John Austin, Carver and Conductor

According to Agnes Austin (1769-1861), when the Revolutionary War began, her father John (born in 1722) was at James Barrett’s farm in Concord helping to prepare stores for the provincial forces.

Austin and the seven men he was supervising evidently hid their supplies and dashed away before Capt. Lawrence Parsons and four companies of regulars arrived to search the place. Austin later told his daughter about how Rebeckah Barrett treated those soldiers, so he probably went back to the house after they had left but didn’t participate in the battle.

Meanwhile, Agnes Austin’s other anecdotes indicate that she was home in Charlestown, in place to see those soldiers march in at the end of their long day.

Over the next two months, most families moved out of Charlestown, which was caught between British-held Boston and the besieging provincial army headquartered in Cambridge. John Austin’s family probably joined him at some safe place to the west. On 17 June, the Battle of Bunker Hill caused most of Charlestown to burn (and shown above), and that probably included the Austins’ empty home.

Two days later, a committee of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress had recommendations for supporting the artillery regiment (which had suffered a supply problem in the battle):

That, in addition to the storekeeper already appointed by this Congress, there be established four conductors of stores, and two clerks for the ordnance department; and a company of artificers, to consist of a master carpenter or overseer, with 49 privates; and the committee of safety be desired to recommend to this Congress, fit persons for the offices abovenamed. . . .

Your committee, furthermore, beg leave to report an establishment for the officers and privates above mentioned, viz,: The storekeeper, $80 per month: four conductors, each $48 do. [ditto]: one master carpenter, or overseer, $80 do.: two clerks, each £48 do.: 49 privates, they to find their own tools, $50 do. each.

That afternoon the Committee of Safety responded:

Pursuant to a Resolve of the Provincial Congress sent to this Committee respecting the nomination of four Conductors, two Clerks, and one Overseer for a company of Artificers in the regiment of Artillery; they beg leave to recommend the following persons to the office affixed to their names, viz: Mr. John Ruddock, Mr. John Austin, Mr. John Kneeland, Mr. Thomas Uran, Conductors; Mr. Nathaniel Barber, Jun., Mr. Isaac Peirce, Clerks; Joseph Airs [Eyres], Overseer of the Artificers.

All of those men besides Austin were from Boston, and all had been active in Whig politics before the war. Ruddock was the son of the late North End magistrate with the same name; the family had fought with British soldiers in 1768-70. Peirce was a town watchman. Barber’s father was part of the North End Caucus and is one of the names inscribed on the “Liberty” punch bowl. Uran and Eyres had helped to guard the tea ships. Kneeland was a printer—mostly of religious material, said Isaiah Thomas, but some of his pamphlets had clear political messages.

Like Austin, all of those men were refugees. By appointing them conductors, clerks, and overseer, the Massachusetts legislature not only put reliable men in those posts but also provided them and their families with income.

Other documents show that John Austin continued to work for the Massachusetts military at least through early 1778. At that time, his pay was coming through Nathaniel Barber. Or, since Austin had a son of the same name (Agnes’s older brother) born in 1756, and probably namesake cousins as well, some of those references might be about other men.

Austin, a carver by trade, appears to have died in 1786. There’s more about him and his family in The Cabinetmakers of America and New England Furniture: The Colonial Era.

“The person chose to carry on our Military preparations”

A few years back, Boston 1775 reader Judy Cataldo alerted me to the United States Revolution collection of the American Antiquarian Society. In it are several documents linked to James Barrett, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress delegate and militia colonel who was collecting artillery and other military stores in Concord in the spring of 1775.

On 15 March, David Cheever of Charlestown wrote to Barrett on behalf of the congress’s Committee on Supplies that he was sending “a Load of Bullets,” and that “Seven Men for putting up the Cartrage and Ball will be up with you tomorrow, when you must provide for them, and a House to work In.”

Two days later Cheever wrote:

Mr John Austin the Bearer of this Letter is the person chose to carry on our Military preparations and of more men the names of whome he will aquaint you with, and desier you will Furnish them with provision and a House to Carry on our military preparations. The Committee will be up next Wednesday and ease you of the trouble

And a day after that, on 18 March, Cheever sent another load that included “a chest of Cloathes and 2 Caggs for Mr Austan’s Workmen.” That letter also said:

this teem is sent away at 10 O’clock Satturday night in a Graite pannick Just having heard that the Kings Officers have seazed a cart load of Cartrages going thru Roxbury containing 19000 which must make you and I Extremely Cautious in our carrying on

Lemuel Shattuck quoted briefly from those letters in his 1835 history of Concord, when the documents were probably still held by the Barrett family.

These letters basically confirm what Agnes Austin told Harvard librarian John Langdon Sibley about her father in 1858, as I quoted yesterday: “John Austin, with ten others, was at work nine weeks at Concord before the battle. They were collecting and arranging public stores.” There appear to have been only eight men, they were working in Concord for only a month before the war began, and they were probably making musket (or maybe artillery) cartridges rather than being in charge of all the stores.

But Agnes Austin was only six years old in 1775, and she spoke to Sibley over eighty years later. Furthermore, given that her father’s work was top-secret, there’s remarkable confirmation of her recollection.

That documentary support adds credibility to the rest of Agnes Austin’s anecdote, about how her father responded to the warning that British soldiers were on the way:

Mr. Austin told the men to dress themselves as much like gentlemen as they could, to put on two shirts as they might be captured & they would want them. & then disperse & take care of themselves.

I’ve read about men on privateers also putting on two shirts when they expected to be captured. Clothing was relatively expensive in the eighteenth century, and an extra shirt was also the equivalent of an extra pair of underwear.

On 19 Apr 1775, British soldiers reached the James Barrett farm, the far end of the march into Middlesex County, looking for the very supplies John Austin and his men had been preparing.

TOMORROW: What happened to Austin after the shooting started?

Agnes Austin’s “Many Incidents” of the Revolution

Brian A. Sullivan, archivist for Mount Auburn Cemetery, has transcribed the diary of John Langdon Sibley, Librarian at Harvard College in the mid-1800s (shown at left). The transcription is available on here on the web.

In this Patriots’ Day season, I found the entry for Sunday, 3 Oct 1858, particularly interesting. It says in part:

A blind lady, 89 years old May 27, 1858, Miss Agnes Austin, who lives on the west corner of the Appian Way & Garden St, says that her father John who had charge of the public stores here in the time of the Revolutionary war & often told her many incidents connected with it. . . .

John Austin, with ten others, was at work nine weeks at Concord before the battle. They were collecting and arranging public stores. The news of the approach of the British arrived; they scattered the provisions. Mr. Austin told the men to dress themselves as much like gentlemen as they could, to put on two shirts as they might be captured & they would want them. & then disperse & take care of themselves.

When the enemy came to Col. [James] Barrett’s where Mr. Austin was stopping. they inquired for them & for the Colonel. Mrs. [Rebeckah] Barrett told them they were all gone, & she did not know where they were. The enemy told Mrs. Barrett not to be alarmed. as she should not be harmed. They made her accompany them to every room in the house to see if there were warlike stores or arms. They wanted food. She let them have what milk she had & bread.

Agnes Austin (1769-1861) is also mentioned in George Kuhn Clarke’s 1912 History of Needham:

In my childhood I was often taken to call upon a very ancient blind lady, Miss Agnes Austin, who was born in Charlestown, and lived there for many years, and who delighted to tell her visitors that she saw the British troops under Earl Percy and Lieut.-Col. [Francis] Smith on their return at the close of the memorable nineteenth of April, 1775. A considerable number of the soldiers had thrown away their red coats and much of their equipment. The first legacy that I ever received was under the will of this venerable lady, who was a distant connection of my family.

Austin’s tale about her father in Concord has many of the hallmarks of what I’ve called “grandmothers’ tales” of the Revolution:

• It’s a story told decades later, long after most participants and witnesses have died.
• The story puts an ancestor of the teller (and often the first listeners) front and center at a historic event.
• The narrator was an elderly unmarried (widowed or never married) woman passing on lessons to children.

As with all oral traditions, my response is to look for contemporaneous documentary support. Is there corroboration for any detail? Are there significant contradictions?

And in this case, I actually found strong documentary support.

TOMORROW: John Austin and the supplies in Concord.

A Hurry of Hoofs in a Village Street

To be honest, Somerville doesn’t even have to offer activities on Patriots’ Day to catch my attention with that poster.

But in fact the city plans a Colonial Fair for families in Foss Park, Fellsway West and Broadway, from 10:00 to 11:30 A.M. Paul Revere and his horse will come through. Try to behave yourselves.

Upcoming Events Off the Beaten Path

In addition to the annual commemorations grouped around Patriots’ Day that I linked to here, a few more talks caught my eye because they’re one-off events in unusual venues.

On Monday, 16 April (which is legally Patriots’ Day), at 10:00 A.M., Dr. Sam Forman will sign copies of Dr. Joseph Warren: The Boston Tea Party, Bunker Hill, and the Birth of American Liberty, at the Vine Lake Cemetery, 625 Main Street in Medfield. Why a cemetery in Medfield? Because that’s the burial place of Mercy Scollay, Dr. Warren’s fiancée when he died. Forman will “read from her newly attributed works and unveil her portrait.”

That same day at 7:00 P.M., Seamus Heffernan will do a book-signing and chat about his alternative-history comic Freedom in the Modern Myths shop at 34 Bridge Street in Northampton. Check out our conversation about that reworking of the Revolution starting here.

On Tuesday, 17 April, the Nichols House Museum will present a lecture by Peter Drummey, the Stephen T. Riley Librarian at the Massachusetts Historical Society, on ”The Real Liberty Bell: Boston Abolitionists, 1700-1863.” This will take place the American Meteorological Society at 45 Beacon Street in Boston starting at 6:00 P.M. Admission is $20, or $15 for members of the museum. For reservations, call the museum at 617-227-6993, preferably by 13 April.

Finally, on the actual anniversary of the outbreak of the war—Thursday, 19 April—Prof. William Fowler will speak at the National Archives in Waltham about his latest book, American Crisis: George Washington and the Dangerous Two years After Yorktown, 1781-1783. Fowler is, among many other things, the Gay Hart Gaines Distinguished Fellow in American History at Mount Vernon. That free program begins at 6:00 P.M. Reservations are recommended; email or call toll-free 866-406-2379.

Henry Knox in Balance

I’ve been exploring the documentary record of Henry Knox’s activities just before the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. I don’t think it supports the picture that his biographers have painted: that he was, and was widely known as, a stout Whig.

In fact, I suspect that Knox’s June 1774 marriage to Lucy Flucker, daughter of Massachusetts royal secretary Thomas Flucker, made some people think that the young man would soon lean toward the Crown. He had much better prospects with the Fluckers’ support than on his own.

As I quoted here, after hearing about that marriage, the pro-Crown New York printer James Rivington stepped up his correspondence with Knox. Rivington also recommended his shop to officers of His Majesty’s 23rd Regiment of Foot, on its way to Boston. Knox’s New London Book Store became known as a gathering-place for British officers—which could only have reinforced any public impression that Knox was in the Crown camp.

Whether he intended that outcome or not, Knox’s contact with the royal forces proved useful to the Massachusetts Whigs. On 3 Jan 1775, Josiah Quincy, Sr., of Braintree wrote to his son, Josiah, Jr., then visiting England, with sensitive news:

Mr W— brings intelligence from Boston, that the seamen on board the fleet are grown mutinous;—that one of the navy officers, meeting with a land officer at K—x’s shop, told him that on board all the ships their men were grown so uneasy and tumultuous, that it was with great difficulty they could govern them. Upon which the land officer observed, that the uneasiness among the soldiers was full as great, if not greater, than among the seamen.

The way Quincy dropped Knox’s name (disguised with a dash) suggests that the bookseller himself was a conduit of this gossip.

I’ve already written how it seems likely that Knox was the man who warned that royal officials—in particular, his father-in-law—knew what Paul Revere’s intelligence network was discussing in November 1774. (See “Who Tipped Off Paul Revere?”) Again, that suggests Knox supported the Whigs, but not loudly.

In his business letters Knox expressed strong hopes for a political change in London, but he avoided radical rhetoric and talk of armed conflict. Like most people, he probably hoped for a peaceful solution to the crisis. He probably wanted to avoid harsh conflict within his family and with trading associates. But when the Whigs needed intelligence, he provided it.

In his memoirs William Heath looked back circumspectly on how Henry and Lucy Knox left Boston:

His military genius and acquaintance with our General [i.e., Heath] led him to be importunate with Capt. Knox to join the army: not did he need persuasion to join in the cause of his country. His removal out of Boston, and the then state of his domestic concerns, required some previous arrangement; as soon as this was effected, he joined the army.

I suspect there was a lot of family drama involved in those vague sentences. Were there arguments and tears? Or did Henry and Lucy make their plans in whispers, not telling the rest of her family? As it turned out, Lucy would never see her parents again.

In the spring of 1775, Henry Knox discarded the opportunities that came from marrying into the Flucker family and became an unpaid engineer for the provincials. I don’t see that as an easy, foregone decision. Knox could probably still have chosen to stick with his wife’s family and take advantage of their wealth and contacts. Having that option made his decision all the more dramatic.

Henry Knox: “the only things which I desire you to send”

In November 1774, Henry Knox wrote to his main London book supplier, Thomas Longman (1731-1797), about the effects of Parliament’s Boston Port Bill and Continental Congress’s Association, or boycott of goods from Britain.

First of all, those measures meant Knox wasn’t enclosing any money. In March, the London stationery firm Wright & Gill had reminded Knox about an overdue bill and threatened to add 5% interest to the balance. Knox paid that invoice, as the firm confirmed in July. But that left him less money for Longman:

I am sorry it is not in my power to make you remittance per this opportunity, but shall do it very soon. This whole Continent have entered into a General non-Importation agreement until the late acts of Parliament respecting this Government, &C., are repealed, which will prevent my sending any orders for Books until this most desirable End is accomplished. I cannot but hope every person who is concerned in American trade will most strenuously exert themselves in their respective stations for what so nearly concerns themselves.

I had the fairest prospect of entirely balancing our account this fall, but the almost total stagnation of Trade in consequence of the Boston Port Bill has been the sole means of preventing it, and now the non-consumption agreement will stop that small circulation of Business left by the Boston Port Bill—I mean the internal business of the province. It must be the wish of every good man that these unhappy differences between Great Britain and the Colonies be speedily and finally adjusted—the influence that the unlucky and unhappy mood of Politicks of the times has upon trade, is my only excuse for writing concerning them.

The Magazines and new publications concerning the American dispute are the only things which I desire you to send at present, which I wish you to pack together well wrapped in a brown paper as usual.

The Continental Association actually prohibited the import of “any Goods, Wares, or Merchandises whatsoever,” with no exception for magazines and political pamphlets. Most likely the committee-men who promoted that boycott didn’t really care about the publications Knox asked for; they might even have been among his customers.

Nonetheless, this is another example of Knox as a young businessman seeking practical middle ground. He stuck to the boycott mostly, but not totally, and (contrary to what some biographers have written) he didn’t champion or help to enforce it.

After the war, Knox tried to pay off his Longman bill. He made one big payment but, land-rich but cash-poor, didn’t retire the whole debt before he died in 1806.

TOMORROW: The value of playing both sides.

Links for the Patriots’ Day Season in 2012

Events commemorating the start of the Revolutionary War come on strong in the next couple of weeks. The best clearing-house for happenings out in the countryside is BattleRoad.org’s Events page. Among those items is my own talk in Lincoln tomorrow night: “What Did the British Hope to Find in Concord on April 19th?”

BattleRoad.org’s listings extend to the end of the month. They include the battle demonstrations and encampments inside Minute Man National Historical Park on 14-19 April. I prefer visiting those over the venerable dawn skirmish on Lexington common because they’re (a) not at dawn, and (b) spread out, so the sight lines are better.

On that last point, writer Derek W. Beck asks whether V.I.P. seating for the Lexington reenactment is in the spirit of the occasion. Or would the provincials in that skirmish have seen those arrangements as similar to seating the meetinghouse according to social status and wealth?

One local commemoration I hadn’t read about before is Acton’s “Robbins’ Ride.” Alas, “for the purposes of safety and practicality,” this isn’t reenacted by an actual thirteen-year-old boy on a horse. Then again, an adult is more likely to ride responsibly.

In the city, Boston National Historical Park hosts its annual “Paul Revere’s Row” on 15 April. The next morning, Roxbury celebrates William Dawes’s trip through that town with events starting at 8:00 at the U.U. Urban Ministry/First Church. The Paul Revere House has many presentations and family activities lined up for the school vacation.

Finally, on Sunday the Boston Globe ran several articles pertinent to the holiday:

• On reenacting the real fight in Lexington on 19 Apr 1775, which occurred in the afternoon as the British expedition came back through town and met the reinforcement column. In the late 1900s the town militia’s attack on the regulars withdrawing to Boston became known as “Parker’s Revenge.” 
• On Bedford’s pole-capping ceremony, a tradition that goes back 47 years. (While I’ve found scattered references to the “Liberty Cap” in Revolutionary times, the symbol seems to have reached its greatest popularity as a Jeffersonian symbol during the partisan politics of the early republic.)
• On Cyrus Dallin, sculptor of the Paul Revere statue in the North End, and his museum in Arlington.
• On the legacy of the “praying Indian” communities of Massachusetts—Natives who adopted Christianity and a lifestyle that combined American and European culture, only to be eventually swept along by the growing population of British settlers and their descendants.

Thomas Sawin Homestead in Natick, 1692-?

This is the old Sawin house in Natick, photographed in 1936, from the American Antiquarian Society’s photographs of historical structures by Harriette Merrifield Forbes.

The oldest part of the house was reportedly built in 1696 by Thomas Sawin, who made a deal with the Christian Native community of Natick to set up a sawmill and gristmill for them. He legally lived in Sherborn for another two decades. The Sawins were among the first families of full British descent to settle among the Natick community. By 1745, however, the area had so many white inhabitants that they took over the government, and Natick became much like other Massachusetts towns.

During the alarm of 19 Apr 1775, the Sawin family and their Bacon in-laws were active in the Natick militia. According to traditions recorded by local historian Horace Mann (not that Horace Mann):

Thomas [Sawin], 3d, born in 1751, was called Ensign and Captain, and built the house near the brook about 1770. He married Abigail Bacon, of Dedham, in 1771, and was the father of Thomas and Martha, the founders of the Sawin Academy at Sherborn. He was a minute man in 1775 and a soldier in the Canada expedition of 1776. It was to this house that Abigail Bacon and her neice, Abigail Smith, came on the night of the 18th of April, 1775, to warn the Sawins of the marching of the British from Boston; and this house was a rendezvous of a portion of the Natick minute men.

Actually, while a local young woman named Abigail Bacon might have been involved in spreading the alarm on 18-19 April, Abigail Smith could not have been. In January, Boston 1775 reader John Russell showed me a document indicating that Smith was still only an infant then. Which makes two dramatic stories of the Revolution her descendants retold in the late 1800s that have proven untrue.

The surviving Sawin house, greatly expanded in 1791, sits on property now managed by the Massachusetts Audubon Society as part of the Broadmoor Wildlife Sanctuary. The society can’t keep up the building and plans to demolish it.

On 14 April at 11:00 A.M., I’ve been told, there will be “A Call for a Prayer of Thanksgiving” at the house as described on this Facebook page. The organizers hope to save the structure from demolition, but whether it’s practical to preserve or move it is uncertain. This may be the house’s last Patriots’ Day.

Howe Explores the Durant-Kenrick House in Newton, 12 Apr.

On Thursday, 12 April, Historic Newton will sponsor a free lecture by Jeffery Howe, Professor of Fine Arts at Boston College, about the city’s Durant-Kenrick House. Howe created this digital archive of American architecture that I’ve periodically dived into.

The Durant-Kenrick House was built in 1732 by a blacksmith and merchant named Edward Durant (1695-1740), who moved out from Boston with his family and enslaved servants to enjoy the life of a country gentleman. Howe’s talk, titled “A New Refinement: the Durant-Kenrick House in the Context of Colonial Housing,” will examine it as a sign of domestic trends:

At its construction in 1734, the Durant-Kenrick house represented an important new stage in the evolution of colonial architecture, falling between the simplicity of 17th-century building and the social aspirations of later Georgian mansions.

During the Revolutionary War the house was the home of the merchant’s son, also named Edward Durant (1715–1782). He was a Harvard graduate and local political leader, moderating Newton town meetings and serving as selectman and legislator. Durant’s son Thomas was a militia lieutenant in 1775, and his son Edward became a doctor, serving as a regimental surgeon and dying on a privateer.

Edward Durant also provided space in his house for a grammar school in the early 1760s. Old Massachusetts law required towns of a certain size to have such a school to prepare boys for careers in the ministry, but rural towns usually tried to avoid the expense of an extra building for only a few scholars.

All that said, the site’s major importance came in the early republic after it passed to the Kenrick family, who developed the largest nursery in New England. The Kenricks supplied American estate owners with fruit trees, ornamental trees, and flowering plants, and eventually currants and currant wine.

The Fiske Center for Archaeological Research at the University of Massachusetts–Boston has been excavating the Durant-Kenrick site, with periodic reports. Carl M. Cohen has also tracked activity at the house since its owners donated it Historic Newton (a city agency) in 2010.

Howe’s talk will begin at 7:00 P.M. in the Newton Free Library’s auditorium. It’s free and open to the public.

James Rivington: “for fear of hurting your interest”

Yesterday I quoted from the correspondence of Boston bookseller Henry Knox and New York printer James Rivington. Their professions made them natural business associates, with Knox selling what Rivington printed.

Eighteenth-century booksellers and printers didn’t confine themselves to selling printed matter. In his second latter to Knox, dated 26 June 1774, Rivington asked the younger man if he wanted to be the Boston agent for “Maredant’s Antiscorbutic Drops.”

In June 1774, Knox married Lucy Flucker, daughter of the royal secretary of Massachusetts. Soon after hearing that news, Rivington sent three letters, longer than any previously, congratulating the young bookseller on his marriage. At the same time, Rivington:

• told Knox that he’d recommended his shop to officers of the 23rd Regiment of Foot (the Royal Welch Fusileers), then being transferred from New York to Boston.
• sent him four chests of contraband tea to sell.

In October Rivington offered to host Henry and Lucy, whom he’d called a “most beauteous bride” and an “amiable Lady” (I don’t think they’d met), when they visited New York.

In that city, Rivington was already known in mid-1774 as a pro-Crown printer, though he still did jobs for Patriots as well. I suspect he thought that Knox’s marriage would draw the young bookseller into the Loyalist party in Boston. So he was throwing business in Knox’s direction.

On 1 December, Rivington sent Knox 300 copies of a Patriot pamphlet by Philip Livingston (shown above) titled “The Other Side of the Question; or, A Defence of the Liberties of North-America: In Answer to a Late Friendly Address to All Reasonable Americans, on the Subject of Our Political Confusions.” He told Knox that he hadn’t enclosed the original, Loyalist pamphlet:

The friendly address I do not send to you for fear of hurting your interest, it was forwarded to me by [Boston printers] Mills & Hicks to be printed, my reasons for not troubling you with these very warm, high seasoned pamphlets, is that your very numerous friends, on the patriot Interest, may be greatly disgusted at your distributing them; but if you are not so very nice as I apprehend from the state of your interest &c and are willing to have these sort of articles I will secure them for you from time to time. A piece is printing, in the Hudibrastic stile which will sell but I greatly fear you will not like. Pray explain yourself on this head directly, for I mean to shew every expression of my attention to you.

Thus, although Rivington recognized that Knox’s “interest” and “very numerous friends” were on the Patriot side, he dangled the prospect of business selling Loyalist material. Undoubtedly that would have pleased Lucy’s father, Thomas Flucker, and his colleagues in the royal government.

I don’t think Knox’s response to this invitation survives. When he discussed politics in earlier letters, his tone was moderate and his positions were Whig but not radical. He tried to maintain friendly ties. The only hint that Knox might become a Loyalist was his marriage with the financial prospects it brought—but apparently that was enough for Rivington to send out feelers.

COMING UP: The value of Knox’s position.

Henry Knox: “I beg some directions about your tea”

People writing about Henry Knox after the Revolutionary War said that he was always an ardent Whig. However, in sources from the early 1770s, his political views aren’t so pointed. There’s no evidence he was involved in any of the Whigs’ political organizations, such as the North End and South End Caucuses. He wasn’t on town committees. Attorneys on both sides of the Boston Massacre trials called him to testify.

Of course, Knox was still only in his early twenties, and thus not in line for political leadership yet. But he’s also not linked to the Boston Tea Party, a rare distinction for a Boston Patriot of his age.

Knox did have a significant encounter with the tea trade, which had major political implications after 1773. On 28 July 1774, New York printer James Rivington (shown above, from the collections of the New-York Historical Society) told him that he’d sent four chests of Hyson tea for Knox to sell on consignment. That tea had been landed without any duties paid, Rivington added, meaning both that it was illegal and that selling it wouldn’t mean paying the tea tax. (That letter was published by the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1928 and is now in the collection of the Gilder-Lehrman Institute.) On 15 August, Rivington wrote that more tea was on its way.

Knox’s earliest biographer, Francis S. Drake, wrote of this episode: “Knox declined the commission, and in September Rivington orders its delivery to a Mr. Palfrey.” (William Palfrey was a business associate of John Hancock.) Later Knox biographers—Noah Brooks, North Callahan, and Mark Puls—similarly wrote that the young bookseller refused to sell the tea, presenting that as evidence of his steadfast support for Whig political platform.

However, Cyrus Eaton printed Knox’s letters on the subject in his 1865 History of Thomaston,…Maine, and they present Knox’s reluctance as based on business, not politics. They also show that he kept trying to sell that tea discreetly for months.

On 4 August, Knox told Rivington:

I received yours of the 28th of July, and am much obliged to you for your kind recommendation of the Officers of the 23d [Regiment], but am extremely sorry for your mistake in consigning Hyson Tea to this place. I have conversed with the first tea dealers in town, who say this is the dullest time for it they ever knew, and that 100 lbs. would supply the probable demand for a twelvemonth.

The person who informed you about the price is also mistaken, as my informers say they would be very glad to take $3 per pound for theirs which is exceedingly good. Souchong tea would have answered much better than Hyson—but as they are both entirely out of my way I should be well pleased to have nothing to do with them. If by any good Fortune the ship should be detained till this arrives, by all means take it out.

The Gentlemen of the army and navy brought their Tea with them, as they were informed it was not to be had here; and a report of its being scarce has occasioned great quantities to be poured in from the neighboring seaports.

Two weeks later, Knox wrote again about the difficulty of selling tea. He never refused the business on political grounds. On 29 September, Rivington did tell Knox to deliver the tea to Palfrey, but on 15 October he was still asking the bookseller “to get as much above twenty shillings for the Tea as you possibly can.”

As late as 6 Feb 1775, Knox reported to Rivington:

I beg some directions about your tea. I have tried every person in this town who usually deals in it, but have not been able to succeed. One chest I sold to my particular friends at the rate of 12s. sterling per pound, but have not been able to sell one ounce to any other persons. Pray give me your speedy commands about it. As the Provincial and Continental Congresses have determined to suspend the use of it after the first of March, it will be too great a risque for me to vend any of it after that time, altho’ I should be glad to do every thing in my power to serve you.

Knox was eager to adhere to the Patriot boycotts, and his other letters of the time expressed opposition about the Boston Port Bill. But the tone of Knox’s pre-war letters was far from radical, and he seemed more concerned with business than with politics.

COMING UP: Knox’s marital politics.

Gordon S. Wood Speaks in Worcester, 5 Apr.

Tomorrow evening, Thursday, 5 April, starting at 7:30 P.M., Gordon S. Wood will speak at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester on the topic “Does History Teach Lessons?”

The society’s announcement asks, “Was George Santayana correct when he said that ‘those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’?” Or might there be other things to learn from the past? For myself, I’ve concluded that the past, like the present, is too complex for clear lessons, and the most important thing to learn from it is the need to recognize that complexity.

Wood has spoken on this topic before at the Rhode Island Historical Society’s annual meeting last autumn. His talk will probably reflect ideas in his book The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History, a collection of reviews. And it will surely draw on his deep knowledge of early American history; his The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 received the Bancroft and John H. Dunning prizes, and his The Radicalism of the American Revolution won the Pulitzer Prize and the Emerson Prize.

“Large promises had been held out to Knox…”

Yesterday I quoted the passage from Noah Brooks’s 1900 biography of Henry Knox in which he wrote, “Large promises were held out to young Knox to induce him to take a commission in the royal cause; he was regarded as too desirable a man to be lost from the military service of the King.”

Brooks didn’t cite a source or evidence for that statement. He also used the vague passive voice: “promises were held out,” “he was regarded.” That suggests he was working from equally vague and perhaps wishful traditions rather than documents.

North Callahan extrapolated from Brooks’s passage in his 1958 biography of the artillery general, writing that Knox received an offer of a British army commission “through the influence of Thomas Flucker,” his father-in-law (shown above). Subsequent authors repeated the same statement, relying on Callahan and Brooks.

But what was the basis of Brooks’s statement? I looked for confirming evidence in the first biography of Knox, published by Francis S. Drake in 1873. He wrote even more vaguely, and without citing sources:

Large promises had been held out to Knox to induce him to follow the royal standard, as it was thought of consequence to prevent so talented a young man from attaching himself to the provincials; but his patriotism was as sincere as it was ardent, and he did not for a moment hesitate, but embarked heart and hand in the patriot cause.

Interestingly, two years before that, Horatio Bateman’s Biographies of Two Hundred and Fifty Distinguished National Men began its entry on Knox by saying:

He married the daughter of a staunch loyalist, and was an officer in the British army when the struggle of the Revolution commenced. . . .

We know that’s wrong. It suggests that there was a long tradition in New England of saying that Knox turned away from opportunities on the royalist side because he supported the Whigs. But it also shows that tradition was hazy and liable to exaggeration.

I’m skeptical that the Flucker family actually arranged for an army commission for Knox. Such a regular army commission was a big deal, and a big expense, and it should have left a thicker paper trail. Promises of a higher rank in the Massachusetts military seem more likely, and well within Flucker’s reach as the province’s royal secretary. But even then there’s no evidence of how solid such promises were, or what Knox’s immediate response was.

COMING UP: Henry Knox and five chests of tea.

The Mystery of Henry Knox’s “Boy Soldiers”

In his 1900 biography of Henry Knox, Noah Brooks wrote of the connections that the young bookseller’s 1774 marriage brought him:

Lucy Flucker’s only brother [Thomas, Jr.] was a lieutenant in the British Army, and, while he was serving the cause of the King, his newly made brother-in-law was zealously studying the art of war and schooling himself for the service into which he was so soon to enter. Large promises were held out to young Knox to induce him to take a commission in the royal cause; he was regarded as too desirable a man to be lost from the military service of the King. The British officer who had observed with admiration the evolutions of the artillery company of which Knox was second in command, and had said that a country which produced such “boy soldiers” as he could not readily be brought under subjection, only gave voice to the sentiment that pervaded the ranks of the determined colonists.

In fact, Knox was never “second in command” of an artillery company in Boston’s militia; he was second in command of a grenadier company. Brooks’s biography has a lot of unreliable statements like that, which makes me wary of accepting its statements without confirmation.

So what confirmation does the Brooks biography offer about Knox being offered “a commission in the royal cause,” and a British officer praising his “boy soldiers”? Actually, Brooks doesn’t usually cite sources.

For the second part of that question, a Google Books search led to Cyrus Eaton’s History of Thomaston, Rockland, and South Thomaston, Maine, published in 1865. It stated:

[Knox] was at the early age of eighteen chosen one of the commanding officers of a company of grenadiers composed of young Bostonians, so distinguished for its martial appearance and the precision of its evolutions that it received the most flattering encomium from a British officer of high distinction. This officer’s prediction that “a country that produced such boy soldiers, cannot long be held in subjection,” was soon verified.

Unfortunately, Eaton didn’t cite a source for that anecdote, either. It appears to have been a tradition in Maine, where Knox lived after the war, rather than in Boston. Which is a bit odd since any such event would have taken place in Boston and pleased Bostonians, and later generations of Bostonians were never shy about publishing praise of their ancestors.

TOMORROW: And Knox’s royal commission?

Account of the Wonderful Centaur

This clipping from the Gentlemen’s Magazine of 1 Apr 1751 comes courtesy of the University of Otago’s online exhibit on that magazine.

Two Upcoming Events in Lincoln

At 2:45 P.M. on Saturday, 7 April, the Lincoln Minute Men and Minute Man National Historical Park will host the annual Paul Revere Capture Ceremony. I understand that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow will attempt to read his “Paul Revere’s Ride” while people portraying Paul Revere, William Dawes, Dr. Samuel Prescott, Mary Hartwell, and others will offer corrections and additions. There will also be music and musket fire. This event takes place at the outdoor site of the capture (shown above, courtesy of the Paul Revere House), and is for all ages.

Three days later, on Tuesday, 10 April, the group hosts its annual Battle at North Bridge Lecture. I’ll address the group on the topic of “What Did the British Hope to Find in Concord on April 19th?” Most accounts of the start of the Revolutionary War in April 1775 say that Gen. Thomas Gage sent troops to Concord to search for “military stores.” Research shows that Gage was hoping to find specific weapons and that the “arms race” to secure those weapons started back in September 1774. That starts at 7:30 P.M.

To observe that event, I’ve revamped the Boston 1775 website by creating separate pages about my upcoming and past speaking engagements, publications, and web appearances. Those pages now contain the links the used to fill the top of the right-hand column. I’ve headlined those pages “Elsewhere” since I do occasionally come out from behind the keyboard.

Pauline Maier Talks Ratification in Lexington, 30 Mar.

Tonight the Lexington Historical Society hosts Prof. Pauline Maier speaking on how the states ratified the Constitution, the topic of her recent book Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788.

On 10 Dec 1787, the town of Lexington had a meeting to respond to the call for a convention to respond to the proposed new federal structure for the U.S. of A. The upshot:

The Town then made choice of Benjamin Brown Esqr. to represent them in the State Convention to be held at the State House in Boston on the Second Wednesday of January next to give their Assent & ratification to a Constitution or Frame of Government for the United States of America as reported by the Continental Convention begun & held at Philadelphia, in May, 1787—

Benjamin Brown (1720-1802) was a farmer and deacon of the local congregation. He had been a selectman, member of the town’s committee of correspondence, and representative to the Massachusetts General Court and Massachusetts Provincial Congress. (He was also father of Solomon Brown, who Boston 1775 notes was quite significant in the start of the war.) The Wisconsin Historical Society displays a nearly unreadable image of Brown’s official documentation as a delegate.

The Lexington town records don’t seem to include complex or wary instructions for Deacon Brown. In that town at least, there seems to have been little discussion of whether Americans should or should not “give their Assent & ratification” to the new Constitution. Brown appears in the official record of the convention in Boston (at the Federal Street meetinghouse, not the State House) only once, voting yea at the end. But there was a lot more drama evident elsewhere.

Maier’s talk on that saga will begin at 8:00 P.M. in the Lexington Depot Building and 13 Depot Square. There will be coffee and cookies, and book sales and signing.

Saving Private Barnes at the M.H.S., 3 Apr.

And speaking of the question of divided loyalties at the Massachusetts Historical Society, next week on Tuesday, 3 April, the society will host a session of the Boston Area Early American History Seminar where participants will discuss Prof. Len Travers’s paper “The Court-Martial of Private Barnes.”

Months after the French capitulation at the end of the French and Indian War, a young Massachusetts man, Joshua Barnes, was discovered still in the company of his Wabenaki captors. He had been taken more than four years earlier while on patrol along Lake George. Now, Barnes was arrested and faced trial for treason before a British army court-martial.

Was he, as the court insisted, a renegade who had willingly adopted Native life and taken up arms against his king? The testimony of both Barnes and the witnesses against him suggest something different: that hostage stress response, known today as Stockholm Syndrome, may better explain the behavior that led to his arrest.

This paper, digested from a draft chapter for a proposed book, will be a departure from familiar “fate of the captive” narratives, which generally assume a storyline of assimilation into Native societies, “failure” to assimilate, or redemption.

The seminar starts at 5:15 P.M. In order to gauge the size of the room and the number of cookies needed, the society asks that people reserve a space in advance. Copies of the paper are usually available to read at the M.H.S. before the discussion.

(Image above courtesy of the Lake George R.V. Park.)

Secrets of the Federal Street Theatre

Today the Massachusetts Historical Society opens a new exhibit on the first public theater in Boston, a matter of great controversy back in 1794. The society’s Events webpage says:

“The First Seasons of the Federal Street Theatre, 1794-1798” documents the battle over the Federal Street Theatre through playbills from early performances as well as the letters and publications of supporters and opponents of public theater in Boston. The M.H.S. show is a satellite display of an exhibition titled “Forgotten Chapters of Boston’s Literary History” on display at the Boston Public Library.

The Federal Street Theatre exhibit will be on view through 30 July, and is free to people visiting on 10:00 to 4:00 on weekdays.

The first manager of that theater was John Steele Tyler, older brother of the playwright and jurist Royall Tyler. And his history is even slippier than his little brother’s. John Steele Tyler was a major early in the Revolutionary War, then a lieutenant colonel in the Massachusetts forces during the Penobscot expedition. In 1780, he sailed to Europe with John Trumbull, another former American officer, who wanted to study painting.

Tyler and Trumbull were sharing rooms in London late that year when Benjamin Thompson, secretary to Secretary of State Lord George Germain (and slipperiest of all), ordered their arrest as suspected spies. Loyalist friends warned Tyler, and he slipped away to France while Trumbull went to jail. The next year, Tyler wrote to Germain saying that the French alliance had turned him against the American cause and that he’d defect to the Crown for £1,000.

That letter didn’t come to light until Lewis Einstein’s book Divided Loyalties in 1933, so Tyler was able to return to America in the 1780s with a solid reputation. Privately John Adams called him “a detestible Specimen” (for unknown reasons), but publicly Tyler was an upstanding veteran and businessman. Family tradition says he’d even undertaken spy missions for Gen. George Washington. And perhaps that’s what Tyler really was up to in London. But that family’s voluminous traditions are sometimes contradictory and self-serving.

In any event, Tyler’s outward respectability made him a good public face for the institution that broke Boston’s long-standing taboo against theater.

(The image of the Federal Street Theatre above comes from the Boston Public Library’s Flickr collection.)