inserting “shrewdly”?

In the same vein, and even more tellingly, what timeframe could the word “then” refer to in the phrase “then deposited at Concord”? Clarke must have written that word in 1776 or 1777 to remind his audience of the situation back in April 1775. It wouldn’t have been part of any note Warren wrote for Samuel Adams and John Hancock to read while the troops were still marching and the stores were still deposited.

And yet the word “then” appears inside Clarke’s quotation marks, as well as Elias Phinney’s. So at the very least, we know those writers weren’t quoting an original document exactly. And it appears even more likely that Phinney got his words from Clarke, not from any note from Warren now lost.

I also think Clarke used his quotation marks to signal that he was approximating the message from Dr. Warren, not reproducing it word for word. And, since the parson never actually stated that he’d seen a written message from Boston, we have to consider the possibility that he was paraphrasing the news that Warren’s messengers had conveyed out loud.

TOMORROW: Listening to Paul Revere.

(The photograph above showed the Lexington Historical Society’s Hancock-Clarke House, where Paul Revere and William Dawes rendezvoused with Adams and Hancock, and where Clarke wrote his sermon and narrative.)

“Written Communications from Gen. Warren”?

In 1825, Elias Phinney published his History of the Battle at Lexington: on the Morning of the 19th April, 1775. Until then, Americans had remembered the men on Lexington common as being shot down without offering any threat or resistance to the British army; they were martyrs. Phinney still insisted that the redcoats had fired first, under orders from Maj. John Pitcairn, but he argued that the Lexington men had fired back, making them stalwart heroes and the event a “battle.”

Along the way, Phinney wrote:

Gen. [Joseph] Warren, ever watchful and active in devising, as he was undaunted in executing, the best measures for the safety of the country, had despatched two messengers, Col. Paul Revere and a Mr. Lincoln, with information to [John] Hancock and [Samuel] Adams. Revere passed over the ferry to Charlestown, procured a horse of the late Deacon [John] Larkin, and rode with all speed to Lexington, where he arrived a little after midnight. . . .

Shortly after, Mr. Lincoln, who had come by the way of Roxbury, arrived. They both brought written communications from Gen. Warren, “That a large body of the king’s troops, (supposed to be a brigade of twelve or fifteen hundred,) were embarked in boats from Boston, and gone over to Lechmere’s Point in Cambridge, and it was suspected, they were ordered to seize and destroy the stores belonging to the colony, then deposited at Concord.”

“Mr. Lincoln” is Phinney’s mistaken identification of William Dawes (shown above), based on the mistaken recollection of Lexington militia sergeant William Munroe fifty years after the fight. Obviously, Phinney wasn’t working with sources that named Dawes, such as Revere’s own accounts.

Phinney’s words echo what the Rev. Jonas Clarke published in 1777, quoted yesterday, but not exactly. Did both Clarke and Phinney copy from a document that doesn’t survive? If so, the differences between the two transcriptions raise questions. Either Clarke added words, or Phinney removed them. Was the estimate of British soldiers written as “12, or 1500” or “twelve or fifteen hundred,”?

I think it most likely that Phinney relied on Clarke’s published narrative, quoting the words he thought had come from “written communications from Gen. Warren,” cutting those that seemed out of place, and applying up-to-date rules for style. In other words, Phinney’s statement that Revere and “Lincoln” had carried written messages was his interpretation of Clarke’s statement, not based on actually seeing one of those documents or other independent evidence.

TOMORROW: Going back to the Rev. Mr. Clarke’s words from 1777.

“We Received Intelligence, by Express”

It’s been over a month since the anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, and I’m still working through questions related to that event. In the comments on this posting about Isaac (a.k.a. Israel) Bissell, I wrote, “Revere and Dawes didn’t take written reports out to Lexington, but Hancock and Adams knew and trusted them already.”

Charles Bahne emailed to ask about that because other researchers have written that Paul Revere and William Dawes did carry written messages from Dr. Joseph Warren. So I realized I should review the evidence and explain my conclusion.

On 19 Apr 1776, exactly one year after the battle, the Rev. Jonas Clarke of Lexington preached on the event. He was an eyewitness, had hosted Samuel Adams and John Hancock in the parsonage the night before, and was a figure of learning and authority in the town.

The following year, the Boston printing firm of Powars and Willis published Clarke’s sermon in a pamphlet subtly titled:

The Fate of Blood-thirsty Oppressors, and GOD’s tender Care of his distressed People.

A Sermon, preached at Lexington, April 19, 1776. To commemorate the MURDER, BLOODSHED and Commencement of Hostilities, between Great-Britain and America, in that Town, by a Brigade of Troops of George III, under Command of Lieutenant-Colonel SMITH, on the Nineteenth of April, 1775.

To which is added, a brief NARRATIVE of the principal Transactions of that Day.

That narrative has been published several times since.

Clarke’s narrative began:

On the evening of the eighteenth of April, 1775, we received two messages; the first verbal, the other by express, in writing, from the committee of safety, who were then sitting in the westerly part of Cambridge, directed to the Honorable JOHN HANCOCK, Esq; (who, with the Honorable SAMUEL ADAMS, Esq; was then providentially with us) informing, “that eight or nine officers of the king’s troops were seen, just before night, passing the road towards Lexington, in a musing, contemplative posture; and it was suspected they were out upon some evil design.”

(What’s boldface here was italicized in the original publication.)

A few paragraphs later, Clarke wrote:

Between the hours of twelve and one, on the morning of the NINETEENTH OF APRIL, we received intelligence, by express, from the Honorable JOSEPH WARREN, Esq.; at Boston, “that a large body of the king’s troops (supposed to be a brigade of about 12, or 1500) were embarked in boats from Boston, and gone over to land on Lechmere’s-Point (so called) in Cambridge: And that it was shrewdly suspected, that they were ordered to seize and destroy the stores, belonging to the colony, then deposited at Concord,” in consequence of General Gage’s unjustifiable seizure of the provincial magazine of powder at Medford, and other colony stores in several other places.

The phrase “by express” meant a messenger sent particularly to carry that news. Both passages use quotation marks, implying that Clarke was copying words directly from the messages he described. The first says that the Committee of Safety in Cambridge sent two messages, but only one was in writing. Did the “express, from the Honorable JOSEPH WARREN,” also bring a letter?

TOMORROW: Interpreting Clarke’s words in 1825.

Twitter Feed, 13-22 May 2010

• RT @unionparkpress: "Milch Cow" returns to Boston Common ht.ly/1KdRm #BostonCommon #Cows #
• RT @dancohen: Facebook's privacy policy is now longer than the U.S. Constitution, with 170 options: nyti.ms/ctwKJB (via @nickbilton) #
• From @lucyinglis, the street cries of Georgian London: bit.ly/c0vKx7 Probably far fewer in 1700s Boston. #
• Two Revolutionary War veterans in western Massachusetts turn to crime in 1783: bit.ly/a9899k #
• RT @jimhill: Time to paint a young Ben Franklin. #
• Photo tour of Philadelphia neighborhood with 18th-century roots: bit.ly/ay6wca #
• Thomas Jefferson's famous mammoth cheese, and its political significance: bit.ly/c603xt #
• NPR coverage of Jack Rakove's book REVOLUTIONARIES: n.pr/brOp4G #
• Tim Abbott traces the path of Henry Knox and ordnance from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston: bit.ly/drNHR2 #
• RT @bostonhistory: Just Added at Teach History: The Edwards Family Home Site in Boston's North End. tinyurl.com/36a94rd #
• "Handful of children's gravestones that name a mother, but no father. All of these are the gravestones of slaves": bit.ly/cbR8mL #
• Photos and link for Caitlin G D Hopkins's paper on Newport gravestone carver Pompe Stevens: bit.ly/9mqcZD #
• The PR campaign for Michael Bellesiles's new book is astonishing in its effrontery: bit.ly/dzgMUd #
• More on historian Stephen Ambrose's relationship with subject DD Eisenhower (via @ToddHouse via @sally_j): bit.ly/bcWBdC #
• Looking Backward waves to Dr John Jeffries, 1st US aeronaut: bit.ly/9f9aaf Long version of his life starts here: bit.ly/a7B4IV #
• .@publichistorian: Related: should I reread Archer's Goon for the thirtieth (fiftieth?) time? #yes // Of course. #
• RT @LizB: about to start SONS OF LIBERTY #comics: Revolutionary War, 2 runaway slaves...w/ superpowers. #
• .@chasingray Take care w/SONS OF LIBERTY comic. Two of that title. Marshall Poe's has no superpowers, mistaken history. bit.ly/cxdSDq #
• Reporter Joe Mozingo's search for family name takes him back to colonial Virginia slave (via @ToddHouse @InnerCompass): bit.ly/cO1HcX #
• Unskillfully but doggedly carved gravestone for a 5-yr-old child, Brooklyn, CT, 1754: bit.ly/cFmnzy #
• Conference on historical prints, fact and fiction, at Worcester in Nov 2010: bit.ly/9vmtrt #
• Exploring the engravings of Paul Revere at the American Antiquarian Society: bit.ly/cO42ux #
• RT @CLTcurator: irked that I can't find digitized version of a particular 18th c. legal manual. O the lofty expectations we have nowadays! #
• RT @PaulRevere1734: May 19th - 1766 saw Fireworks marking repeal of Stamp Act, 1780 Sky so dark by Noon I could hardly see my way h ome. #
• RT @history_book: Wellspring of Liberty: How Virginia's Religious Dissenters Helped Win the American Revolution bit.ly/b4OMJM #
• Anti-abortion movement seizing Susan B. Anthony as their own on dubious historical grounds: bit.ly/9xeE3V #
• Coming to your TV this fall—Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de la Fayette: bit.ly/dooP6K #
• "18th-c image that suggests that sexual humiliation of detainees may have deep roots in the American psyche"? bit.ly/co84Gj #
• Recent papers on tea protests, John Q. Adams's courtship, feuding Continental Navy captains & Essex County furniture: bit.ly/csxJIF #
• RT @Jurretta: History conferences can be dishwater dull. I'm willing to bet this one will be the opposite bit.ly/9EMy3E #
• @opheliacat I don't think anyone's image of Columbia in Native dress inspired disguises at Tea Party. Men just wanted to hide their faces. #
• @opheliacat Then newspapers emphasized "Mohawks" as a way to talk about tea rioters as somehow separate from town. Image stuck and grew. #
• @opheliacat Upcoming book by @bencarp will say more about Native symbolism at Boston Tea Party, and what led to what. #
• Families invited to bike in Minute Man Park, 20 June: www.friendsofminuteman.org/blog/?p=748 #
• George Washington Book Prize winners, via @jbd1: philobiblos.blogspot.com/2010/05/beeman-wins-george-washington-book.html #
• Some colonial Americans' libraries, via probate records and @jbd1: philobiblos.blogspot.com/2010/05/new-lea-libraries-added.html #
• Another redcoat soldier unlucky enough to get into a fight with an officer--guess who wins every time: bit.ly/azxEmD #
• Michael Kenney reviews Marla Miller's new bio of Betsy Ross in BOSTON GLOBE: bit.ly/bMLt38 #
• "What may be America's oldest silver dollar" from 1794 reported to sell for ~$8 million: bit.ly/bXBR0n #
• In Pennsylvania today! Local news on commemoration of Oney Judge, escaped from President's mansion in 1796: bit.ly/9yhv5N #
• Report on fatal explosion at New Hampshire black powder factory: bit.ly/bvnsvE Old-fashioned gunpowder is still mighty powerful! #
• In Brandywine River valley, ran across flyer for self-published historical thriller called LAFAYETTE'S GOLD: lafayettesgold.com/ #

New Book about Maine in the Revolutionary War

Mike Cecere has just announced the publication of To Hazard Our Own Security: Maine’s Role in the American Revolution. Publisher Heritage Books says:

Maine’s role in the American Revolution has traditionally been obscured by the fact that it was part of Massachusetts during the conflict and did not become a state in its own right until 1820. Thousands of men from what is now Maine served in the Revolutionary War, but they did so alongside men from Massachusetts and in units identified as Massachusetts regiments.

Together these men fought in nearly every key engagement of the war, including: the siege of Boston, invasion of Canada, and defense of New York in 1775-76, and the battles of Trenton, Princeton, Hubbardton, Saratoga, Monmouth, Rhode Island, Newtown, Stony Point, and finally, Yorktown.

The book also touches on the seizure of the Margaretta in Machias, the Royal Navy’s destruction of Falmouth (Portland), Benedict Arnold’s 1775 march to Quebec, and the Penobscot expedition of 1779—all events taking place within modern Maine.

But I get the sense that while James S. Leamon’s Revolution Downeast (1993) focuses on what happened in Maine, particularly political and cultural change, this book has more about what happened to fighting men from Maine.