“Not to trust the said boy out of his sight”

After young Charles Bourgate accused both his master, Edward Manwaring, and his master’s alibi witness, John Munro, of participating in the Boston Massacre, as I related here, Manwaring summoned “a third person who happened to be that Evening in company with them.”

That person was the traveling actor and singer Michael Angelo Warwell.

On 15 Mar 1770, Warwell gave a long and detailed recollection of the night of the Massacre to Justices Richard Dana and Edmund Quincy, the magistrates who had quizzed Charles. It stated:

On Monday the 5th of this present March, 1770, about three o’Clock, afternoon, I called upon Mr. Edward Manwaring, at his lodgings in back-street Boston, and immediately proceeded with him and mr. John Monroe, to the house of mr. Brown in Charlestown, to settle an affair between the said Brown and one doctor Brown in Boston, relative to a horse, which the last mentioned Brown had hired of the aforementioned Brown in Charlestown, where we staid ’till something after six in the evening, and returned to Mr. Manwaring’s lodgings about seven, and sat ourselves down to spend the evening with him, which we accordingly did.

(You just know I tried to find out more about that horse. I regret to say I’ve learned no additional information.)

About an hour and half after our arrival at the said Manwaring’s lodgings, we heard the cry of fire in the street, and thereupon ran to the windows to be informed where it was, when some person under made answer at the south-end; others in the street were also enquiring where it was, and they were answered that they would soon see, and other expressions to the same purpose, which made us conclude, that something more was than in the case than fire alone; on which we came to a resolution not to [go] from the said Manwaring’s apartment, soon after this determination we were confirmed more in our former opinion by a noise in the street, and some people saying four out of five were killed, which words tho’ we did not know the meaning of, fully satisfied us there was something more than fire.

On this occasion Mr. Manwaring’s boy, several times attempted to go into the street to join the multitude, and once had got as far as the gate next the street, when Mr. Monroe fetched him back, and shut the gate after him. After this Mr. Manwarring kept the said boy, in his the said Manwaring’s own room, being determined not to trust the said boy out of his sight.

Then we the said Edward Manwaring, John Monroe, myself and Mrs. [Elizabeth] Hudson the Landlady of the House, who was afraid to stay in her own apartment alone; I say we the aforesaid persons sat over a bottle or two of mull’d wine ’till half an hour after Ten, when the tumult seemed to be subsided, and Mr. Monroe proposed to go to his own lodgings, which Mr. Manwaring would have persuaded him from, apprehending there might be danger in so doing; but he persevered in the resolution of going, and went accordingly, but told us at parting, that if any tumult still remained he would immediately return, but if he did not return we might depend upon it all was quiet, and he did not return that night.

Elizabeth Hudson’s wife John was “a custom-house clerk,” according to a Whig writing in the 8 Apr 1771 Boston Evening-Post. He was “out of town that evening,” she testified. She might have been nervous about an angry crowd mobbing her house because of its ties to the Customs service.

After this, myself, Mr. Manwaring and Mrs. Hudson (and the boy still in company) remained together ’till about twelve the same night, when she left us to go to her own bed. After this, myself, Mr. Manwaring and his boy sat up together about three hours longer; it being then too late for my returning to my own lodgings, Mr. Manwaring proposed my sleeping with him, which I accordingly did in the same bed, and, the boy was ordered to go to his bed, which he accordingly did, it being in the same room. These particulars I could not suppress, in justice to Mr. Manwaring and Mr. Monroe.

Warwell’s testimony prompted Justice Dana to dismiss the accusation against Manwaring and Munro, and to order Bourgate to be taken back to the Boston jail. Despite supporting the Whigs politically, Dana refused to have anything more to do with that charge.

On 16 March, 250 years ago today, Manwaring wrote a triumphant letter to the printers of the Boston Gazette, which had first reported the accusation against him:

Messieurs EDES & GILL,

Gentlemen,

As the villainy of my servant (who is a Boy under age without principle, sense or education, and indeed unacquainted with our language) has subjected myself and one of my friends to a suspicion that we were concerned in the unhappy transaction of Monday the fifth instant. I thought it necessary to publish the following affidavit as an additional (till further) proof of my innocence, and the extreme injury done my sentiments and reputation.

I am, Gentlemen,
Your humble Servant,
EDWARD MANWARING.

In their 19 March issue, Edes and Gill apologized for just not having enough space to print Warwell’s deposition. They finally got around to publishing it on 26 March. Later this month, we’ll see what effect it had.

Michael Angelo Warwell, Bit Player in the Boston Massacre

In 1741, in the English market town of Totnes, a baby was baptized with the name Michael Angelo Warwell.

The reason for such a baroque name was that the boy’s parents, John and Maria Warwell, were artists. According to the Rev. Samuel Reynolds, writing in 1740, John Warwell was “a painter and a player.” He was the first professional visual artist to confirm the “very great genius for drawing” of the minister’s son Joshua.

Warwell wasn’t a portraitist, as Sir Joshua Reynolds would be. Instead, he specialized in decorative painting, particularly as architectural accent. In the 1750s he did some sort of work for the the shellwork grotto at Goldney Hall, shown above.

Michael Angelo Warwell followed his father’s other career path, into the theater. Sometime before 1765, he sailed for North America. We know this because his parents followed, putting an advertisement in the 19-31 Oct 1765 South Carolina Gazette:

THIS IS TO INFORM Mr. MICHAEL ANGELO WARWELL…that his father and mother are arrived in the Planters Adventure, Miles Lowley, commander, at Charles-Town, South Carolina, with intent to settle there…

The Warwells set up a household in Charleston near Gov. Thomas Boone’s. John advertised that he painted “HISTORY PIECES: HERALDRY: ALTAR PIECES: COACHES, LANDSCAPES: WINDOW BLINDS, SEA PIECES: CHIMNEY BLINDS, FLOWERS: SKREENS, FRUIT: GILDING.” He also offered to mend and clean pictures, paint rooms, and construct “Deceptive Temples, Triumphal Arches, Obelisks, Statues, &c. for Groves or Gardens.”

On 9 June 1767, the South Carolina Gazette reported that “Mr. Warwell, Sr., a noted limner,” had died. The “Sr.” indicated that the younger Mr. Warwell, still only in his mid-twenties, had made a name for himself locally.

On 11 August, Maria Warwell announced that she was planning to leave South Carolina and wanted to settle her debts. She added:

And while she waits for a passage, she will be much obliged to those who will employ her, in mending in the neatest and most durable manner, all sorts of useful and ornamental china, viz. beakers, tureens, jars, vases, and busts; statues, either in china, glass, plaster, bronze, or marble; should a piece be wanting, she will substitute a composition in its room, and copy the pattern as nigh as possible.

By April 1768, the Warwells’ Charleston house had become the new Customs House. That agency might have been expanding as it collected new revenue through the Townshend duties. I have no idea whether the Warwell family owned the house and thus dealt with the Customs service themselves, but that link seems notable in light of Michael Angelo Warwell’s future friendship with a Customs officer.

The younger Warwell became part of David Douglass’s American Company, a set of theatrical entertainers who came together to perform plays and also offered concerts solo or in small groups. The company was in New York in July 1769.

Warwell collaborated with an actor named Hudgson and a tavern owner named Burns to deliver, “By Permission of his Excellency the GOVERNOR,…an Attic Evenings ENTERTAINMENT.” The two performers read extracts of poetry and plays and sang songs. Admission cost five shillings. According to advertisements in the New-York Gazette and New-York Journal, Warwell’s repertoire included “Bright Author of my present Flame,” “A Song in the Anacreonick Taste,” “A Song set by Dr. Henry Purcel,” “A Martial Song, in Character,” and “a Two Part Song by Mr. Warwell and Mr. Hudgson.”

Warwell then headed north. New England wasn’t a fertile field for theater. In fact, in Boston it was illegal. But that meant there was an upper-class set curious about theater-adjacent entertainment. Performers like Warwell could offer “lectures” and “concerts” that gave people just a taste of the London stage.

On 5 Jan 1770, the New-Hampshire Gazette ran this item, sent from Marblehead on New Year’s Day:

Mr. Hall, by giving the following a Place in your useful Paper, you will oblige one of your Readers.

GENEROSITY and COMPASSION united.

ON Monday the 18th Instant, in the Evening, Mr. M. A. Warwell, Gent. read (at the Assembly Room in this Town) the Beggar’s Opera, to a Number of Gentlemen and Ladies, and to universal satisfaction. His Tickets amounting to £.7-6-9 lawful Money, the whole of which he generously gave as a Charity to the poor and distressed Widows & Orphans of this Place, who are real Objects of Pity and Commiseration.—May the above Example excite others, in their several Capacities, to go and do likewise.

The next month, Warwell was in Plymouth, sitting in on the 7 February meeting of the Old Colony Club. The record of the next day’s meeting says:

This evening was read at the Hall the “Provoked Husband,” a comedy, by Mr. M. A. Warwel, to a company of about forty gentlemen and ladies, by invitation of the Club.

Warwell sat in on two more club meetings that month.

But on 5 March, he was in Boston. And that’s how Warwell got involved in the legal maneuverings around the Boston Massacre.

(I haven’t found any trace of Michael Angelo Warwell after March 1770. However, in the spring of 1771 a Thomas Warwell read The Provoked Husband and sang songs on the Caribbean island of St. Croix—maybe that was a brother.)

COMING UP: Warwell’s memorable fifth of March.

“Both he and the boy were at Home that Evening”

An anonymous letter now part of the Sparks Manuscripts at Harvard relates what happened when Justice Richard Dana (shown here) gave Customs surveyor Edward Manwaring a chance to respond to his young servant Charles Bourgate’s accusation.

That letter says:

a little French boy servant to Manwarring the tide Surveyor, declared that he at the Desire of his Master, and several other Gentlemen, who were that night in the board room, fired three guns from one of the windows & that a number more, were fired by other people——

Manwarring was Immediately summon’d before them, but on his proving by the evidence of Mr. [John] Munro that both he and the boy were at Home that Evening, he was acquitted, & the boy retracting every word he had said was committed to Jail—

Munro was a notary public. He died in January 1775 at age thirty-nine, so he didn’t get to be on any Loyalist lists.

Young Charles had another trick up his sleeve the next morning, though.

day on the boys declaring [i.e., One day on, the boy declaring] that both Manwarring & Munro were that night at the Custom House, both were Summon’d before the Justices & Munro’s affadavit set aside, he being now a party—

Munro couldn’t be an alibi witness for Manwaring because they were allegedly in on the crime together. But then Manwaring pulled out another name.

but a third person who happened to be that Evening in company with them, appear’d & Confirmed, what Munro had the day before advanced, & they were dismissed and the boy remanded back to prison.—

I’ll share that witness’s testimony tomorrow.

For now, we leave young Charles Bourgate back where we picked up his story yesterday: he was in jail and discredited. Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson wrote:

Mr. Dana, a Justice zealous for the cause of Liberty, had examined the boy and was so fully convinced of the falsity of his evidence that he would not issue a warrant for apprehending the persons charged.

Manwaring was free, and he set about writing to the Boston Gazette.

TOMORROW: Michael Angelo Warwell?

“The flashes of two guns fired from the Custom-house”

Soon after Charles Bourgate reaffirmed his earlier story of being made to shoot down at the crowd during the Boston Massacre, the Boston Whigs (William Molineux in particular) got the young servant in front of a magistrate.

This time that magistrate was Richard Dana, a higher authority than Edmund Quincy, the official who had collected Bourgate’s testimony. Quincy was merely a justice of the peace. Dana was a justice of the peace and of the quorum, which I think means that some level of the county court couldn’t meet without him.

The notion that one or more people shot at the crowd from the Customs House behind the soldiers actually had some support. A young gentleman named Jeremiah Allen stated that he was on the balcony of Joseph Ingersoll’s Bunch of Grapes tavern (shown above) during the incident.

he heard the discharge of four or five guns, the flashes of which appeared to be to the westward of the centry box; and immediately after, he the deponent heard two or three more guns, and saw the flashes thereof from out of the house now called the Custom-House, as they evidently appeared to him, and which he the said deponent at the same time declared to the aforesaid Molineux and [John] Simpson, being then near him, saying to them, at the same time pointing his hand toward the Custom-House, there they are out of the Custom-House.

The “aforesaid Molineux” was William Molineux, Jr., son of the Whig leader. He no doubt passed Allen’s story on to his dad, who then went looking for confirmation.

Other witnesses would soon tell even more damning stories. Those later quoted in the town’s report were:

• George Coster, sailor from Newfoundland: “the deponent heard the discharge of four or five guns more, by the soldiers; immediately after which the deponent heard the discharge of two guns or pistols from an open window of the middle story of the Custom-house, near to the place where the sentry box was placed, and being but a small distance from the window, he heard the people from within speak and laugh, and soon after he saw the casement lowered down”
• Cato, enslaved servant to postmaster Tuthill Hubbart: “he stood near the sentry box and saw the soldiers fire on the people, who stood in the middle of said street; directly after which he saw two flashes of guns, one quick upon the other, from the chamber-window of the Custom-house; and that after the firing was all over, while the people were carrying away the dead and wounded, he saw the Custom-house door opened, and several soldiers (one of whom had a cutlass) go into the Custom-house and shut the door after them”
• Samuel Drowne, shop assistant to a stationer on Cornhill: “during the time of the soldiers firing, the deponent saw the flashes of two guns fired from the Custom-house, one of which was out of a window of the chamber westward of the balcony, and the other from the balcony, the gun which he clearly discerned being pointed through the ballisters, and the person who held the gun in a stooping posture, withdraw himself into the house, having a handkerchief or some kind of cloth over his face.”

All those witnesses would testify before Justice Dana and Justice John Hill on 16 March. Their stories might have been circulating even before then.

Faced with Charles Bourgate’s accusation, Dana summoned Edward Manwaring and asked him how he responded to what his servant had said.

COMING UP: A singing alibi?

“As plenty in King-street as the paving stones”

On 14 March 1770, 250 years ago today, Josiah Collings went to magistrate Edmund Quincy to swear to this deposition, which he then had published in the 26 March Boston Gazette:

To the Inhabitants of the Town of BOSTON,

WHEREAS by some evil minded person or persons, it has been diverse times since the public massacre in King-street on the evening of the 5th day of March current, reported, That a blacksmith who works near the foot of Beacon-hill, did swear that some of the Inhabitants of the said town of Boston did say at the time of the said massacre, that the dollars which should be taken out of the Custom-house would be as plenty in King-street as the paving stones:——

And whereas it as been surmis’d of me the subscriber, who have for some time past work’d as a blacksmith near the said place, that I had spoken as above.——

I do now hereby declare, That I have never heard any of the inhabitants of this town say any thing touching a design upon the Custom, or any money, or other thing thereto belonging; and that a thought of that nature was never in my mind.

JOSIAH COLLINGS.

Just as the Boston Whigs had their conspiracy theories about royal appointees, those bureaucrats had conspiracy theories about the Whigs and the crowd. They theorized that a mob had attacked Pvt. Hugh White on King Street not because he’d clubbed apprentice Edward Garrick for speaking disrespectfully of Capt. John Goldfinch but because they really wanted to attack the Customs House and loot it.

The Whigs and other defenders of Boston’s reputation of course sought to squelch any idea of nefarious purposes—on their side, at least. When some people said Collings was spreading the story around, he felt enough pressure from his neighbors to issue this public denial. In sum, the blacksmith was denying a rumor about spreading a rumor.

I don’t have much more information about Joseph Collings. He married Mary Wallace in 1763 and Elizabeth Granger ten years later. He may have been the Joseph Collins appointed as a town watchman in December 1774, or maybe not.

When Mr. Molineux Visited Charles Bourgate in Jail

When we left Charles Bourgate, 250 years ago, the young French servant was locked up in the Boston jail for “profane Swearing.”

Charles had told shopkeeper Elizabeth Waldron that he and his master had shot guns out of the Customs House at the crowd on the night of 5 March, thus participating in the Boston Massacre.

But when magistrate Edmund Quincy summoned Charles to tell his story under oath, the French boy denied everything. And vehemently enough, it appears, that Justice Quincy sent him to the jail.

William Molineux, the merchant and Whig organizer, then got involved. As the 18 Mar 1771 Boston Gazette recounted the situation:

Mr. Molineux hearing of this, and like a good citizen, being anxious, if there was any truth in what the boy had related, that it might be brought to light, desired it as a favour, of Mrs. Waldron, that he might see them together; with which she readily comply’d, and they both went up to the prison-house, where they had conversation with the boy…

This conversation became a legal issue later, so Molineux asked multiple people to testify about that encounter before Justices Richard Dana and Samuel Pemberton on 15 Mar 1771. Those sworn witnesses included:

• Joseph Otis, “keeper of the Goal”
• Bathsheba Hyland, who “was present ironing of clothes in the parlour of Mr. Otis”
• Lindsey George Wallis, deputy sheriff, dropping in on business

In addition, Marcy Otis, the jailer’s wife, stated for the newspaper that she was there and offered to leave her front room along with Hyland to do their ironing elsewhere, but “Mr. Molineux desired that I would not go out.”

All those witnesses declared that Molineux had told young Charles “to declare nothing but the truth,” that “there was no offer of bribery or anything like it.” Nonetheless, it was probably easy for the imprisoned boy to discern what Molineux wanted to hear.

During that conversation, with the ironing board standing nearby, Charles Bourgate reversed himself again. Everything he had told Mrs. Waldron was true, he now said; “he had deny’d it before the justice, because his master, [Edward] Manwaring, had whip’d him severely for reporting it, and had threatened to kill him if he repeated it.”

Molineux asked Justice Quincy to come to the jail for another hearing on the “Saturday evening next after the Massacre,” or 10 March. Among the other people present was Thomas Chase, the South End distiller and member of the original Loyall Nine. Everyone told the French boy once again to be truthful. Chase stated, “the Boy then in the most full and explicit manner, declared before said Justice, that both he and his master did fire out of the Custom-House window.”

The Monday issue of Edes and Gill’s Boston Gazette, dated 13 March and marked with the black bands of mourning, broke the news to readers in a supplement:

A Servant Boy of one Manwaring the Tide-waiter from Quebec is now in Goal, having deposed that himself, by the Order and Encouragement of his Superiors had discharged a Musket several Times from one of the Windows of the House in King-Street, hired by the Commissioners and Custom House Officers to do their Business in; more than one other Person swore upon Oath, that they apprehended several Discharges came from that Quarter.—

It is not improbable that we may soon be able to account for the Assassination of Mr. [James] Otis some Time past; the Message by [George] Wilmot, who came from the same House to the infamous [Ebenezer] Richardson before his firing the Gun which kill’d young [Christopher] Snider, and to open up such a Scene of Villainy acted by a dirty Banditti, as must astonish the Public.

The Boston Whigs were about to break the murderous Customs House conspiracy wide open!

The Boston Town Meeting Takes Action

On Tuesday, 13 Mar 1770, 250 years ago today, Boston took a couple of major steps in its official response to the Boston Massacre.

The town had started its annual meeting the day before, reelecting the seven selectmen and then moving on to overseers of the poor, wardens, and such specialized offices as surveyors of boards and sealers of leather. But there were a lot of agenda items specific to that month.

Sheriff Stephen Greenleaf warned about possible jailbreaks. The town agreed to cover the cost of more watchmen in case the court system didn’t. This may well have been an oblique way of pointing to the number of soldiers in jail after the shooting on King Street. In fact, those prisoners might have been even more nervous than the townspeople, worried that as soon as there were no regiments in town they might be lynched.

The 29th Regiment had already moved to Castle William, but the 14th was still in town. The meeting appointed a high-level committee led by John Hancock and Samuel Adams to urge Col. William Dalrymple to remove his regiment immediately. Dalrymple assured those gentlemen “that between Thursday Night and Fryday Morning [i.e., by 16 March] not one of the 14th. Regiment, except himself, would remain.”

On Monday the meeting appointed Thomas Cushing, John Adams, and Josiah Quincy to write to the town’s agents and major contacts in London about the Massacre.

Resuming on Tuesday, the town appointed a committee of small businessmen to “draw up an Agreement for the Shopkeepers that have or do deal in Tea, not to dispose of any more of that Article untill the Revenue Acts are repealed.” It formed another committee of major merchants to discuss how to strengthen non-importation.

Finally the meeting reached this item:

What steps may be further necessary for obtaining a particular Account of all proceedings relative to the Massacre in King Street on Monday Night last, that a full and Just representation may be made thereof

The meeting approved these actions:

• Commissioning James Bowdoin, Dr. Joseph Warren, and Samuel Pemberton to write a thorough report on the event and who was responsible for it, which became A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre.
• Asking the selectmen “to employ one or more Council to offer to the Kings Attorney as Assistance to him in the tryal of the Murtherers”—a special prosecutor paid by the town in the name of the victims.
• Referring the question of whether “a public Monument may be Erected on the spot where the late Tragical Scene was acted” to the Massachusetts General Court, presumably because it had more funds.

The Boston town meeting wanted strong measures, but it was still chary about spending money.

Jonas Obscow, Natick Indian and Continental Soldier

Jonas Obscow (also spelled Obsco and Obscho) was born in Natick on 5 June 1739. The town’s vital records don’t identify his parents, but a man of the same name—presumably this baby’s father—died in 1745. His probate file, approved by Judge Samuel Danforth, said the most valuable part of his estate was 27 acres of land.

Four years later, in June 1749, Thaddeus Mason of Cambridge put young Jonas’s name on a list of Indians in Natick, “old and young,” separate from all other family groups.

On 27 Apr 1764, Jonas Obscow married Mary Speen, born to Abraham and Rachel Speen in 1738. “Abram Speen, wife and one child” had also appeared on the Mason list, and some of the late Jonas Obscow’s land bordered on Abraham Speen’s land, so the couple no doubt knew each other well.

The Obscows had three children recorded in the Natick record over the next few years:

• Mary, born 18 Nov 1765
• Abraham Speen, born in Walpole, 22 Dec 1767
• Zurvia, born 4 Feb 1770 and dying exactly two months later

In May 1772, the Obscows petitioned the Massachusetts General Court to permit the sale of some of their property. Their plea said that they had “for several years past, been exercised with Sickness in their family, of long continuance, which several of their Children have died.” Now “indebted to Physicians and others who relieved them in times of their affliction,” they wanted to sell “a lot of land at ye. West part of Natick four miles distant from their home lot, and four miles from the meeting house, Containing thirty seven acres.”

The Obscows had to petition the legislature before selling any land because, as Natick Indians, they needed the approval of guardians for the tribe appointed by the province. This provision was no doubt instituted with the goal of protecting Native people from being gouged. Of course, it made them dependent on the good will of the white men appointed as their guardians. The Obscows signed their petition with their marks. Three guardians of the Natick Indians signed as well. The General Court approved the sale.

In May 1775, Jonas Obscow joined the Massachusetts army, enlisting in the company of Capt. Joseph Morse within Col. John Paterson’s regiment. Obscow served in the siege of Boston at least through November, when he received a bounty coat. Military service meant income and food, but it also meant leaving Mary and whatever children were still alive back in Natick.

Jonas Obscow also enlisted for a 1777 campaign against the British in Rhode Island. Around that time his marriage with Mary was ending.

In 1783 Mary Obscow petitioned for state approval to sell her own land. That petition said she and Jonas had had four children, “But one now living about 15 years of age”—probably Abraham Speen Obscow. Mary went on to say that Jonas “Left your Petitinor & Child about 7 years ago & married unbenone to your Petitioner.” Mary had suffered from from “great Sickness & other misfortune of Broken Bones &c.,” putting her in debt to “doctr’s & Nursing &c.” The legislature granted that petition.

As of October 1788, Mary Obscow was dead, though the guardians for the Natick Indians were still selling her land “for the purpose of paying her Just Debts, & for the benifit of her Heir at Law.” One guardian held £5.12s.9d. from that estate in 1790, when Abraham Speen Obscow had presumably come of age.

In 1789 a man named Abel Perry petitioned the state to allow the guardians to look into and approve Jonas Obscow’s sale of twelve acres to him. Many Natives in New England’s “praying towns” lost the land assigned to them in just this gradual way, as debts forced them to sell off their property.

In 1796, the selectmen of Natick described Jonas Obscow as “an Indian man who is blind and is also wholly unable to go by reason of the Rheumatism and has not Estate to support him.” They were petitioning for state money to feed and house Obscow and other poor people, including Caesar Ferrit. The Natick officials argued that their town, originally founded for Indians who had converted to Christianity, deserved special consideration since Natives were exempt from local taxes but still sent their children to town schools.

The Natick selectmen also pointed out that Indians “have taken in negros…with whom they marry and have children,” and then “Said children when of age suppose them selves Exempted from all Taxes.” In other words, they would have preferred for those people of both Native and African ancestry to be classified as Negro so they were taxable. If, however, the state hinged special grants to Natick based on its large Native population, the selectmen would no doubt have wanted those same people counted as Indian.

Jonas Obscow died in Natick on 13 Nov 1805, at the age of sixty-six.

David Lamson, a Middle-Aged Man of Menotomy

David Lamson was among the men from Cambridge who served in the French and Indian War, according to provincial muster rolls examined by local historian Lucius R. Paige.

Lamson himself had some Native ancestry and probably some African since he was later described as “mulatto” and “half Indian.” He may have been only in his teens when he enlisted.

The man next appears recognizably in government records in March 1767, when he “came from Medford to live at Peter Tufts, jr.’s.” in Charlestown. The town warned Lamson out the next year, disclaiming responsibility if he became ill or needed public assistance, but then taxed him in 1770.

Another Charlestown document puts Lamson in Reading in 1769 before returning, listed as an Indian and described as a “young man” still. His mobility indicates he had no land of his own and moved around the county seeking work.

Within the next few years, Lamson returned to Cambridge, in the western village known as Menotomy. There he had a positive reputation as “a man of undoubted bravery and determination,” respect gained at least in part from his military service.

As a man of color, Lamson was exempt from militia training, despite being only a few years removed from the “young man” label. However, he was on the area’s “alarm list” along with older men and others who didn’t have to train but were still expected to turn out with their guns in an emergency.

And on 19 Apr 1775, Menotomy faced an emergency. Hours before dawn, a column of British soldiers moved through the village on its way to Concord. Around noon, another column of about the same size marched through: Col. Percy’s reinforcements. In between those two sets of redcoats, the local militia company mustered and headed west to confront the king’s troops—from a strategic distance, of course.

That left the “alarm list” or “exempts” in the town. Sometime in the afternoon, word came of a couple of British army supply wagons rolling west. These wagons had been held up, possibly at the bridge across the Charles River. Hastening to meet Lt. Col. Francis Smith’s troops on their way back from Concord, Col. Percy had left those wagons to travel under the protection of several soldiers.

According to nineteenth-century chronicler Samuel Abbot Smith, the Menotomy exempts “met at once in [Benjamin] Cooper’s tavern…to form some plan of capturing” the wagons. “They chose for their leader David Lamson, a mulatto.” Putting a man of color in a leadership role was unusual for this society, but Lamson’s neighbors respected his military experience, his bravery, and most likely his relative youth.

George Quintal, Jr., located a May 1775 document listing “David Lampson” among the men present at that confrontation. Richard Frothingham’s 1849 History of the Siege of Boston stated that Lamson, “a half Indian, distinguished himself in the affair.” Those sources help to confirm Smith’s local lore, published in the 1860s.

Lamson’s group ambushed one British wagon near what would become the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Medford Street. A company from Chelsea, led by the Rev. Phillips Payson, attacked another wagon. The militiamen killed two of the redcoats in the escort, wounded others, and downed some of the horses. Some of the regulars fled, dropping their weapons and reportedly seeking protection from “an old woman” they found “digging dandelions,” possibly Ruth Batherick.

Menotomy later became the town of Arlington, and it memorializes this short skirmish with a monument crediting the “Old Men of Menotomy.” But their leader was a middle-aged man, exempt from militia training not because of his age but because of his skin color.

I’ll say more about David Lamson and about other Continental soldiers of Native American descent at tomorrow’s Evacuation Day lecture at Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters in Cambridge.

“Heard the oration pronounced, by Coll. Hancock”

On 12 March, Revolutionary Spaces’ Old South Meeting House will host a program devoted to Dr. Joseph Warren’s 1775 oration on the Boston Massacre.

With royal troops back in town, army officers in the hall, and the province on the brink of war, that was an especially dramatic moment.

The previous year’s oration probably had a lot of drama, too, but it consisted of hushed, concerned conversations behind the scenes.

Boston’s first three official commemorative orations were delivered by:

• James Lovell, once recruited for the pulpit at Old North
• Dr. Warren, a vigorous newspaper essayist
• Dr. Benjamin Church, known for poetic eloquence

In contrast, the orator chosen for March 1774 was John Hancock. Unlike those three predecessors, he wrote hardly anything for the newspapers. Though he had served for years as both a town selectman and a representative in the General Court, he wasn’t considered one of Boston’s eloquent men. Hancock was known for public largesse, not public speaking.

Why then did the Whigs choose Hancock to deliver the 1774 oration? It may have been to bind him to their cause. In 1771, with the Liberty case resolved, troops moved out of town, and the Massacre trials over, people saw Hancock as shifting away from the radical Whigs. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson even fantasized about winning the young merchant over to his side.

My reading is that Hancock had the best sense for public opinion around, and he realized the overall populace wasn’t interested in confrontation. Then came the tea crisis of late 1773. Public sentiment changed, and everyone expected a harsh response from London. That was a good time to take a prominent position in the resistance. And what better way to do that than by delivering a Massacre oration?

Of course, there was still the matter of writing that speech. Reportedly Dr. Church and the silver-tongued Rev. Samuel Cooper helped Hancock compose his text. But it was up to him to deliver it.

People crowded into Old South on 5 Mar 1774. Within the crowd was John Adams, who had known Hancock as a fellow schoolboy back in Braintree. That evening, Adams wrote in his diary:

Heard the oration pronounced, by Coll. Hancock, in Commemoration of the Massacre—an elegant, a pathetic, a Spirited Performance. A vast Croud—rainy Eyes—&c.

The Composition, the Pronunciation, the Action all exceeded the Expectations of every Body. They exceeded even mine, which were very considerable. Many of the Sentiments came with great Propriety from him. His Invective particularly against a Prefference of Riches to Virtue, came from him with a singular Dignity and Grace.

Dined at Neighbour Quincys, with my Wife. . . . The Happiness of the Family where I dined, upon account of the Colls. justly applauded Oration, was complete. The Justice and his Daughters were all joyous.

The joy of relief, clearly. Hancock’s talk had gone so much better than people had expected.

One of Justice Edmund Quincy’s daughters was Dorothy. Although the young woman was already close to the widow Lydia Hancock, I’m not sure she and the orator were yet engaged to marry. But within a year they would be.

Hsiung on “The Metabolism of Military Forces,” 10 Mar.

On Tuesday, 10 March, the Massachusetts Historical Society will host a joint session of its Pauline Maier Early American History Seminar and Boston Seminar on Environmental History series.

Prof. David Hsiung of Juniata College will present a paper on “The Metabolism of Military Forces in the War of Independence: Environmental Contexts and Consequences.” Here’s his preview of the work:

In order to function during the War of Independence, armies and navies needed multiple sources of energy—food, firewood, work animals (which also needed food), ammunition, and more. How did specific natural environments, both proximate and distant, fuel those military metabolisms? How did such actions affect those environments in the decades and centuries that followed? This paper is the seed of a book proposal that, when watered by your feedback, will germinate come summertime.

The format of these sessions is that the printed paper is available for subscribers to read in advance and the author offers a brief précis or comments to launch the conversation. At this session, James Rice of Tufts University will then comment on Hsiung’s paper, followed by group discussion. Finally, around 6:45 P.M. there will be refreshments and more discussion.

This seminar is scheduled to start at 5:15 P.M. at the Massachusetts Historical Society on Boylston Street. Register in advance through this page.

“They all four were buried in one grave”

On the afternoon of Thursday, 8 Mar 1770—250 years ago today—Boston had a huge public funeral for the first four people to die after the Boston Massacre.

This was only eleven days after the funeral for Christopher Seider, reportedly attended by 1,300 to 2,000 people. The March procession had, in the estimate of merchant John Rowe, at least five times as many mourners:

I attended the Funeral of the four Unhappy People that were killed on Monday last. Such a Concourse of People I never saw before — I believe Ten or Twelve thousand. One Corps with their Relations followed the other & then the Select Men & Inhabitants.

Christopher Davis alerted me through Facebook to a letter about this funeral from Henry Prentiss (1749-1821, shown here in middle age) to his father, a minister in Holliston. Prentiss had just finished an apprenticeship with the merchant Oliver Wendell and asked his father to check “what he [Wendell] was to give me when my time was up”—meaning he didn’t have a copy of his own indenture.

Prentiss sent his father an eyewitness account of the shooting on King Street and the government deliberations that followed. In a postscript, he added what information he’d gathered about the Massacre victims:

The Names of those persons that were killed and their occupation. Jackson a Molatto fellow. Sailor. Gray a Rope maker. Covil mate of a vessell. Munk a Boat Builder. Maverick a Lad about fifteen years of age. Wounded viz., Edwd Payne Mercht in this town shot thro his arm. Green a Taylor shot through his thigh. Patterson shot thro his arm. The Names of the Rest have slip’d my memory.

Even what Prentiss recalled had errors. The “Molatto fellow” was then being identified as “Michael Johnson,” though within days he’d been named as Crispus Attucks. “Covil” was James Caldwell.

It doesn’t appear that Prentiss was close to any of the victims. Indeed, he gave only one man’s full name—Edward Payne, a fellow merchant. 

The next morning, Prentiss appended his description of the funeral:

Yestaday Afternoon four of those unhappy persons that were shot last Monday Evening were inter’d, the procession was much the grandest of any ever seen in America. Gray’s Corps went first then his Relations, then Covil and his Relations, then Maverick and his Relations & then Jackson & after Jackson the Inhabitants walk’d four a brest. I imagine to the number of three or four Thousand, & then a vast number of Carriges, they all four were buried in one grave & young Snider dug up & put with them.

severall company’s of Soldiers are gone to the Castle and the Remainder embarking as fast as possible, to-morrow Night the town will be Clear of them.

Prentiss’s estimate of the crowd at “three or four Thousand” might have been more accurate than Rowe’s, but that was still the largest procession Boston had seen in decades. And speaking of estimates, it took a lot longer than two days to move all the soldiers out of Boston.

(My thanks to Christopher Davis, and to Holliston chronicler George F. Walker, for bringing this source to light.)

Gingerbread, Cheese, and Spilling the Beans?

Even as some Bostonians crowded Faneuil Hall on 6 Mar 1770 to report threatening encounters with British soldiers, the young French servant Charles Bourgate was telling his story for the first time.

That morning, according to a sympathetic article in the 8 Apr 1771 Boston Evening-Post, Charles went into Joseph Waldron’s shop on Back Street “to buy bread, &c., as usual.”

Waldron was legally a tailor. In August 1767 the selectmen had licensed him to sell distilled spirits from his shop, but he didn’t handle that business. Instead, Waldron had married Elizabeth Bell at the Old South Meeting-House in 1766, and she maintained the shop selling “ginger bread and drams,” and perhaps other comestibles.

Everyone must have been talking about the fatal clash the night before. Charles Bourgate spoke to Elizabeth Waldron—“Showing much anxiety,” the Evening-Post stated. Soon the French boy was “confessing that he had fired two guns, and his master [Edward] Manwaring one, from the first chamber of the custom-house.”

Elizabeth Waldron may have rewarded Charles for his confession. Months later, a fellow prisoner in the Boston jail, James Penny, testified to hearing the boy say that at some time Waldron gave him “gingerbread and cheese, and desired him to swear against his master.” It seems more likely that Waldron felt sympathy after hearing Charles’s story than that she induced him to level a false accusation.

According to the 18 Mar 1771 Boston Gazette, “Mrs. Waldron…immediately went to Justice Quincy, and declared what she had heard, upon oath.” Edmund Quincy (1703-1788, shown above) was a staunch supporter of the Whigs. Other people were also talking about seeing flashes of gunshots from the Customs house windows.

Word of the French boy’s claim probably got back to Manwaring. Charles later declared that that night “my master licked me…for telling Mrs. Waldron about his firing out of the Custom house.”

Justice Quincy summoned the servant boy for examination. I can’t tell when that happened, but the clues point to Wednesday, 7 March, or the couple of days that followed. Standing before the magistrate, supposedly fearing another licking from his master, Charles denied all that he’d told Mrs. Waldron.

The boy must have denied his previous story quite vehemently because Quincy sent him to jail for “profane Swearing.” Or perhaps that was just the Whig magistrate’s legal excuse to get Charles Bourgate away from his master.

EXTRA: Collecting “information respecting the Massacre”

As I described earlier, the first order of business at Boston’s town meeting on 6 Mar 1770, 250 years ago today, was to collect “information respecting the Massacre of the last night.” This produced the earliest surviving eyewitness testimony related to that event.

The first man in line with such info was the painter John Singleton Copley, who reported:

that Mr. Pelham and his Wife and some Person of Mr. Samuel Wenthrops Family, heard a Soldier to say after the firing on the last Night, that the Devil might give quarters he should give them none—  

In other words, this soldier would use deadly force in any fight. [The published town records say “fixing” instead of “firing.”]

I interpret “Mr. Pelham and his Wife” to mean Copley’s half-brother Henry Pelham and his own wife Susanna (though conceivably the artist’s other half-brother Charles Pelham and his wife Mary had come in from Newton that night). Hearing this threat might explain why Pelham drew the accusatory picture of the shooting that Paul Revere later copied.

Samuel Winthrop was clerk of the Massachusetts Superior Court, where the soldiers would be tried. Copley painted him in his court robe around this time.

At the same town meeting, John Scott volunteered that “a Lad of Mr Peirpoints said at Mr. [Peter?] Cherdons, that a Soldier was heard to say that his Officer had acquainted them, that if they went abroad at Nights, they should go armed and in Companies.” This may have been the same John Scott chosen for jury duty that fall.

Robert Pierpont himself said: “before the firing on the last Night he had disarmed a Soldier who had struck down one of the Inhabitants.” Pierpont was an active Whig from the South End who had prompted his own riot the previous October. Cpl. Hugh McCann later complained that Pierpont had attacked him soon after the shooting, probably the same incident. Within days, Pierpont was overseeing inquests of the shooting victims as one of the town coroners.

The tailor Pool Spear reported: “last Week he heard one Kilson a Soldier of Pharras Company say…Inhabitants…had broke an Officers Windows [and]…that Parties of Soldiers were ordered with Pistols in their Pockets, and to fire upon those who should assault said House again, and that Ten Pounds Sterling was to be given as a Reward, for their killing one of those Persons, and fifty pounds sterling for a Prisoner.” Spear was then being sued for tarring and feathering the Customs service sailor George Gailer. Apothecary Robert Palmes reported that Spear had been near King Street the night before but went home, sensing trouble.

In such a small town, it seems, almost everyone had a link to the disputes that led to the shooting and a link to the legal system that would adjudicate it.

Another early witness was the shoemaker George Robert Twelves Hewes. His testimony wasn’t entered into the town records appended to more testimony published later, showing his determination to get this story out. Hewes said:

last night, about one o’clock, as he was returning alone from his house to the town-house, he met Sergeant Chambers of the 29th, with eight or nine soldiers, all with very large clubs and cutlasses, when Dobson, a soldier, spoke to him and ask’d him how he far’d, he told him very badly, to see his townsmen shot in such a manner, and asked him if he did not think it was a dreadful thing, said Dobson swore by God it was a fine thing, and said you shall see more of it; and on perceiving I had a cane, he informed Sergeant Chambers of it, who seized and forced it from me, saying I had no right to carry it; I told him I had as good a right to carry a cane as they had to carry clubs, but they hurried off with it into the main guard.

Was this Sgt. Chambers the same who had spent Sunday in a “house of pleasure”? I asked Don Hagist, editor of the Journal of the American Revolution. He said a Sgt. Charles Chambers is listed on the muster rolls of the 29th Regiment in October 1769 and June 1770. A Sgt. Joseph Chambers pops up on the latter roll, never having appeared in the record of the regiment before. So it’s not certain which sergeants were where.

(I was pleased Don could confirm that Matthew Chambers, who serves as an example of a redcoat with a wife and small children through much of Serena Zabin’s The Boston Massacre: A Family History, was a private and thus not the man who visited the brothel.)

It’s striking how none of this testimony that survives from that 6 March meeting directly related to the shooting on King Street, even though people like Hewes had been present. Instead, citizens were warning town officials about the ongoing threat that all the soldiers—not just those already in custody—posed to the people of Boston.

A Town Meeting for a Town in Turmoil

After the shooting on King Street on 5 Mar 1770, townspeople raced to take the wounded to doctors and to demand justice.

British army officers struggled to get from their lodgings to their companies’ barracks. They feared that locals would gather weapons and counterattack. There were rumors of a tar barrel being moved to Beacon Hill to summon militiamen from neighboring towns, though there’s little evidence those things actually happened.

At the Town House, acting governor Thomas Hutchinson assured the crowd that the civil government would investigate the event and pursue charges. Magistrates started to interview witnesses.

Whig leader William Molineux arrived and urged Hutchinson to order all the troops back to their barracks. Reluctant to be seen as controlling the army, the lieutenant governor merely asked Lt. Col. Maurice Carr to issue that order on his own authority.

In the early morning, Sheriff Stephen Greenleaf brought in Capt. Thomas Preston for questioning. About 3:00 A.M., the justices sent him to the town jail. The next morning, they visited the main guard, examined the eight soldiers’ firelocks (one bayonet still showing traces of blood), and arrested them as well.

At 11:00 on the morning of 6 March, 250 years ago today, hundreds of Bostonians thronged Faneuil Hall, demanding a special town meeting “occasioned by the Massacre made in King Street”—the event’s label was already being established. Only town clerk William Cooper was there, however. The selectmen were all over at the Town House, meeting with Hutchinson and his Council. So William Greenleaf, the sheriff’s brother and eventual successor, went to alert them.

Many townspeople wanted to testify about hostile encounters with soldiers. Eventually the meeting appointed a small committee to take that evidence. (I’ll address those testimonies in a separate posting.) The gathering then chose a larger committee filled with prominent men—Thomas Cushing, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, William Phillips, Molineux, and so on—to tell Lt. Gov. Hutchinson:

it is the unanimous Opinion of this Meeting, that the Inhabitants and Soldiery can no longer dwell together in safety; that nothing can be rationally expected to restore the peace of this Town, and prevent blood and Carnage, but the immediate removal of the Troops

That committee proceeded to the Council Chamber of the Town House, overlooking the site of the shooting. Hutchinson and Lt. Col. William Dalrymple were trying to balance the orders that Gen. Thomas Gage had issued on the authority of the Crown, the need to keep public order, and the need to calm the populace. But most of all, each man was trying to ensure that the other bore the main responsibility for whatever decision came out of the meeting.

Dalrymple suggested that since Gen. Gage has instructed him to station some troops at Castle William, he was willing to order the 29th Regiment there and await approval from New York. No soldiers of the 14th had been involved in the shooting, after all. Would that satisfy the people?

At 3:00 P.M. the town meeting resumed and immediately moved from Faneuil Hall to the larger Old South Meeting-House. That meant there had to be thousands of men attending. Cooper read Hutchinson’s message: “It is not in my power to countermand those Orders” from Gage, but Lt. Col. Dalrymple had offered to remove the 29th to the Castle.

The meeting voted to reject that compromise with “but one dissentient.” The people chose a smaller committee to return to the Town House. Back in the Council Chamber, Samuel Adams told Hutchinson and Dalrymple, “If you can remove the 29th regiment, you can also remove the 14th; and it is at your peril if you do not.” (That’s the wording from the Rev. William Gordon, writing just a few years later. Later accounts have other language.)

In 1771, Adams told James Warren about Hutchinson’s immediate reaction: “if Fancy deceived me not, I observ’d his Knees to tremble. I thought I saw his face grow pale (and I enjoyd the Sight) at the Appearance of the determined Citizens peremptorily demanding the Redress of Grievances.”

But Hutchinson still held out, asking his Council for support. Those gentlemen urged withdrawal. Councilor Royall Tyler went farther and warned:

The people will come in from the neighboring towns; there will be ten thousand men to effect the removal of the troops, who will probably be destroyed by the people, be it called a rebellion, or occasion the loss of our charter, or be the consequence what it may.

That was just the uprising the royal authorities feared.

Lt. Col. Dalrymple was already dangling another suggestion. The acting governor could “desire” him to remove both regiments, and he’d do so. Hutchinson could thus avoid giving orders to the army. Dalrymple could tell Gage that he was simply responding to the local civil authority.

The Council accepted that approach. The committee accepted it. Back in Faneuil Hall, the town meeting accepted it and then voted “to have a strong Watch of our own for the protection of the Inhabitants in the Night, untill the troops would remove.”

However, nobody had settled how soon the two regiments would actually leave Boston.

EXTRA: After the Sestercentennial of the Massacre

And you thought the Sestercentennial commemoration of the Boston Massacre was over after the reenactments on Saturday. But no!

Here are the events I know about in the coming month.

Sunday, 8 March, 12:30-2:30 P.M.
Faneuil Hall to the Granary Burying-Ground, Boston
Reenactors and the public are invited to a period oration delivered by Henry Cooke IV under the Samuel Adams statue, followed a procession to the Granary Burying Ground to lay a wreath at the victims’ tomb.

Tuesday, 10 March, 7:00 P.M.
American Antiquarian Society, Worcester
Mitch Kachun, author of First Martyr of Liberty: Crispus Attucks in American Memory, discusses how and why certain historical narratives gain widespread credibility and familiarity while others are forgotten or marginalized. This talk explores the different ways that Crispus Attucks has been either made a part of or excluded from Americans’ understandings of the story of the American Revolution and the story of the nation.

Thursday, 12 March, 6:30-8:00 P.M.
Old South Meeting House, Boston
“Sanguinary Theatre: Dr. Joseph Warren & His Massacre Oration” will blend modern context and costumed interpretation to revive a fiery oration of 1775. Following the Boston Massacre, the residents of Massachusetts Bay made their feelings on the violent event known in a series of annual memorial meetings, with speeches by well-known orators of the day. Dr. Joseph Warren delivered such a speech to a tense and rowdy crowd at Old South Meeting House in March 1775, months before his death at the Battle of Bunker Hill. In this oration, Warren both mourned the Massacre victims as martyrs and inspired his audience with a call to protect liberty for future generations. Witness Warren’s thoughts on the military occupation of Boston, the Bloody Massacre on King Street, and these events’ repercussions as colonists found themselves on the brink of war. Tickets available through this page.

In addition, as already noted, Serena Zabin will be speaking about her new book, The Boston Massacre: A Family History, in Lexington on 10 March and in Newport, Rhode Island, on 12 March.

And don’t miss these ongoing museum exhibits:

• “Beyond Midnight: Paul Revere,” split between the Worcester Art Museum and the Concord Museum through early June.
• “Fire! Voices from the Boston Massacre” at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston through late June.
• “Reflecting Attucks” at the Old State House in Boston through March 2021.

And of course the legal trials that followed the Boston Massacre in late 1770 were important historic events in their own right. Stay tuned!

Charles Bourgate’s Massacre

Today, 5 March, is the Sestercentennial anniversary of the Boston Massacre. I’ve written a lot about the Massacre over the years, including this post from 2007 about how the trouble started and how easily people could have avoided it.

So today I’m sharing a rarely recounted perspective on the event from a teen-aged servant named Charles Bourgate. He was reportedly born at Bordeaux, France, but also identified as “a Jersey boy.”

This was the French boy’s testimony at the trial on 12 Dec 1770 of his master, Customs official Edward Manwaring, along with Manwaring’s friend John Munro and lower-level Customs employees Hammond Green and Thomas Greenwood.

All four of those men were charged with participating in the murders on King Street, with muskets actually shot out an upper window of the Customs house, as shown above from the print by Paul Revere.

Charles testified:

I am an apprentice to Mr. Edward Manwarring. On the evening of the 5th March last, I was at Mr. [John] Hudson’s in Back-street, at the North-end, where my master then lodged, Mr. Hudson and his wife [Elizabeth] were at home;…

According to the boy’s earlier deposition for town magistrates, Manwaring and Munro had gone to the Customs house to “drink a glass of wine” about half an hour before he heard an alarm.

when the bells rung I ran into King street, and to the door of the Custom-house which was on a jarr partly open, and a young man one Green, he with one eye, (pointing to Hammond Green) opened the door and pulled me in; two or three gentlemen came down stairs, and one of them a tall man, pulled me up stairs, and said to me, you must fire, the tall man gave me a gun, and said to me “if you don’t fire I’ll kill you”—

In his deposition, Charles said, “I saw my Master and Mr. Munroe come down stairs, and go into a room; when four or five men went up stairs, pulling and halling me after them.” So not exactly the same detail, but the same result.

I went up stairs and stood by a front window in the chamber, and the tall man loaded two guns with two balls each, and I fired them both; as soon as I had fired one gun, he, the tall man, said again to me, “if you don’t fire I will kill you.” He had a cane with a sword in it in his hand, and compelled me to fire both the guns.

After I had fired these two guns, Mr. Manwarring fired one gun also out of the same window. The tall man loaded the three guns, and I see him put the balls in each of them and heard them go down. The two guns I fired, I pointed up the street and in the air. When my master Mr. Manwarring pointed his gun out of the window I was in the room, but went out and was on the stairs before his gun went off, I heard it, but did not see it.

As soon as I had fired, the tail man took me down stairs, and said he would give me money if I would not tell: I replied, I did not want any money, but if I was called before the Justices, I would tell the truth.

There were a great many people in the house, and a number of people round me in the chamber where I fired, I can’t tell the precise number, but there were more than ten, Mr. Munro and Hammond Green were in the house below stairs, Mr. Manwarring was in the chamber when all the three guns were loaded and fired, there was the space of a minute and an half between the second gun I fired, and the third which my Master fired. There was a candle in the chamber, but I cannot tell whether there were one or two windows in it. When I came up into the chamber, there were two guns in it, I fired twice out of the same gun, but I cannot tell whether Mr. Manwarring fired the same gun I did.

At the time I and my master fired, the street below was full of people, and the mob were throwing sticks, snow-balls, &c. It was pretty dark, but I don’t know but there might be a little moon. I can’t tell whether the guns my master and I fired, were fired before or after the firing by the soldiers.

When I went from Mr. Hudson’s to the Custom-house, I passed through the lane that leads from the Market to the Custom-house, (Royal-exchange-lane) and I did not see the Sentry-box or any soldiers near the Custom house; there were many people round there in the street.

Immediately after I went down stairs, I went out of the house and saw a great number of people throwing snow-balls and sticks, but I saw no soldiers. I returned to Mr. Hudson’s house, Mr. Hudson and his wife were then at home, and no other person in the house.

Earlier Charles had declared, “I ran home as fast as I could, and set up all night in my master’s kitchen.”

At the trial, attorneys asked the French boy again “where he was when be heard the report of his master’s gun?” He said “he was quite down stairs,” thus not able to declare positively that Manwaring had shot at the crowd but certainly implying he had.

Asked whether William Molineux had asked him about his story, Charles said “he was in the goaler’s house with Mrs. Otis the prison-keeper’s wife, Mr. Wallis, deputy sheriff, and Mr. Molineux, and that the latter told him to tell the truth.”

Of course, none of this was the truth. Except, probably, that Hammond Green had only one eye.

TOMORROW: The morning after a Massacre.

EXTRA: Hanson Plass on “Lancaster Hill’s Revolution,” 8 Mar.

In the wake of the Boston Massacre Sestercentennial, there’s also an interesting talk about a Bostonian not prominent in that event but active in the quest for liberty in eighteenth-century America.

On Sunday, 8 March, at 12:15 P.M. Eric Hanson Plass will speak at King’s Chapel on “Lancaster Hill’s Revolution.”

The event description says:

Lancaster Hill, a free black man living in colonial and revolutionary-era Boston, married Margaret, a woman enslaved by a parishioner, at King’s Chapel in the 1750s. During the American Revolution, Hill joined the ranks of notable activist and abolitionist Prince Hall, and advocated for the abolition of slavery.

In 1777 Lancaster Hill signed his name to a petition with eight other men, demanding that this new independent state of Massachusetts abolish the institution of slavery once and for all. This stroke of a pen, in his own hand, was a distinct moment in this man's transformation into an American revolutionary. Over the span of some thirty years, Lancaster Hill transformed from being a man enslaved by a government, to a man who demanded recognition and accountability of government.

Hanson Plass brings over a decade of experience illuminating Boston’s history as a park ranger with the National Park Service. He holds a master's degree in Public History from the University of Massachusetts Boston.

This event is free and open to the public. Voluntary donations support the King’s Chapel History Program and its public programs.