“For the Purpose of Conveying Intelligence”

On 15 July 1775, Gen. George Washington wrote this entry in his expense notebook:

To 333 1/3 Dollars give to —— ——* to enduce him to go into the Town of Boston; to establish a secret correspondence for the purpose of conveying intelligence of the Enemy’s movements & designs

* The names of Persons who are employed within the Enemy’s lines, or who may fall within their power cannot be inserted.

This £100 expenditure is one of the largest the general made during the first year of the war. Two outlays were bigger. One was the £239 Washington paid for five horses when he started out from Philadelphia. The other came up on 1 Apr 1776, as he prepared to leave Massachusetts:

To amount of Sundry sums pr. Memmo. for secret services to the date … [£]232

Thus, the biggest expenses that the commander personally controlled in 1775-76 involved espionage. In fact, in this article for the C.I.A. website P. K. Rose notes: “During the Revolutionary War, Washington spent more than 10 percent of his military funds on intelligence activities.”

Washington scholar John C. Fitzpatrick wrote as a note to the second of the two expense entries:

The memoranda of accounts for secret service expenditures were carefully destroyed and it is now impossible fully to identify many of the American spies. Later in the war Major Benjamin Tallmadge was placed in charge of the Secret Service, and in the Washington Papers is a letter from him in which he incautiously mentioned the name of one of his spies. It has been so heavily scored over by the pen of the Commander-in-Chief as to defy deciphering and Washington’s answer to Tallmadge’s letter contains a sharp rebuke to the major for having needlessly exposed the spy to such a risk of discovery.

And on the first entry Fitzpatrick said:

The item of $333 1/3 marks the beginning of the official secret service activities. . . . how many and who were employed during the siege of Boston is not known.

This week Boston 1775 sets out to blow the cover on Gen. Washington’s very first spy ring.

TOMORROW: “A Scheme he is about to put in Execution.”

Going Way Back with Blazing Combat

The Warren company started publishing Blazing Combat in 1965. It was a quarterly comics magazine—larger than a typical comic book, without color, and thus not under the Comics Code Authority. It lasted only four issues before being canceled for lack of sales.

Some people said that Blazing Combat failed because military officers wouldn’t allow the magazine to be sold in PX stores since it offered a jaundiced view of war. Others say it was simply too gruesome for a mass audience. The entire run has been collected in one volume.

All of the stories were written or co-written by editor Archie Goodwin, who worked with some of the medium’s stellar artists. Most of the tales were set during America’s mid-20th-century wars, but in each issue Goodwin reached further back into the past as well. There were two Revolutionary War comics.

The first, “Mad Anthony,” features Gen. Anthony Wayne, but as a supporting character, and hardly mad at all. The tale is really about two fictional soldiers putting out each other’s eye. The pictures suffer from the mustache problem I’ve noted elsewhere, with Wayne drawn like Errol Flynn.

The other Revolutionary tale is “Saratoga!”, illustrated by Reed Crandall. That story is a straightforward retelling of the battle’s crucial American counterattack, with the final panel’s twist being that the general who carried the day was Benedict Arnold. But the story’s real stunner is the art. Click on the panels above for a larger image, and just look at that hatching!

George Washington Sat Here

The invoice for cleaning the John Vassall house in Cambridge before Gen. George Washington moved in, which aide-de-camp Thomas Mifflin paid on 15 July 1775, includes this item:

Necessary house — [£]1.2.6

A few weeks later, on 25 August, Washington noted in his expense notebook a payment of £1.10 to “James Campbell—Necessaries for the House.” Four days later he made an equal payment to Jehoiakim Youkin for “D[itt]o. D[itt]o.”

“Necessary” was an eighteenth-century euphemism for an outhouse. Apparently the general had paid for Campbell and Youkin to clean out the headquarters latrines, or dig new ones. (The unusual name of Jehoiakim Youkin or Yokum also appears in the records of the Stockbridge Indians. His signed receipt for 30 shillings from the general’s secretary Joseph Reed is in the headquarters files.)

As autumn arrived, that outdoor facility no doubt seemed less enticing in the middle of the night. On 20 September steward Timothy Austin bought “3 Chamber Potts & 1 Pitcher.”

The house became more crowded in early December when Martha Washington, her son, and his wife arrived, along with some enslaved servants.

Late the next month the weather turned cold, with ice covering the Charles River for the first time. On 26 January 1776 and then on 14 February, Austin added six more chamber pots for the household, so on chilly nights the family wouldn’t have to visit that necessary house.

(The image above shows the pieces of a Rhenish chamber pot uncovered in an archeological dig at Mount Vernon.)

George Washington’s Teeth, Even Closer

Back in 2007, Boston 1775 ran an item titled “George Washington’s Teeth, Close Up.” It featured an image from the American Dental Association website of the first President’s false teeth, made by North End native John Greenwood. That A.D.A. webpage got edited away into the aether, as sometimes happens, and the image disappeared off the ’net.

But this year (actually next, judging by the copyright date) Lerner Classroom is publishing John Greenwood’s Journey to Bunker Hill, by Marty Rhodes Figley. The back of that book kindly recommends Boston 1775’s material on Greenwood. And then it says this site includes “a picture of the false teeth John made for George Washington!”

I can’t let the schoolchildren of America down. So with Google’s help I restored a smaller image of those teeth to the original posting. And now, thanks to Barista, I have the pleasure of sharing this larger picture of the same dentures. So now, children of America, you can sit down happily to your school lunches.

Still hungry? Here’s another set of Washington’s teeth on display at Mount Vernon.

Boston Preservation Awards

The Boston Preservation Alliance has given two of its Preservation Achievement Awards for this year to local landmarks that reach back into the lifetime of the Revolutionary generation.

One goes to the Old South Meeting House for how it restored its tower clock (works shown here).

Created in 1766 and installed in 1770, the Tower Clock became a prominent icon of the Boston cityscape and is believed to be the oldest tower clock in New England still in operation in its original location.

The year-long restoration process started in 2009 and brought together many expert preservationists. The North clock face was carefully restored and the South clock face (too damaged to restore) was replicated in solid mahogany. With paint analysis, a more accurate understanding of the earlier clock appearance was gained. The faces of the clock now appear in their earliest known vibrant black color, made with a traditional smalting process. Along with the exterior, the clockworks were carefully disassembled, cleaned, and replaced when necessary.

Another award went to the Park Street Church, which was built in 1809. (During the Revolution, that corner was the site of the town granary, and nearby were the institutions for the poor: the bridewell, almshouse, and workhouse. The award citation says:

the recent renovations strove to make the church more accessible to parishioners and visitors, as well as improve deteriorated exterior conditions. An open space Welcome Center was created to connect the historic Tremont Street and contemporary Park Street entrances.

Other accessibility-related improvements included the rebuilding of a central elevator and an upgrade of the public entrance on Park Street. Exterior work consisted of masonry repairs to brick and brownstone facades, replacement of deteriorated roofing and gutters, and the removal of abandoned fire escapes.

Here is the full list of this year’s honorees. The Boston Preservation Alliance is celebrating this year’s awards in the Modern Theatre on 21 October at 5:30 P.M. Tickets for this fundraiser are $35 per person.

Seminars in September

Okay, I got a few more September events that caught my eye.

The Massachusetts Historical Society hosts the Boston-Area Early American History Seminar, and this academic year’s sessions start with Francis J. Bremer’s paper “Not Quite So Visible Saints: Reexamining Church Membership in Early New England” on Thursday, 16 September, at 5:15. This series is usually open to the public, but attendees get a lot more out of the discussion if they’ve read the paper in advance. Printed copies are usually available at the M.H.S. on the day of the seminar, and subscribers can access the papers online.

The next day, 17 September, the M.H.S. has a “brown-bag seminar” with Sara Damiano describing her research there on “Financial Credit and Professional Credibility: Lawyers and Laypeople in 18th-Century New England Ports.” There’s no homework necessary for this one, but folks are encouraged to bring brown-bag lunches to munch on while the researcher speaks. (I don’t know when she gets to eat.)

Near the other end of the Back Bay, the New England Historic Genealogical Society is hosting a talk on Wednesday, 22 September, at 6:00 P.M. by Eric Jay Dolin based on his book Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America. The announcement:

Beginning his epic history in the early 1600s, Dolin traces the dramatic rise and fall of the American fur industry, from the first Dutch encounters with the Indians to the rise of the conservation movement in the late nineteenth century. Dolin shows how the fur trade, driven by the demands of fashion, sparked controversy, fostered economic competition, and fueled wars among the European powers, as North America became a battleground for colonization and imperial aspirations.

Populated by a larger-than-life cast—including Dutch governor Peter Stuyvesant; President Thomas Jefferson; America’s first multimillionaire, John Jacob Astor; and mountain man Kit Carson—Fur, Fortune, and Empire is the most comprehensive and compelling history of the American fur trade ever written. Dolin’s talk, accompanied by slides, will tell the story of fur trade in America, from East to West.

Dolin also wrote Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America and Political Waters: The Long, Dirty, Contentious, Incredibly Expensive But Eventually Triumphant History of Boston Harbor. He holds a Ph.D. in environmental policy from M.I.T., and lives in Marblehead. (He’s also speaking about the fur trade at the M.H.S. on Wednesday, 29 September, at 5:30 P.M.)

Reenactment and Round Table at Minute Man Park

Two different sorts of interesting events are coming up this month at Minute Man National Historical Park.

On the weekend of 11-12 September, the New England Campaigners will recreate Captain David Brown’s Company of Concord Minute Men in an encampment near the North Bridge. There will be 18th-century military drill and musketry, and presentations on the role of Brown’s company on 19 April 1775. The event is open to the public from 10:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. on Saturday, and 10:00 to 3:00 on Sunday. And it’s free.

On Monday, 27 September, the park’s Lexington Visitor Center will host the inaugural meeting of a new American Revolution Round Table, from 7:00 to 9:00 P.M.. As the Friends of Minute Man Park describe, this group:

is sponsored by the Lincoln Public Library, the Minute Man National Historical Park, and the Tufts University Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. The purpose of ARRT-MMNHP is to provide a nonacademic, informal continuing forum to review and discuss notable and recent books and research findings about the major events and personalities of the American Revolution.

In addition, the Round Table is intended to:

(1) Encourage the study and discussion of the ideals of the American Revolutionary War;
(2) Promote better understanding of the pivotal events and personalities of the American Revolution; and
(3) Increase public awareness of the meaning, significance and legacy of the American Revolution.

At the September 27th meeting, the group will first discuss organizational plans, to be followed by a discussion of Ray Raphael’s book, The First American Revolution: Before Lexington and Concord.

The organizers ask folks who want to participate to contact moderator Mel Bernstein (or call 781-259-9926) to reserve a place. This first meeting is free, but there will be a $25 annual membership fee to fund future sessions. The plan is to hold three meetings per year, in the fall, winter, and spring.

American Revolution Round Tables have been meeting in other parts of the country for years, and organizers like Bill Welsch, John Nagy, and Thomas Fleming have been asking me why we don’t have one here in Massachusetts. I’m very grateful to Mel Bernstein and the sponsors for starting one up, so now I can attend without any extra work!

(Boston 1775 comments on The First American Revolution here.)

Drumming Up Interest

This month brings two big fife and drum musters in Massachusetts.

Old Sturbridge Village hosts its annual Drummers’ Call on Saturday, 11 September: “The Sturbridge Village Martial Music Adult Corps and Youth Fife & Drum Corps will be joined by visiting fife & drum corps.”

Two weeks later on Saturday, 25 September, is the annual Sudbury Muster, hosted by the Sudbury Minutemen and Longfellow’s Wayside Inn. In addition to the music, there will be sutlers, crafts vendors, and vaguely-historically-based family games.

(My photo shows a member of the William Diamond Junior Fife & Drum Corps a few years back.)

Facts, Fables, and Fiction about “Paul Revere’s Ride”

On the remaining Wednesdays in September, the Paul Revere Memorial Association [i.e., the Paul Revere House, getting fancy] is presenting a series of lectures on the theme “One Hundred and Fifty Years of ‘Paul Revere’s Ride’: Facts, Fables and Fiction.”

These lectures will start at 6:30 P.M. each Wednesday at the Old South Meeting House on Washington Street in Boston. The series is free to the public, thanks to a grant from the Lowell Institute. Here are the topics.

Wednesday, 8 September
Listen, My Children: Paul Revere’s Ride in Poetry and Legend
Using new research, historian and author Charles Bahne [a Boston 1775 guest blogger] will examine how Henry W. Longfellow created one of America’s most enduring legends—a tale which, like all legends, often strays from the truth. What did Longfellow know when he wrote the poem? Why did he include some details, and ignore or omit others? What about William Dawes and Samuel Prescott? Included in the program will be a world-premiere: the first-ever public reading of Longfellow’s complete first draft, including an entire stanza which was later deleted, and has never been published.

Wednesday, 15 September
The Lost and Legendary Riders of April 19th
Beyond Paul Revere and his companions, Americans have passed along stories of other notable riders on April 19, 1775. Historian J. L. Bell [that’s me!] investigates the facts and fiction behind such figures as Hezekiah Wyman, the dreaded “White Horseman”; Abel Benson and Abigail Smith, children said to have helped raise the alarm in Middlesex County [and never explored on Boston 1775]; and Israel Bissell, the post rider credited with carrying news of the fight all the way to Philadelphia.

Wednesday, 22 September
“A Friend” of Paul Revere: The Role of Family Histories in the Ongoing Mystery of Who Hung the Lanterns in Old North Steeple, April 18, 1775
On April 18, 1875, in front of a packed house at Boston’s Old North Church, Samuel Haskell Newman presented his family’s account of the night of April 18, 1775. Specifically, he identified his father, Robert Newman, as the man who hung the lanterns in Old North steeple on that historic night. One year later, in July, 1876, Reverend John Lee Watson of Orange, New Jersey, argued in a letter to the Boston Daily Advertiser that it was his relative, Captain John Pulling, who hung the signal lanterns. Old North Foundation historian and educator Bob Damon will evaluate these competing narratives and explore the important role that family histories play in our understanding of history.

Wednesday, 29 September
Revering America: The Politics of Remembering the Revolution
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was not the first, nor by any means the last, to make use of Revolutionary War history for other purposes. Just this past spring, George Pataki launched an anti-health care petition drive called RevereAmerica, from Boston’s Paul Revere Mall. Americans have always put the past to political ends. Jill Lepore, Kemper Professor of History at Harvard University and New Yorker staff writer, will discuss the fraught relationship between reverence and revolution.

Meeting Prudence Wright

As I said yesterday, I think there are dubious details in some versions of the story of local women stopping a Loyalist (or two) at the bridge in Pepperell. But there’s no doubt about the political fervor of the woman remembered as their leader, Prudence Wright. We don’t need family lore set down decades after the Revolution to see evidence of that.

On 14 July 1774, town records say, Wright gave birth to a son whom she and her husband David named Liberty. Unfortunately, that child didn’t live long: he died on 11 March 1775. (His parents would give the same name to their next baby boy, born in 1778, and this one lived until 1877.)

July was after the Boston Port Bill and Massachusetts Government Act had taken effect, but before the countryside began to mobilize against the royal government. The court-closings and county conventions would start the next month, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and new militia elections that fall. In giving their baby such an obviously political name, the Wrights were on the cutting edge of resistance.

I understand that Eleanor Gavazzi has researched Prudence Wright in depth as a student at Fitchburg State and as head of Groton’s D.A.R. chapter, which bears Wright’s name and erected the grave marker above a century ago. Gavazzi provided background material for an article on the Pepperell bridge incident that Colonial Williamsburg magazine published in 2006 (unfortunately, not one of the articles available online) and for this Saturday’s reenactment. Gavazzi gives talks about Wright and her world to school and civic groups.

“Persons Suspected of Being Inimical”

According to Caleb Butler’s 1848 recounting of how Prudence Wright and the women of Pepperell arrested Leonard Whiting in April 1775, that New Hampshire man “was in reality the bearer of despatches from Canada to the British in Boston.” Butler reported that Whiting’s “despatches were sent to the Committee of Safety,” created by the Massachusetts Provincial Congress to coordinate the armed resistance.

In An Account of Some of the Early Settlers of West Dunstable, Monson, and Hollis (1915), Charles S. Spaulding wrote of Whiting, “He was detected while carrying treasonable despatches from Canada to Boston to the British officers, by the women of Pepperell…”

Yet the published records of the Committee of Safety don’t mention Whiting, or important intercepted messages from Canada. No researcher appears to have turned up those “treasonable dispatches” in the Massachusetts archives. We do have a short 24 Apr 1775 letter to the Committee of Safety from Oliver Prescott of Groton, the man who reportedly examined Whiting after his arrest, but it says nothing about a prisoner.

Whiting and his associates were definitely under suspicion. On 13 July, a Hillsborough County congress investigated his brother Benjamin, considering depositions from Robert Fletcher and Thompson Maxwell. That body concluded that Benjamin was “an open and avowed enemy to his country,” and cautioned “persons from connexions with him.”

In spring 1776, according to Samuel T. Worcester’s History of the Town of Hollis, local committees of safety and then the New Hampshire assembly summoned the Whiting brothers and Samuel and Thomas Cumings as “persons suspected of being inimical to the Rights and Liberties of the United Colonies.” (This means Thomas Cumings could not have left the area forever immediately after meeting his sister at the Pepperell bridge, as one later tradition claimed.)

In June both chambers of the New Hampshire legislature agreed:

That the said Suspicion is not sufficiently Supported, and that the said Leonard Whiting, Benjamin Whiting, Samuel Cummings, and Thomas Cummings be acquitted & fully Discharged.

But soon the courts indicted Thomas Cumings on a new charge. He forfeited his bail and left the state. Samuel Cumings and Benjamin Whiting followed, and New Hampshire confiscated their property.

Only Leonard Whiting remained in America, but that same local history says, “for a large portion of the years 1777 and 1778 he was imprisoned in the jail at Amherst, with several other accused persons.” Finally, he was released, and returned to the community, regaining a measure of respect by the time he died.

If Leonard Whiting had indeed been caught carrying “treasonable dispatches” in April 1775, it’s hard to believe that the Patriot authorities who kept locking him up between then and 1778 didn’t have enough evidence to convict him.

I think it likely that at some point in 1775-76 the Pepperell women did stop Whiting at the Nashua River bridge and take him to Prescott, the local Patriot organizer. (As for whether Samuel Cumings was along for the ride, the evidence for that is weaker.) Whiting may even have been carrying letters of some sort, and the locals, already suspicious about him, saw those documents as trouble. But treasonable “despatches from Canada to the British in Boston”? I doubt they existed.

What about the alternative explanation that Wright had overheard one of her brothers and Whiting planning to ride to Boston? Given how often those men were arrested in the next few years, heading for the British lines might have made sense. But it seems unlikely they could have brought along much useful military information from north central Massachusetts.

I suspect descendants of the folks who detained Whiting wanted to remember that act as justified, hence the stories of “treasonable despatches” and overheard conversation. No doubt Wright, Prescott, and their neighbors saw themselves as bravely standing up to their enemies. But all the times Whiting was arrested and released without charge look like parts of a wartime witch-hunt, a local manifestation of what historians have called 1775’s “rage militaire.” That’s not the history we like to reenact, but it’s part we should also remember.

TOMORROW: Meeting Prudence Wright.

Prudence Wright and Her Brothers

Yesterday I quoted an 1848 anecdote about women in Pepperell seizing a Loyalist suspected of carrying “despatches from Canada to the British in Boston” in April 1775. Over the next half-century, other authors added to that story.

In an 1873 address in Dunstable, New Hampshire, Samuel T. Worcester filled in some information:

The maiden name of Mrs. David Wright, the heroine of the bridge guard, was Prudence Cumings, a daughter of Samuel Cumings, one of the first settlers of Hollis, and first town clerk. It appears from the Hollis records of “births and marriages,” that Prudence Cumings was born at the parish of West Dunstable, now Hollis, Nov. 26, 1740, and married to David Wright, of Pepperell, Dec. 28, 1761.

In 1899, Mary L. P. Shattuck delivered a talk to the local D.A.R. called “The Story of Jewett’s Bridge,” which she published in 1912. (Here’s the text in P.D.F. form.) This appears to be the most comprehensive telling of the bridge story.

Shattuck collected two versions of the tale, one each from descendants of:

• the suspected Loyalist, Leonard Whiting (1740-1807) of Hollis; unlike some other men arrested for favoring the Crown, he stayed in the U.S., moving only as far as Cavendish, Vermont.
• Prudence Wright (1740-1823), the leader of the women at the bridge.

Generally, Shattuck’s additions to the story make it more dramatic. For example, the earliest version reported that Whiting was detained at the home of Oliver Prescott (1731-1804), Groton’s Patriot political leader. Shattuck played up how Whiting’s daughter Nancy married Prescott’s son Oliver—which gives the tale overtones of “How I Met Your Mother.”

Another addition to the original tale isn’t possible to confirm through town records. It says Whiting was riding with another suspected Loyalist named Samuel Cumings, who recognized the voice of the woman shouting at them to stop—because Prudence Wright was his sister. Shattuck even quoted Samuel as saying, “Hold, that’s Prue’s voice, and she would wade through blood for the rebel cause.”

Yet a third addition to the tale was that Prudence Wright had actually overheard her brother (either Samuel or another one, Thomas Cumings) and Whiting discussing how they would ride to Boston and tell the British authorities about what the Patriots were doing. In this version, she organized the guard specifically to block them. And after hearing her voice, Thomas (in one version) left the area for good. That telling plays up family ties the most, and provides an even stronger justification for Wright’s actions.

I’m always dubious about stories that grow better over time without supporting documentation. And this tale strikes me as missing a particular type of evidence.

TOMORROW: The missing documents.

Arrest at the Pepperell Bridge

On Saturday, 4 Sept 2010, there will be a ceremonial reopening of the covered bridge in Pepperell, Massachusetts. One celebration will be a reenactment of something that reportedly took place at a predecessor to that bridge in 1775, soon after the start of the Revolutionary War.

The earliest description of this event that I’ve found appears in Caleb Butler’s History of the Town of Groton: including Pepperell and Shirley, published in 1848:

After the departure of Col. [William] Prescott’s regiment of “minute men,” Mrs. David Wright of Pepperell, Mrs. Job Shattuck of Groton, and the neighborng women, collected at what is now Jewett’s bridge, over the Nashua, between Pepperell and Groton, clothed in their absent husbands’ apparel, and armed with muskets, pitchforks, and such other weapons as they could find, and having elected Mrs. Wright their commander, resolutely determined, that no foe to freedom, foreign or domestic, should pass that bridge. For rumors were rife, that the regulars were approaching, and frightful stories of slaughter flew rapidly from place to place and from house to house.

Soon there appeared one on horseback, supposed to be treasonably engaged in conveying intelligence to the enemy. By the implicit command of Sergeant Wright, he is immediately arrested, unhorsed, searched, and the treasonable correspondence found concealed in his boots. He was detained prisoner and sent to Oliver Prescott, Esq., of Groton, and his despatches were sent to the Committee of Safety.

A footnote identified the detained man as: “Capt Leonard Whiting, of Hollis, N. H., a noted tory. He was in reality the bearer of despatches from Canada to the British in Boston.”

Lorenzo Sabine reprinted Butler’s words without credit in his Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution, the first attempt to compile information on Americans who had sided with the Crown during the Revolution. And since Sabine’s book was more widely distributed than Butler’s, a lot of subsequent authors cited Sabine.

TOMORROW: How the story grew.

Disenfranchising New Jersey Voters in 1807

As I recounted yesterday, New Jersey’s 1776 constitution gave women who headed households and owned £50 worth of property the right to vote. This became significant, in a limited way, as American politics evolved naturally into a two-party system in the 1790s. Federalists and Republicans complained about the other side’s female voters, but, seeking any advantage, praised their own.

In an essay for Publick Occurrences Prof. Rosemary Zagarri discussed this political sniping:

In the heat of party conflicts, members charged that their opponents had taken sexual advantage of the women whom they accompanied to the polls. Others suggested that the women had been coached about their choice of candidates. Still others maintained that the women had been physically coerced into voting. In 1803, New Brunswick Federalists were accused of “rallying the petticoat electors and hurrying them and others to the polls.” In 1802, “whole wagon loads of the ‘privileged fair’” were said to have been brought to the places where ballots were cast.

There seem to have been more complaints from the Republican side, which might mean that wealthy, unmarried women favored the Federalists. Or it might simply reflect how the Republicans were gaining in strength and had more newspapers.

In 1804, moderate Republicans started a centrist third-party movement, shaking up the system. The party also split over where to put a new Essex County courthouse: Elizabethtown or Newark? There was a vote on that question in 1807, and Zagarri reported:

The election itself witnessed unprecedented voter turnout. Newark prevailed. However, supporters of the other site quickly challenged the result, pointing out that the number of ballots cast was three times larger than the eligible voter population.

Even in New Jersey, that looked suspicious. The legislature set out to address the problem. Their solution appears to have involved a lot of yelling.

In the next session of the assembly, legislators hurled charges and countercharges about corruption and fraudulent behavior at state elections. Much of the misbehavior, it was clear, came from white men who voted even though they were not qualified or who voted at different polling places more than once.

The solution, however, focused on marginal populations: women, foreigners, and free blacks. Because women’s dress “favoured disguise,” it was said, some women “have repeated the vote without detection.” More generally, women, blacks, and foreigners had “no interest in the welfare of the state” and were “mere instruments of parties in the state, or the agents of executive designs, formed out of it.” Perhaps most frightening of all, if women, free blacks, or aliens could vote, they might also be able to serve in public office.

National Republican leaders stepped in to broker a compromise and keep their party intact. Newark got the courthouse in exchange for a new election law that protected voting rights for all taxpaying white male citizens. The state’s outnumbered Federalists went along with this because they felt that keeping a property requirement on white men would make up for the loss of their few black and female votes. And no one was left to challenge the constitutionality of the new law.

(The picture above shows the Salem County, New Jersey, courthouse, built in 1735, since the controversial courthouse in Newark no longer exists. The photo by Jimmy Emerson comes via Flickr under a Creative Commons license.)

New Jersey’s “Petticoat Electors”

Yesterday I took a brief look at the story of one Massachusetts woman casting a vote in a town meeting in 1756. The better documented example of American women voting long before the organized suffrage movement comes from early federal New Jersey.

When New Jersey Patriots wrote a constitution for their newly independent state in 1776, it did not require voters to be male. It required them only to head households and own a certain amount of property. The result was that there was no rule against wealthy, unmarried women voting. (If they had husbands, then the law presumed he headed the household, and each household was ideally supposed to have only one vote.)

Was that limited vote for women simply an oversight? If so, state officials soon realized what their constitution said. New Jersey’s election law of 1790 referred to a voter as “he or she.”

In the following years each party accused the other of bringing “petticoat electors” to the polls, which suggests that New Jerseyans recognized women had the right to vote but still looked askance at them actually exercising that right. Were those complaints well founded? Did custom outweigh the law? In sum, how often did New Jersey women really vote?

The late Piney Creek blog pointed me to a 1992 paper on the topic: “‘The Petticoat Electors’: Women’s Suffrage in New Jersey, 1776-1807,” by Judith Apter Klinghoffer and Lois Elkis, published in the Journal of the American Republic. It assembles a lot of evidence on the question.

New Jersey politicians seemed to agree that in the 1790s there could be up to 10,000 New Jersey women eligible to vote. Reports of actual voting tended to estimate the female electors at only a few dozen per polling place, even in larger towns, with no more than 150 statewide.

A Republican newspaper called the Newark Centinel of Freedom said that at least 75 women voted in Elizabethtown in 1797, and complained again about female Federalists in 1798 and 1800. According to the paper, the opposing party

so ingratiated themselves in the esteem of the Federal ladies of Elizabeth-town, and in the lower part of the state, as to induce them (as it is said) to resolve on turning out to support the Federal ticket.

In fact, the state’s Federalist newspaper made no special claims or appeals to women before the election.

Furthermore, in 1800 the Stony Hill Republican banquet included this toast: “The fair daughters of Columbia, those who voted in behalf of Jefferson and Burr in Particular.” And at Bloomfield one party toast was: “the Republican fair; May their patriotic conduct in the late elections add an irresistible zest to their charms; and raise the female character in the estimation of every friend to his country.”

In 1801 Joseph Bloomfield became the state’s first Republican governor; he went to the polls with “that part of his female household entitled to vote.” So although the Republicans complained about Federalist female voters, they were proud of their own.

Occasionally female voting eligibility led to controversy. In 1802 an election in Hunterdon was decided by a single vote, and one of the (Federalist) voters was a married woman. But she had been separated from her husband for several years, and paid taxes on her own. But she paid those taxes under her married name—so was she eligible? Another argument arose over a formerly enslaved black woman—was she entitled to vote?

TOMORROW: The controversies come to a head in 1804-1807.

The Growing Legend of Lydia Taft

Today is the anniversary of the Constitution’s 19th Amendment in 1920, guaranteeing American women the same voting rights as men.

Some sources, such as this Wikipedia article, say that a widow named Lydia Taft actually voted in the Uxbridge, Massachusetts, town meeting in 1756. In recent years people have named a stretch of highway and a nursing home after Taft.

However, the earliest description of her vote apparently dates from over a century later. In 1881, Rushton D. Burr published an 1864 address in Uxbridge, adding extensive appendices on town history. One of those appendices, titled “The Taft Family,” said this about Lydia Taft:

Her husband died in 1756. The French and Indian war was at hand; the Revolution not far distant [i.e., nearly twenty years later]. A requisition was made upon the town of Uxbridge for a certain sum of money for colonial purposes [i.e., a tax hike]. A meeting of the legal voters was held to see if the money should be granted. The estate of Josiah Taft paid the largest tax in Uxbridge, and his son Bezaleel was a minor [six years old]; but with a sturdy sense of justice that there should be “no taxation without representation [a phrase not coined for years],” the citizens declared that the widow Josiah Taft should vote upon the question. She did so, and her vote was the one that decided in the affirmative that the money should be paid.

More recently, Carol Masiello mined Uxbridge’s vital records to find details of Lydia Taft’s life for this local newspaper article. For example, while Burr remembered her youngest son Bazaleel Taft, the town apparently forgot his older brother Asahel, who was also a minor in 1756. And what about the oldest son, Josiah Taft, who turned twenty-three in 1756 and would ordinarily inherit his father’s place as head of the family with voting rights?

All in all, I’m a little suspicious of the story, for a few reasons. First, I’m not seeing any quotes from 1756 documents. When Uxbridge bent the usual rules to let Lydia Taft vote on the tax hike, was there no complaint from the voters who opposed the tax? There was supposedly an equal number of men on each side. People of the time would complain about “a trifling majority” after losing a close vote, so why accept a decision made by an illegal voter?

Why was there no comment in newspapers or government records on Lydia Taft’s vote or what precedent it might set? (I just looked for reports, and couldn’t find any.)

Second, I see some “memory creep” as people interpret previous writings to make more of Lydia Taft’s suffrage. For example, Masiello’s article reports: “She is mentioned in town records a few times more, once in 1758 to reduce her highway rates and another in 1765 was to change her school district.” In the Wikipedia entry, those mentions of her as a property owner become additional times that Taft voted.

Finally, several articles about Taft (not Masiello’s) reflect later customs, such as stating “she became known as Lydia Chapin Taft.” Actually, she didn’t; she appears in Uxbridge records as “Lydia Taft.” Most eighteenth-century wives didn’t keep their maiden names as middle names; later genealogists (and collateral descendants) like to do that. That makes me question how reliably authors can interpret information about colonial customs.

I can picture the men of Uxbridge deciding to let Lydia Taft participate in this town meeting as her late husband’s administrator, and a sort of proxy for her son. She was a member of the Uxbridge elite, her husband having been one of the richest men in town. Her support for the new colony tax might have carried weight. But I can’t see the men of Uxbridge bending the rules on such a close vote, at least without causing a lot of talk.

It would be nice to see the official records of this town meeting. They might be very skimpy—clerks often tried to avoid recording divisive controversies, so they wrote down only final decisions. If Uxbridge’s 1756 records confirm that “the citizens declared that the widow Josiah Taft should vote,” then Lydia Taft’s place in history is clear. If not, this looks like a local legend—interesting, but not well supported.

The Prince Hall Monument in Cambridge

While I was on Cambridge common looking at trees, I also visited the Prince Hall Monument dedicated in May 2010.

I’d heard about this monument for years because of questions about whether it belonged in Cambridge. Prince Hall lived in Boston, where he was the leader of the African-American community in the years after the Revolution. He delivered a published oration in west Cambridge in 1797, but that part of the town became Arlington. There didn’t seem to be any documented connection between Hall and modern Cambridge.

But when I saw the tall dark gray stones, created by local artist Ted Clausen, I was happily impressed. They stand in a circle, evoking both the feeling of being hemmed in, as early American society hemmed in Hall, and of gathering together for strength.

The text engraved on the stones describes Hall’s life and work, going beyond his role in Freemasonry and avoiding myths that have arisen around him. The stones also touch on other milestones and figures in Massachusetts’s civil rights history.

All in all, this monument makes a better case for being rooted where it is than the nearby plaques honoring Casimir Pulaski and Thaddeus Kosciuszko. Not that those men weren’t important in America’s Revolutionary War, but I don’t think they ever came to Cambridge or lived nearby.

The photograph above was taken by Wally Gobetz, and comes from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

Not the Washington Dogwood!

Last month I posted a series of articles about the Washington Elm on Cambridge common (starting here), which tried to trace the growth and felling of a famous Revolutionary War myth. In doing so, I fear that I launched another myth.

In this posting, I wrote: “Dutch elm disease probably brought down the 1932 replacement elm, so since the 1980s a hardy dogwood has stood in.”

But Cambridge historian Charles Bahne gently told me that the tree on the city common sure looked like an elm to him. My horticultural knowledge is so small I don’t claim to know one deciduous tree from another. I got the dogwood idea from this photograph of a plaque found while searching for online photos marked “Washington Elm.”

In doing so, I missed the fact (unmistakable in Flickr’s new layout) that that plaque describes a “Washington Elm” which stood in New Jersey; it was a descendant and namesake of the one in Cambridge. So the “Washington dogwood” is also, necessarily, in New Jersey.

I’ve now corrected my “The Washington Dogwood?” posting—thanks, Charlie! I even got out to Cambridge common myself this month, and confirmed that the tree near the city’s historic “Washington Elm” monuments is…deciduous.

(Photo above by Wally Gobetz, available through Flickr via a Creative Commons license.)

“Went to Miss Jeale’s to Play at Base Ball with Her”

The Oxford English Dictionary’s first literary citation for the word “baseball” comes from Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, published in 1796:

Mrs. Morland was a very good woman, and wished to see her children everything they ought to be; but her time was so much occupied in lying-in, and teaching the little ones, that her elder daughters were inevitably left to shift for themselves; and it was not very wonderful that Catherine, who had by nature nothing heroic about her, should prefer cricket, base ball, riding on horseback, and running about the country, to books.

That passage suggests that eighteenth-century girls gravitated toward cricket and baseball on their own—it wasn’t seen as a game just for boys.

This spring C.N.N. ran a story confirming the picture of early baseball as a sport for females as well as males:

One notable discovery found in a shed in a village in Surrey, southern England, in 2008 was a handwritten 18th-century diary belonging to a local lawyer, William Bray.

“Went to Stoke church this morn.,” wrote Bray on Easter Monday in 1755. “After dinner, went to Miss Jeale’s to play at base ball with her the 3 Miss Whiteheads, Miss Billinghurst, Miss Molly Flutter, Mr. Chandler, Mr. Ford and H. Parsons. Drank tea and stayed til 8.”

Julian Pooley, a historian at the Surrey History Centre who verified the diary, said Bray’s precise printing of the words “base ball” suggested the sport may have been new to him.

“He writes in a particular type of handwriting but when he comes across a new word he often wrote it in a clear way as if he wanted to remember it,” Pooley told CNN.

The picture above, painted by Joseph Wright of Derby in 1789, offers yet more evidence: it shows two Wood brothers and one Wood sister preparing for a game of cricket. This lively portrait hangs in the Derby Museum and Gallery, and comes courtesy of ArtFund, “an independent charity committed to saving art for everyone to enjoy” in the U.K.

International Voices in the Debate on American Slavery

Andrew Hamman, a graduate student at the San Francisco State University who has taught high-school history, announced a new online resource called American Slavery Debate: In the Context of Atlantic History. He describes it this way:

an online primary source archive I have developed over the past year while in residence at the Office of Resources for International and Area Studies (ORIAS) at UC-Berkeley.

The website is entitled American Slavery Debate: In the Context of Atlantic History and provides access to 320+ downloadable documents that illustrate the myriad of international influences that affected American attitudes toward slavery and antislavery between the American Revolution and the Civil War. It has been designed to support teaching and research in the fields of both American History and World History and to encourage scholars and educators to widen the lens through which they examine the complex subject of American slavery.

There are three sections now:

• British Antislavery Influence, 1770-1865
• Black Emigration Movements – Foreign Support and Opposition, 1787-1865
• Revolution and Abolition in Haiti, 1791-1865

Most of the documents are from the 1800s, but some show the start of the international debate late in the previous century.