A Firmer for Molding Your Square Butts

The Jackson family of the Brazen Head advertised a lot of hardware that was unfamiliar to me—not that I do much metalworking or woodworking.

I looked up a bunch of those terms while confirming my transcription and got curious about others. So here’s what I learned about the unfamiliar inventory at the Brazen Head.

close-stool pans: Close stools were cabinets with chamber pots inside.

coffin bullions: Lumps of metal used to decorate coffins, it looks like.

double and single spring chest locks, stock locks: Edward Hoppus’s Builder’s Dictionary said, “LOCKS for Doors are of various Kinds; as for outer Doors, called Stock-locks; for Chamber-doors, call’d Spring-locks, &c.”

egg nob locks: Apparently locks built with doorknobs shaped like eggs.

H & HL hinges: Door hinges distinguished by their shapes. H hinges looked like the letter H. HL hinges, as illustrated a couple of days ago, looked like an H mashed with an L; some professional guides therefore called them IL hinges instead.

firmers: Merriam-Webster says a “firmer chisel” is “a woodworking chisel with a thin flat blade,” and dates the two-word phrase to 1827. The Jacksons’ ad is considerably earlier, of course. The word comes from the French “fermoir,” meaning to form.

gimblets: Now spelled “gimlet,” a T-shaped tool with a screw-tip for boring holes.

hallow and rounds: The first type often spelled “hollow,” these are planes for molding wood, shown here.

splinter and black pad-locks: A splinter padlock had four springs, according to a nineteenth-century reference. A black padlock was presumably black.

post pepper-mills: The sort of cylindrical pepper grinder we’re used to.

handles & scutcheons: Scutcheons were small metal plates, often shaped like shields (escutcheons), to protect part of a wooden surface from handling.

prospect hinges: These seem to be hinges for the “prospect door” in a desk, which was a “single, hinged portal fashioned with a keyhole,…for private or secret documents.”

brass & iron table ketches: Even Luke Beckerdite’s American Furniture could only guess that a “table Ketch” was “possibly a tea table,” but it sounds like it was part of a table—maybe a metal reinforcement of a table leg or foot.

rule joint table hinges: Diagram of a rule joint for a table leaf here.

square butts, dovetails: I think these were metal pieces to reinforce types of joints for two pieces of wood.

girt web: Usually called “girth web,” heavy canvas straps used to strap on saddles and other things.

jobents: A specialty nail with a thick shank, made for attaching iron straps.

dutch spectacles: Spectacles that perched on one’s nose without earpieces, like pince-nez.

bath metal thimbles with steel tops: Bath metal was an alloy of zinc and copper.

aul-hafts: Handles for awls.

spinnel: Sometimes this is a term for a mineral, more usually spelled “spinel.” The phrase “short spinel” is defined as “bleached yarn” or “unwrought inkle” in nineteenth-century references. But I can’t figure out why the Jacksons would be selling either of those things, and why they would list it between “punches” and “white wax.”

Box Irons, Flat Irons: Flat irons were solid, and box irons had a metal part that could be removed and placed in the fire, then replaced in the hollow of the iron to keep it heated.

And finally…

A Quantity of large brown Paper fit for sheathing Ships: In the 1730s, there were two ways to protect ships’ hulls against shipworm. One was attaching sheets of lead to the hull, which of course didn’t help with buoyancy. The other was to plaster the hull with tar, stick on a layer of hair, and then attach a thin sheath of wood that could be replaced as it was eaten away. It looks like thick rag paper could substitute for or supplement the hair.

(When copper sheathing became standard in the late eighteenth century, paper was one way to keep different metals from touching each other in the salt water and suffering galvanic corrosion. But Mary Jackson’s 1736 ad was too early to refer to that use.)

TOMORROW: Historical context for The Saga of the Brazen Head so far.

The Brazen Head and a Bridge in Newbury

An item one could buy at the Sign of the Brazen Head in 1759, but which Mary Jackson didn’t list in her advertising, was a lottery ticket.

We know that from an ad that appeared in the Boston Evening-Post on 30 April:

The Drawing of Newbury Lottery
(the Second Part) will punctually commence at the Town-House in Newbury, on Thursday the last Day of May next, there being a Subscription for the Tickets then unsold, if any there shall be.———

[pointing hand] Tickets to be had of Ebenezer Storer, Esq; Messrs. Timothy Newell, William Jackson and James Jackson, in Boston; Capt. Bowen and Mr. Chipman in Marblehead; Mr. Pyncheon in Salem; Mr. Symonds in Danvers; Daniel Gibbs, Esq; and Mr. Daniel Sargent in Gloucester; Major Epes, Capt. Staniford, and Mr. William Dodge in Ipswich; James M’Hard Esq; and Mr. Joseph Badger in Haverhill, and of the Managers in Newbury.

Note, But two Blanks to a Prize.

What was all that about? The town of Newbury wanted to build a bridge over the Parker River to replace a ferry that had operated for over a century. In fact, the town had wanted to build such a bridge since 1734, according to John J. Currier’s “Ould Newbury” (1896). In that year the town meeting had voted to approve such a bridge on certain conditions:

• It had to be wide enough for coaches.
• Its main arch had to be tall and wide enough for boats laden with hay to pass through.
• It wouldn’t cost the town of Newbury anything.
• It would be free to use.
• It had to be built within ten years.

It may not be surprising that no one undertook to fulfill all those conditions.

But the idea remained. In 1750 the Newbury town meeting and the Massachusetts General Court again approved of the idea of building a bridge. The legislature was involved because this time the planners proposed financing the bridge with a lottery, and the law needed provincial approval. The development team received authority to raise £1,200 that way.

In 1758 Ralph Cross finished building the bridge. It was 26 feet wide, 870 feet long, and had eight wooden arches. That structure no longer exists, but the present Parker River Bridge, built mainly in 1853 with stone arches, stands at the same spot.

Even after the bridge opened, however, the men behind it were still raising money. In fact, in April 1760 the legislature authorized a second lottery, and in February 1763 a third, to finish paying for the bridge and then to pay for its maintenance. Ads in the Boston newspapers for lottery tickets continued to direct customers who felt lucky to William and James Jackson, especially William.

When managers announced such lotteries, they had to be open about the terms. For example, the 1760 Newbury lottery stated that there were 5,000 tickets costing $2 apiece. One ticket would win $500, four would win $100, five $50, six $40, ten $30, fourteen $20, forty-five $10, seventy-five $8, and 1,495 tickets $4. The remaining 3,345 tickets were “blanks,” meaning their holders won nothing.

In all, just under one-third of all the tickets in the Newbury Lottery gave back more than a ticket-buyer had invested. That’s what the ad above meant by “Note, But two Blanks to a Prize.”

The goal of the 1760 lottery was to bring in $10,000. Of that sum, $9,000 was earmarked for prizes and the rest for the bridge. But raising a full £1,000 meant selling through the whole run of tickets, and that was a challenge. The 1759 drawing advertised above depended on some people promising “a Subscription for the Tickets then unsold.” As of March 1761 there were still unsold tickets for the second lottery, and the Newbury town meeting was asked what the town should do about it.

Today’s state lotteries operate under different rules, but one thing hasn’t changed: the expectation value of a ticket is still less than its price.

TOMORROW: Technical info.

[Above: A 1765 ticket from the long-running Faneuil Hall lottery signed by one of the managers, John Hancock.]

“To be sold by Wholesale and Retail, By James Jackson”

As I research Mary Jackson and her family, I must say it would be a lot easier if they weren’t named Jackson. And if they hadn’t kept choosing first names like James, William, and Mary. But of course they weren’t the only family in eighteenth-century New England who set traps for researchers that way.

As I reported before, James and Mary Jackson had their second son baptized James at King’s Chapel on 8 May 1735. Boys named Jackson were admitted to the South Latin School in 1740 and 1742. Unfortunately, those school records don’t include full names. It’s possible that those boys were William and/or James Jackson, who would have been aged nine and seven respectively. If so, like most boys who started at a Boston grammar school in the 1700s, they never graduated, probably shifting to a writing school for better education in business skills.

This is just a guess based on their later paths, but I suspect William spent his adolescence helping Mama at the Brazen Head while James clerked for another import merchant. I’m even ready to guess that businessman was William Rand (1716-1758), who sold cloth and other dry goods “in Cornhill, The Corner Shop on the North side of the Townhouse,” per the 24 June 1751 Boston Evening-Post. In other words, very close to the Brazen Head.

This shopkeeper William Rand is often mixed with Dr. William Rand (1689-1759), who was an apothecary and a town tax collector. To confound matters further, that doctor had a namesake nephew, who in this period was a Harvard student and medical trainee and later was a counterfeiter. But I digress.

James Jackson came of age in May 1756. Already the town’s ministers were reading a notice that he intended to marry Sarah Rand—possibly the baby sister of shopkeeper William Rand, born in Charlestown in 1729. On 27 May, the couple wed at King’s Chapel. (The record there gives Sarah’s first name as Mary, just to add to the genealogical muddle. But that’s clearly an error, judging by the intention of marriage and later records of the couple.)

James Jackson thus married at an unusually young age, perhaps to a woman six years older. However, there’s no indication Sarah Rand was pregnant when they married, as many New England brides were. Instead, he seems to have been mature for his years.

James and Sarah Jackson had their own little baby James baptized at King’s Chapel on 26 June 1757, with his mother Mary standing as one of the sponsors. Five years later, on 10 Mar 1762, their son William was baptized in the same church; grandmother Mary and uncle William Jackson were sponsors.

On 26 Feb 1759 the Boston Evening-Post ran this advertisement:

Just Imported from LONDON, in the Brigantine Hannah, John Ayers Master, and to be sold by Wholesale and Retail,
By James Jackson,
At his Shop opposite Ebenezer Storer, Esq; and Son’s Warehouse in Union-street, BOSTON, very reasonable for ready Money,

A Great Variety of European and India GOODS, consisting of such a Number of Articles as would be tedious to the Reader. Likewise, a fine Assortment of Cutlery Ware, English Shoe Soles, Writing Paper, Looking Glasses, Raisins, Currants, Starch and Spices.

A similar ad followed in the Boston Post-Boy. Young Jackson had opened his own shop in the North End and was importing from Britain and beyond.

In March, the Boston town meeting elected James Jackson as one of twelve Clerks of the Market, alongside such peers as the silversmith Nathaniel Hurd. That was an entry-level elected position which the community usually gave to a young man seen as reliable and on his way up.

TOMORROW: Taking a chance with the Jackson brothers.

A New Owner at the Brazen Head

By 1756, Mary Jackson had been running her shop at the Sign of the Brazen Head in central Boston for over twenty years.

She had started as a suddenly widowed mother of two young children and for a few years had a male business partner, but then he died, too. For over a decade, Jackson had been the sole proprietor.

On 23 August, Mary Jackson’s Boston Gazette advertisement disclosed big news about the business. She had a new partner: her son William.

For folks who love historic hardware and retailing, here’s a full transcript of that ad. For anyone else, feel free to skip down to the discussion of the Jackson family.

Imported from LONDON and BRISTOL, and to be sold by
Mary and William Jackson,
At the Brazin-Head in Cornhill, by Wholesale and Retail. And as ready Money is a great Inducement, they will sell cheap for Cash. Viz.

BRASS kettles, skillets, warming-pans, frying-pans, iron dripping-pans, iron pots, kettles & skillets, powder, lead & shot of all sizes, London dishes, plates and cream-pots, spoons, pewter measures, porringers, bed and close-stool pans, turrenes, tea-kettles, & copper coffee-pots, kettle-pots, brass & copper sauce-pans, copper drinking pots, andirons, shovel and tongs, fire-pans, brass & iron candlesticks, iron chafin-dishes, flat-irons, skimmers, ladles, bellows & box-irons, nails, brads, tacks & hob nails of all sorts, coffin bullions, tin tax, double and single spring chest locks, stock locks, egg nob locks and other door locks, H & HL hinges, pew hinges, hooks and hinges, and garnets, chest hinges, door latches, compasses, hammers, firmers, gimblets, hand-saws, plows, hallow and rounds, sugars, rules, plastering & brick trowels, splinter and black pad-locks, brass nails, post pepper-mills, brass cocks, an assortment of files, desk & book-case furniture, viz. handles & scutcheons of various sorts, desk and book-case locks, book-case hinges, scutcheons and bolts, prospect hinges, schutcheons and locks, desk buttons, brass pins, clock case hinges, furniture for tea-chests, brass & iron table ketches, London glue, screws, brass & iron desk hinges, rule joint table hinges, square butts, dovetails, three barr’d, plain and crooked stirrup irons, women stirrup irons, white setts, black buckles, saddle heads, turf nails, bridle kitts, rings and staples, girt web, saddler’s billions, jobents, spurs, tinn’d curry-combs, &c. case-knives and forks, jack-knives & pen-knives, coat and sleeve buttons, swords & belts, brass and leather ink-pots, shoe & knee buckles, scissars & shears, London needles, pocket-compasses, ivory & horn combs, razors & hones, dutch spectacles, brass & iron thimbles, bath metal thimbles with steel tops, fountain pans, brass, iron, steel & japann’d snuffers, black glass necklaces, stay-hooks, snuff-boxes, powder-flasks, pewter tea-spoons, flints, money-scales and weights, jews-harps, fish-lines and hooks, gun-locks, an assortment of shoemakers tools, knives, hammers, sowing & pegging and blades, aul-hafts, rasps & knippers, tax, punches, spinnel, white wax, with a great variety of other London, Birmingham, and Sheffield cutlery wares.

Also, Good Connecticut PORK and BEEF.

N.B. Any Person in the Country, by sending a Letter, shall be as well used as if present themselves. Old Brass, Copper, Pewter, Lead and Bees-wax, will be taken in Exchange the same as Cash.

The timing of this advertisement raises a couple of questions. William made his debut in the very first installment of The Saga of the Brazen Head, when he was baptized on 13 July 1731 at King’s Chapel. That meant he came of legal age in 1752. But it took another four years before William’s mother made him her legal partner.

In fact, William arrival in the newspaper advertising coincided with his little brother James coming of age in the late spring of 1756. I’m not sure what to make of that. Was it just coincidence, or was Mary sorting out both her sons’ futures at once?

It also seems significant that Mary Jackson continued to be the senior partner in the family firm, her name listed first in the advertisements. Indeed, after 1758 the Brazen Head ads usually appeared under the name of “Mary Jackson & Son,” not even naming William.

TOMORROW: How was the younger James Jackson keeping busy?

[The photo above shows an HL hinge, courtesy of Williamsburg Blacksmiths.]

Newport Talk Postponed Because of Government Shutdown

I’m postponing the next installment of The Saga of the Brazen Head to share this announcement from Newport and some thoughts about it.

The Newport Historical Society was planning to host a lecture this week on “‘I am an honest woman’: Female Revolutionary Resistance along the New England Seacoast” by Dr. Emily Murphy, curator for the National Park Service at Salem Maritime National Historical Site.

This talk focuses on the spinning bees that became popular in New England in the late 1760s and early 1770s and what they can tell us about women’s political activity:

This presentation will examine how middle-class women participated in resisting the importation of British Goods in the years leading up to the American Revolution.

In Colonial New England, lower class men and women could take to the streets and protest, men of the middling sort could participate in political action, yet women of the middling class were restricted by law and society. This didn’t stop these wealthier women, who became known as Daughters of Liberty, from showing their support for the Patriot cause. Along the New England seacoast, it became a popular springtime occurrence for ladies to participate in spinning bees where they would create homespun fabric and boycott purchasing fabrics imported from England.

Murphy earned her Ph.D. in American Studies from Boston University in 2008 and has worked for the National Park Service for nearly twenty years. She’s also participated in many living history events across New England; the photo above shows her carding wool. She’s a terrific researcher who loves sharing history with the public.

Unfortunately, because Emily is an N.P.S. employee, the federal government shutdown means that right now she can’t do her job, isn’t being paid, and can’t deliver this lecture in Newport.

What’s more, Emily’s husband, a ranger at Minute Man National Historical Park, is also on furlough and not being paid. They’re not the only couple I know in which both partners work for the Park Service. Thousands of N.P.S. employees chose to serve the public by preserving our historical and natural inheritance, and most are now locked out without salary payments.

Without rangers and other staff, large parks are being damaged with litter and human waste. Three park visitors died in late December. The only N.P.S. site with more than a skeleton security staff, the Associated Press reports, is the one in the Trump-operated hotel in Washington, D.C.:

The Trump administration appears to have gone out of its way to keep the attraction in the federally owned building that houses the Trump hotel open and staffed with National Park Service rangers, even as other federal agencies shut all but the most essential services.

Before the Secretary of the Interior left office under multiple ethics investigations, Congress appeared to be moving toward a budget with more money for the department to tackle “deferred maintenance” projects. Now the parks are instead suffering more damage, the department is bending the law to grab other money, and much of the federal budget is up in the air.

It’s easy to trace the source of this mess. Back in mid-December, Donald Trump said he’d be “proud” to preside over a government shutdown. Then the White House press office signaled that in fact he’d accept a bill funding all government agencies through the end of the budget year. The Senate unanimously passed such a bill. Then the President broke that commitment. Earlier this month, he repudiated his designated negotiator’s compromise offer, confirming that no one has any reason to trust him. We’re all paying the price for his deep flaws, with some of our national historical properties and the people who care for them suffering extra hard.

The Newport Historical Society has postponed Emily Murphy’s talk to Thursday, 24 January, at 5:30 P.M.—assuming, that is, that the government shutdown will be over by then. This event will take place at the Newport Historical Society Resource Center at 82 Touro Street. Admission is $1 for members and retired or active-duty military, $5 for others. Keep watch for further announcements.

[ADDENDUM on 22 January: With the Trump shutdown still dragging on, this talk has been canceled.]

“Just imported, and to be sold by Mary Jackson”

After her business partner Robert Charles died, Mary Jackson stepped up her advertising from the Sign of the Brazen Head.

Her main business was brass hardware and metals, both made in the shop and shipped in from Britain. For example, the Boston Evening-Post for 28 Sept 1747 announced:

Just imported, and to be sold by Mary Jackson, at the Brazen Head in Cornhill, all sorts of Ironmongery, Braziery and Cutlery Ware, also Pewter and Lead by the Hundred, and Nails of all sorts by the Cask or smaller Quantities, at reasonable rates.

But hardware wasn’t all that Jackson sold. Like a lot of Boston shopkeepers and importers, she carried other goods, wherever she saw a profit. That brought her into lines more typical of “she-merchants,” such as fashionable dry goods. On 9 May 1748, her Boston Evening-Post ad said:

To be sold by Mary Jackson, at the Brazen Head Cornhill, Boston, sundry close Mournings, viz.

Bumbazeen, Alamode, Lutestring, Norwich Crapes, Tiffany, Hat-band Crape, Paper and Gause Fans, Handkerchiefs, Women’s Lamb Gloves, also Mens and Womens white Lamb Gloves, and Womens Mittens, Shalloons, Buckrams, &c. by Wholesale and Retail

N.B. The said Mary Jackson has got a handsome new Chaise to sell…

Jackson’s late husband had also advertised a chaise from the Brazen Head, back in 1735. The shop’s location on the main street near the center of town may have made it a good place to display a vehicle.

Likewise, the Brazen Head became a sales outlet for produce from New England farms, as these select advertisements from the Brazen Head show.

• Boston Evening-Press, 19 Mar 1753: “CHOICE BUTTER, either by the Firkin or Tub”
• Boston Evening-Press, 22 July 1754: “CHOICE Connecticut Pork, Florence Oil, Indigo, and Mould Candles.”
• Boston News-Letter, 4 Sept 1755: “POWDER, Shot, Flints, [various types of hardware], Desk and Book-case Furniture: With a Variety of either London, Birmingham and Sheffield Country Ware, too tedious to mention.”

In the last advertisement, Jackson also said she would sell the by-now-usual pork in “exchange for Rum, Sugar or Molasses,” indicating both the ongoing cash shortage in the colonies and her ability to sell those commodities on to others. As for the ammunition featured in the ad, that new line might reflect the oncoming war against France.

TOMORROW: A new young partner.

Jacob Bailey Meets Charles Paxton’s “Gay Order”

Jacob Bailey (1731-1808) graduated from Harvard College in 1755, ranked at the bottom of his class in social rank. He chose to go into the ministry, starting as a Congregationalist like most of his fellow New Englanders.

Shortly after receiving his master’s degree in 1758, however, Bailey decided to become an Anglican minister. That required going to England to meet with a bishop for ordination. In his diary he wrote:

I visited my parents, where I found my Aunt Bailey, who all cried out upon me when I discovered my resolutions of visiting London for orders; and after all, I found it extremely difficult, with all the arguments I could use, to gain them over to any favorable sentiments concerning the Church of England.

Bailey didn’t set out on his journey until late 1759, traveling first to Boston to arrange passage. He met with Charles Paxton (shown here), a Customs officer and warden of King’s Chapel, on 26 December. The young man wrote in his diary that Paxton promised “to use his interest with the commander of the Hind in my behalf, for a passage to England.”

Twelfth Night, 6 Jan 1760, was a Sunday. The Congregationalist meetinghouses had their regular services, but the Anglican churches made a bigger deal of the holiday. Bailey apparently attended King’s Chapel and visited briefly with the rector, the Rev. Henry Caner. Then he made a more unusual social call:

…having received an invitation from Mr. Paxon, I waited upon him, was politely received, introduced into a fine parlor among several agreeable gentlemen. I found here the famous Kit Minot, Mr. McKensie, and one Mr. Stuart, a pretty young gentleman.

I observed that our company, though chiefly upon the gay order, distinguished the day by a kind of reverent decorum. Our conversation was modest and perfectly innocent, and I scarce remember my ever being in any company where I could behave with greater freedom.

Let’s imagine reading those same words from a mid-20th-century author: a gathering of men, most “upon the gay order” and one “a pretty young gentleman.” The writer is obviously concerned about the conversation not being “modest and perfectly innocent.” But he comes away feeling he’s never been “in any company where I could behave with greater freedom.” We’d easily interpret that as the account of a homosexual man meeting other out-homosexual men for the first time.

Charles Paxton was in fact a lifelong bachelor. The Whig press ridiculed his elaborate courtly manners and sneered that he was frightened of boys’ games and once concealed himself in women’s clothing.

Christopher (Kit) Minot also never married. Born in 1706 and graduating from Harvard in 1725, he eventually joined the Customs service, serving as a land waiter. Hannah Mather Crocker later wrote that Minot was “a man of keen wit” who “moved in the first circles.” He left Boston during the 1776 evacuation and died in Halifax in March 1783.

I’m not sure of the identities of the other men Bailey named, but they might also be connected to the Customs service. William McKenzie was a searcher for the Customs office in Savannah in the late 1760s. Stuart might have been Duncan Stewart (1732-1793), later Customs collector in New London, Connecticut; Stuart married a daughter of Boston merchant John Erving in 1767, and they had ten children.

Likewise, Jacob Bailey eventually married and had six children. I didn’t find in his modern biography any further indication of interest in other men. But just four days later as he rode out of Boston, he wrote: “In the boat’s crew I discovered a young man, whose appearance and behavior pleased me more than all I had seen.” Here he was, just trying to sail away to be ordained, and attractive young men kept throwing themselves in front of him.

Okay, “gay” didn’t acquire its sexual definition until the twentieth century, and our understanding of homosexuality is also different from that of 1760. When Bailey wrote about gentlemen “chiefly upon the gay order,” he probably meant an upper-class, non-Calvinist, luxury-enjoying lifestyle. Bailey’s relatively poor, rural family descended from New England Puritans was mostly likely awash with suspicions about wealthy Anglicans. What sort of society was he getting himself into as he changed denominations? But the young minister was pleased to find a set of gentlemen sharing a decorous Twelfth Night conversation—and he could relax.

Of course, there might well have been gay men in that parlor.

“The late Company of Jackson and Charles”

As proprietor of the brazier’s shop at the Sign of the Brazen Head, Mary Jackson managed a largely male staff of colleagues, journeymen, and apprentices.

The probate file for Jackson’s late husband James listed five males questioned about goods in the shop when he died: William Coffin, Benjamin Simons, George Reston, Abraham Bennet, and Isaac Beal (as near I can read the handwriting). The clear implication is that those were employees.

I looked for all five names in my usual places and could find only one, but he was a brazier. Late in the winter of 1737, Coffin took out ads in the Boston Gazette and Boston Evening-Post to state:

WILLIAM COFFIN, at the Ostrich, near the Draw-Bridge Makes & Sells Mill Brasses, Chambers for Pumps, Brass Cocks of all Sizes, Knockers for Doors, Brasses for Chaises and Sadlers. Brass Doggs of all sorts, Candlesticks, Shovels and Tongs, Small Bells, and all other Sorts of Founders Ware.

Also all sorts of Braziers and Pewterers Ware, Small Stills and Wormes, and all sorts of Plumbers Work; likewise Buys old Copper, Brass, Pewter and Lead.

Coffin had thus gone into business for himself after working for the Jacksons. But he did so up near the border of the North End.

The 29 Nov 1736 Boston Gazette named another expert working in the Jackson shop:

If any Persons desire to know the true Value of Ores, Minerals, or Metals, of what kind soever, may have them justly Essay’s on reasonable Terms, by Robert Baden, at Mrs. Jackson’s Founder, at the Brazen Head in Cornhill, Boston.

Obviously Baden’s expertise as an assayer of metals was helpful for Jackson as well.

Mary Jackson’s most important coworker—legally her partner in the early 1740s—was a man named Robert Charles. I don’t know if he was from New England or Britain. He was in Boston by 1740 when he was initiated into the St. John’s Lodge of Freemasons.

Records shows at least two Massachusetts craftsmen doing business with the firm of Mary Jackson and Robert Charles (with Jackson always listed first as the senior partner). The clockmaker Benjamin Bagnall bought “wire, brass plates, hinges, locks, and escutcheons, as well as ‘Dolphins for Clock,’” between 1739 and 1743, according to Charles L. Venable’s American Furniture in the Bybee Collection. The Dallas Museum of Art has a Bagnall clock featuring just such dolphin ornaments, shown above.

Helen Schatvet Ullmann’s The Pierponts of Roxbury, Massachusetts says that housewright Robert Pierpont bought £14.6.7 worth of “pew hinges, roundhead nails, a hand saw, a penknife, and other items, including a candlestick and a brass skillet.”

We know about the Pierpont purchases because Jackson and Charles took the housewright to court as they settled accounts to split up their business. The Boston Evening-Post for 9 Apr 1744 ran this notice:

Robert Charles, in Copartnership with Mrs. Mary Jackson, being obliged speedily to go for England, hereby desires all Persons that have any Accounts open with the said Copartnership, to come and settle them before he goes, to prevent further Trouble.

N.B. the said Jackson and Charles have a likely Negro Girl about fourteen Years old to dispose of.

That enslaved girl probably worked in the Jackson household. At the time, Mary’s two sons were a little younger than that girl.

It’s not clear if Robert Charles ever made it to England. On 6 Nov 1745, the same probate judge who oversaw the settlement of James Jackson’s estate appointed Mary Jackson an administrator of Charles’s estate. The last reference to the partnership that I’ve found is an announcement in the 6 Oct 1746 Boston Evening-Post:

All Persons that have any Demands on the late Company of Jackson and Charles, are desir’d to bring in their Accounts to Mrs. Mary Jackson, Administratrix, in order to a Settlement; and all those indebted to said Company are desir’d to pay their respective Dues, as they would avoid being sued.

Ten years after her husband’s death, Mary Jackson was once again on her own.

COMING UP: What was on sale at the Brazen Head.

“Mary makes and sells Tea-Kettles and Coffee pots”

As recounted in yesterday’s posting, by the end of 1735 Mary Jackson had reopened her husband James’s braziery shop a few weeks after he died at sea.

Mary Jackson had two sons under age five to provide for, and, according to accounts she later filed to the probate court, a staff of seven dependent on the shop. Plus her husband left well over a thousand pounds in inventory, and well over two thousand pounds in debt. So there were many reasons to make the most of the business.

Given that amount of stock at the Sign of the Brazen Head and the shop’s location near the center of Boston, Jackson immediately became one of the town’s most visible businesswomen.

The best documented “she-merchant” in pre-Revolutionary Boston was Elizabeth Murray, subject of Patricia Cleary’s 2000 biography. Murray opened a millinery shop after arriving from Scotland as a young woman in 1751. She imported the latest dress fashions, cloth, ribbons, and other dry goods, and she gave lessons in genteel embroidery and other skills for girls.

Murray married three times, gaining a great deal of wealth with her second marriage to Isaac Smith, but she was always able to support herself. She used prenuptial agreements to ensure she controlled her own wealth. And she acted as mentor to younger single women in Boston business, such as Janette Day and the Cumings sisters.

Jackson, in contrast, appears to have become a businesswoman by default because of her husband’s death. Furthermore, manufacturing brass hardware was not a traditionally female profession like millinery.

On 11 Oct 1736 Jackson published this advertisement in the Boston Gazette:

MARY JACKSON, at the Brazen-Head, in Cornhill, makes and sells all sorts of Brass and Founders Ware, as Hearths, Fenders, Shovels and Tongs, Hand-Irons, Candlesticks, Brasses for Chaises and Saddles, of the newest Fashion; all sorts of Mill Brasses; Mortars, Cocks, large and small; all sorts of polish’d Brazier’s Ware, at reasonable Rates.

A Quantity of large brown Paper fit for sheathing Ships, to be sold: Likewise buys old Copper, Brass, Pewter, Lead and Iron.

I’ve found a couple of other ads in which Jackson stated in some way that she actually produced the metal goods she sold, such as this line in the 21 June 1750 Boston News-Letter:

Said Mary makes and sells Tea-Kettles and Coffee pots; copper Drinking-pots, brass and copper Sauce-pans, Stew-pans, and Baking-pans; Kettle-pots, and Fish-Kettles.

However, in many more advertisements over the course of twenty years, Mary Jackson emphasized that she sold the hardware and other goods at the Brazen Head. So I’m not sure how hands-on she was in the production of brassware, as opposed to supervising employees’ work, managing imports from Britain, and running the retail shop. Because she was definitely the boss of the enterprise.

TOMORROW: The men who worked for Mary Jackson.

Settling James Jackson’s Estate

The last installment of The Saga of the Brazen Head ended on 12 Sept 1735 with James Jackson drowning on a trip home from Maine. He left his wife Mary with two sons under the age of five.

James left no will, so on 25 September a probate judge appointed three people to administer the estate: William Speakman, baker; John Deacon, blacksmith; and Mary Jackson, widow. Speakman and Deacon’s names don’t appear in the probate file again.

Mary Jackson in turn appears to have hired Leonard Jarvis, whose gravestone at Copp’s Hill illustrates this posting, to inventory the estate and settle some debts.

In January 1736, Jackson submitted a six-page inventory of her husband’s property. He owned no real estate. The hardware in the store started with “36 Pair of Large Brass Candlesticks” and totaled £1,469.11.8, plus about £100 of founder’s tools and raw metals. The household goods included a mahogany card table, an “old fashioned” looking glass, and 39 pieces of pewter tableware. All told, Jackson valued her late husband’s property at a little over £1,700.

That wasn’t the end of the probate process by a long shot, however.

In August 1737 the probate judge questioned five men about the Jackson estate, asking if they knew of any property not included in the inventory. From three of those men came news of:

• “old Iron & old brass carried into the Cellar to the value of one hundred weight”
• “some brass Patterns which were never shown to the Apprizers by William Who is run away”
• “old Cocks that came to be mended & a pair of old Hinges”

In November 1737 the court summoned Richard Fry, then back in Boston and feuding with Samuel Waldo. Fry owed money to the Jackson estate, with the security being a parcel of paper—“but it being So Bad that its for ye most part unvendible.” For papermaking fans, this parcel consisted of reams of “Large bag paper,” “Small Capp,” “Best Sorted Whited Brown,” “Whited Brown,” and a “Bundle.” Mary Jackson had sold most of the bag paper and best whited brown. The probate court empowered a committee to examine and value the rest.

The court had already commissioned those same men to sort out the debit side of the estate. On 24 July 1738, the Boston Gazette ran this notice:

The Commissioners to Examine the Creditors Claims to the Estate of Mr. James Jackson, late of Boston Founder, deceased, will meet once a Month at the usual time and place for Four Months longer, to Receive said Claims, of which the Creditors are to take notice.

The commissioners filed their report in October 1738. They found that the James Jackson estate owed eighty-four creditors a total of £2,696.5.10. The biggest creditor, with over £1,650 due, was the wealthy merchant Charles Apthorp. The second largest, owed only £228, was James Bowdoin.

In yet another document for the probate court, Mary Jackson reported the total amount due to her husband as £1,787.6.9, and that she had collected £221 and a penny since his death. In that filing Jackson also included a list of expenses since her husband’s death, including payments to the commissioners and others who helped settle the estate, wages for a nurse, “weeds” for mourning, and necessary household expenses. That was enough for the judge to declare the estate settled in 1739.

Mary Jackson’s expense list reveals some details of her husband’s brazier business. She paid rent to William Dummer for the shop, separate from other rent, probably for where the family lived. She reported “the Expence of maintaining 7 persons during the Shops being shut up wch. was 4 Weeks.” I’m guessing those seven people included the five men interrogated about things removed from Jackson’s estate, plus the elusive William.

The four weeks’ closure sheds new light on this advertisement that had appeared in the Boston Gazette on 27 Oct 1735:

MARY JACKSON, the Widow of the late James Jackson Founder, at the Brazen Head in Cornhill Boston, sells all sorts of Founders Ware, and all sorts of bright Braziers Ware, and likewise Casteth all sorts of Mill Brasses.

Having kept the Sign of the Brazen Head closed for a month, all the while paying the skilled staff to stay on, Mary Jackson had opened for business again.

TOMORROW: Mary Jackson, businesswoman.

“Fashioning the New England Family” in Boston

The “Fashioning the New England Family” exhibit will be on display at the Massachusetts Historical Society through 6 April. It’s well worth a visit, especially because it’s free.

The webpage on the exhibit explains:

Fashioning the New England Family explores the ways in which the multiple meanings of fashion and fashionable goods are reflected in patterns of consumption and refashioning, recycling, and retaining favorite family pieces. Many of the items that will be featured have been out of sight, having never been exhibited for the public or seen in living memory. . . .

For the public, it is an opportunity to view in detail painstaking craftsmanship, discover how examples of material culture relate to significant moments in our history, and learn how garments were used as political statements, projecting an individual’s religion, loyalties, and social status.

The garments on display range from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. The ways they’re displayed are often as interesting as the clothing itself. In a couple of cases, beside the garment is a portrait of its owner wearing it. One quilted petticoat is a recreation by Colonial Williamsburg tailors based on a pattern copied from the original—which was destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. Tools show how clothing was made and repaired. Examples highlight how garments were remade or their fabrics reused.

The exhibit also features fashionable accessories, such as jewelry, shoes, and Abigail Adams’s pocket. One case is devoted to a rare example of a wig, wig case, powder, and related utensils. I was particularly struck by a walking stick that belonged to Thomas Hancock, shown here; I hadn’t known “fist canes” were a thing.

Given the expense of fashionable, high-quality clothing; the resources necessary to preserve those goods; and the Massachusetts Historical Society’s traditional supporters, upper-class fashion dominates the exhibit. But of course I looked for traces of “my guys,” the striving mechanics on the front line of pre-Revolutionary protests and military preparations, as discussed in The Road to Concord. Many of those men made it into the genteel class, but they struggled to get in and to solidify that status. Understanding fashion helped.

One item from “my guys” is shown at top: a hatchment that a young woman in the Pierpont family embroidered following the design of heraldic painters John and Samuel Gore. And there’s a whole display case devoted to objects from the family of William Dawes. He was a fashion icon in colonial Boston—the first time Dawes’s name appeared in the newspapers, it was because he got married in a suit of Massachusetts-woven cloth. That suit doesn’t survive, but the display includes homespun cloth from the Dawes family earlier in the century, a silk muff, bags and purses, and a kidskin bag that Dawes used to hold legal papers when he died in 1799.

For folks who can’t visit the exhibit before April, there’s also a Fashioning the New England Family book by guest curator Kimberly S. Alexander.

“The New-born Year now dawns again”

It’s a Boston 1775 tradition to share a “carrier’s address” around New Year’s. That’s one term for a poem that newspaper carriers composed, printed, and distributed to encourage end-of-year tips from their customers.

I’ve featured several poems from those newspaper delivery boys, some from delivery men and women, and possibly one from a delivery girl. Some came from individual boys, such as Job Weeden, but most were collective pleas. Often those verses alluded to political issues of the day.

This year I’m making a slight deviation and instead sharing a farrier’s address. A farrier was, as you know, a person who shod horses. Two hundred fifty years ago today, at least one farrier’s apprentice in Boston was distributing a printed broadside with this message:

A
New-Year’s Wish,
From the Farrier’s Lad.

The New-born Year now dawns again,
And precious Health is still possess’d;
May Heaven’s Blessings yet descend,
And all our Troubles be redress’d.

’Tis true, the Scene is chang’d!---but yet
Our anxious Hopes are still alive:
We trust our KING will hear our Cries,
And all our Grievances relieve.

Then while with Plenty you abound
And Mercies on you daily flow,
Pray out of your abundant Store
Some trifle on your Lad bestow.

Boston, January 1769.

Whatever print shop produced this broadside for the farrier’s lads also switched out some type and printed “A New-Year’s Wish, From the Baker’s Lad.” And perhaps others that haven’t survived. Which shows how by 1769 the practice of seeking gratuities at the end of the year was pretty widespread across the juvenile workforce.

Richard Fry’s Greatest Scheme

Before going on with The Saga of the Brazen Head, I’ll zip through what happened with Richard Fry.

Under his contract for the paper mill with Samuel Waldo and Thomas Westbrook, Fry had to pay £64 a year. But making paper on the Maine frontier didn’t bring in huge profits, and the whole province was in a cash crunch. Fry managed to send his landlords fifty reams of paper in place of specie, but that wasn’t £64 in cash, was it?

Waldo and Westbrook sued Fry and won a judgment of £70. They had the sheriffs in Maine seize the paper-making equipment. And they had Fry clapped into the Boston jail as a debtor around the start of 1737. In response, Fry claimed that Waldo and Westbrook had taken that action only after they had tried to buy him out and he refused.

Waldo recruited another man to continue the paper manufactory as an employee. Then he turned on Westbrook, forcing him out of the partnership. Calling himself “hereditary lord of Broad Bay,” Waldo recruited more settlers in Europe.

Among the people who came to America at Waldo’s invitation were the German ancestors of Christopher Seider. However, whenever Britain went to war with France, which happened in 1744 and again in 1757, the Maine frontier became a risky place to live and the settlements emptied out. Waldo died in 1759. Some of his holdings descended to his daughter Hannah and then to her daughter Lucy, wife of Henry Knox.

Meanwhile, back in the Boston jail, Richard Fry produced a steady stream of petitions complaining about his Maine landlords, the sheriff and undersheriff who’d taken his stuff, and the jailer who’d locked him up.

On 22 May 1739 Fry placed yet another advertisement in the New-England Weekly Journal:

This is to inform the Publick, that there is now in the Press, and will be laid before the Great and General Court, a Paper Scheme, drawn for the Good and Benefit of every individual Member of the whole Province; and what will much please his Royal Majesty; for the Glory of our King is in the Happiness of his Subjects: And every Merchant in Great Britain that trades to New-England, will find their Account by it; and there is no Man that has the least Shadow or Foundation of Common Reason, but must allow the said Scheme to be reasonable and just:

I have laid all my Schemes to be proved by the Mathematicks, and all Mankind well knows, Figures will not lye; and notwithstanding the dismal Idea of the Year Forty One, I don’t doubt the least seeing of it a Year of Jubile, and in a few Years to have the Ballance of Trade in Favor of this Province from all Parts of the Trading World; for it’s plain to a Demonstration, by the just Schemes of Peter the Great, the late Czar of Muscovy, in the Run of a few Years, arrived to such a vast Pitch of Glory, whose Empire now makes as grand an Appearance as any Empire on the Earth, which Empire for Improvement, is no ways to be compared with this Royal Majesty’s Dominions in America.

I humbly beg Leave to subscribe myself,
A true and hearty Lover of New-England,
Richard Fry.

Boston Goal, May 1739.

What was he on about now? Fry was issuing A Scheme for a Paper Currency to solve the specie crisis and promote the local economy. Backing up the new printed money, he wrote, would be the output of “Twenty Mills” built around Boston harbor. When Fry had first announced his scheme the previous August, even calling a meeting of investors at the Green Dragon Tavern, he had only seventeen mills in mind.

One might question the value of economic advice from a man who had gone bankrupt in England and was in jail for debt. But those circumstances didn’t daunt Fry. We can read his proposal, plus a couple of the petitions he wrote in the same years, in this book. Other documents from him are in the Clements Library.

Fry’s scheme wasn’t the only attempt to address the province’s specie shortage. In 1740, Boston businessmen set up the Massachusetts Land Bank, which issued private paper currency based on land holdings. The royal government and its supporters, led by Thomas Hutchinson, worked to stifle that enterprise, and in 1741 Parliament outlawed it. Some historians have traced the enmity between Hutchinson and Samuel Adams, whose father was a Land Bank investor, to that controversy.

Fry of course saw nothing wrong with paper currency (and one suspects he hoped to win the contract to supply the paper). But he no doubt preferred his own approach to issuing it. And as long as the provincial authorities opposed the Land Bank, he was ready to take advantage of that. In December 1740 Fry pointed out to Gov. Jonathan Belcher and his Council that his jailer was dealing in Land Bank currency. (A sample shown above.)

Richard Fry died in 1745, his finances still a mess. He left a wife and at least one child.

“Overset in the Storm near the Isle of Sholes”

In the Boston newspapers printed on Thursday, 15 Sept 1735, we can watch the maritime town struggle to gather and digest news of a calamity at sea. First, the Boston Post-Boy:

Last Monday Night we had a hard Storm, the Wind from N. E. to S. E. in which sundry Vessels were drove on Shoar in the neighbouring Ports . . .

We hear, that a Sloop belonging to Newbury, one Offin Boardman Master, bound from Casco-Bay to this Place, having a Raft of Masts at her Stern, was overset in her Passage, on Monday Night last, and thirteen People drown’d, being all the Persons on board, Nine of them were Passengers; she was carried into the Isle of Shoals last Wednesday.

This Offin Boardman (1698-1735) was the grandfather of a man of the same name who commanded a privateer during the Revolutionary War and lived on Historic New England’s Spencer-Pierce-Little Farm after 1796.

Here’s the 15 Sept 1735 Boston Gazette:

Monday Night last in the Storm Offin Boreman bound from Casco to Newbury in a Sloop laden with Lumber, was overset in the Storm near the Isle of Sholes she had on board 8 or 10 Passengers, some belonging to this Town, among whom were three Married Women, all lost; we have heard the Names of some of ’em but not with the certainty as to mention ’em. Mr. Boreman has left a Wife and 3 or 4 Children, and had on board with him a valuable Negro.

That evening came the Boston Evening-Post:

Monday Night last we had a very severe Storm of Wind at N. E. which did some Damage to the Shipping in our Harbour . . .

The same Night a Sloop coming from Casco-Bay, Offin Boardman of Newbury Master, was overset near the Isle of Shoals, and all the People drowned. ’Tis said there were on board, (besides Three Men belonging to the Sloop,) Ten Passengers, some of which belonged to this Town, but tho’ several Sloops came in Yesterday from Casco-Bay, yet we cannot get a particular Account of their Names. We hear that the Sloop has been since found, and is towed into the Isle of Shoals.

A week later, the 22 Sept 1735 Boston Post-Boy finally provided specifics:

We have now certain Information, That in the Sloop which was overset in the violent Storm we had last Monday Night was Se’n-night, as mention’d in our last, there were but Eight Persons, all of whom were drowned, viz. Offin Boardman, Master, Thomas Coker and Edmund Pilsbury, all of Newbury; a Man belonging to the Sloop, whose Name was cannot learn; Mr. James Jackson of Boston, Founder; the Wife of Nathaniel Lock, the Wife of John Sweet, and the Wife of William Bucknam, all of Casco-Bay.

At the Sign of the Brazen Head in Boston, Mary Jackson was left a widow with two sons. William was four years old, and James was only four months.

COMING UP: Picking up the pieces.

“Brown Paper made at Mr. Fry’s Mill”

In 1734 Richard Fry finally set about making paper at the mill built for him in Stroudwater outside Falmouth (now Portland), Maine, by real-estate developers Samuel Waldo and Thomas Westbrook. Fry sublet some of that facility to another English papermaker named John Collier.

On 14 October, Fry addressed his old neighbors in yet another hortatory advertisement in the New-England Weekly Journal:

To the INHABITANTS of the GREAT TOWN of BOSTON;

It is now almost Three Years, since I Published an Advertisement, to shew you the excellent OEconomy of the Dutch, in the Paper Manufactory, in order to induce you to follow so laudable an Example; but I am sorry to say, I have had but small Effects of it as yet; when Gentlemen have been at great Expence to serve the Public, as well as their own Private Interest, it is the Duty of every Person, as much as in them lies, to help forward so useful a Manufactory; Therefore I intreat all those that are Lovers of their Country, to be very careful of their Linnen Rags, and send them to Joseph Stocker in Spring Lane, BOSTON, and they shall receive ready Money for the same.

Richard Fry.

That plea highlights what seems like a fundamental flaw in the plan to run a paper mill on the Presumpscot River. A frontier settlement didn’t have nearly as many rags as a big old port like Boston. Nor did it have printers, newspapers, attorneys, or many businessmen in need of lots of paper. Waldo was still busy recruiting settlers, as this broadside shows. But aside from supply, demand, and labor, Fry’s enterprise had great prospects.

Meanwhile in Boston, as I quoted a couple of days ago, James Jackson first advertised himself as making and selling brass goods at the sign of the Brazen Head. On 8 May 1735, James and his wife Mary had their second son, James, Jr., baptized at King’s Chapel.

After another two months, on 7 July 1735, the New-England Weekly Journal announced:

Brown paper, TO BE SOLD, for ready Money, by James Jackson, at the Brazen Head in Cornhill, Boston.

P.S. There will be no more Brown Paper made at Mr. Fry’s Mill at Stroudwater, at Casco-Bay

I’ve found no clue about how Fry and Jackson linked up. Why would a shop full of brass hardware be a good outlet for brown paper? Perhaps the two men felt some affinity as recent arrivals from England making their way among established Yankees.

In any event, at the end of that summer James Jackson took a trip up to Casco Bay. He might have been delivering or installing brass fixtures in a mill or other new building. He might have been picking up more paper to sell. Jackson might even have been exploring the possibility of joining Waldo and Westbrook’s settlement, moving his small family to the Maine coast.

He never came back.

TOMORROW: “a very severe Storm of Wind.”

“Richard Fry, Stationer, Bookseller, Paper-maker, and Rag Merchant”

In September 1728 the Massachusetts General Court promoted local paper manufacturing by granting a ten-year patent to a group of investors that included Daniel Henchman, Benjamin Faneuil, and Thomas Hancock. Those partners built a mill in Milton and delivered the first sample of paper back to the legislature three years later.

Another Boston merchant, Samuel Waldo (1696-1759, shown here) also saw potential in paper. He made a partnership with Thomas Westbrook (1675–1744) of the district of Maine, securing title to a large swath of land between the Penobscot and Muscongus Rivers. Waldo headed to Britain to recruit skilled craftsmen while Westbrook set about building a settlement to receive them.

One of the men Waldo met in England was Richard Fry. According to A. H. Shorter’s Paper Making in the British Isles (1971), Fry, a “rag merchant,” paid to insure a paper mill at Long Wick in Buckinghamshire in 1726. John Bidwell’s American Paper Mills (2013) adds that Fry oversaw two more paper mills in Berkshire and owned part of a paper warehouse in London. Bidwell also reported that in 1730 Fry went bankrupt, and thus at liberty to make a new start in America.

Fry and Waldo signed an indenture contract in 1731. Fry promised to move to New England, and Waldo promised that within ten months Westbrook would finish building a paper mill on their land in Maine for Fry to run.

Richard Fry reached Boston by the end of that year. He had to support himself for a while, so in April and May 1732 he ran the same advertisement in the New-England Weekly Journal, Weekly Rehearsal, and Boston Gazette:

This is to give Notice, That Richard Fry, Stationer, Bookseller, Paper-maker, and Rag Merchant, from the City of London, keeps at Mr. Thomas Fleet’s Printer at the Heart & Crown in Cornhill, Boston; Where the said Fry is ready to accommodate all Gentlemen, Merchants, and Tradesmen, with sets of Accompt Books, after the neatest manner: And whereas, it has been the common Method of the most curious merchants in Boston, to Procure their Books from London, This is to acquaint those Gentlemen, that I the said Fry, will sell all sorts of Accompt-Books, done after the most acurate manner, for 20 per Cent. Cheaper than they can have them from London.

I return the Publick Thanks for following the Directions of my former Advertisement for gathering of Rags, and hope they will continue the like Method; having received seven thousand weight & upwards already.

For the pleasing entertainment of the Polite part of Mankind, I have Printed the most Beautiful Poems of Mr. Stephen Duck, the famous Wiltshire Poet: It is a full demonstration to me that the People of New England, have a fine taste for Good Sense & Polite Learning, having already Sold 1200 of these Poems.

I haven’t found any “former Advertisement.” If Fry had indeed collected 7,000 pounds of rags and sold 1,200 copies of the Duck poetry collection, most of that work might have been in Britain. The Boston print shop of Kneeland and Green did issue Duck’s Poems on Several Subjects in 1732, but it’s not clear whether they were working with Fry or inspired by him.

On 29 May, Fry announced another scheme in the New-England Weekly Journal:

This is to Acquaint the Publick, that I have Printed a Specimen of a new Sett of Letters, lately Imported from London, on which I propose to print the Spectators by Subscription, at Three Pounds the Sett, neatly Bound; and that the Publick may be intirely satisfied, the Subscriptions in Boston are to be taken in at the Office of Mr. Joseph Marion, Notary Publick, & Deposited in his hands.

It will be needless to acquaint the Learned and Polite part, that nothing more demonstrates the fine Genius of a Country, than to have the curious Art of Printing brought to Perfection, wherein the present Age have Opportunity to convey their Ideas in fine Characters to succeeding Ages. The vast Returns the Dutch make only in this Branch of Trade is most prodigious, for they Print for all the Known parts of the World; and it was really the Grand Oppressions they suffer’d that gave them that Keen Edge, to such a pitch of Industry, as hath brought them to make that glorious Figure they now make in the World: Therefore the Rod is sometimes very Convenient to reform Common-wealths of those things which would certainly be destructive of their Happiness: and there is no way of bringing any Common-wealth out of any Calamity but Industry, and jointly to promote every Art and Science that has the least view of being useful to the Publick: Therefore I don't doubt but every Gentleman that is a true Lover of his Country will Subscribe.

And I justly flatter my self I shall have a Number of Ladies Subscribers, the Authors of these Books having always been justly esteem'd among them.

Richard Fry.

N.B. Subscriptions will be taken in at Newport, New-York, Philadelphia, Piscataqua, and South-Carolina, and after Three Hundred Subscriptions, the work to be committed to the Press, and finish’d with all possible Expedition. 20 s. to be paid at Subscribing, & 40 s. at Delivery.

Unaccountably, Fry’s type sample and hortatory advertisement didn’t bring in three hundred subscriptions, and he never printed the Spectator.

Meanwhile, Westbrook was still building up in Maine. The paper mill wasn’t finished within ten months. In fact, the building wasn’t ready for Fry to move in until 1734. He then signed a twenty-one-year lease, promising Waldo and Westbrook £64 sterling each year.

TOMORROW: The Brazen Head connection.

“Next Door to Brazen Head”

Yesterday I related how the brazier James Jackson came to Boston from London and by December 1734 opened a shop called the Brazen Head, after its brass-covered sign.

That November, Benjamin Franklin directed a letter “To Mr. Henry Price At the Brazen Head Boston, N.E.” Price, a tailor, had come to Boston from England in 1723. Ten years later he founded the town’s first Freemasons’ lodge, having been named “Provincial Grand Master of New England and Dominions and Territories thereunto belonging” during a trip home. Franklin was writing on Freemasonry business.

I’ve found no other links between Price, the Brazen Head, and Jackson. Six years later Price advertised under the sign of “the Golden Fleece, in Kingstreet,” which was appropriate for his work as a tailor. It’s conceivable that Franklin just mixed up his mythological metallic signs. It’s also possible that Price and Jackson lived close together, and the Brazen Head was already a neighborhood beacon useful for directing mail.

Certainly it’s no surprise that a shiny brass head hung out on the town’s main street would become a landmark. Within five years, neighboring shopkeepers used Jackson’s shop sign to direct customers to their own businesses.

Here, for example, is an advertisement from the 7 Sept 1736 New-England Weekly Journal:

Several Sorts of Glass Bottles, as also good velvet Corks, To be Sold by Mr. Belthazar Bayard, next Door to Brazen Head in Cornhill, Boston.

Bayard married Mary Bowdoin, and the couple were both eventually buried in the Bowdoin family tomb in the Granary Burying-Ground, shown here. Mary was a first cousin of Gov. James Bowdoin, commemorated on the plaque now affixed to that tomb.

Back to the Brazen Head. Here’s another advertisement from the 12 Nov 1739 Boston Evening-Post:

Just published,
An excellent SERMON on Regeneration, Preached to a numerous Audience, by George Whitefield, A.B. of Pembroke College, Oxford. Printed in London; Reprinted in Boston, and Sold by Charles Harrison, over-against the Brazen Head in Cornhill.

The eye-catching shop sign also meant that Jackson had less occasion to advertise his main business of brasswork. But, as was standard for Boston shopkeepers, he undertook to sell other things and needed to promote those goods. For example, the Boston Gazette for 23 June 1735 ran this notice:

JAMES JACKSON, Founder,
At the Sign of the Brasen Head in Cornhill Boston makes and sells all sorts of Founders’ Wares, also Mends, Tinns, Buys or Exchanges all sorts of Copper, Pewter, Brass, Lead or Iron by wholesale or retail. Likewise a two Wheel’d Chaise well finish’d, and lin’d with Scarlett broad Cloth, with a good Harness, also a Chair lin’d with red Morocco Leather, with a good Harness, and both new, to be Sold reasonably by said Jackson.

A couple of weeks later, on 7 July 1735, the New-England Weekly Journal announced:

Brown paper, TO BE SOLD, for ready Money, by James Jackson, at the Brazen Head in Cornhill, Boston.

P.S. There will be no more Brown Paper made at Mr. Fry’s Mill at Stroudwater, at Casco-Bay

Which brings us to papermaker Richard Fry, one of Massachusetts’s more contentious characters in the 1730s and ’40s.

TOMORROW: The controversies of Richard Fry.

“At the Brazen Head in Cornhill Boston”

One of the landmarks of pre-Revolutionary Boston was the Brazen Head—a carved head covered in bronze. It hung outside a shop near the center of town, right across from the Town House.

Earlier this year I found that several histories say the Sign of the Brazen Head was a tavern. Charles Warren did so in Jacobin and Junto (1931), and Carl Seaburg in Boston Observed (1971). More recent examples include webpages from the usually reliable Massachusetts Historical Society and the Adverts 250 Project.

I’m hoping to cut off that misconception. Dublin may have had a Brazen Head Tavern, but Boston didn’t. The bronze head hanging on Cornhill street in Boston was the shop sign of a family of braziers, or makers and sellers of brass hardware.

What’s more, that family went through a lot of drama over the course of the 1700s, so over the next few days I’ll start telling The Saga of the Brazen Head.

The first page of that story is an advertisement in the 27 Apr 1730 New-England Weekly Journal:

To be Sold by the Maker from London, a quantity of double refin’d hard metal Dishes and Plates, as also, sundry other things of the same metal, by Wholesale, or Retale, at Reasonable Rates, the Owner designing for London, in a Weeks time; to be seen at Mr. James Jackson, Founder, next Door to Mr. Stephen Beautineau in Cornhill, Boston.

It looks like Jackson was referring to himself as both the goods’ “Maker from London” and their “Owner designing for London.” In other words, he had brought Boston the metropolis’s best brasswork, was ready to sell it for good prices, and then planned to return home.

But something changed. On 10 September James Jackson married Mary Hunter in King’s Chapel. I haven’t found out anything more about her, unfortunately. If she wasn’t Anglican before, she was now.

On 22 Feb 1731, Jackson placed a new ad in the New-England Weekly Journal with no hint of impending departure:

Brass Pump Chambers and large Brass Cocks, and all sorts of Founders Ware Cast, made or mended, at reasonable rates, by James Jackson Founder from London near William’s Court in Cornhil Boston: Likewise Exchanges or buys old Copper, Brass, Pewter, Lead or Iron.

On 13 July, James and Mary Jackson baptized their first son William at King’s Chapel.

Jackson’s two advertisements located his place of business on Cornhill in central Boston, but I’m not sure if they specified different sites or the same site in different ways. By the time of his next ad, however, Jackson had settled on a shop location and found a way to make it stand out. In the 16 Dec 1734 Boston Gazette he announced in his largest notice yet:

James Jackson Founder from London, at the Brazen Head in Cornhill Boston, makes and sells all forms of Brass Work, as Brass Hearths, Stove Grates, Fenders, Tongs & Shovels, Andirons, Dogs, Candlesticks, Snuffers & Stands, Plate Warmers, Brass Knockers for Doors, all sorts of Brass Work for Coaches or Chaises, or for Saddlers, Casts Mortars large and small, Brass Chambers for Pumps, brasses for Mills or Cranes, brass Cock Gun Work, small Bells, or any other sort of Cast Work; also sells London made pewter and Brasiers Ware, Brass Kettles large and small, Brass and Copper Warming-pans, of the best sort, Copper Tea Kettles, Coffee pots, Chocolate pots, Boiling-pots, Stueing and Frying pans, brass Skillets, Chafing Dishes, Steel Tongs and Shovels, London and Country made Jacks, Box Irons, Flat Irons, brass Nails by the Thousand, Iron Nails, Files, Melting pots, Gun powder and Shot, Swords & Belts, Horse pistoles, Cabinet Work Chamber & Kitchen Bellows, and sundry other sorts of Brasiers Ware, also Buys or Exchanges, or mends any sort of Copper, Pewter, Lead or Iron, at Reasonable Rates.

Using the symbol and name of the Brazen Head was a, well, brazen move for the Londoner. According to a legend that New England Puritans no doubt disdained, the thirteenth-century monk Roger Bacon had invented a “brazen head”—a mechanical head that answered any yes-or-no question. That device showed up in a popular Elizabethan comedy (as shown above), and Daniel Defoe’s 1722 Journal of the Plague Year stated that a brazen head was one of the common symbols of a fortune-teller.

For James Jackson, however, the shiny head probably just symbolized his brassware. And for the next forty years his Brazen Head shop would be a landmark near the center of Boston.

TOMORROW: A local landmark.