Government Finance of Health Care, 18th-Century Style

Today Boston 1775 welcomes Dr. Sam Forman as a guest blogger. He is the author of the new book Dr. Joseph Warren: The Boston Tea Party, Bunker Hill, and the Birth of American Liberty. This is only the third full biography of Warren, a central figure in the beginning of the Revolutionary War, and the first in decades. Sam is also an expert in health management, and in this essay looks at that side of Warren’s work.

My new biography of Dr. Joseph Warren is the rousing story of one involved citizen who made a big impact in troubled times. Once famous and broadly admired, he is now barely remembered as the Patriot who sent Paul Revere on that legendary ride, and as the hero of the Battle of Bunker Hill, where he was killed in action.

A sidelight to Warren’s tale is interesting relative to a current controversy. Some conservative Republicans and modern Tea Partyers are calling for the repeal of President Obama’s health care financial reforms. They appear to argue that our Revolutionary-Era leaders never countenanced government involvement in health care finance. Such originalist assertions are Libertarian staples on which calls for reductions and elimination of such programs are based.

The notion that American Founders were not involved in government finance of health care is not borne out by the experience of Boston Patriots. Some, like Joseph Warren, were heavily involved in such programs. Politicians on all sides of the modern controversy do not seem to realize this.

All shades on the political spectrum of Warren’s day judged finance of health care of vulnerable populations as a fitting role for government, even as Whigs opposed taxation without representation within the British Empire. The issue was not whether this was an appropriate role of government, but who should hold the government contract and provide the services.

Dr. Joseph Warren held that Massachusetts province contract to provide health care to needy and elderly residents served by the almshouse and workhouse public institutions from 1769 into 1772. Physician services to people served by these institutions was on a fee-for-service basis to the designated physician, payable one or more times yearly, by a committee of Boston overseers. Designation of the physician and his reimbursement were handled separately from the staffing and administration of the almshouse and workhouse.

Dr. Benjamin Church served prior to Warren. Making his clinical rounds on October 20th at the workhouse at the outset of the 1768 British army occupation of Boston, Dr. Church was refused entry at point of bayonet. As a large crowd gathered, only the intercession of Sheriff Stephen Greanleaf gained Church access to his patient and avoided a riot.

This episode and Church’s clinical services to the poor doubtless reinforced his cache as a popular Whig, and may have helped to immunize him against suspicions of disloyalty for years.

Joseph Warren succeeded Benjamin Church as the province-designated physician to provide charity care from about May 1769 through April 1772. Appointments are recorded in the minutes of the Governor’s Council, whose originals are at the Massachusetts Archives. Government reimbursement and charity care patient volume for 1770/71 come from surviving Governor’s Council records and a Town of Boston tabulation approved by a committee headed by John Hancock.

Government reimbursed fee-for-service care for the indigent constituted about 42% of Warren’s practice, based on volume. As a portion of total revenue, estimates range from 64 to 68% for the three years Warren held the post.

Estimates of Government Reimbursed Care by Dr. Joseph Warren to Massachusetts Almshouse Poor as a Portion of His Medical Practice, May 1769 through April 1772

In 1772 Dr. Samuel Danforth, a Loyalist, displaced Joseph Warren. The new appointment may have had political overtones during a period of Whig quiescence and Tory resurgence. Despite his suspect politics, Dr. Danforth later practiced medicine in Boston and went on to become a founder of the Massachusetts Medical Society.

The closest modern equivalent to Massachusetts Province’s provision of health services to the almshouse and workhouse poor, would be a state Medicaid plan or Medicare, if it had a recipient means test.

Dr. Joseph Warren is a favorite Revolutionary figure among modern Republicans, and was idolized by their favorite American president of modern times, Ronald Reagan. The notion that fighting American founder Dr. Warren—very probably an organizer of the historical Boston Tea Party—aggressively pursued governmental finance of health care for the needy, is an important observation for modern observers of all persuasions. The extent of Warren’s provision of government reimbursed care during 1769-1772, and the widespread support that such government involvement enjoyed in Massachusetts by both Patriots and Tories in the Revolutionary era, are noteworthy. They constitute a humanitarian legacy predating the creation of the United States and its Constitution.

Nevertheless, I would not venture to assert that the compelling history of the American Revolutionary era confers originalist clout to any particular modern agenda regarding health care. To do so would be to commit the sin of presentism, the transgression of asserting a modern agenda in the guise of past events.

Thanks, Sam! For more on the care of the poor in colonial Boston, see the published town records The Eighteenth-Century Records of the Boston Overseers of the Poor, edited by Eric Nellis and Ann Decker Cecere and published by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. Visit Sam’s website for more on Joseph Warren and his compatriots, with weekly updates of primary-source documents.

Sam will speak on Dr. Warren, the early Revolutionary era, and his new biography at the Brookline Booksmith tonight at 7:00 P.M.; at Newtonville Books on Wednesday, 11 January, at 7:00 P.M.; and at Old South Meeting House on Thursday, 19 January, at noon (admission $6, free to Old South members).

“I was neither whig nor tory but a Printer.”

Benjamin Towne of the Pennsylvania Evening Post was one of Philadelphia’s most enthusiastic Whig printers from 1775 to late 1777, when the British army seized the city. He was then one of Philadelphia’s most enthusiastic royalist printers. When the Continental authorities returned in the middle of 1778, Towne didn’t flee like the other printers.

That left him with the only printing press in Philadelphia, so he had a monopoly on government business for a while. In fact, the state government paid Towne to reproduce its long list of people who had treacherously cooperated with the British military, including himself. He also got the job of printing some proclamations of the Continental Congress.

In October 1778 the Rev. Dr. John Witherspoon, a delegate from New Jersey (shown here), found Towne at a bookstore. This is how Isaiah Thomas described their meeting in his History of Printing in America:

After some conversation, Towne requested the doctor to furnish him with intelligence and essays for the Evening Post, as he formerly had done. The doctor refused, and told him that it would be very improper for a member of congress to hold intercourse with a man who was proscribed by law; but he added, “if you make your peace with the country first, I will then assist you.”

“How shall I do it, doctor?”

“Why,” answered the doctor, “write and publish a piece acknowledging your fault, professing repentance, and asking forgiveness.”

“But what shall I say?”

The doctor gave some hints; upon which Towne said, “Doctor, you write cxpeditiously and to the purpose; I will thank you to write something forme, and I will publish it.”

“Will you? then I will do it,” replied the doctor. The doctor applied to [the bookseller] for paper and ink, and immediately wrote, “The humble Confession, Recantation and Apology of Benjamin Towne,” etc. It was an excellent production, and humorously ironical; but Towne refused to comply with his promise to publish, because the doctor would not allow him to omit some sentences in it.

Witherspoon’s essay somehow made it into print nonetheless. Written in Towne’s voice, it started by acknowledging that he had printed under the protection of both the American and British governments, and went on to claim that he had printed lies for the latter.

The facts being thus stated, (I will presume to say altogether fully and fairly) I proceed to observe, that I am not only proscribed by the President and supreme executive Council of Pennsylvania, but that several other Persons are for reprobating my paper, and allege that instead of being suffered to print, I ought to be hanged as a Traitor to my Country. On this account I have thought proper to publish the following humble confession, declaration, recantation, and apology, hoping that it will assuage the wrath of my enemies, and in some degree restore me to the favor and indulgence of the Public. In the first place then, I desire it may be observed, that I never was, nor ever pretended to be a man of character, repute or dignity. . . .

I do hereby declare and confess, that when I printed for Congress, and on the side of Liberty, it was not by any means from principle, or a desire that the cause of Liberty should prevail, but purely and simply from the love of gain. I could have made nothing but tar and feathers by printing against them as things then stood. I make this candid acknowledgment not only as a penitent to obtain pardon, but to show that there was more consistency in my conduct than my enemies are willing to allow. They are pleased to charge me with hypocrisy in pretending to be a Whig when I was none. This charge is false; I was neither whig nor tory but a Printer. 

Towne toughed it out in Philadelphia for the rest of the war, but he had trouble finding subscribers for his Evening Post and printed sporadically. In 1783 he tried something novel: printing a new issue of the paper every day. The result was America’s first daily newspaper, but Towne couldn’t keep up the pace past 26 Oct 1784. He went back to job printing and died nine years later, still in Philadelphia.

“A New-year Song, as heretofore!”

After Gen. Sir William Howe took Philadelphia in the fall of 1777, printer Benjamin Towne remained in the city and continued to print the Pennsylvania Evening Post. But he did have to adjust some of his attitudes of the previous year, as his apprentices’ verse for the New Year of 1778 displays:

New Year’s Verses,
Addressed to the KIND CUSTOMERS
of the
PENNSYLVANIA EVENING POST,
By the PRINTER’s LADS who carry about the same.
THURSDAY, January 1, 1778.

TOWNE’s Evening Post!---Good Masters pray,
Permit your Postboy still to pay
His annual Tribute at your Door,
A New-year Song, as heretofore!
Too long—I own it with remorse,
I labor’d, like a jaded Horse,
To fetch and carry loaded Squibs,
Bouncing Crackers, artful Fibs,
While CONGO’s Harness gall’d my Ribs!
Then Safety, Peace, and Freedom fled,
And Truth was fain to hide her Head;
But now, from those vile Shackles free,
Which fetter’d you as well as me,
I’ll tell the Truth, and gladly fly
To contradict each daring Lie;
Throw in my little Mite to bring
Each Wanderer back to bless the KING!
For then, to crown the rising Year,
Sweet smiling Peace shall soon appear,
With Joy and Plenty in the Rear.
This Hope we all may cherish now,
For thus has JOVE commission’d HOWE.

LATE a Council of GODS, by the Mandate of Jove
Was call’d on OLYMPUS to meet;
The THUNDERER spoke—and the MUSE from above
Descended his Speech to repeat.
Ye know, all ye Powers that attend on my Throne,
Your Will to my Pleasure must bow;
I will that those Gifts which you prize as your own,
Shall now be bestow’d on my HOWE.
Astraa, who long since had quitted the Earth,
Presented her Balance and Sword,
A Soul that does honor to Titles and Birth,
Imperial Juno conferr’d;
Fierce Mars gave his Chariot, gay Hermes his Wand.
Alcides his Club and his Bow,
Sweet Peace with her Olive Branch graced his Hand,
And Pallas did Wisdom bestow.
Thus adorn’d with Endowments and Armour divine,
The Hero by JOVE was address’d;
This Balance and Sword to thy Hands we consign,
Let Justice preside in thy Breast.
But temper’d with Mercy let Justice appear,
Majestic, yet mild and serene;
And still in the Heat of your martial Career,
Let the Prospect of Peace close the Scene.
Though Discord your generous Zeal to oppose,
Shall nourish Sedition and Hate,
Till your Friends feel the Horrors of War with your Foes;
Yet Success is ensur’d you by Fate.
Sweet Peace shall revive from the Horrors of War,
Her Empire again be restor’d,
Affection and Duty shall cover each Scar,
And HOWE by the World be ador’d.

Towne’s verse for the previous new year had wished the best for the Continental Congress, Gen. George Washington, and the Continental troops. But in December 1777 the Congress was in York, Washington and his army in Valley Forge. So Towne’s verse referred to the Congress as “Congo’s Harness.”

But then Howe pulled out of Philadelphia, and in July 1778 the Congress returned.

TOMORROW: Benjamin Towne makes his choice.

“Hail now the joyful day!”

It’s a Boston 1775 tradition each New Year’s season to quote one of the verses that printers’ apprentices carried around and distributed at that time of year, soliciting tips.

This year’s verse comes from the shop of the Pennsylvania Evening Post, which Benjamin Towne (c. 1740-1793) launched in January 1775—a most newsworthy year, as it turned out. Philadelphia was the largest and most dynamic city in British North America, so Towne had a lot of competition. His strategy was to publish three times a week instead of just once or twice, and to support the radical Whigs.

The year of 1776 brought for American Whigs the best of times (British forces leaving Boston and Charleston, the Congress declaring independence, new state governments being established) and the worst of times (British forces coming back to New York, driving the Continental troops through New Jersey, and threatening Philadelphia). But the American victory at Trenton took some of the pressure off, so the newspaper boys could feel optimistic.

This is what they came up with for New Year’s 1777.

New-Year’s Verses
Addressed to the CUSTOMERS of
The PENNSYLVANIA EVENING POST,
By the PRINTER’s LADS who carry it.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 1, 1777.

Hail! O America!
Hail now the joyful day!
Exalt your voice,
Shout, George is King no more,
Over this western shore;
Let him his loss deplore,
While we rejoice.

You know, I think this is written to the tune of “God Save the King.” Kind of ironic.

The Latin tag in the next verse was translated as “He who transplanted us hither will support us” by a helpful footnote on the broadside.

Now in thy banner set,
Transtulet sustinet;
God is our King,
Who does in mercy deign,
Over us for to reign,
And our just rights maintain,
His praises sing.

O may he deign to bless,
The great and each Congress,
Of this our land,
With wisdom from on high,
And unanimity,
To save our liberty,
Nobly to stand.

And on the virt’ous head,
Abundant blessings shed,
Of Washington;
Give him to know thy will,
Fill him with martial skill,
His station to fill,
’Till glory’s won.

And may our Gen’rals all,
Officers great and small,
Be Heaven’s care:
Within the hostile field,
Guard them with thine own shield,
While they the sword do wield,
In this great war.

O may our men be spar’d,
If not for death prepar’d;
Lord hear our cry,
Let us behold thy face,
And taste of thy rich grace,
While we this earth do trace,
Before we die.

And to thee th’ Lord of host,
Father, Son and Holy Ghost,
We’ll give all praise,
And ever magnify,
Honor and glorify,
To all eternity,
And never cease.

Of course, in September 1777 the British army whupped the Americans at Brandywine and occupied Philadelphia for that winter.

TOMORROW: What did that mean for Benjamin Towne?

“Heroic pieces found in his pocket”

One of my doorways into eighteenth-century history was Christopher Seider, the young boy fatally shot in a riot in Boston on 22 Feb 1770.

After Christopher’s death, the Boston Evening-Post reported the event in unusual detail and concluded:

…all the friends of Liberty may have an opportunity of paying their last respects to the remains of this little hero and first martyr to the noble cause, whose manly spirit (after the accident happened) appeared in his discreet answers to his Doctor, his thanks to the clergyman who prayed with him, and the firmness of mind he showed when he first saw his parents, and while he underwent the great distress of bodily pain, and with which he met the king of terrors. These things, together with several heroic pieces found in his pocket, particularly Wolfe’s Summit of human glory, give reason to think he had a martial genius and would have made a clever man.

For years I hunted for “Wolfe’s Summit of human glory.” Given the context, it was almost certainly a publication about Gen. James Wolfe (shown above), killed during the British conquest of Québec City in 1759. But none of the many poems and articles written about the man included the phrase “summit of human glory.”

I checked Readex’s Archive of Americana database in many ways; it’s based on microtext collections of what was supposed to be basically every newspaper published in colonial America, and every “imprint”—i.e., book, broadside, pamphlet, handbill, lottery ticket, &c. The latter part is often called the “digital Evans” after the American Bibliography catalogue of all that material by Charles Evans and his successors. But even within that vase amount of scanned stuff, there was no “summit of human glory.”

Evans and his team didn’t find every broadside, however. Some entered archives, or came to light, after the last volume of that series in 1959. But many items printed in colonial America simply didn’t survive.

This fall I tried my keyphrase on a catalogue I know well—that of the Massachusetts Historical Society. And up popped a broadside with this title:

Major-General James Wolfe, who reach’d the summit of human glory, September 13th, 1759: with a particular account of that gloriously dangerous work, the taking the city of Quebec, the capital of the French settlements in North-America.

So of course I asked to look at that.

This broadside is a 17" by 24" sheet with four columns of tiny type around a 9" x 12" engraving of Wolfe surrounded by clouds, a booming cannon, and a frame decorated with leaves, swords, and banners. There’s no indication of who published it or for how much, but a broadside of this size was expensive. The copy at the M.H.S. is stamped and perhaps painted in blue and red—an embellishment that cost extra.

The text is a detailed, sometimes technical, description of the taking of Quebec, written by Vice Admiral Charles Saunders and Gen. George Townshend, who took over after Wolfe’s death. Not the sort of thing one would expect a ten-year-old to be carrying around, even with the big colored picture.

But that’s what was reportedly in Christopher Seider’s pocket on the day he died, along with other “heroic pieces.” That’s one of my favorite discoveries of the past year.

Once Again with the Presidential Oath

In an attempt to argue that George Washington added the phrase “So help me God” to his presidential oath in 1789, David Barton wrote at Wallbuilders about the fact that some states included that phrase as part of their oaths for office-holders at the time. In particular:

At that time, New York law required that “the usual mode of administering oaths” be followed (i.e., “So help me God”) and that the person taking the oath place his hand upon the Gospels and then kiss the Gospels at the conclusion of the oath.33 (Like the other states, these provisions remained the legal standard long after the inauguration.34)

The quoted phrase “the usual mode of administering oaths” comes from the first work cited in Barton’s first footnote, the Laws of the State of New-York. (The second work is a 1788 manual for New York justices of the peace. The following footnote points to an 1836 equivalent, based on 1821 law; it has nothing to do with the swearing-in of a federal official thirty years before that law, and seems to have been included just to make the presentation appear more weighty.)

As Ray Soller noted at American Creation, the 1778 law that Barton cites on “the usual mode” is actually about dispensing with that mode for people with conscientious objections to it. So the “usual mode” was not a legal requirement after April.

For the full context, on 5 Mar 1778, the New York state legislature passed laws to govern the swearing-in of state officials; that’s chapter 7, though chapter 3 had already included an oath. Those oaths mention God twice, the second time in closing those oaths with “So help me God.”

However, by 27 March, the legislature had to acknowledge that Quakers don’t swear (chapter 16 and later). And on 1 April it agreed to “dispense with the usual mode” of having all men kiss the Bible because, chapter 25 stated, “many of the inhabitants” had objected.

Those revisions to the 5 March law don’t specify that New York office-holders could decline to say “So help me God.” Barton might argue that that means that provision of the law remained in effect. But the clear pattern is that the legislature moved away from requiring the “usual mode.” There were just too many religious beliefs to demand the same ritual from every office-holder.

Furthermore, whatever New York laws said, they did not govern the swearing-in of a federal official like President Washington. The presidential oath is specified in the Constitution, just as these New York laws stated the oaths for New York officials, word for word. The New York laws included “So help me God”; the Constitution does not. Barton doesn’t see that difference as significant; Soller does, as do I. Washington was, of course, involved in the creation of the Constitution and valued it highly.

Detailed contemporaneous descriptions of Washington’s first inaugural describe him kissing a Bible supplied at the last minute by the local Freemasons and reciting the Constitutional oath as written—without “So help me God.” One might think the use of that Bible would be enough to satisfy Barton’s argument that early American society was infused with religious belief. Claiming that Washington added words that no one heard only weakens that position, turning it into a statement of faith rather than fact.

New Voices from the Arnold Expedition Brought to Light

Yesterday’s quotations from diaries of the American attack on Québec in late 1775 came from Voices from a Wilderness Expedition: The Journals and Men of Benedict Arnold’s Expedition to Quebec in 1775, a new book on Col. Benedict Arnold’s advance from Massachusetts through the Maine wilderness to Canada by Stephen Darley.

This book is not a narrative history of Arnold’s expedition, like Thomas A. Desjardin’s Through a Howling Wilderness or Arthur S. Lefkowitz’s Benedict Arnold’s Army. Rather, it’s a study of the diaries that survive from that expedition, and as such a necessary supplement to the third edition of Kenneth Roberts’s March to Quebec.

Darley self-published through AuthorHouse to make his research available. Voices from a Wilderness Expedition contains the first published transcriptions of several first-person accounts of the campaign, as well as research on the full careers of several notable officers, including Col. Roger Enos, Capt. William Goodrich, and Capt. Scott, first name usually left blank.

Darley found three of those first-person accounts in the University of Glasgow Library, catalogued as “Durben Journal.” He argues that the main document is a copy of Capt. Henry Dearborn’s original diary before it was expanded and edited into the version we know (now housed at the Boston Public Library), and hypothesizes about how that collection got to Glasgow.

The volume contains a transcription of the version of Dr. Isaac Senter’s journal at the Rhode Island Historical Society, which differs significantly from the published version, and first full appearances of journals by Pvt. Samuel Barney and Pvt. Moses Kimball.

As Darley notes, the Arnold expedition must have been one of the most minutely documented of the period, with thirty journals and detailed memoirs surviving and more known to have existed but lost. That might reflect how many of its participants came from New England, with its emphasis on literacy. But it also suggests that men understood they were trying something important that deserved to be recorded for their families and friends. Pvt. Barney, for example, bought his blank book (“for nine Coppers”) just a few days after agreeing to go on the expedition.

The prose in Voices from a Wilderness Expedition is somewhat old-fashioned, but that’s not inappropriate for discussions of document provenance and authenticity. This is not supposed to be an entertaining adventure tale. But it should be a necessary resource for anyone researching Arnold’s campaign.

I bought the book in ePub form through Barnes & Noble, partly for the convenience and partly to test that format. I’ve looked at the file now on three devices, including a Simple Touch Nook, an iPad, and my desktop computer. There are some oddities of typography and formatting, and I can’t tell whether those appear in the print edition or surfaced during the transition to ePub format; for self-publishing authors, multiple electronic formats are just one more thing to worry about.

Unfortunately, in all three formats I can’t read Appendix II, which consists of tables listing all the men on Arnold’s expedition. Evidently they were formatted for the printed page as images of a spreadsheet rather than as text, and the images don’t get any bigger on my screens. I don’t know if other electronic formats will work the same way, but if you’re interested in the complete record I recommend a print version.

“We was asked who would scale the walls.”

Here are two views of the action outside the city of Québec 236 years ago. The first comes from the journal of an officer identified on the manuscript as Captain Durben (Dearborn?):

26th [Dec 1775]. A return was made of the men in Coloniel [Benedict] Arnold’s Detachment who were willing to storm the town; there were only three in my company consisting of sixty three, who dissented from it.

27th. Afternoon all the troops assembled at the place of rendezvous in very high spirits, and were ready to march to the attack, when an order came from the General [Richard Montgomery] to send them back to their quarters—because he thought the night too clear and calm for the attack—though the day had been windy with snow.

Here’s Pvt. Samuel Barney’s record of the same two days in Canada:

Tuesday, December the 26th. This morning arose some better. We was asked who would scale the walls. There was (17)? Turned out.

Wednesday, December the 27th. This morning arose well and it snowed, and we had orders to go into Quebec, and all paraded, but it cleared up and we did not go.

Both those quotations appear in print for the first time in a new book called Voices from a Wilderness Expedition, by Stephen Darley. More about that book tomorrow.

(Image above of Québec on a mild day in 1768 courtesy of the Library of Congress.)

Pvt. Daniel Granger of the Continental Army

Daniel Granger was born in Andover, Massachusetts, on 2 March 1762. That made him thirteen and a half when he joined the Continental Army as a temporary substitute for his older brother, who had fallen ill and wanted to go home. It was the winter of 1775-76, and Daniel served nearly three months until his brother returned.

Here was one of Daniel’s experiences as a young soldier:

I was not detailed to go on Sentury until about ten or eleven Oclock at Night, and it so happened that I was placed the lowest down on the [Lechmere] Point, by a larg Oak stump the most awfully cold, bleak place, no watch-box to stand in; and by orders, our Guns were loaded. Here I had to stand two hours, and tramp round the old stump to Keep me from freesing, and no other Sentinal in sight of me.

And about eleven or twelve oclock the Sentinal that was placed above me, heard the Ice trickle down from the Rocks as the Tide fell off, which frightened him, I heard him hale, at the Top of his voice, “who comes there” twice I beleave, and then fired off his Gun and ran off, I could hear the Drum beating at the guardhouse to turn out the Guard, I cocked my Gun, looked and lissaned, but could see nor hear anything but the trickling of the Ice on the Shore, I was determined not to run, nor to fire, until I should see or hear some thing to fire at.

and soon I saw two Men coming, and as they approached, I haled, who comes there, one answered “grand rounds” I then said grand rounds, advance & give me the countersign, they advanced, and when at a proper distance, I charged baonnet ordered them to stand, & give the Countersign. one answered, “Baltimore” which was the Word given to all the Senturies for that night I answered the word is right, and shouldered my Gun.

They talked with me some time, asked me, if I heard the Sentury fire? I told them that I heard him hale, and fire, & his tramp on the Snow when he ran, but that I saw nothing, & was determined not to fire nor run until I did, they said, “I was a brave fellow” and asked my age, & on being told it, expressed astonishment, that I should be there so young.

And early the next Morning an Officer came into the guard house & enquired for the Sentury that stood down the lowest on the Point in the Night at the time of the alarm, & soon found me, and took me into the Officers Room and I recollect the Captain’s name was Clough, he took me by the hand and sat me down on his Knees, praised me a good deal for my courage and said many pleasing things to me which made me rather Proud.

The countersign “Baltimore” lets us pinpoint this event as happening on 26 December 1775. My favorite detail is how Capt. Jeremiah Clough of New Hampshire sat the boy on his knee to praise him. That’s how young Pvt. Granger was.

Daniel Granger evidently started to write down his recollections at the age of eighty and finished in 1848. A copy of the manuscript was transcribed and published in the Mississippi Valley Historical Review in 1930.

Freedom’s First Finale

In the imaginary Revolutionary Massachusetts that Seamus Heffernan depicts in the Freedom comic, the boys trade stories about a masked hero called the Liberty Eagle. The first issue even comes with copies of an underground broadside showing the Liberty Eagle conquering King George. The story offers glimpses of a mysterious feathered figure. All of which brings up the all-important final question of my interview:

B75: Who would win in a fight, Batman or the Liberty Eagle?

SH: Man, I’ve been agonizing over this question… but as much as I hate to say it, I think Batman would probably win. While the Liberty Eagle has mysterious and superhuman strength and speed, Batman has technological gadgets that would boggle the LE’s colonial mind. He would certainly give Batman a run for his money, though, most likely leaving him cut and bruised to near death by the end of the fight. It is a truly a battle I would love to witness.

B75: Indeed. Plus, even in the eighteenth century, Batman has allies.

(This panel comes from Detective Comics Annual, #7 [1994], script by Chuck Dixon and art principally by Enrique Alcatena.)

Thanks for the conversation, Seamus! And a happy holiday season to all!

Publishing Freedom: “The printed page is paramount.”

Here’s the fourth installment of my interview with Seamus Heffernan, whose new comic Freedom promises an epic look at a Revolutionary America that never was.

B75: I didn’t expect Freedom to be so BIG. For $7.00, one gets 64 oversized (8" x 12") pages of story, plus extra illustrations. Was that the format you initially imagined? Did you ever plan to publish it all on the web?

SH: Actually, I had originally planned to publish it as a broadsheet sized “newspaper”. It was going to be 11"x17" and folded up, with some kind of card-stock folio-cover to keep it in. It turned out to be difficult to find a printer who could do that cost-effectively, and it turned out to not be the best format for stores either.

On abandoning that format, I tried to settle on something close to it, but also closer to the traditional comic-book format. I went to the rare book room in the Boston Public Library to see if there were any smaller pamphlets or broadsheets printed at during the colonial period and tried to line my project up with those dimensions. The 8"x12" did the best job of letting the dense line work breathe while not being too cumbersome. I’m sure there will be many vendors out there who will disagree with me on that.

I never planned to publish it on the web, and perhaps I am a fool for doing so, but I’m doing my best to make this project reminiscent of the revolutionary era, so the printed page is paramount.

B75: Freedom is one of the (I believe) second-to-last set of Xeric Foundation grantees. For folks outside the comics world, what does that mean?

SH: The Xeric Grant is a charitable grant set up by one of the creators of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Peter Laird. It is a grant to help aspiring comics artists start their career as self-publishers by funding the printing and promotion of a creator’s work. Your work has to be finished (in other words, they won’t give you a stipend to live off of while you work on your book full-time), and it has to be approved by six jury members. I was very fortunate in that they liked Freedom No. 1 so much they gave me twice the money I had asked for!

Sadly, the Xeric is closing its doors to funding self-publishers as the comics market has changed dramatically. With the advent of web comics and Kickstarter (now considered one of the largest independent comics publishers because of how many projects gets funded through them), I think they felt that their grant was no longer suited to today’s trends in publishing. The final Xeric Grant deadline is May 2012, so if you have a project you want funding for…better wrap it up!

B75: When I showed Freedom to the Boston Comics Roundtable, one detail that caught a lot of people’s eyes was your style for emphasized lettering—not just bigger, bold letters but serif as well. What other ways are you working to give Freedom an eighteenth-century feel?

SH: Like I said above, I tried to print the book in a format that would evoke an eighteenth-century publication. I’ve always felt that lettering does as much as art style to develop the flavor of a story. Its importance is often overlooked in modern comics (especially with the rise of digital lettering, which I kind of regard as a carnal sin), so I made certain to use typefaces that would have been prevalent during my story’s period. I studied a lot on how typesetting was done in those days, and tried to design text pages to match how pamphlets, flyers, broadsheets and books would have been laid out.

The cover is also meant to reflect the period, as will all the covers to come on future issues. Each cover will be a faux historical oil painting, mostly in the Enlightenment or Romantic traditions. I also do my best to write in the over-wrought, floral style of the day, even when just doing acknowledgements or section breaks.

TOMORROW: The question that must be asked.

Telling the Story of Freedom

My interview with Seamus Heffernan, creator of the new Revolutionary-era comic Freedom, turns to his storytelling.

B75: Freedom starts with a farmboy named Adam Farr heading into Boston to become apprentice to a merchant, It seems to a coming-of-age story. Why did that feel like the right way to approach this topic?

SH: When it comes down to it, Freedom is essentially the coming-of-age story of a nation (though perhaps not the one that readers assume it will be). I wanted the main protagonist’s situation to mirror the situation of the colonies as a whole. Like the recently defeated revolutionaries, his independence is snatched from him the moment he reaches it. And I’m pretty sure every one of us remembers what it was like as a teenager, yearning for the moment when you can throw off your parents’ yoke and strike off on your own.

I feel like if the reader can identify with the character’s situation, and the character’s situation is a metaphor or representation of the larger scene, the reader has a wider experience with which he can engage the story. Also, the contract between the Farrs and the merchant regarding Adam’s apprenticeship becomes a fairly important plot point later on, but I won’t divulge those details.

B75: You mentioned that you began Freedom “when we were hot and heavy into the war on terror” in 2005. Clearly that environment shaped some of the scenes in the first issue—for example, as the Farr brothers go through a military checkpoint at the gate of Boston. Do you want readers to draw direct parallels, or to look at all the situations in new ways?

Both, actually. During my research I was struck by all of the parallels of our founders’ struggle to rid themselves of the British military and that of people in the Middle East struggling against their own enemy, which happened to be us. Regardless of the reasons why, nobody likes it when an army lands on your shores and starts pushing you and your countrymen around. And when that force is overwhelmingly more powerful, you often rely on tactics your enemies decry as craven, dishonorable, even immoral.

I think it’s important for us to remember that we came from a stock of folk whose “betters” reviled them as traitors and terrorists. It’s also important to remember that in many cases, our founders acted as such, out of necessity. So I’d like for my readers to draw parallels so that they can look at all the situations in new ways.

B75: The end of issue No. 1 promises the next story will be about an enslaved girl from Georgia named Minerva. Obviously, since this is a parallel-world version of the Revolution, the war doesn’t have to stop after four more years in 1783. How many plot threads do you have planned out, and how long do you want Freedom to be?

That question is still a little loose in my mind, but I can say that it’s going to be very long. I have a huge, complex epic with many, many plot threads laid out in general, but I honestly have no idea how long it will take to complete. I’m shooting for 3 “books” containing 5-6 chapters, each chapter being a full issue like Freedom No. 1. My greatest wish is to be able to put out one a year, but the style I’ve chosen and the demands of my commercial art career seem likely to hinder that dream.

But regardless, I’m more excited about this project than any other I’ve ever undertaken, and have resigned myself to the notion of it being my life’s work. So this day or the next, it will be done, and it should be a really fun ride along the way.

TOMORROW: The technical side of publishing a Revolutionary comic.

Seamus Heffernan on “Drawing a convincing Revolutionary-Era Boston”

This continues my interview with Seamus Heffernan, the artist and writer behind the new comic Freedom, set in a Boston that’s still under British rule in 1779.

B75: What were your biggest challenges in researching that setting? Your biggest thrills?

SH: Visually, if you’re doing a WWII comic you have more photo-reference than you could ever need. Drawing a convincing Revolutionary-Era Boston requires relying on drawings, etchings, paintings, written descriptions from the period and Rev War reenactment photos. I am constantly cross-referencing material to make sure I’m getting my depiction as correct as possible, but the process is time-consuming and challenging.

I’m a little OCD when it comes to getting the setting to be historically accurate in the face of what is essentially a fantastical, fictional story. At one point I redrew all of the grenadiers in the checkpoint scene when I realized I had left out an important element of their uniform.

I’m sure I’m still missing a million things, but eventually you have to let some things go. And I’m more of an artist than a writer, so developing compelling dialogue in the vernacular of the day, particularly in the realm of slang, was more challenging than any line I put down on paper.

The most thrilling part is when story moments seem to leap out perfectly from history and land exactly where they need to for my fictional version to work. For example, I needed a redcoat captain who was sympathetic to the Americans in the checkpoint scene. I realized the best candidate would be someone who was an American himself. Perhaps a famous one who had left the colonial ranks to go spy on the British and (in my alternate history) enlists with the British and rises to the rank of Captain. Hence, Nathaniel Hale escaped his historical fate and shows up in the nick of time to save Adam Farr from his execution. I have many more examples like that but can’t say too much without giving away some spoilers.

B75: You started this project from the Pacific Northwest, but recently moved to Boston. Do we measure up to what you imagined?

SH: I’m actually a born and raised east-coaster! I went to high school in Newburyport, which is probably where the real seed for this whole project was planted. I was of course terribly bored with all the colonial charm of this area when I was a teenager, but you grow up and realize how much power there is in history, and how cool it is to be around it.

I’m back in Newburyport now, living here after stealing my wife from the west coast. We’re about to have our first kid together, so I guess you can say I’ve come full circle. And so far, being back here has measured up beyond what I had hoped. I’ve gone to Rev War reenactments, walked the “Freedom Trail” for days, gone to talks of yours and other historians, and can just walk downtown if I need to get a first-hand look at what colonial cities might have looked like. Beyond that, I feel just being around these old cobblestones and warped brick walls has lent gravity, legitimacy and interest to my work.

TOMORROW: Telling the story of Adam Farr.

Seamus Heffernan’s Freedom: The Inspiration

Freedom is a new Revolutionary-era comic from writer-artist Seamus Heffernan.

I’m looking at page 6 of the first issue, and I recognize the center of Boston right away. The spires of the Town House (now the Old State House) and the First Meetinghouse of the Rev. Dr. Charles Chauncy look much as they do in Henry Pelham and Paul Revere’s famous engravings of the Boston Massacre.

But this full-page picture is captioned “The Colony of Massachusetts / June 2nd, 1779.” And the royal emblems are still up on the State House, though they’re looking poorly.

As its webpage explains, Freedom is set in “Massachusetts two years after the Americans lost the Revolutionary War.”

So this fictional Boston is still under British army rule, and Patriots hang in effigy instead of Tories. But there’s an underground insurgency. And a teenager named Adam Farr is caught in the middle.

For the next few days I’m running my interview with comics creator Seamus Heffernan about Freedom.

B75: How did you decide to tell a comics story set in Revolutionary Boston? Any particular inspirations?

SH: The idea to do a comic set during the Revolutionary War first popped up during a critique in an art class at the Pacific Northwest College of Art. The class was focused on the ideas of myth, heroes and monsters.

During the “heroes” segment of the class I started thinking about our own country’s heroes, the often mythical way their stories are relayed, and our then current situation on the world stage (this was back in 2005 when we were hot and heavy into the war on terror). I made a huge, romantic (and in hindsight, quite awful) painting called “The Boston Tea Party (The Martyrdom of Samuel Adams)” in which Sam Adams was depicted carrying out a suicide bombing on the East India Company ship while a gathering of founding fathers looked on from the docks; full of sadness, honor and pride.

It was meant to be an over-the-top fictional retelling of an actual event, but when I presented the work to the class, at least two-thirds of the students were unimpressed and confused as to why I had just made a boring historical painting. I believe some even thought I had just copied some Romantic-era painter. They all thought my depiction was ACTUALLY what happened.

[Click on the image for a larger look at this mythological history painting.]

I realized then just how close history and mythology were, and became fascinated with the idea of using the history of the American Revolution to try and explore that boundary. So while wrapping up art school I did a couple short stories playing with the idea of a fictional American Revolution while I let the big ideas soak in and form the foundation of what would eventually become Freedom.

TOMORROW: Researching a history that never quite happened.

Washington at the Commander Hotel in Cambridge

The Commander Hotel in Cambridge opened in 1927 during the Colonial Revival. Located near the site of the “Washington Elm,” the hotel was named in honor of George Washington, the commander-in-chief. Some of its architectural details are modeled on Mount Vernon.

A couple of decades later, Frank A. K. Boland was the hotel’s owner. He had once been an attorney representing the American Hotel Association. (He had been disbarred in 1909 for bribing a court clerk and reinstated in 1912; that seems have to have been a normal way of doing business in New York then.)

I haven’t found out exactly when, but at some point a visitor told Boland that a bronze reproduction of Jean-Antoine Houdon’s statue of Washington was available in Somerville. The T. F. McGann & Sons Company was offering it for sale, advertising in School Executive and School Management and Institution. Obviously, the firm thought that it would be appropriate for a school.

Boland went to see the statue. It had turned black from standing out in a storage yard since 1932. The McGann company had made it for Manchester, Connecticut, but “financial disagreement resulted in final cancellation of the order.” Perhaps the Depression had also been part of the problem.

Boland bought the statue and mounted it on the Commander Hotel’s lawn on “a stately base of rough finish granite.” With its base, it stands 6'10" tall and weighs 1,034 pounds. Every so often it gets to wear a Bruins, Celtics, Red Sox, or Patriots jersey during a championship run.

In 1949 Boland started a campaign to commemorate the Washington Elm, which had fallen twenty-six years before. Artist Leonard Craske was already at work on a bas-relief showing Washington reviewing troops under a tree, much like Washington Elm images going back over a century. But by that point historians had turned against the elm legend. The final text on Craske’s monument says nothing about the tree:

General George Washington, having taken command of the Army of the United Colonies at Cambridge, inspects the troops near this spot on the fourth day of July 1775.

Undaunted, Boland planned an unveiling on 3 July 1950, the traditional day of the Washington Elm ceremony. At noon on 2 May he led a committee of Cambridge notables to meet with President Harry Truman and invite him to the unveiling. The Truman Library shows the President’s schedule for that day. Corbis offers a photograph of the committee giving the President a relic of the fallen elm. Boland is the man looking happily at the camera.

The young man at left who looks like an office intern was Rep. John F. Kennedy, who had arranged the meeting. Truman didn’t come, but Kennedy was one of the main speakers at the ceremony that July.

(Photograph above by Wally Gobetz, available via Flickr through a Creative Commons license. Thanks to Ed Guleserian, current owner of what’s now the Sheraton Commander Hotel, for a copy of Boland’s press release about the statue.)

The Wreck of the Industry, 1764

The Museum of Underwater Archeology website offers an interesting virtual exhibit on the wrecked British sloop Industry. The introduction explains:

In 1763, the Treaty of Paris brought the Seven Years War to an end. As part of the peace negotiations, Spain’s territory of La Florida was ceded to Britain. After almost two centuries of Spanish rule, all of Spain’s troops, military supplies, and citizens living in Florida were transported to Havana, Cuba, and the colony was re-populated by British troops from the Royal Army headquarters in New York. Four sloops were sent from New York to St. Augustine, the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the present-day U.S., loaded with much-needed supplies for Florida’s new inhabitants.

One of these ships, the Industry, captained by Daniel Lawrence, never reached her destination. Falling victim to the notorious shifting sands off St. Augustine’s harbor, she struck a sandbar and was lost on May 6, 1764. She had been loaded with artillery, ammunition, and tools that had been intended for the newly established British garrisons in Florida. . . .

The shipwreck was discovered in 1997 by archaeologists from Southern Oceans Archaeological Research, Inc. (SOAR), after conducting extensive archival research and a magnetometer survey. Excavations were conducted between 1998 and 2000 first by SOAR and subsequently by the Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program (LAMP), the research arm of the St. Augustine Lighthouse and Museum. A variety of artifacts reflecting the Industry’s cargo of munitions and tools were uncovered and recorded, including eight cast-iron cannon, an iron swivel gun, crates of iron shot, three iron mooring anchors, several millstones, and boxes of tools such as axes, shovel blades, knives, trowels, files, and handsaws. Many of these finds, including one of the cannons, were recovered, conserved, and are currently on display at the St. Augustine Lighthouse and Museum.

There’s a broken link to the museum website, but I think this is where it should go. The photo above comes from the Texas A. & M. University Conservation Research Laboratory; it shows a swivel gun from that wreck before treatment.

As reported in a Jacksonville Times article that the M.U.A. site links to, two other cannon were taken from that site without authorization in the spring of 1999.

The M.U.A. highlights a lot of other underwater finds as well.

Jesse Harding Pomeroy’s Tea Party Poem

This poem “A Boston Brew of Tea Sir!” was written by Jesse Harding Pomeroy (1859-1932) and published in The Mentor on 25 Mar 1916. Pomeroy, born in Charlestown, was quite familiar with the patriotic mythology of his home state, and was echoing it back in an old-fashioned style.

Of ’seventy-three the tale we sing,
That famous brew whose taste did sting:
The deed on winter’s night was done, Sir.
A noble pot to make our brew
From Boston port the waves to strew.
And Johnny Bull
Did drink his full,
For relish to his taste, Sir!

The monarch proud of England’s shore,
Thought tax on tea was pence in store:
But soon his tone was changed, Sir.
For Yankees bold will pay no tax,
Where principles are found too lax:
King George did taste
And made a face,
That never yet was straight, Sir!

Not all the strength of English might,
Nor coming years in fame so bright,
Could wash his mouth of tea, Sir.
It shook his nerve as never yet,
Into his pate new ideas let:
J. B. may strive
On pence to thrive:—
We served his, piping hot, Sir!

From small beginnings much may come:—
Across the years we view their sum.
Our stamps were not for George, Sir.
Our gallant sires undaunted were,
In fight for Freedom sweet and pure.
For Johnny Bull,
Could pull no wool,
Across the Yankee’s eyes, Sir!

Their noble fame to us e’er brings
A trust and hope wroth more than kings;
A quenchless flame to guard, Sir.
In courage tried our Temples rear,
With mem’ries true to shield from fear,
Fail we do not,
(Nor rights forgot)
To twist the Lion’s tail, sir!

That brand of tea should now be named,
For spicey flavor justly famed:—
The Hub’s exclusive brew, Sir.
Pekoe, Hyson, Bohea, Oolong,
May find some praise in other song.
But for its vim,
And snap so grim,
Gundpower be its name, Sir!

As poetry, it’s nothing special. What makes this verse unusual is that Pomeroy was serving a life sentence for a murder he’d committed at age fourteen.

In an autobiographical account published around the time of his trial, Pomeroy wrote of reading Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography. As his alibi for killing another child, James told a long, detailed story that included walking past the Granary Burying Ground and seeing what he thought was Franklin’s grave. The court convicted him anyway, and authors who researched his case think he was responsible for two other murders as well.

The governor of Massachusetts refused to sign a death warrant for such a young murderer, and eventually Pomeroy’s sentence was changed to life in prison—in solitary confinement. In 1916, when he wrote this poem, he had been serving that sentence for forty years. His signature in The Mentor, the prison magazine, was “Grandpa,” reflecting his relative age.

The following year, the state allowed Pomeroy to mingle with other prisoners. In 1929, he was transferred to a mental hospital, where he died.

The poem was transcribed by Jarett Kobek (scroll down this page to 2002).

Was Nathanael Greene at the Boston Tea Party?

Yesterday the Text Message blog from the U.S. National Archives stated:

There were over one hundred participants in the destruction of the tea, and one of them was Nathanael Greene, George Washington’s most trusted general. Their military partnership is documented in the Letters from Major General Nathanael Greene, 1776-1785 and in Letters of Nathanael Greene, with Various Papers Relating to the Quartermaster’s Department, 1778-1780. It was not easy to connect Greene directly to the campaign because his name is commonly misspelled as “Nathaniel.” It is rude not to give proper credit where credit is due, and that is why he is being recognized in this post as a contributor to one of the most famous American protests.

It’s true that the name “Nathaniel Green” appeared on the list of men involved in destroying the tea in Traits of the Tea Party, the earliest published list of participants.

But the later book Tea Leaves identifies that man as someone who dined with Boston’s Sons of Liberty in August 1769. That Nathaniel Greene (as he usually spelled his name) shows up in Boston’s town records identified as a merchant; he gave his bond for tax collector Abraham Savage for a few years. In the town’s newspapers Greene advertised such goods as wine, sugar, and “A Quantity of Norwich Stone Ware,…viz. Juggs, Pickle Potts, Muggs, &c.” He signed some of the Boston merchant community’s protests against various Crown acts.

In 1786, Nathaniel Greene ran against the incumbent register of deeds for Suffolk County on a platform of having been “ruined” in trade and left with “a numerous family of young children to maintain.” (Seriously, that was the argument for electing him.) It was a hard-fought race, but in October, the same month that Boston newspapers were reprinting eulogies about Gen. Greene, they also ran this notice:

Nathaniel Greene,
PRESENTS his compliments to the respectable inhabitants of the County of Suffolk, and informs them, that he has opened his Office for the REGISTRY of DEEDS, at the House formerly occupied by Messrs. Brimmers, near the sign of the Lamb;—where constant attendance will be given.

On 31 Jan 1791 the Boston Gazette reported that Greene had died, still in office. He was only fifty-two. At the time of the Tea Party he had been thirty-five, with several children at home.

There was another Nathaniel Greene active in Boston around the same time, a sea-captain who died in early 1773. Meanwhile, there were multiple Nathaniel Greenes in Rhode Island, not just the future general. So we have to be careful not to ascribe too much activity to any one man.

The Mysteries of Thompson Maxwell

It’s clearly documented that Thompson Maxwell (1742-1831) spent time in the colonial army at the end of the French and Indian War, in the Continental Army, and in the U.S. Army during the War of 1812. Born in Massachusetts and living in New Hampshire when the Revolution began, he moved out to Michigan before his death.

In the early nineteenth century, Maxwell began telling people that he was also a participant in the Boston Tea Party. I’ve puzzled over his descriptions of the event for years; in some ways they don’t make sense, but in other ways he appears to have had inside knowledge.

According to James Miller, a general in the War of 1812, Lt. John Allanson took down Maxwell’s description of his career in 1818. About the Tea Party his story was:

In ’73 I went with my team to Boston with a load of stores for the poor of the town, which at that time was shut up. I had loaded at John Hancock’s warehouse & was about to leave town, when Mr. Hancock requested me to drive my team up into his yard, and ordered his servants to take care of it, & requested me to be on Long Wharf at two o’clock, P.M., & informed me what was to be done. I went accordingly, joined the band under one Captain Hewes; we mounted the Ships, & made Tea in a trice. This done I took my team & went home, as an honest man should.

Maxwell thus appears to have named George Robert Twelves Hewes as a prominent participant over a decade before the book A Retrospect of the Tea Party made him a celebrity. Yet he also referred to “Long Wharf at two o’clock, P.M.,” which was neither the place nor the time of the Tea Party.

In 1821 or so, Maxwell told a relative named Benjamin Gleason this:

In 1773, December 16, was in Boston, when the tea was thrown overboard. Seventy-three spirited citizen volunteers, in the costume of Indians, in defiance of Royal authority, accomplished this daring exploit. John Hancock was then a merchant. My team was loaded at his store near Faneuil Hall, for Amherst, N.H., and put up to meet in consultation at his house at 2 o’clock P.M. The business was soon planned and executed. The patriots triumphed.

That account is more circumspect about what Maxwell actually did in the Tea Party. He used the passive voice and the plural instead of claiming directly that he was involved. But it’s much the same story, and liars’ stories don’t usually get worse over the years.

Finally, sometime in 1830 or 1831 the Rev. E. H. Pilcher (1810-1887) met Maxwell out in Michigan. He didn’t take down Maxwell’s story in the man’s own words, and he consulted George Bancroft’s history before writing about Maxwell in 1873, so it’s possible that the standard narrative colored what he recalled. Pilcher wrote:

He was looked upon in the neighborhood with a good deal of veneration, from the fact that he was a revolutionary, and from the further fact that he was one of the forty or fifty men selected by John Hancock to dress in Indian costume and to throw the tea overboard in Boston harbor, in 1773. . . .

The people, encouraged by Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and other prominent men, were resolute in their purpose that the tea should not be landed. One ship owner by the name of Retch, had promised that he would take his tea back to England, but he dallied along for some days, and finally said he could not get a clearance for his ship. On the last day of grace, the people were assembled to the number of about seven thousand, not knowing exactly what to do; and the excited assembly continued together till after dark. This was on Thursday, the 16th day of December, 1773, just one hundred years ago.

John Hancock had organized a body of men, who in the disguise of Indians were to board the ships and destroy the tea. The matter was understood between him and Samuel Adams, probably. There is no public record of the fact that this thing was arranged by Mr. Hancock, for it was a profound secret; but Major Maxwell stated that it was so, and that he was one of the men selected by Mr. Hancock for that purpose.

As Pilcher noted, no other source says that Hancock was so involved in organizing the Tea Party, or any other street actions for that matter. As a prominent merchant, Hancock had lots of reasons to keep a low profile on illegal activities and a high profile at the Old South Meeting-house, away from the docks. Why on earth would he ask a teamster who happened to show up that day from New Hampshire to participate in a top-secret operation?

Yet again, this account includes details that ring true: the behavior of shipowner Francis Rotch, apparently remembered as “Retch,” and the massive meeting. But how would Maxwell know about that meeting “till after dark” if he was at Long Wharf at two o’clock? It seems most likely to me that Thompson Maxwell was in Boston on 16 Dec 1773 but was a spectator who picked up some inside gossip, not a participant in destroying the tea.

The accounts quoted above were published in the Essex Institute Historical Collections, the New England Historic and Genealogical Register, and the Pioneer Collections of Michigan. Pilcher wrote a similar profile of Maxwell in his 1878 book Protestantism in Michigan.

(Thumbnail photo above of a New Hampshire historic marker from Marc Nozell via Flickr under a Creative Commons attribution license.)

The Boston Tea Party’s Mysterious “E.N.”

In 1814, Josiah Bartlett wrote in An Historical Sketch of Charlestown:

E. N. a respectable citizen of this town, lately deceased at the age of 78, has repeatedly mentioned to the writer, that he was among the Indians, who destroyed the tea at Boston in 1774.

That’s one of the earliest examples of a Boston-area man identified in print as having helped to destroy the tea on 16 Dec 1773—more than forty years before.

And even so, Bartlett waited until the man was dead and identified him only by his initials.

Except that a couple of footnotes later, Bartlett named the late Eliphalet Newell as one of the town’s Revolutionary War officers. The two men helped to found Charlestown’s first lodge of Freemasons in 1783, and worked together as directors of the Charlestown Lottery. The Independent Chronicle newspaper for 15 July 1813 confirms that Eliphalet Newell had recently died at Charlestown.

So it’s mighty clear which “E. N.” Bartlett was writing about. Most likely a lot of people in Charlestown knew as well, but they were still keeping the secret among themselves.

Bartlett said that Newell died at the age of seventy-eight, meaning he was born about 1735. The baptismal records of Charlestown’s first meetinghouse confirm that. Curiously, the newspapers of 1813 state that Newell died at age seventy-one. Usually aged veterans of the Revolution added a few years.