“A company from Bradish’s caused disorders at College”

In discussing Charles Adams’s final semester at Harvard, I must now introduce the setting of the Blue Anchor Tavern in Cambridge.

Located at what’s now the intersection of Mount Auburn and J.F.K. Streets, the Anchor Tavern was run for decades by Ebenezer Bradish (1716-1785). It appears to have been a respectable public house, patronized by Massachusetts legislators when the General Court couldn’t meet in Boston because of smallpox or orders from London.

Because Bradish’s tavern was so close to Harvard Yard, however, it was also where the college students went when they wanted to dine beyond the direct reach of their tutors.

That may have created a conflict of interest for Ebenezer Bradish because, in addition to selling the students drink, he also had the contract for replacing window glass at the college. Here’s the account from the decade before the Revolutionary War. Prof. Eliphalet Pearson’s “Journal of disorders” records a lot of window-breaking during the winter of 1788-89.

By then the tavern had passed to the next generation of Ebenezer Bradish, who was the innkeeper the Adams brothers came to know. I don’t know if he was also a glazier, but his brother Isaac was the college blacksmith and, in these years, keeper of the town jail. So the family may still have had a financial temptation to let students get drunk and rowdy. (Town historian and genealogist Lucius Paige wrote of Isaac Bradish, “Like many of his relatives in different branches of the family, he was occasionally insane, and d. by suicide, May 1790, a. nearly 67.”)

In his journal Prof. Pearson recorded this disorder on Monday, 16 Mar 1789:

A company from Bradish’s caused disorders at College P.M.—In ye. evening the door of ye. Lecture room was burst in & thrown down, ye. table turned topsy turvy, & the chair placed in its frame; & squares of glass also was broken in one of the windows.

It’s not certain that the students coming home from Bradish’s were the same who vandalized the lecture room. There was a lot of uproar that season.

The faculty met the next day and again on 19 March to discuss the trouble. The official records discuss two students by name. The first was a junior named Paul Trapier (1772-1824), from South Carolina. Back on 24 February, the faculty had ordered him to sit out college for six months because he was leading “a dissipated and disorderly life.” The local gentleman who had “the care of him” was Thomas Russell, the same Boston merchant whose own son Daniel had been similarly suspended back in 1787.

On 16 March, Trapier had come back to Cambridge and dined with some classmates at Bradish’s tavern. In response to the trouble that followed, the faculty ordered him not to “visit the college yard or be in company with any student” until his rustication was over.

The faculty record give more attention to Francis Withers (1769-1847), another junior from South Carolina—eventually he settled in the handsome coastal town of Georgetown. The minutes say that Withers

returned to the College about half an hour after four o’clock, and in a noisy and tumultuous manner ran violently up the stairs in the west entry of Massachusetts Hall, by which an Officer of the College [Isaac Smith, the librarian, a cousin of Abigail Adams and a former Loyalist], while attending the exercises of a Class, was greatly disturbed; upon which the said Officer immediately ascended the stairs and overtook Withers at his chamber door; at which place, and also in another part of the entry a short time after this, Withers was guilty of insulting the said Officer by insolent & profane language, of disobedience to his orders, and of uttering a vile and impious imprecation against him; and it also appeared that the said Withers was guilty of behaving with irreverence at evening prayers of said day and of leaving the chapel, before divine worship was closed, with apparent insolence;…and Withers adducing no counter evidence, and making no other apology for his malconduct, but that he was too much heated by wine.

Withers was suspended for six months.

The official minutes don’t mention any other students, but Prof. Pearson named many. He wrote that Trapier sat down to dine with three classmates, and then four seniors and three juniors “called & drank wine with them.” Of that party, “most of them returned to College in a noisy manner.”

Among that group was “Adams 1,” or Charles Adams. (Another member was Daniel Russell.) Adams was in the drinking party, but there wasn’t enough evidence to say he was part of the rowdy return to campus, or the vandalism in the lecture hall. And he certainly hadn’t misbehaved as conspicuously as Withers. As a result, Charles not only suffered no punishment, but there’s not even an official notice of his conduct. Only Prof. Pearson’s journal shows that he was involved in this incident at all.

TOMORROW: An attack on a prayer service.

Climate Change Thinking, Then and Now

I decided to take a day off from Charles Adams’s school days today. Instead, here’s a repeat of some comments from eighteenth-century Boston‘s leading scientists on anthropogenic climate change.

Many Americans of that period were anxious to refute the European perception that North America’s climate was too extreme—too cold in winter and too hot in summer—to be healthy. Winter was changing, they declared, as the European population spread. For example, the Rev. Cotton Mather wrote in The Christian Philosopher in 1721:

our Cold is much moderated since the opening and clearing of our Woods, and the Winds do not blow such Razours, as in the Days of our Fathers, when Water, cast up into the Air, would commonly be turned into Ice e’er it came to the Ground.

Benjamin Franklin was more scientific in his approach, telling the Rev. Dr. Ezra Stiles in 1763 that Mather’s belief needed to be tested with systematic measurements over a range of time and space:

I doubt with you, that Observations have not been made with sufficient Accuracy, to ascertain the Truth of the common Opinion, that the Winters in America are grown milder; and yet I cannot but think that in time they may be so. Snow lying on the Earth must contribute to cool and keep cold the Wind blowing over it. When a Country is clear’d of Woods, the Sun acts more strongly on the Face of the Earth. It warms the Earth more before Snows fall, and small Snows may often be soon melted by that Warmth. It melts great Snows sooner than they could be melted if they were shaded by the Trees. And when the Snows are gone, the Air moving over the Earth is not so much chilled; &c. But whether enough of the Country is yet cleared to produce any sensible Effect, may yet be a Question: And I think it would require a regular and steady Course of Observations on a Number of Winters in the different Parts of the Country you mention, to obtain full Satisfaction on the Point.

Mather, Franklin, and their contemporaries inherited the seventeenth-century Scientific Revolution, but their view of time and space were still limited. Scientists of the nineteenth century made the crucial breakthrough of conceiving of Earth’s age in millions and then billions of years, not just thousands. We have the benefit of a much broader perspective and a whole lot more data. We should listen to the scientists of today.

“Perswaded that Charles did not deserve the suspicions”

The Harvard College Thanksgiving banquet in November 1787 ended badly. By the evening, window glass and wooden benches were lying on the ground outside the hall. That might have had something to do with how every student had brought a bottle of wine.

The Harvard faculty levied a ten-shilling fine on each student who had gone to that dinner and couldn’t prove he'd left before the destruction started. The administration then relented in the case of the sophomores, but not the seniors or juniors—including Charles Adams, class of 1789.

The fines went out in the quarterly bills at the start of 1788. So there was no way Charles could keep the bad news from his family (as he would try to do with financial reverses in the late 1790s).

At the time, Charles’s parents, John and Abigail, were still on a diplomatic mission in Britain. The task of looking after their sons had fallen to relatives: Abigail’s older sister Mary Cranch in Braintree; her younger sister Elizabeth Shaw and her husband John in Haverhill; and John’s cousin Dr. Cotton Tufts of Medford, who managed the family money.

Eldest son John Quincy Adams (shown above) had graduated from Harvard the year before and gone to Newburyport to study law. On breaks he got together with both younger brothers. On 2 Feb 1788, after one such visit, John Q. wrote in his diary:

I had with Mr. Shaw some conversation upon the subject of the disorders which happened at College, in the course of the last quarter: his fears for my brothers are greater than mine: I am perswaded that Charles did not deserve the suspicions which were raised against him: and I have great hopes that his future conduct, will convince the governors of the University, that he was innocent.

The Rev. John Shaw had tutored both Charles and Thomas Boylston Adams to prepare them for college, as well as other boys. (Including Charles’s first roommate or “chum,” who’d gotten into worse trouble—but I’ll talk about that some other time.) Shaw was clearly worried about Charles’s behavior while John Q. tried to stand up for him.

Two weeks later John wrote to Dr. Tufts for some spending money, noting that he’d asked Charles to pass on the request but, well, “I am apprehensive he forgot to deliver my message.” Like many oldest sons, he seems to have felt both protective of his little brothers and convinced they were incurable idiots.

John Q. went on with more hopeful comments about the situation:

The riotous ungovernable spirit, which appeared among the students at the university in the course of the last quarter gave me great anxiety; particularly as I understood, that one of my brothers, was suspected of having been active in exciting disturbances; but from his own declarations and from the opinion I have of his disposition, I hope those suspicions, were without foundation—I conversed with him largely upon the subject, and hope, his conduct in future, will be such as to remove, every unfavourable impression.

Others in the family were adding their voices, perhaps less optimistically. The next day, 17 February, Aunt Elizabeth wrote to Aunt Mary:

I long to hear from Charles & Thomas I charged them to write to me— I do not know that Mr Shaw & I could have given them better advice if they had been our own Sons— I hope they will conduct agreeable to it—& be wiser than they have been, & more cautious of abusing Government, for what they from choice suffer—the Ten shillings penalty, I mean—

As I wrote a couple of days ago, I think the record shows that only Charles had been fined the ten shillings and Tommy still had a near-spotless record at college. But he was the little brother, and the family didn’t want Charles to lead him astray.

Unfortunately, all those admonitions didn’t keep Charles out of trouble in his senior year.

TOMORROW: A rough winter in Cambridge.

“Charles has been guilty of a trick”

On 26 May 1786, John Adams wrote from London to his eldest son, congratulating John Quincy Adams on getting into Harvard College:

Give me leave to congratulate you on your Admission into the Seat of the Muses, our dear Alma Mater, where I hope you will find a Pleasure and Improvements equal to your Expectations. You are now among Magistrates and Ministers, Legislators and Heroes, Ambassadors and Generals, I mean among Persons who will live to Act in all these Characters.

If you pursue your Studies and preserve your Health you will have as good a Chance as most of them, and I hope you will take Care to do nothing now which you will in any future Period have reason to recollect with shame or Pain.

In the same letter, the U.S. of A.’s minister to Great Britain urged John Quincy to continue to be an example and mentor for his two younger brothers:

If your Brother Thomas is fitted, I hope he will enter, this Summer: because, he will have an Advantage in being one Year with you. My love to Charles. I hope he loves his Book. I have great dependence on you to advise your younger Brothers, and assist them in their Studies. You talk french I hope, with Charles, and give him a taste for french Poetry: not however to the neglect of Greek and Roman, nor yet of English.

Charles Adams was just finishing his first year at Harvard, and Thomas Boylston Adams was preparing to take the entrance examination.

Around the same time John Quincy received that letter, he caught his brother Charles snooping in his private papers. It’s not clear what Charles saw. John Q. had written about some potentially sensitive subjects in his diary that month:

• On 12 July he criticized the freshman class—Charles’s class—for feuding with the sophomores.
• He made multiple comments about the beauty of a young lady the brothers had met in Braintree.
• On 26 July he wrote crankily about not getting the dorm room he expected, blaming the change on a couple of other collegians. (John Q. went back to his diary and added a note, for himself and posterity, that those classmates weren’t to blame.)

Most likely Charles commented about one of those matters, and that alerted his older brother to his snooping.

On 27 July, John Q. started his diary entry this way:

I perceive Charles has been guilty of a trick which I thought he would despise; that of prying into, and meddling with things which are nothing to him: and ungenerously looking into Papers, (which he knew I wished to keep private,) because I could not keep them under lock and key. If he looks here, he will feel how contemptible a spy is to himself, and to others.

It looks like John Quincy never directly confronted his brother about the invasion of privacy. Instead, he left this passive-aggressive note for Charles to find the next time he went looking in the diary. That approach might suggest that John Quincy’s later admonitions to his brother about behaving better weren’t actually that direct.

John Adams returned to Massachusetts in 1788. On 16 July of that year, he wrote to his eldest child, Abigail Adams Smith:

I am happy to hear from all quarters a good character of all your brothers. The oldest has given decided proofs of great talents, and there is not a youth of his age whose reputation is higher for abilities, or whose character is fairer in point of morals or conduct. The youngest is as fine a youth as either of the three, if a spice of fun in his composition should not lead him astray. Charles wins the heart, as usual, and is the most of a gentleman of them all.

The returning diplomat wrote this letter after the Harvard Thanksgiving banquet of 1787, which ended with Charles being fined ten shillings. As we’ll see tomorrow, other members of the family had been discussing that event in person and in letters for months. Yet it appears John Adams didn’t know anything about it since he still heard “from all quarters a good character” of every son.

No one was telling Papa.

TOMORROW: “The riotous ungovernable spirit.”

Sorting Out the Adams Boys at Harvard

I started my look at Charles Adams’s experience at Harvard College with a posting on how his aunts clustered around and made sure he had furniture for his dorm room. (His parents were far off in Britain.)

It’s only natural then to wonder how Charles’s extended family responded to his disciplinary problems at college, especially the ten-shilling fine levied at the end of 1787 after some disturbance at Thanksgiving dinner. (Windows were broken. Benches were thrown.)

In order to discuss that topic, I have to lay out how my reading of the Harvard University sources differs from the interpretation of the editors of the Adams Family Papers.

As I wrote back here, the college documents usually refer to undergraduates by last names. When there were two or more students with the same surname, they would be designated as Smith 1, Smith 2, and so on, in order of seniority.

In 1787 there were no fewer than five undergraduates named Adams at Harvard—the three sons of John and Abigail Adams of Braintree and then two more unrelated boys in the class of 1788, Solomon and Thomas. Just to make things more confusing, John Quincy Adams entered Harvard after Charles Adams, but he was admitted straight into the junior class and graduated before the middle brother in a little over a year.

I believe that means Charles was called “Adams 3d” as an entering freshman, “Adams 4th” as a sophomore (the year he hosted a noisy gathering in his dorm), “Adams 3d” again as a junior (when he was at that Thanksgiving banquet), and finally “Adams 1st” as a senior in 1788-89. That appears to be Bertha Illsey Tolman’s interpretation when she indexed the college documents.

The editors of the Adams papers read the record of that Thanksgiving disturbance to say that Charles Adams was “Adams 1st” and his little brother Thomas Boylston Adams (shown above) was “Adams 3d,” both fined ten shillings.

Since “Adams 1st” was a waiter in the senior class in 1787-88, I think that student had to be either Solomon or Thomas Adams. “Adams 3d” was a junior, thus Charles Adams (and not a waiter). Tommy B. Adams wasn’t there at all.

As noted back here, Thomas Boylston Adams’s disciplinary record shows only one minor infraction over four years—the same number that his brother John Q. amassed in a much shorter period. Nevertheless, the family worried about Tommy. I think that reflects their fear that Charles and other college boys would be a bad influence on him, not anything Tommy himself did.

If there’s one thing I can add to the Adams family historiography, it’s clearing Thomas Boylston Adams of accusations of serious misbehavior. He was just pulled into an eddy of family concern about his brother Charles.

TOMORROW: Serious talks with Charles.

“Required Reading” Exhibit at the Athenaeum

On Tuesday, 17 September, the Boston Athenaeum will open its new exhibit, “Required Reading: Reimagining a Colonial Library.”

This display will feature the King’s Chapel Library Collection, a 221-volume set of “necessary and useful” texts—everything that the minister of that Anglican church was expected to need to pastor his flock.

The Rev. Thomas Bray assembled this collection and brought it with him across the Atlantic Ocean on H.M.S. Deptford in 1698, twelve years after the church was founded. At the time and for decades afterward, the Church of England considered Puritan-founded Massachusetts to be missionary territory, so its rector needed all the support he could get.

The collection included:

• A 1683 atlas of the world
• Sir Walter Raleigh’s History of the World (1666)
• A nine-language Bible, the “London Polyglot” (1657)
• A Biblical concordance compiled by Massachusetts minister Samuel Newman in 1658
• A complete mathematics textbook from 1690

This will be the first time that the King’s Chapel Library collection is on public view for all. The books will sit in a full-scale replica of the “massive, ark-like bookcase designed in 1883” to house them on the Athenaeum’s third floor.

The exhibit will also share the “dramatic and little-known story behind the unique collection’s compilation and its arrival in New England.” The war shut down King’s Chapel after the 1776 evacuation, so preserving this library in Boston was another feat. The new minister who reopened the church in the 1780s steered the congregation toward Unitarianism, quite different from the seventeenth-century theology reflected in those old books.

Having been custodian of this library since 1823, the Athenaeum hopes its exhibit will prompt visitors to explore the idea of “essential knowledge.” The presentation includes perspectives from the Chinese Historical Society of New England, Hebrew College, the Museum of African American History, UMass-Boston, and other partners about what is “required reading” today.

The public exhibit opening will take place from 5:30 to 7:30 P.M in the Boston Athenaeum at 10 1/2 Beacon Street. At 6:00, curator John Buchtel will deliver a thirty-minute presentation about the books and display. This event is free and open to the public. The exhibit will be on view for months to come.

Stiefel on Cabinetmaker John Head in Concord, 19 Sept.

On Thursday, 19 September, the Concord Museum will host a discussion with Jay Robert Stiefel about “The Cabinetmaker’s Account,” on the life and work of joiner John Head (1688-1754).

Head emigrated from Britain to America, and his Philadelphia account book is the earliest and most complete to have survived from any cabinetmaker working in the British Empire on either side of the Atlantic.

Stiefel researched that document for nearly twenty years, and a few months ago the American Philosophical Society published his findings in large-format, profusely-illustrated volume in its Memoirs series.

Head’s business reflects commerce with early Philadelphia’s entire crafts community: “shopkeeping, cabinetmaking, chairmaking, clockmaking, glazing, metalworking, needleworking, property development, agriculture, botany, livestock, transport, foodstuffs, drink, hardware, fabrics, furnishings, household wares, clothing, building materials, and export trade.” Stiefel’s book also serves as a door into 18th-century Philadelphia, its material culture, and the social interactions among that era’s artisans and merchants.

On this evening, Stiefel will be in conversation with Gerald Ward, the Senior Consulting Curator and the Katharine Lane Weems Senior Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture Emeritus at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

This event will take place from 7:00 to 8:00 P.M. It is free, but advanced registration is required. Copies of The Cabinetmaker’s Account will be available for purchase and signing.

Minute Man Park Celebrates Its Sixtieth

Minute Man National Historical Park is celebrating the sixtieth year since its creation by act of Congress this month.

This weekend there are a couple of recurring programs.

Saturday, 14 September, 1:00-4:00 P.M.
In the News
What were local people talking about in 1775? Visit the William Smith House, talk politics with local residents of 1775, and discuss the potential impact of events.

Sunday, 15 September, 1:00-4:00 P.M.
The British Redcoat
Far from home, the British Redcoat of 1775 was faced with numerous challenges at home and abroad. Join Park Ranger Roger Fuller, dressed as a British Redcoat, at the Visitor Center to explore the experience of the British soldier of 1775.

Next weekend will be the big celebrations.

Friday, 20 September, 7:00-9:00 P.M.
Realizing the Vision
Lou Sideris, former Chief of Interpretation and Park Planner at Minute Man, will reflect the founding and ongoing development of Minute Man National Historical Park. Reception and refreshments to follow. At the Lexington Historical Society’s Depot Building, 13 Depot Square in central Lexington. This event is free, but space is limited, so please reserve seats by emailing mima_info@nps.gov.

Saturday, 21 September, 10:00 A.M.-2:00 P.M.
Threads of Resistance: Revolutionary Roles of Women
In 1769 colonial women protested British policies by making cloth in the home, reducing reliance on British imports. Experience the process and learn about the political impact of home manufacturing at the Jacob Whittemore House in Lexington.

Saturday, 21 September, 10:00 A.M.-4:00 P.M.
Historic Trades Day
At Hartwell Tavern in Lincoln, learn about various hands-on trades of the period and see skilled artisans at work.

Saturday, 21 September, 4:00-6:00 P.M.
Patriotic Music with the Concord Band
As 2019 marks the 60th anniversary of both the Minute Man National Park and the Concord Band, the park and the band have teamed up to present a concert of patriotic inspired music on the field overlooking the North Bridge. The public is invited to bring a blanket or lawn chairs and a picnic while enjoying the performance. The Friends of Minute Man National Park will present a special birthday cake to the park during the event and will provide free cupcakes while supplies last. As parking is limited, locals are invited to walk to the park. The rain location is 51 Walden Performing Arts Center in Concord.

Finally, on Monday, 23 September, work will begin on preserving the exterior of the North Bridge Visitor Center, also known as the Buttrick Mansion, located on the hillside overlooking the historic North Bridge. The building will be closed to visitors from November to April 2020. This federal contract covers the 1911 building’s roofing system, masonry, doors, windows, trim, portico, and loggia, with a new accessible ramp to be installed. Interior work will include repairing ceilings, restrooms, plumbing, electrical systems, and air conditioning. The building is scheduled to reopen in April 2020.

Prof. Pearson’s “Journal of disorders”

In late December 1787, the Harvard College faculty did some house-cleaning. It was the end of an academic term, the end of the calendar year, and time to address some problems.

Early in the month the college president, professors, and tutors had fined more than thirty students for that disturbance on Thanksgiving. (Then they lifted the fines on the sophomores, because those students were contrite or because the upperclassmen obviously had more power and responsibility.)

At the end of the year the faculty took further action against four students involved in the Thanksgiving disorder, probably because they had all done other things as well. The educators decided that seniors Grosvenor and Wier deserved formal admonitions, and that juniors Emerson and Fayerweather should sit out the next semester.

(In addition, the Boston merchant Thomas Russell reported that he wanted his son Daniel to spend another semester studying in Weston, and the college gratefully agreed to that.)

While Charles Adams was still on the list of juniors who had to pay the ten-shilling fine, he didn’t receive any additional disciplinary attention that season. Evidently he was still keeping up his studies and not leading a completely “dissipated” life.

But Charles got into more trouble in his senior year, and for that we have an additional source beyond the official faculty records. The Harvard University Archives also hold a notebook headed “Journal of disorders &c.” kept by Eliphalet Pearson (1752-1826, shown here).

Pearson had graduated from Harvard College himself in 1773 and then gone into education, teaching in Andover’s town school. He made gunpowder for Massachusetts early in the war and then helped to found Phillips Academy in Andover. After heading that private school for several years, Pearson returned to Harvard in 1786 as Hancock Professor of Hebrew.

Prof. Pearson began his “Journal of disorders” on 4 Dec 1788. He maintained it until 1797, but The Harvard Book: Selections from Three Centuries, edited by William Bentinck-Smith (1982), says, “the most lengthy and frequent entries occurred during December 1788 and January 1789.” Those entries are transcribed here. Apparently the junior and lower classes were particularly restive that winter, and it would be good to know why.

Pearson’s journal is useful because it records more detail about incidents than is in the official faculty records, and it records some incidents that didn’t get into the official disciplinary process at all. And that’s where we can see Charles Adams celebrating his last semester in college a little too much.

COMING UP: A tavern, a snowball, and a naked undergraduate.

Pitt Clarke and “an unjust pecuniary punishment”

Among the students punished by the Harvard College faculty for damaging the dining hall during a Thanksgiving banquet on 29 Nov 1787 was a sophomore designated as “Clarke 2d.”

That was Pitt Clarke (1763-1835) of Medfield. (“Clarke 1st” would have been Edward, class of 1788, a senior.) His college diary survives, was published by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, and can be read here. This picture of Clarke much later in life, when he was a Unitarian minister in Norton, comes from that article.

Clarke was unusual in coming to Harvard when he was his mid-twenties, his education having been delayed by the war and family financial troubles. Most college students of this time were in their mid-to-late teens—the age of high-school students today. But every class had one or two older men without a lot of money who were really dedicated to starting a clerical career.

Clarke’s description of the Thanksgiving banquet was quite different from what appeared in the Harvard faculty records. His diary said:

Thanksgiving, very pleasant. Went to meeting. Mr. Hilliard preached from Psalms 107, verses 31, 32. After meeting had an elegant dinner in the hall; each one carried in a bottle of wine, & all joined in drinking toasts, & singing songs in praise of the day, & with thankful hearts.

Curiously, the four lines about the dinner are in a smaller handwriting than everything else on that page, as this image shows.

Did Clarke cram those lines in later? Did he have a strong reason to go into such innocuous detail?

As discussed yesterday, on 8 December the Harvard faculty decided after much discussion to fine every student who was at that dinner and couldn’t prove that he had left early. That upset Clarke, who wrote in his diary that day:

Very unexpectedly received from the President & the rest of the government, an unjust pecuniary punishment, together with a number of my classmates, for being in the Hall at Thanksgiving day a little while after Supper.

Two days later Clarke wrote:

I together with those who were punished, went to the President to know the justness of it, & to desire him to take it off. He promised us another hearing.

The Colonial Society edition of Clarke’s diary suggests the fine stuck, but the Harvard faculty minutes show otherwise.

On 14 December the college faculty met again to consider the petition from Clarke and his classmates, “Sophimores who were punished…ten shillings each for the disorders which took place on the Thanksgiving day, praying to have the punishments remitted.” The immediate decision was:

Voted, that as various disorders & irregularities have taken place since the last meeting of the Government, they cannot with propriety take into consideration the said petition at present, but that as soon as the Students in general shall manifest a proper disposition to discountenance such conduct as is inconsistent with decorum and the respect due to the Government of the Society, the said petition & any other that may be received on the same subject shall be considered.

That of course gave students who wanted to get out of the fine an incentive not to just stand by but to push their classmates to behave better.

The official record of that 14 December meeting suggests that tactic worked. A note states:

The Government took so much notice of their [the sophomores’] petition as to suspend the entering of their punishments in the second Quarter Bill which went to the Steward, while the punishments of those Seniors & Juniors who were in like manner consined at the same meetings, and who did not shew so submissive a temper, were entered in the Bill.

Clarke wrote no more about the fine in his diary, which presumably means he never had to pay it. On 2 Jan 1788, furthermore, the faculty appointed Clarke to be one of the waiters in the hall, a way for him to earn money and a position of trust.

For Charles Adams and his fellow juniors, however, the ten-shilling punishment remained.

TOMORROW: Another source of trouble.

A Thanksgiving Dinner Gone Wrong

I’m looking at Charles Adams’s disciplinary record as a student at Harvard College in the late 1780s.

In the spring of 1787, Charles was fined six shillings for hosting a noisy gathering in his dormitory room. A year before, John Adams had warned his second son about such socializing:

You have in your nature a sociability, Charles, which is amiable, but may mislead you, a schollar is always made alone. Studies can only be pursued to good purpose, by yourself—dont let your Companions then, nor your Amusements take up too much of your time.

John and Abigail Adams agreed that Charles was the most charming and outgoing of their three boys, but they valued studiousness.

That fall, Charles once again got into trouble in company. The college faculty met on 5 and 7-8 December to consider trouble at the end of the previous month:

It appeared that a number of the Students, who dined in the Hall on the 29th ult. [i.e., of last month] being the day of the public Thanksgiving, were after dinner extremely disorderly and riotous, making tumultuous and indecent noises, breaking the windows of the Hall, throwing the benches out of the windows into the yard &ca. which conduct was greatly to the damage and to the dishonor of the College: Whereupon

Voted, that Adams 1st, Gardner, Gordon, Grosvenor, Hill and Wier, Senior Sophisters——Adams 3d, Blake 2d, Churchill, Coffin, Cutts 1st, Emerson, Fayerweather, Moody, Pierpont, Procter, Shapleigh and Waterman, Junior Sophisters——Clarke 2d, Cutts 2d, Denny, Grout, Ingalls, Moody 2d, Sullivan 1st, Sullivan 2d, Sullivan 3d, Trapier, Ware and Warren, Sophimores, and Tucker a Freshman, who were all of the above company and did not prove themselves to have left the Hall before the riotous proceedings, be charged in their quarterly bill to repair the damage done in the Hall.

Voted, that Adams 1st, Churchill, Emerson and Waterman who were waiters, but upon examination did not give such evidence concerning the disorders as the Governors were convinced they might have given, be dismissed from their waiterships.

Voted, that all who are assessed to repair the damages done in the Hall, those who are dismissed from waiterships only excepted, be punished by pecuniary mulct, ten shillings each.

The minutes also listed nine students by name who had been at the dinner but “left it before disorders arose to a great height.”

The four waiters were working their way through college. The faculty recognized that they didn’t have extra money to pay a fine, but they still took a financial hit in losing their jobs. They maintained student solidarity by not identifying any leaders of the disturbance.

Charles Adams was on that list as “Adams 3d.” In the middle of thirty other boys, there’s no reason to blame him alone for the trouble. Still, it wasn’t a good sign that he was resisting “Amusements.”

COMING UP: A protest from the sophomore class.

“At the chamber of their Classmate Adams”

In digging into the ways that Charles Adams broke the rules of Harvard College, I’m skipping the many times he was punished for being absent or tardy from prayers and recitations.

Those were minor offenses that the college usually dealt with in bulk. Even though they built up on Charles’s record (unlike his older and younger brother’s), they weren’t enough to cast serious doubt on his college career. He appears to have been keeping up his studies well enough.

But the official college faculty minutes, volume 5, also record a more serious offense, discussed "At a meeting of the President, Professors and Tutors April 2. 1787”:

It appeared by the minutes of an examination at a prior meeting, that on the afternoon of Monday the 19th of March last, several of the Sophimores were at the chamber of their Classmate Adams 4th, at which chamber there was much noise and disorder:—That there was the like noise and disorder at the same chamber for a considerable part of the evening.

It also appeared, that while the company were together, language shockingly profane was at times used, and was heard, not only by persons in neighboring houses, but by some far distant, which conduct being greatly to the dishonor of the College, as well as violation of the divine Laws, and it being highly incumbent upon this Government to do every thing in their power to put an end to conduct so inconsistent with the reputation and good morals of the Society

Voted, that Adams 4th, at whose chamber this disorder took place and continued be fined the sum of six shillings, and receive a public admonition.

That was the same punishment that the faculty had imposed on a couple of juniors the previous month for a similarly loud drinking party. (Note that there was no mention of alcohol in Charles Adams’s room, just noise.)

The faculty then went on to another student in the same class: Daniel Russell (1769-1804). That was the third and youngest surviving son of Thomas Russell (1740-1796), a merchant who lived in Charlestown and then Boston. That gentleman did extensive overseas trade and was active in many charitable societies. In 1788 Russell would be chosen a General Court representative and delegate to Massachusetts’s ratification convention, and the next year a member of the governor’s council.

Daniel’s educators determined that he was leading “a very dissipated life,” was “exceedingly idle and inattentive to his studies,” and was “in the way of increasing and strengthening the ill habits which have already taken too deep hold of him.” They therefore asked his father to take Daniel away and have him educated by “a Gentleman in the Country”—they recommended a particular minister in Weston—until September.

Notes on this meeting record added that Thomas Russell had immediately taken Daniel out of college and that “The censure voted to take place upon Adams 4th was inflicted a few mornings afterwards in the Chapel.”

Thus, while Harvard disciplined Charles Adams for hosting a rowdy gathering, his situation could have been worse.

TOMORROW: It gets worse.

The Adams Brothers at Harvard College

For a year in the late 1780s, all three sons of John and Abigail Adams were students at Harvard College.

The first to enter was the middle son, Charles, born in 1770. I described the many little challenges of equipping him for dormitory life in the summer of 1785 back here. (Though I missed the family buying him “a Hat and Cravats” in July.)

John Quincy Adams took his entrance examination the following March, as discussed here. He was older and more experienced than the average new student. (He had been secretary and translator for the U.S. of A.’s first minister to the court of Russia, for goodness’s sake.) The college admitted John Quincy straight into the junior class, and he graduated in 1787.

Finally, Thomas Boylston Adams arrived later in 1786 and studied at Harvard through 1790. Tommy was two years younger than Charles but only a year behind him, his education not interrupted by traveling to Europe with their father.

The Harvard College records of this time designate students by their surnames. When there was more than one student with the same surname, they were called Smith 1, Smith 2, and so on. The case of the Adams brothers was further confounded by the presence of at least one unrelated boy named Adams—Thomas Adams, class of 1788. Thus, when one sees a record of, say, “Adams 2,” one has to know which other Adamses were at Harvard at that exact time and what seniority they had.

Fortunately, in the early 1900s Bertha Illsley Tolman compiled a card index for the Faculty Records, and Harvard recently digitized it. (And Dr. Caitlin G. DeAngelis kindly pointed me to this resource.) I’m going to trust the way Tolman sorted out the Adams brothers rather than retracing each path.

The index records when the faculty officially disciplined all Harvard students. Comparing Tolman’s entries for the three Adams brothers offers a study in contrast. In reverse order of their admission—

Thomas Boylston Adams, punished for absence from prayers, V:296.

John Quincy Adams, punished for absence from prayers, V:252.

Charles Adams, punished for absence from reciting, V:236, 240, 245, 253, 267, 282, 295, 305, 317. VI:19, 26.
punished for absence from prayers, V:346, 253, 267, 282, 295, 317. VI:7, 19, 26.
punished for tardiness from prayers, VI:26.
fined and publicly admonished, V:249-250.
charged for damage done in the Hall, V:278.
fined, V:279.
punished for absence from public lectures, VI:26.
punished for going to a tavern, VI:30.

And that wasn’t even all the trouble Charles got into in four years.

TOMORROW: Unabashed gossip.

“Caught running naked across Harvard Yard”?

Last week I wrote about Charles Adams, John and Abigail’s second son, starting at Harvard College in 1785.

Charles turned out to be the biggest disappointment of that generation, and the trouble started in college, but I had trouble nailing down the details.

I found multiple references to a drunken, naked romp through Harvard Yard, but the stories differed on the details, and none came with pointers to period sources. Or any sources at all.

The earliest was this webpage from the American Experience television series, tied to a 2006 show. In the capsule biography of Charles, it says:

At age 15 he entered Harvard, where he became embroiled in a scandal in which several boys were caught running naked across Harvard Yard. School records indicated that alcohol may have been involved.

Sometime in 2006, someone created a Wikipedia page about a Harvard streaking tradition called Primal Scream. That entry reaches for historical tradition by stating:

While the records are not entirely clear, it appears that when Charles Adams, son of John Adams and brother of John Quincy Adams, was a student at Harvard, he and a few friends were disciplined for getting drunk and streaking naked across the Yard. He was later readmitted.

The one source originally cited was the American Experience webpage—apparently that page was the “records…not entirely clear.”

Joseph Ellis’s First Family: Abigail and John (2010), says of Charles:

He had apparently fallen in with a rowdy crew at Harvard, been disciplined by the college for running naked while drunk through Harvard Yard, and persisted in his bad habits and bad associations after graduation.

The citations for this paragraph offer no evidence for that phrase about “running naked while drunk,” however. (In fact, in the edition I’m seeing the notes cite a letter from Abigail as 30 March 1789 when it should be dated 30 May.)

Finally, Eric Kester’s That Book about Harvard: Surviving the World’s Most Famous University (2012) quotes a campus tour guide saying, “Did you know that in 1785, Charles Adams, son of President John Adams and brother of President Quincy Adams, was severely disciplined for getting drunk and streaking through the Yard his freshman year?” This book subsequently became a second source for the Wikipedia article, even though it may well have been inspired by Wikipedia in the first place.

Having now looked into Harvard’s disciplinary records, I can state that none of those accounts is accurate.

TOMORROW: The Adams boys—a study in contrasts.

Fortifying Newburyport Harbor

Last month Alexander Cain laid out some new research about how Newburyport and nearby towns worked quickly at the start of the Revolutionary War to fortify that small harbor against the Royal Navy:

It appears two possible events triggered the move to fortify the Merrimack River in 1775. The first was the Ipswich Fright which occured in the days after Lexington and Concord. This particular event was the result of a false rumor that British soldiers had landed in Ipswich and had killed the local populace. As the rumor spread, widespread panic set in among the residents of several North Shore Massachusetts towns and many, including those from Newburyport, fled to New Hampshire.

The second event transpired the following month when a detachment of British sailors and officers from the HMS Scarborough entered Newburyport Harbor under the cover of darkness to scout the town’s defensive capabilities. According to the Essex Journal, “last Tuesday evening (May 23) a barge belonging to the man of war lying at Portsmouth, rowing up and down the river to make discoveries with two small officers and six seamen.” Unfortunately, the mission was an utter failure as the “tars not liking the employ, tied their commanders, then run the boat ashore, and were so impolite as to wish the prisoners good night, and came off.” Upon entering Newburyport, the deserters alerted the town of the mission and the location of the officers. However, “the officers soon got loose and rowed themselves back to the ship” before they were apprehended.

The two events rattled Newburyport. Many residents realized that if a Royal Navy warship entered the Merrimack, it could easily sail down the river and not only bombard the town, wharves and shipyards, but it could also raze Salisbury and Amesbury. As a result, officials from the three towns and Newbury agreed that the mouth or the river, as well as the harbor itself, needed to be fortified.

The result, Alex Cain writes, was “an early warning network and at least three defensive lines that included coastal fortifications, physical obstructions, floating batteries, interior redoubts and two companies of militia that were on a constant state of alert.” This made Newburyport a refuge for merchant ships sympathetic to the American cause and a base for American privateers. At least for a couple of years. When the war moved south, the port and its protection became less important.

Tapping into Revolutionary Networks

At the Junto blog, Jordan E. Taylor interviewed Framingham State professor Joseph Adelman about his new book, Revolutionary Networks: The Business and Politics of Printing the News, 1763–1789.

Many books have studied the political printing of the Revolutionary era through biography of exceptional figures like Benjamin Franklin or Isaiah Thomas, or through studies of how political essays were written and spread. But how ordinary printers did the work to put those essays into readers’ hands hasn’t gotten so much attention.

Adelman told Taylor:

To understand the materiality of these texts and how they operated in the real world, it is helpful to actually see them in physical form. In the introduction I work through how printers laid out a weekly newspaper, which is difficult to see through a view of single pages in PDF form. I also was able to see (literally!) some important developments in newspaper runs by being able to see the size and quality of the paper, for example. . . .

As for my favorite find, I’d have to say the story from the Stamp Act crisis about Boston radicals who in February 1766 tried a piece of stamped paper for treason and then ceremonially hanged and burned it. It may be my favorite story of the entire Revolution, both because it’s so Boston and because it encapsulates so much about how Americans in the 1760s viewed print and paper (it could commit crimes!).

Here’s how Adelman described the main argument of Revolutionary Networks:

Much of the book examines how printers (and their collaborators) created both formal and informal mechanisms to circulate news and information, through the post office, committees, and the networks that printers developed—with one another, with political leaders, with economic elites, and others.

A second thread that runs through the book is the changing conception of freedom of the press, and especially its relationship to the business practices of the printing trade. Dating back to the early eighteenth century and Benjamin Franklin’s “Apology for Printers,” printers portrayed themselves as mechanics who set type and pulled the press, but remained outside of the political debate. The Revolution brought that to an end. Independence also forced printers, and political leaders to reframe their thinking about the press from its position as opposition against a distant government to its standing as a constituent part of the new republics.

Finally, the thing that ties everything together is the overlap between commercial and political interests. It seems a truism to say that out loud, but for printers those concerns interacted in complicated ways, both across the group as a whole and for individuals over time.

Taylor’s review of Revolutionary Networks for the Junto is here. We can also hear Joe Adelman speaking about his book on the podcasts Ben Franklin’s World and New Books in American Studies.

The First and Ongoing Pauline Maier Seminar Series

The Boston Area Early American History Seminar has changed its name to the Pauline Maier Early American History Seminar, honoring the late M.I.T. professor who was an enthusiast for these discussion and many other ways of delving into the national past.

The seminar series continues to provide a forum for scholars and interested members of the public to discuss many aspects of North American history and culture. Sessions are free, though there is a $25 cost to order copies of the papers in advance of each discussion, which I recommend as a bargain.

All the seminars begin at 5:15 P.M. at the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street in the Back Bay. Formal conversation lasts for about ninety minutes, and then participants can enjoy light refreshments and further chat until 7:30.

Here are the sessions scheduled for the upcoming calendar year.

Thursday, 26 September 2019
Toward the Sistercentennial: New Light on Women’s Participation in the American Revolution
Woody Holton, University of South Carolina
Comment: Mary Bilder, Boston College Law

Tuesday, 5 November
Native Lands and American Expansion in the Early Republic
Emilie Connolly, Dartmouth University, and Franklin Sammons, University of California, Berkeley
Comment: Nancy Shoemaker, University of Connecticut

Tuesday, 19 November
Murder at the Manhattan Well: The Personal and the Political in the Election of 1800
Paul Gilje, University of Oklahoma
Comment: Katherine Grandjean, Wellesley College

Tuesday, 10 December
Who Was “One-Eyed” Sarah?: Searching for an Indigenous Nurse in Local Government
Gabriel J. Loiacono, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh
Comment: Cornelia Dayton, University of Connecticut

Tuesday, 7 January 2020
Supplying Slavery: North America, Jamaica, and British Intra-Imperial Trade, 1750-1770
Peter Pellizzari, Harvard University
Comment: Richard Dunn, American Philosophical Society

Tuesday, 3 March
The 1621 Massasoit-Plymouth Agreement and the Genesis of American Indian Constitutionalism
Daniel Mandell, Truman State University
Comment: Linford D. Fisher, Brown University

Tuesday, 10 March
Military Metabolism and the Environment in the War of Independence
(Co-sponsored by the Boston Seminar on Environmental History)
David Hsiung, Juniata College
Comment: James Rice, Tufts University

Tuesday, 7 April
“Our Turn Next”: Slavery and Freedom on French and American Stages, 1789-99
Heather S. Nathans, Tufts University
Comment: T.B.D.

Tuesday, 12 May
Honoring Dan Richter: McNeil Center for Early American Studies Alumni on their Experiences and Research
Round-table Discussion
(Richter is retiring, not being honored in the same way Maier is, so I expect he’ll be in town to enjoy the discussion.)

The Massachusetts Historical Society hosts similar series of seminars or discussions on African American History; Environmental History; Modern American Society and Culture; the History of Women, Gender, and Sexuality; and New England Biography.

Upcoming Talks at the Newport Historical Society

Here are a couple of events coming up at the Newport Historical Society this month.

On Thursday, 5 September, Will Simpson will speak on “‘Frère et Concitoyen’: A Newporter in Revolutionary France.”

The story of William H. Vernon’s years in France (1778-1797) is one of thrilling political intrigue as this young American merchant, a member of one of Newport’s most influential Colonial-era merchant families, found himself thrust into the midst of the French Revolution.

Simpson won prizes at Middlebury College, where he majored in French with a minor in history, and did research in the Newport Historical Society’s Vernon Family manuscripts as a 2019 Buchanan Burnham Summer Scholar in Public History.

The “Frère et Concitoyen” program will take place at the Newport Historical Society’s Resource Center, 82 Touro Street, starting at 5:30 P.M. Admission is $1 for society members and retired and active-duty military personnel, $5 for other people.

On Thursday, 19 September, the society will host a lecture originally scheduled in January but postponed because the President’s decision to shut down the federal government for the second time in a year.

Emily Murphy, Curator for the National Park Service’s Salem Maritime National Historical Site, will deliver her lecture “‘I am an honest woman’: Female Revolutionary Resistance along the New England Seacoast.” I can recommend this talk to anyone interested in the political activism that led up to the war and independence.

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. She has worked for the National Park Service for nearly twenty years and is also an accomplished living historian.

This talk, co-sponsored by the Hotel Viking, will also take place at the Resource Center, 82 Touro Street in Newport. Admission is $5, or $1 for society members and retired and active-duty military personnel.

(The picture above shows the Vernon family mansion, still standing on Clarke Street in Newport.)

Moving into a Harvard Dormitory in 1785

At this time of year young people are settling in at college, including my godson at Cambridge. So I’m looking at the process of entering college in 1785.

Fifteen-year-old Charles Adams started at Harvard College that year. His parents, Abigail and John, were across the Atlantic in London, so he was under the wing of relatives on his mother’s side.

Charles had been studying for the entrance exam with the Rev. John Shaw of Haverhill, an uncle by marriage. On 9 May Charles wrote to his cousin William Cranch: “we study in the bedroom as usual two young fellows from Bradford being added to our number, One of whom will be my chum if we get in and who I should be very glad to introduce to you.”

By “chum,” Charles meant a college roommate. That prospect was Samuel Walker (1768–1846). When Charles’s older brother John Quincy Adams visited that summer, he immediately assured their mother that Samuel was “a youth, whose thirst for knowledge is insatiable.”

Unfortunately, the dormitory wasn’t working out so smoothly. On 14 August, Abigail’s older sister, Mary Cranch, reported to her:

I have just heard that cousin Charles is not like to have the chamber he petition’d for, nor any other. Half his class will be oblig’d to Board out in the Town. Mr. Cranch and I are going tomorrow to see how it is, and to procure him a place if necessary. . . .

You cannot think how sorrowful your son looks about the loss of his chamber, but I hope to make him happy yet. I have got all the Furniture ready, (this is the part he is to find). The Bed and Linnin is found by his chum a very worthy pretty youth, who study’d with him at Mr. Shaws. Walker is his name, he is from Bradford.

Fortunately, the situation was soon resolved. On 17 August, Aunt Mary wrote:

Charles is happy he has got his chamber. I return’d last night. I found he had his petition’d granted. He is in the same college with Billy [Cranch,] has a Room upon the lower Floor [of Hollis Hall].

I have got him a pine Table made to stand under his looking glass. It doubles over like a card Table and is painted Marble colour and looks very well. He has the Square Tea Table to stand in his study. I got a few things for him in Boston as I came from Cambridge, and now I think he is equip’d and will go tomorrow with the best advice I can give him.

Charles Adams’s dorm room thus included a “Bed and Linnin” brought by his chum Samuel, a “looking glass,” a pine table painted like marble, and a “Square Tea Table,” among other things.

All four Harvard students I’ve mentioned went on to study the law. John Quincy Adams had a long and successful career while his brother Charles did not. William Cranch became a judge in Washington, D.C. Samuel Walker practiced in Rutland, Vermont, for a quarter-century.

Before then, however, Walker was rusticated for a year in 1787 for “stealing from his class mates.” And he seemed like such a studious boy.

On the Night Before the Powder Alarm

Yesterday we left Esther Sewall in her house in rural Cambridge on the night of 1 Sept 1774.

Sewall had two young sons. Her husband, attorney general Jonathan Sewall, had gone into Boston that morning. The household also included a couple of law students about twenty years old and at least one enslaved man.

Outside, there were upwards of forty local men and boys demanding that her husband come out and answer for the royal governor’s actions. Not only was Gen. Thomas Gage implementing the Massachusetts Government Act, but he had just taken gunpowder and cannon away from the local militia.

Yesterday I started quoting an account of that confrontation from a third, unnamed young man inside the house. It continued:

…those without played their artillery of stones & brickbats against the windows.

The door being shut, & they being enraged by the explosion of a gun in the entry near the front window tho’ without the least design of hurting & at a different side of the house from where we supposed the mob were, they went into the front yard & broke those windows.

We then went out to them & declared that the gun went off accidentally, that we were very sorry for it as it was agreed upon since we had got them out of the house not to fire but on the last extremity; yet that we were determined to defend ourselves at the risque of our lives & they might depend upon resistance at all events if they offered to reenter. We begged them to consider the distress this might occasion to Mrs Sewall & family & to disperse

They appeared to be satisfied about the gun at last, told us we had fought like brave fellows & if we would give them something to drink they would not go to Judge [Joseph] Lee’s as they intended but would disperse

which they did after drinking a few glasses of wine & cordially bid each other Good-Night.

It was still possible for young men to stop their violence before anyone was hurt. As long as there was wine involved.

Years later, in speaking to the Loyalists Commission, one of the law students, Ward Chipman, declared that he had deliberately fired that pistol. He went on to be one of the most important builders of New Brunswick, Canada.

Massachusetts Patriots seized on Chipman’s gunshot and spun events to suggest that it provoked the crowd’s violence. For example, Dr. Joseph Warren wrote to Samuel Adams on 4 September: “some boys and negroes had called at Mr. Sewall’s house at Cambridge; and, by the imprudent discharge of a pistol by a person in the house, they were provoked to break the windows, but very soon left the house without doing further damage.”

Even Esther Sewall’s own father, Edmund Quincy, unhelpfully told her sister: “Im sorry to understand, that thro. great inadvertency, a Gun or pistol was dischd. from ye. house—ye sole Cause of ye Violence wch. ensued.”

By the end of 2 September, however, almost no one was talking about the assault on the attorney general’s house. Sparked by wildly exaggerated rumors of a British military attack, thousands of Massachusetts militiamen had marched into Cambridge and forced resignations from everyone from the county clerk to the lieutenant governor. That “Powder Alarm” signaled the end of royal rule in almost all of New England. The conflict in Massachusetts turned from political to military.

The Sewall house still stands on Brattle Street in Cambridge, though moved from its original site. It’s in private hands and unmarked.

As far as I can tell, the anonymous account of what happened there in September 1774 has been published only in Leslie F. S. Upton’s 1968 collection of readings, Revolutionary Versus Loyalist: The First American Civil War, 1774-1784.