Knott on the Washington-Hamilton Relationship, 15 May

On Friday, 15 May, the Lexington Historical Society is hosting its annual Cronin Lecture—but this year the talk will be online.

The event announcement says:

Join Stephen Knott, co-author [with Tony Williams] of Washington and Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America, to hear the tumultuous story of the nation’s founding through the unlikely duo of George Washington and Alexander Hamilton.

Despite differences in temperament and ambition, Washington and Hamilton were able to form a partnership that brought America through the battlefields of the Revolution, the Constitutional Convention, and the early years of the republic. The Library of Law and Liberty writes that Knott is able to to explore the “volatile but ultimately durable alliance of George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, showing that constitutional statesmanship is not some mythical creature.”

Knott is a Professor of National Security Affairs at the United States Naval War College in Newport. He formerly co-chaired the Presidential Oral History Program at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

This event is scheduled to take place on the Zoom platform on Friday from 7:00 to 8:30 P.M. It is free, but one must register to access the feed. Refreshments will be served as long as you serve yourself refreshments. Thanks to the Lexington Historical Society for making this event available.

Knott’s book falls into the subsection of recent Founders’ biographies that look at two important people instead of one, or instead of several. The relationship between those politicians, such books argue, shaped their work and thus the republic.

If we were to plot the pairings of all those books as a network, Washington would be one of the biggest nodes, with almost everybody wanting to be close to him. In addition to Knott and Williams’s look at Washington and Hamilton, I can think of:

• David A. Clary, Adopted Son: Washington, Lafayette, and the Friendship that Saved the Revolution
• Thomas Fleming: The Great Divide: The Conflict Between Washington and Jefferson that Defined a Nation
• Gerard W. Gawalt, George Mason and George Washington: The Power of Principle
• Edward J. Larson, Franklin and Washington: The Founding Partnership
• Eric Leibiger, Founding Friendship: George Washington, James Madison, and the Creation of the American Republic
• Dave R. Palmer, George Washington and Benedict Arnold: A Tale of Two Patriots

Jefferson would have a lot of links, too, not all of them so friendly. In addition to Fleming’s book about Washington and Jefferson, there are:

• Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg, Madison and Jefferson
• Tom Chaffin, Revolutionary Brothers: Thomas Jefferson, the Marquis de Lafayette, and the Friendship that Helped Forge Two Nations
• John Ferling, Jefferson and Hamilton: The Rivalry that Forged a Nation
• Gerard W. Gawalt, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson: Creating the American Republic
• James F. Simon, What Kind of Nation: Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and the Epic Struggle to Create a United States
• Gordon S. Wood, Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson

Hamilton’s recent popularity is evident in the growing number of books about his relationships, though it’s telling that most of those are about rivalries rather than long partnerships. In addition to the two titles already mentioned, I found:

• Jay Cost, The Price of Greatness: Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and the Creation of American Oligarchy
• Thomas Fleming, Duel: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and the Future of America

And now Madison has been paired up with three other Founders. Not to mention outliers:

• Yuval Levin, The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left

There may well be other two-Founder biographies I’ve missed, so leave comments. I’m not including dual biographies of married couples or blood relations, nor studies of trios and larger groups.

“I can never give any thing but general accounts of conversations”

Last fall, I discussed a moment when John Quincy Adams discovered that his younger brother Charles had been reading his diary without permission.

At the time, the Adams brothers were students at Harvard College. John Quincy was about to turn twenty and increasingly interested in young women. Charles was in his mid-teens and increasingly getting into trouble with the college authorities.

John Quincy was still worried about prying eyes the following 17 Jan 1787, when he wrote:

I had a deal of chat, with Miss [Almy] Ellery, who has a larger share of Sense, than commonly falls to an individual of her sex. We conversed upon diverse subjects, but I can never give any thing but general accounts of conversations, for I cannot always keep this book under lock and key; and some people have a vast deal of curiosity.

Despite that caution about his conversation with Almy Ellery, in the same season John Quincy set down some delightfully acidic comments about other people he met.

On 4 January:

Miss [Catherine] Jones as usual was severe. Her disposition would be much more amiable, if she was not so sensible of her satirical talents, and so fond of them as to gratify her passion upon all occasions.

12 January:

We pass’d an hour in the evening at Mr. [Caleb] Gannett’s [the Harvard steward]; he was not at home: Mrs. [Ruth] G. is quite historical; that is she gives a very minute history of whatever occurs to herself or her family.

1 February:

Mr. [Thomas] Fayerweather and his family were there. An extraordinary character. The greatest range of his ideas, is between the counter of a shop, and the potatoe-hill behind his House; these furnish him with an universal topic of conversation, which he commonly enjoys alone, for he gives no other person time to express either approbation or dislike of his sentiments.

15 February, after a dance:

Of the Ladies, some had beauty without wit, and some wit without beauty; one was blest with both, and others could boast of neither. But little was said, and sentiment did not thrive, when the feet are so much engaged, the head in general is vacant.

16 February:

Miss [Rebecca] Hastings was there, but she has neither youth nor beauty, and if she has wit it is somewhat beneath the surface.

Clearly John Quincy Adams didn’t worry about his brother seeing those comments.

COMING UP: More catty comments to come.

Fire Buckets and the Fenno Family

The Skinner auctioneers blog offers Christopher D. Fox’s detailed discussion of firefighting and leather fire buckets in Boston.

In particular, Fox profiles one maker of those buckets:

While there were certainly a number of merchants in Boston from whom fire buckets could be purchased, few seem to have advertised in the papers. In addition, it is very rare to find a mark or signature on a fire bucket that identifies its maker. As a result, the identities of nearly all of the makers of fire buckets around Boston have been lost. One exception to this are the buckets produced by John Fenno Jr.

John Fenno Jr. was born in Boston on May 4, 1732, to John Fenno (1707-1790) and Hannah Capen (1712-1792). He married Katherine Hodges (1729-1810) on April 4, 1755, and together they had six children. Fenno’s father worked in the leather business and it is likely that John learned the leatherworking trade from him. While it is not clear exactly when John Fenno Jr. began working on his own, an advertisement in the Massachusetts Centinel in April 1785 indicates that by then his business was well established. “John Fenno, jun. Hereby gives notice to those gentlemen who are so well disposed as to enter into Fire Societies, and all others, that he continues to make Leather Buckets, strong and neat, of a large size, and handsome shape. — Hoses for Engines, and Hoses for the West-India use — Boots, Gloeshoes, and Shoes of all sizes, at the sign of the Leather Bucket, next door to Dr. Samuel Curtis’s at the South End.” Fortunately for historians and collectors, Fenno’s fire buckets are identifiable as he marked his work with a rectangular stamp reading “I. FENNO” on the back of his buckets near the stitched seam.

Unfortunately, in the spring of 1787 his house burned and Fenno was forced to relocate his business as testified by a newspaper advertisement in May of that year. This advertisement is interesting in that beyond the text describing what he makes and sells, it illustrates two of his principal products; shoes and buckets. Over the next several years his business continued to flourish and he expanded his offerings to include hoses for firefighting equipment and other uses. In October 1794 Fenno placed the following advertisement in the Columbian Centinel: “John Fenno, Informs the Public, that he continues to make Leather Buckets, after the best manner, at the sign of the Bucket, Orange Street, South end, Boston. A number of Buckets may be had on the shortest notice. Said Fenno makes Hoses for Engines, and Hose for the conveyance of Oil and Molasses on board vessels.” Fenno apparently continued his bucket-making business until his death on December 5, 1812.

Fenno’s next-younger brother, Ephraim (1734-1790), also became a leather-dresser in Boston. He turned “melancholy” in the late 1780s, was admitted to the almshouse in November 1788, and died there, as tracked in his son’s letters (P.D.F. download).

John and Ephraim’s uncle Benjamin Fenno (b. 1719) might have been the man who looked after the town granary before the Revolutionary War. That granary eventually was taken down to built the Park Street Church, but it left its name on the neighboring burying-ground.

The next generation of the Fenno family left a literary trail. The bucket-maker John Fenno’s daughter born in 1765 is variously called Janet, Jennet, Jenny, and Jane. As Jenny Fenno and then as Jane Ames, she published three volumes of religious verse, as I discussed here. Here’s a look at her 1805 volume for sale.

Ephraim had a son named John Fenno (1751-1798), who assisted Abiah and then Samuel Holbrook at the South Writing School. After the war and some unsuccessful shopkeeping he became the publisher and editor of the Gazette of the United States, the Federalist Party organ in the nation’s capital (first New York and then Philadelphia). He died of yellow fever, far from Boston.

Carrot Pudding from the 1730s

Several years back, Alyssa Connell wrote at Cooking in the Archives about a handwritten cookbook in the collection of the University of Pennsylvania:

This two-volume recipe book is dated 1730 (vol. 1) and 1744 (vol. 2) and belonged to Judeth Bedingfield, though it contains the handwriting of multiple persons. The carrot pudding recipe comes from the first volume, which includes not only other recipes for cooking – pickled pigeon, for instance, “quaking pudding,” quince cream, and many more – but also for making various kinds of wine and cordials and for household remedies for ailments like colic.

One of the recipes Bedingfield collected in that manuscript was:

To make a Carrot Pudding Mrs Bransby Kent[xxx]

Take six Carrots not to large boyl them well & as many pip[pins] with the juce of one lemon & four sugar rouls beat them very well in a Marble Mortor Mix with these a pint of cream & three Eggs Sweeten it to your tast Bake in a dish with pu[xxx] & put in Cittern & Candid Oringe

Connell and her co-blogger, Marissa Nicosia, adapted that recipe into a modern one they shared on the blog.

This past weekend, I tried making that carrot pudding. With a small household, I halved the ingredients down to one egg and one Granny Smith apple. I had the modern advantages of a food processor to puree and blend, silicone muffin molds, and a thermostat-regulated oven (which needed more baking time than the adapted recipe called for, probably because I chose not to use a pie pan). With the extra baking time, the puddings set to my liking, and after cooling I turned them out onto plates.

The result was sweet, tasty, and soft, like a carrot flan. I’m definitely keeping the recipe in the pile.

There are many other historical recipes for carrot puddings compiled here at the Carrot Museum site.

Studying the Schoolmasters’ Salaries

Toward the end of their 8 May 1770 town meeting, Bostonians turned to approving salaries for the town’s schoolteachers.

There were five town schools—two grammar or Latin schools and three writing schools. However, not all the teachers were compensated equally. Here are the salaries for the masters at each school:

• John Lovell, South Latin School (shown here): £120.
• Samuel Hunt, North Latin School: £100.
• John Proctor, Queen Street Writing School: £100.
• Samuel Holbrook, South Writing School: £100.
• John Tileston, North Writing School: £100.

Obviously, the town valued John Lovell’s services significantly more than any other master. There were a number of factors, including his long tenure at the South Latin School and how that school was twice as large as the North Latin School. But the town always spent more on the grammar schools.

The disparity was even more pronounced when we add in the salaries that the meeting approved for each assistant master or usher:

• James Lovell, usher, South Latin School: £60, plus £40 “as an encouragement for him to remain and exert himself in the Service of the Town the ensuing Year.”
• James Carter, usher, Queen Street Writing School: £50, plus £25 for encouragement.
• Assistant for the South Writing School, to be named later: £50.
• Assistant for the North Writing School, to be paid through Tileston: £34.

Tileston’s assistant was William Dall, who turned seventeen years old in 1770. He was still an apprentice and thus worth only two-thirds of a regular usher’s salary.

At the South Writing School, Samuel Holbrook had become master partway through the school year after the death of his uncle Abiah, but he’d taught at the Queen Street School years before. His assistant might have been John Fenno, born in in 1751 and thus also still under age.

James Carter was an experienced teacher who would take over the Queen Street Writing School in a couple of years, which is probably why the town offered him “encouragement” to stay on the job.

But Boston really encouraged James Lovell at the South Latin School, paying him as an usher as much money as every master but his father. He was a Harvard graduate working under his father, and people might have felt he was turning away better prospects. Indeed, later that year, the congregation at Christ Church invited Lovell to preach during a dispute with their pastor, the Rev. Mather Byles, Jr.

That disparity in spending on the different schools becomes even more stark when we look at the number of children each of those schoolteachers served. Here’s how many scholars a town committee found at each school a couple of months later in 1770:

• South Latin School, 137 boys.
• North Latin School, 56 boys.
• South Writing School, 231 boys.
• Queen Street Writing School, 268 boys.
• North Writing School, 250 boys.

Even without an usher at the North Latin School, the town was paying £320 to give 193 boys a grammar-school education (or, really, part of one since about two-thirds of each entering class dropped out without finishing). That’s per-pupil spending of £1.66.

Meanwhile, the town was spending £459 to educate the other 749 boys in the practical skills of handwriting and arithmetic. That was £0.61 per pupil.

Clearly the system favored the students at the Latin Schools, most of them coming from the town’s richer families. Though Boston prided itself on its public schools, the system wasn’t equitable. (And about half of the boys in town of school age weren’t in the public schools at all. Not to mention no girls or black children.)

There was one more piece of business for Boston’s 8 May 1770 town meeting: to vote £100 to David Jeffries “for his Services as Treasurer of the Town the Year past, and for all his Expences in that Office.” Someone had to pay the schoolmasters.

“Strict adherance to the design of the Townˇ

At 3:00 P.M. on 8 May 1770, after their midday dinners, the white, propertied men of Boston returned to Faneuil Hall to resume their town meeting.

Having elected their representatives to the Massachusetts General Court, they named a committee to write instructions for those gentlemen. Such instructions had become a useful way for the Whigs to make political statements about the big issues of the day.

The first man named to that committee was Richard Dana. Traditionally that made him the committee head and the principal author of its report. Dana was a magistrate respected for his legal knowledge, suggesting that the meeting expected such issues to arise in the upcoming legislature.

The other committee members were attorney Josiah Quincy, Jr.; Dr. Joseph Warren; selectman Joshua Henshaw; and attorney Benjamin Kent. It’s notable that Quincy had just represented Ebenezer Richardson at his murder trial, yet the town still felt he was worthy of the public trust.

Another item on the agenda involved the Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre. The committee who had written that report on the Boston Massacre, including newly returned representative James Bowdoin and Dr. Warren, “presented an Appendix to said Narrative.” That was the collection of depositions the authors had used as evidence, starting here.

The town meeting officially “accepted” that appendix. Which avoided hassle because those depositions had already printed with the report and sent off to sympathetic figures in Britain, and William Molineux had mailed a copy to special prosecutor Robert Treat Paine.

The men then voted “that the Thanks of the Town be and hereby are given to said Committee for their strict adherance to the design of the Town in their appointment; and for their perfecting the Business in so correct and masterly a manner.”

The meeting also discussed two property issues. Several inhabitants had asked “that the Selectmen may be empowered to make sale of several pieces of unimproved Land.” And Jacob Emmons asked “that the Town would make him satisfaction for the damage he has or may sustain by the taking away of his Lands in Paddys Alley for the enlarging of a Street.”

The voters took different approaches to these problems. On the first, they named a committee to handle the matter, as usual. On the second, they decided Emmons hadn’t followed proper procedure and gave him “leave to withdraw his Petition”—meaning a definite no.

TOMORROW: The schoolmasters’ salaries.

After James Otis “behaved very madly’

On 8 May 1770, 250 years ago today, Bostonians gathered for one of their annual town meetings.

Every March, the white men of the town elected its selectmen and other officials for the coming year. Every May, a smaller section of those white men, those who owned more property, elected the town’s four representatives to the Massachusetts General Court.

For the last few years the town had reelected the same four men:

• James Otis, Jr.
• Thomas Cushing, who had become speaker of the house.
• Samuel Adams, the house clerk.
• John Hancock.

But Otis was no longer in his right mind. He’d gotten into a coffee-house brawl with a royal official in September, suffering a bad head injury. For a while he appeared to recover, but in March, in the wake of the Boston Massacre, he had broken windows in the Town House.

Then on 22 April, the day after Ebenezer Richardson was convicted of murder for shooting at a crowd from his window, the merchant John Rowe wrote this in his diary:

This afternoon Mr. Otis behaved very madly, firing guns out of his window, that caused a large number of people to assemble about him.

Personally I’d stay far away from Otis’s house in that situation, but people might have felt safe once he’d emptied his guns. In any event, the man’s family subdued him and bundled him away to a doctor’s estate in the country.

One item of official business at the May town meeting, therefore, was:

The Honble. James Otis Esq. having by the advice of his Physicians, retired into the Country for the recovery of his Health.

Voted, that the Thanks of the Town be given to the Honble. James Otis Esq; for the great and important Services which as a Representative in the General Assembly through a Course of Years He has rendered to this Town and Province; particularly for his undaunted Exertions in the Common Cause of the Colonies from the beginning of the present glorious Struggle for the Rights of the British Constitution. At the same Time the Town cannot but express their Ardent Wishes for the recovery of His Health, and the continuance of those publick Services that must long be remembered with Gratitude, and distinguish his Name among the Patriots of America Voted, that the Gentlemen the Selectmen be a Committee to transmit to the Honble. James Otis Esq. an attested Copy of the aforegoing Vote

Otis’s departure meant that there was now an opening for the town’s fourth representative.

By a happy coincidence, there was also a prominent Whig politician in Boston who’d been shut out of his usual legislative seat the previous year. James Bowdoin (shown above as a young man) had served in the Massachusetts house back in the 1750s before rising to a seat in the Council. In that body he had led the opposition to Gov. Francis Bernard. In May 1769, the legislature chose Bowdoin for the Council again, but this time the governor “negatived” or vetoed him. Bowdoin therefore had had no official political role for a year.

Bowdoin had used that free time to publicize the letters of Gov. Bernard that leaked from London. After the Massacre, Bowdoin was the principal author of the town’s report on the shooting. So voters knew what he had done for Boston.

The official tally in the records was that out of 513 total votes the top candidates were:

The Honble. James Bowdoin Esq. - - - - - 439
Honble. Thomas Cushing Esq. - - - - - 510
Mr. Samuel Adams - - - - - - - - 510
Honble. John Hancock Esq. - - - - - 511

It’s possible that Bowdoin’s lower number meant there was another candidate or two but clerk William Cooper kept that man’s name out of the record.

(I don’t know if there’s any significance to the way those tallies appear in the minutes, from the lowest to the highest vote-winner. John Rowe attended the meeting and recorded the same numbers in his diary, but he listed Hancock second. In the next couple of years, there was no similar pattern in the order of votes recorded.)

TOMORROW: More town business.

More Online Events to Stay Home For

Here’s another sampling of online events involving Revolutionary New England history to watch for.

Fort Ticonderoga
The historic site provides regular livestreams. Many are free to watch on Facebook, including oxen and cooking demonstrations. The “Soldier’s Life” series (including a presentation on the uniform of 26th Regiment today at 1:00 P.M.) runs 45 minutes, costs $10, and requires advance registration.

Fraunces Tavern
Thursday, 7 May, noon to 1:00 P.M.
In “Preserving the Past: The Restoration of Fraunces Tavern,” historian Mary Tsaltas-Ottomanelli explores the history of 54 Pearl Street, home of Fraunces Tavern Museum and Restaurant in New York; its significance to the American Revolutionary era; and the efforts to restore and preserve the building over the last 300 years. Register here.

Thursday, 21 May, 6:30 to 7:30 P.M.
Lindsay Chervinsky, author of The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution, discusses the first presidential cabinet. President Washington modeled his new cabinet on the councils of war he had led as commander of the Continental Army, tinkering with its structure throughout his administration. As Washington faced an increasingly recalcitrant Congress, he came to treat the cabinet as a private advisory body to summon as needed, greatly expanding the role of the president and the executive branch. Register here.

Massachusetts Historical Society
Thursday, 14 May, 5:30 to 6:30 P.M.
Liz Covart of the Ben Franklin’s World podcast interviews Daniel R. Mandell, professor at Truman State University, about his new book, The Lost Tradition of Economic Equality in America, 1600-1870. Although Americans today are concerned about the ever-increasing levels of wealth and income, many continue to believe that their country was founded on a person’s right to acquire and control property. Mandell argues that the US was originally deeply influenced by the belief that maintaining a “rough” equality of wealth was essential for a successful republican government. Free but registration required.

Wednesday, 20 May, 5:30 to 6:30 P.M.
The M.H.S.’s Director of Programs, Gavin Kleespies, offers “Misled: A Virtual Tour of Inaccurate Historical Markers” in Cambridge, including “mimic” houses, mislabeled trees, and even a fake rock. Markers influence what and who we remember, but sometimes they aren’t quite what that appear. Some are just wrong. Even in a city known world-wide as a home to rigorous scholarship, misleading and inaccurate historical markers can be found. While these markers don’t always reflect the whole truth, sometimes the stories they tell offer important lessons about who gets to shape history. Free but registration required.

Cambridge Center for Adult Education
Saturday, 16 May, 10:00 A.M. to noon
Boston 1775 friend and occasional guest blogger Charles Bahne leads an online tour of “Tory Row.” For more than two centuries, Brattle Street has been one of the finest residential streets in America. In 1775, George Washington and his army made their headquarters in the abandoned mansions of seven wealthy Loyalists—all of which still stand today. Later two of those mansions were the homes of the poets Longfellow and Lowell. Brattle Street residents have also invented baking powder, Fig Newtons, Polaroid cameras, and Sadie Hawkins Day. Cost $35.

“The Commissioners seemd rather inclined to Ad”

The Colonial Society of Massachusetts’s publication of the correspondence of Francis Bernard and Thomas Hutchinson, royal governor and lieutenant governor of Massachusetts in the 1760s, lets us cross-check John Adams’s recollection of being recruited to be advocate general.

Adams wrote in the early 1800s that his friend Jonathan Sewall came to him sometime in 1768 and said he was about to leave that post. According to Adams’s memory, Sewall said that Gov. Bernard wanted to offer it to Adams, despite their political differences. Furthermore, “one of great Authority,” which Adams took to mean Hutchinson, had recommended him as the best qualified candidate.

The Bernard and Hutchinson papers tell a different story. As Bernard recalled the situation in early 1769, Sewall first offered his resignation as advocate general the preceding July. At the time he was enmeshed in a dispute with the Customs Commissioners which only grew worse after the Liberty seizure and riot.

At that time, Bernard wasn’t interested in accepting Sewall’s resignation. Instead, the governor put his energy toward patching up the differences between the Commissioners and the attorney general. Eventually, it appears, all the principals decided to agree that the problem was the Commissioners’ secretary, Samuel Venner, stirring up trouble. He was removed in January 1769, and everyone made nice.

Late in 1768, however, word had arrived that the London government had reorganized the Vice Admiralty courts in North America and made Sewall a judge in Halifax. That gave Sewall a higher salary, but he had to leave Boston for court sessions. Bernard may have been pleased not to have Sewall around so much, but he wanted someone doing the job of advocate general in Massachusetts.

In early 1769, therefore, Bernard got serious about recruiting someone to replace Sewall. But there’s no indication in the governor's papers that he wanted John Adams. In fact, in a 15 March letter to an Admiralty official in London, Bernard explained that he definitely didn’t want a lawyer connected to the province’s Whigs:

at present I am not ready to name fit Persons for either of the Offices: such has been the prevalence of the popular Party in this Government, that some of the Lawyers, whom I should have been glad to have engaged in his Majesty’s Service, have by their abetting the Factious party rendered themselves unfit Objects of the favor of Government. . . .

For these Reasons it will be most advisable that Mr Sewall should continue to act in these Offices till the Causes in which he is now engaged shall be concluded & his Places can be properly filled.

Bernard asked the Admiralty to allow Sewall to appoint a local deputy in Halifax to do his job while he remained at work in Massachusetts.

Gov. Bernard himself sailed out of Boston harbor in early August 1769, to much rejoicing. That left Lt. Gov. Hutchinson in charge. On 20 September, he wrote to Bernard that Sewall had tendered his resignation at last.

Mr. Sewall has sent me his resignation of the place of Advocate, in form, and I have made the appointment of Mr [Samuel] Fitch until His M[ajesty’s]. pleasure shall be signified. The Commissioners seemd rather inclined to Ad[ams] but I think it very dangerous appointing a man to any post who avows principles inconsistent with a state of government let his talents otherwise be ever so considerable. Until this post & that of Attorney general have salaries annexed they will never be of very great use.

Bernard wrote back from London on 17 November:

I will certainly take Care to introduce the Subject of the Advocate & Attorney general by the first Opportunity, & will urge the Necessity of their being supported from hence. The Appointment of Mr. Fitch I will not neglect. . . .

I don’t see how you could possibly appoint or recommend the Person proposed to you under the present Notoriety of his Connections. I was asked by one of the Ministry to day who that John Adams was. I gave as favourable an Answer as I could, but not such as would have justified the Appointment of him to an Office of Trust.

Thus, there’s no evidence in Bernard’s papers that he wanted to name John Adams as advocate general, and no evidence in Hutchinson’s papers that he would have recommended him for a post in the royal government.

Bernard’s remark about “Lawyers, whom I should have been glad to have engaged in his Majesty’s Service” before they joined the political opposition suggests he may have been interested in Adams earlier in his career. That could fit with the story that Samuel Quincy later told Hutchinson about Sewall’s attempt to entice Adams with an appointment as justice of the peace.

It’s plausible that Sewall talked to his friend Adams in 1768 or 1769 about his thoughts of resigning, and the professional opportunity that would create, and in his memory Adams amalgamated that conversation with one in the early 1760s about the governor being ready to appoint him to a lower post. But if Sewall really did tell Adams that Bernard wanted to make him advocate general in 1768, he was getting way ahead of himself.

More mysterious is Hutchinson’s statement that “The Commissioners seemd rather inclined to Ad[ams]” for the post in late 1769. That was after Adams had argued in print against the Stamp Act and in court against the Liberty seizure. Perhaps the Commissioners thought that the appointment would bring a skilled lawyer to their side and muzzle a political opponent all at once. But it’s impossible to imagine Adams becoming a Customs Department protégé.

John Adams as Advocate General?

A couple of days back I recounted the story of how Jonathan Sewall tried to convince his friend John Adams to accept an appointment as justice of the peace from Gov. Francis Bernard.

Sewall had accepted a similar appointment a few years before, then wrote newspaper essays supporting Bernard’s administration, and got the reward of multiple jobs in the royal government: Massachusetts attorney general, solicitor general, and advocate general in the Vice Admiralty court.

By the late 1760s, Sewall was ready to give up some of those appointments. He wanted to become a judge on the Vice Admiralty court. Meanwhile, Gov. Bernard, who had created the job of solicitor general for Sewall, wanted to appoint someone else to that post so he could have two friendly legal advisors.

Sometime in 1768, Adams recalled in his memoir (and he didn’t keep a diary most of that year to confirm this), Sewall came to dinner at his new house on Brattle Street. They were still friendly, despite the growing political gap between them.

Adams recalled:

After Dinner Mr. Sewall desired to have some Conversation with me alone and proposed adjourning to the office. Mrs. [Abigail] Adams arose and chose to Adjourn to her Chamber. We were accordingly left alone.

Mr. Sewall then said he waited on me at that time at the request of the Governor Mr. Bernard, who had sent for him a few days before and charged him with a Message to me. The Office of Advocate General in the Court of Admiralty was then vacant, and the Governor had made Enquiry of Gentlemen the best qualified to give him information, and particularly of one of great Authority (meaning Lt. Governor and Chief Justice [Thomas] Hutchinson), and although he was not particularly acquainted with me himself the Result of his Inquiries was that in point of Talents, Integrity, Reputation and consequence at the Bar, Mr. Adams was the best entitled to the Office and he had determined Accordingly, to give it to me.

So this dinner came with a second job offer.

Now lots of Adams’s later recollections were, explicitly or implicitly, about his “Talents, Integrity, Reputation and consequence,” and his steadfast, principled insistence on doing the right thing. In this case, he wrote:

Although this Offer was unexpected to me, I was in an instant prepared for an Answer. The Office was lucrative in itself, and a sure introduction to the most profitable Business in the Province: and what was of more consequence still, it was a first Step in the Ladder of Royal Favour and promotion. But I had long weighed this Subject in my own Mind.

For seven Years I had been solicited by some of my friends and Relations, as well as others, and Offers had been made me by Persons who had Influence, to apply to the Governor or to the Lieutenant Governor, to procure me a Commission for the Peace. Such an Officer was wanted in the Country where I had lived and it would have been of very considerable Advantage to me. But I had always rejected these proposals, on Account of the unsettled State of the Country, and my Scruples about laying myself under any restraints, or Obligations of Gratitude to the Government for any of their favours.

My Answer to Mr. Sewall was very prompt, that I was sensible of the honor done me by the Governor: but must be excused from Accepting his Offer.

Sewall asked Adams what his objection was. Adams recalled, “I answered that he knew very well my political Principles, the System I had adopted and the Connections and Friendships I had formed in Consequence of them.” Indeed, by 1768 people knew Adams was one of the Whigs surrounding James Otis and Samuel Adams.

In his memoir, Adams also claimed to have said that “the King, his Ministers and Parliament, apparently supported by a great Majority of the Nation,” were infringing on Massachusetts’s liberties. In the 1760s the Whig line was actually that local administrators were doing so, that the king and the voters of Britain were surely against such policy. Adams’s memory was almost certainly getting ahead of himself on that point. But he still said no.

According to Adams:

To this Mr. Sewall returned that he was instructed by the Governor to say that he knew my political Sentiments very well: but they should be no Objection with him. I should be at full Liberty to entertain my own Opinions, which he did not wish to influence by this office. He had offered it to me, merely because he believed I was the best qualified for it and because he relied on my Integrity.

Adams said, “I knew it would lay me under restraints and Obligations that I could not submit to,” essentially calling Bernard’s reported promise a lie.

Sewall told his friend, “You had better take it into consideration, and give me an Answer at some future day.”

Adams declared, “my mind was clear and my determination decided and unalterable.”

And yet Sewall still didn’t give up, Adams recalled:

about three Weeks afterwards he came to me again and hoped I had thought more favourably on the Subject: that the Governor had sent for him and told him the public Business suffered and the office must be filled.

Sewall was no longer saying that Gov. Bernard wanted Adams in the job of advocate general—just that he wanted someone besides Sewall, and soon. The window of opportunity was closing. Sewall, who had struggled financially early in life, leaped at such chances. He didn’t want his friend Adams to miss this one.

But once again, Adams said no.

TOMORROW: Another perspective on the situation.

A Few Paragraphs on the Paraph

Yesterday I learned a word:

paraph

It means the fancy squiggle that people like John Hancock added to their formal signatures, as shown above from a replica of the Declaration of Independence.

Originally an additional guard against forgery, the paraph got its name in the late sixteenth century. I don’t see many people using the term in the late eighteenth century. They still signed with paraphs, though, but those squiggles were mostly decorative. Not that they didn’t have a function—good handwriting was a sign of gentility, and a graceful paraph showed even firmer upper-class status.

Which helps to explain why in 1766 Dr. Thomas Young, who didn’t have the benefits of a formal education and probably felt that keenly, was signing his letters with a most elaborate paraph. (He calmed down by the early 1770s, when his signature became more republican.)

Online Events and Videos While We Stay Home

With the pandemic, almost every historical site, museum, and society that hosted events has now pivoted to organizing and promoting online events.

Sometimes that means an interview with a historian or other expert at home, produced over a platform like Zoom. Sometimes it’s a video of the site recorded gingerly at two arms’ lengths. Sometimes it’s an older lecture, a virtual tour, or another offering.

This makes it possible to enjoy the resources of distant historic sites, or to partake in two events scheduled for the same day and catch up on others. Of course, that adds tremendously to one’s list of events one really should get to. Even without being able to go anywhere, I’m starting to feel overscheduled.

Here’s the first installment of a periodic roundup of online events and resources that have caught my eye. I hope you find them educational, entertaining, or simply distracting enough.

Last month I chatted with Lee Wright and Carrie Lund of History Camp about what myths of the Battle of Lexington and Concord and what the British troops were seeking on 19 Apr 1775, the subject of The Road to Concord. This month Lee and Carrie had a similar conversation with Alexander Cain, expert on Lexington and Essex County’s response. More video interviews will follow every couple of weeks, and this Thursday there’s a history trivia contest.

Minute Man National Historical Park’s “Virtual Patriots’ Day” videos are all available now, and Jim Hollister is continuing to offer “Ask a Ranger” question-and-answer sessions each Friday.
https://www.facebook.com/MinuteManNPS/

The Paul Revere House has ongoing audio and radio series.

Check out History Summit for self-produced videos from the authors of over two dozen recently published history books.

Mount Vernon has deep pockets and one of the most extensive livestream video programs with different themes for each weekday:

• Mansion Mondays – Exploring different areas of the Mansion.
• Teaching Tuesdays – For K-12 students, teachers, and parents.
• Washington Wednesdays – Dive into a different piece of Washington history.
• Tranquil Thursdays – Enjoy the sights & sounds of Mount Vernon.
• Casual Fridays – We’ll do something new & different each week!

I get the feeling someone there watched The New Mickey Mouse Club as a kid.

John Adams as a Justice of the Peace?

Jonathan Sewall’s attitude toward politics might seem cynical to us.

Sewall played the eighteenth-century patronage game, angling for appointments from powerful officials rather than elective office. In the eighteenth-century British Empire, many gentlemen did the same. It was how the imperial government operated. And there was a certain logic to it.

In the early 1760s, Sewall privately sniped at the leaders of both of Massachusetts’s political factions, Thomas Hutchinson and James Otis, Jr., while watching for opportunities. He stayed clear of ideology.

Then in 1762 Gov. Francis Bernard (shown here) appointed Sewall to be a justice of the peace. Seeing an opening on the side of the court party, in February 1763 Sewall published the first of many pseudonymous newspaper essays supporting Bernard and Hutchinson.

Eventually that worked. In March 1767, Bernard made Sewall a “special attorney general,” in line to succeed Jeremiah Gridley. Since that wasn’t strictly legal, Bernard created a new position called solicitor general and named Sewall to that post in June. In November, Sewall became attorney general and advocate general, though he also retained the solicitor general title.

At some point in the mid-1760s, according to some fellow Loyalists over a decade later, Sewall tried to entice his friend John Adams to start climbing the same path.

This is the story that Hutchinson recorded in his diary on 22 Oct 1778, while he was in exile in London:

Mr. [Richard] Clarke and [Samuel] Quincy in the evening. They both agreed in an anecdote, which I never heard before—That when the dispute between the Kingdom and the Colonies began to grow serious, John Adams said to Sewall that he was at a loss which side to take, but it was time to determine.

Sewall advised to the side of Government, and proposed to Governor Bernard to make Adams a Justice of Peace, as the first step to importance. Bernard made a difficulty on account of something personal between him and Adams, but Sewall urged him to consider of it a week, or some short time, and acquainted Adams the Governor had it under consideration, but Adams disliked the delay, and observed, that it must be from some prejudice against him, and resolved to take the other side.

Sewall was superior to Adams, and soon became Attorney-General and, one of the Superior Judges of Admiralty. Adams is now Ambassador from the United States to the Court of France, and Sewall a Refugee in England, and dependent upon Government for temporary support. Such is the instability of all human affairs.

Clarke and Quincy dated Sewall’s attempt to before 1767 and his appointment as Massachusetts attorney general. Quincy was friendly with both Adams and Sewall, and related to both of their wives, so he seems like a reliable source on how Sewall saw the affair.

At the same time, this version of the anecdote reflects a Tory perspective on the Massachusetts Whigs—that their opposition was driven by thwarted ambition and perceived slights rather than political principles. The patronage system was founded, after all, on interpersonal relations and loyalties.

In fact, Adams’s distaste for Sewall’s politics, even as he liked the man, went back to 1763. Weeks after Sewall’s first newspaper essay, Adams published his own first letter as the rustic “Humphrey Ploughjogger” to complain about “grate men [who] dus nothin but quaril with one anuther and put peces in the nues paper.”

When Sewall defended Bernard and Hutchinson as “J,” Adams responded as “U” to say:

Mr. J inlisted himself under the banners of a faction, and employed his agreable pen, in the propagation of the principles and prejudices of a party: and for this purpose he found himself obliged to exalt some characters and depress others, equally beyond the truth— . . . Many of the ablest tongues and pens, have in every age been employ’d in the foolish, deluded, and pernicious flattery of one set of partisans; and in furious, prostitute invectives against another:

Then in late 1765 Adams came out firmly against the Stamp Act in another “Ploughjogger” letter, the instructions he drafted for Braintree’s representatives in the Massachusetts General Court, and the essays eventually titled A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law. So it wasn’t hard to see what side of the political divide he was on by then.

Nonetheless, Sewall tried again to win Adams over to the court party.

COMING UP: Another job offer for John Adams.

Hutchinson and Adams, Together at Last

Both men would hate that I’m making a combined announcement, but new volumes of the Papers of Thomas Hutchinson and the Papers of John Adams have just been published.

The Colonial Society of Massachusetts is publishing the Thomas Hutchinson Papers, edited by John S. Tyler and Elizabeth Dubrulle.

The latest volume covers the years 1767-1769, including the imposition of the Townshend duties, the arrival of the new Customs Commissioners, the Circular Letter stand-off, the Liberty riot, the arrival of troops, the leak and publication of Gov. Francis Bernard’s letters, the Michael Corbet trial (barely mentioned), and Bernard’s departure. During this period Hutchinson was both lieutenant governor and chief justice of Massachusetts.

I received a printed volume as a member of the society. At some point soon, the text will be available in digital, searchable form on the Colonial Society’s website.

The Massachusetts Historical Society is publishing the Adams family’s papers in several series. On behalf of the editorial team, Sara Georgini just announced volume 18 of John Adams’s correspondence, which covers the months from December 1785 to January 1787.

Adams was then in London as the U.S. of A.’s first minister to the Court of St. James, feeling increasingly frustrated as Britain waved aside the young nation’s interests. A couple of men from pre-war Boston came back into Adams’s life in this period: Dr. John Jeffries and John Singleton Copley, who painted the picture shown above.

I looked at what these volumes said about the relationship between Hutchinson and Adams. The chief justice must have met the young Braintree lawyer in the early and mid-1760s, but Hutchinson left no comment about Adams until after he’d moved into Boston.

The new volume appears to contain Hutchinson’s first surviving remark on Adams, in a 5 Aug 1768 letter to a fellow judge (either John Cushing, Benjamin Lynde, or Peter Oliver):

For news I refer you to Edes and Gill. I am grown callous and all they say about me makes no impression. [James] Otis and the two Adams, [William] Cooper & [Benjamin] Church go regularly every Saturday in the afternoon to set the Press. They all profess a great friendship for me. I wish the whole Court were Pensioners that they might share part of the Obloquy.

The Boston Gazette had recently published an essay criticizing Hutchinson as “the Pensioner” for accepting a salary from the Crown.

Though the lieutenant governor included both Samuel and John Adams among the Whigs who “set the Press” in 1768, going to the print shop appeared to be a curious new experience for John when he wrote about it thirteen months later.

The new John Adams Papers volume takes up five years after Hutchinson’s death, but the American diplomat hadn’t forgotten the late governor. On 27 Jan 1787 he wrote to Benjamin Hichborn about the danger posed by the Shays Rebellion:

I begin to suspect that some Gentlemen who had more Zeal than Knowledge in the year 1770. will soon discover that I had good Policy as well as sound Law on my side when I ventured to lay open before our People the Laws against Riots, Routs & unlawful assemblies—

mobs will never do—to govern states or command armies—I was as sensible of it in 70. as I am in 87—to talk of Liberty in such a state of things–

Is not a [Job] Shattuck & a Chase [Daniel Shays] as great a Tyrant, when he would pluck up Law & Justice by the roots, as a Bernard or a Hutchinson when he would overturn them partially?

Over the nearly two decades in between those letters, Adams had become a lot more like Hutchinson than he’d acknowledge. In both of these collections the writer sighs about all the people criticizing him and warns against mobs.

TOMORROW: A new job for John Adams?

“A certain Number to be employed in cleaning the Streets”

My curiosity about how colonial Boston periodically coerced free black men into mending town highways began years ago when I came across an item in the New-England Chronicle and Essex Gazette printed on 24 Aug 1775.

[That issue covered 17-24 August while the next covered 24-31 August, so it’s not the issue now dated 24 August in the Readex newspaper database.]

At that time, printers Samuel and Ebenezer Hall had brought their press down from Salem to Cambridge and were publishing just behind the siege lines for the Continental Army and its supporters. During the siege they reported about what they heard from the besieged capital, as in:

We are informed that the Negroes in Boston were lately summoned to meet at Faneuil-Hall, for the Purpose of chusing out of their Body a certain Number to be employed in cleaning the Streets; in which Meeting Joshua Loring, Esq; presided as Moderator. The well known Cesar Meriam opposed the Measure, for which he was committed to Prison, and confined till the Streets were all cleaned.

One possibility is that this event never happened, or was distorted beyond the facts by the time the news reached Cambridge. I haven’t found mentions of it in any other source. But there aren’t many sources on civilian life in Boston at this point in the siege. I think this event did happen because of the specific names involved, and it reflected an attempt by Loyalists to resume “normal” life in Boston.

Those men convened something approximating a town meeting in Faneuil Hall. Most of Boston’s selectmen had remained in the town to preserve the community, but without town clerk William Cooper they didn’t keep normal records. Selectman Timothy Newell’s surviving diary focused on military developments and didn’t mention this gathering.

The men who came to Faneuil Hall elected Joshua Loring, Sr., as moderator, as a normal town meeting would do. He was no longer an inhabitant of Boston, having moved out to Roxbury in 1752 (his house shown above), but the Whigs had set a precedent for meetings of the Body of the People with everyone welcome.

The gathering then tried to reinstate the custom of drafting free black men to repair the roads, with a little alteration: the white men reportedly summoned all the town’s black men and told them to choose who had to do this work. But that system of forced labor hadn’t really been workable for decades.

The New-England Chronicle credited “The well known Cesar Meriam” with protesting the measure. This was Caesar Marion, a formerly enslaved blacksmith in the North End. He had worked for a white blacksmith named Edward Marion. In 1769 Edward promised to manumit Caesar in his will and leave him all his tools and the use of his shop, assuming he provided for Edward’s widow Mary. In Boston’s 1771 tax list, Caesar Marion was listed as a property-owner.

The New-England Chronicle printers expected their readership of Boston neighbors and refugees to recognize Caesar Marion’s name. Apparently he was prominent in town, possibly a leader in the town’s African community. Certainly at this moment he took the lead in protesting for them.

Joshua Loring’s son Joshua, Jr., was Gov. Thomas Gage’s new sheriff, overseeing the jail. The news item says that the Loyalists locked up Marion to keep him quiet and as a sort of hostage to force other men to clean the roads. Peter Edes, stuck in the Boston jail that summer and keeping a diary, didn’t describe Caesar Marion being “committed to prison.” But perhaps it wasn’t long before “the Streets were all cleaned.”

After the siege ended, Massachusetts revised its militia laws. With a war on, and black men serving in the Continental Army, the government no longer saw value in excluding blacks from militia service. That erased the justification for making them work for free on the highways, and this legal custom disappeared for good.

“Which service has not as yet been fully comply’d with”

Yesterday I described how in 1707 Massachusetts and Boston instituted a legal system of drafting free black men to work a certain number of days each year on maintaining highways.

The Boston selectmen’s records show that system being used often in the early decades of the eighteenth century, then less often. Eventually men were able to pay to get out of the labor.

In 1762, three wartime years after the last time they invoked this law, the selectmen of Boston once again cranked up the system to draft the town’s free black men.

The effort started on 12 May with a list in the selectmen’s records of all the free black men they could think of:

• Scipio—late a Servant of Capt. Osbornes
• Scipio, late a Servant of Mr. [Charles?] Apthorp
• Pompy Blackman
• Lank (a Lemmon Merchant, who has been sick)
• Charlestown ——
• Dick, late a Servant to Mr. Tyng, (both sick & lame).
• Toby, living at New Boston.
• Boston. (Jackson)
• Cesar Clark (Baker) keeps at Mr. Pollard’s Old House.
• Another Negro keeps with ye. above named, his name unknown
• Thomas (a Baker) late a Servant to Mr. Knox.
• Homan (late a Servant to the Widow Blackadore[)]
• Joseph, late a Servant to Richard Bill Esq.
• Scipio, late a Servant of Capt. [Thomas] Fayerweather
• Prince Holms
• A Negro at Deacon Fosters
• Jack Clemmons, so called
• George Cobourn, he came from Redding.

You can picture the town officials scratching under their wigs, trying to remember the men they’ve seen around town. “Oh, yeah, there’s a Negro baker over at Pollard’s.” “No, there are two.” “Didn’t Knox’s man become a baker?” “Yes, but he’s not one of them. What was his name?” “Speaking of names, why do we call so many ‘Scipio’?”

Six days later, the selectmen added more information they had collected. In particular, they noted how long each man had been free and how many days since becoming free each had worked for the town (and thus how many days of labor they owed):

• Prince Holmes, “has been free 23 years has paid for 12 Days work.”
• John Thurber, freed “last Novemr. Order’d to work...2 Days.”
• Pompy Blackman, free for six years the next October, 20 days.
• Fortunatus Pitts, free for seven years the next September, 24 days.
• Scipio Fayerweather, free for one year the next September, 2 days.
• Scipio Apthorp, free for two years the next September, 8 days.
• Homer Blackader, “has been sick since his mistresses death,” 0 days.
• Peter How, free nine years, “has work’d 2 Days,” 30 days.
• Richard Tyng, free five years, 10 days.
• Tobias Lockman, free six years as of 1 March, 18 days.
• Scipio Gunny, free as of the previous August, 2 days.
• Boston Jackson, free three years and “(has a Rate Bill),” 6 days.

The selectmen directed John Sweetser to set these men to work on the highways.

That information could be useful in connecting these men to their moments of manumission. In addition, I think the notation by Boston Jackson—“had a Rate Bill”—meant that he’d paid taxes, perhaps arguing that he didn’t need to contribute more to the community in labor.

Even with that added information, however, the selectmen and Sweetser couldn’t make the system work. On 15 December, the selectmen’s minutes say:

Whereas there was an Assignment made on the 18th Day of May last of a certain number of Days on which the Free Negros of this Town were to Work on the High Ways, which service has not as yet been fully comply’d with—therefore Voted—

that the Town Clerk Issue a Warrant this Day, Ordering and requiring them to work such a number of Days as shall be affixed to their respective Names.

Boston ss.
To Scipio and other Free Negros residing in the Town of Boston.

You are hereby severally Ordered and Required to perform so many Days work as is here under affixed to your Names, and this at the Time and Place you shall be directed by mr. John Swetser, appointed an Overseer for this purpose. It being such a proportion of Time as is adjudged to be equivalent to the service of Trainings, Watchings and other duty required of his Majesty’s Subjects, the benefit of which you share. Hereof fail not as you avoid the penalty of Law in such case made and provided.

By order of the Select men
Boston Decemr. 15. 1762
William Cooper Town Clerk.

The numbers of days demanded were:

• Lancaster Hill 16
• Pompey Blackman 20
• Dick Tyng 10
• Boston Jackson 6
• Toby Lockman 18
• Cesar Clark 16
• Thomas Knox 16
• Scipio Osborne 2
• Scipio Apthorp 8
• Peter How 30
• John Thurbur 4
• Fortunatus Pitts 24

Did that work? Not in all cases. On 11 June 1766, four years later, the selectmen’s records say: “Order was this Day issued to Tobias [Lockman, presumably] & Scepio (late Capt. Fayerweathers) Free Negros, to work on the High Way before the Market, four Days each, there being Several Years duty due from them.”

Through one method or another, free black Bostonians kept resisting the town’s demands for free labor. And the town evidently lacked the means or will to force the issue.

This was, of course, the same period when Boston’s Whigs were talking more and more about the importance of ”liberty,” making slavery and its remnants harder to defend. In the 1770s the Massachusetts General Court voted to end the slave trade. One of the men being pursued for work in 1762, Lancaster Hill, would sign a petition to the legislature seeking an end to slavery fifteen years later, as shown above.

The last sign of this law that I spotted in the selectmen’s records appeared on 17 June 1767: “Voted, that Mr. John Sweetser be directed to procure two Pick Axes, & two Wheelbarrows, and four Shovels, for the use of those Negros that may be imployed on the High Way,—and that those Tools are to be left in his care, he to be accountable for them.” Yet it’s unclear who actually used those tools and on what terms.

The selectmen of Boston never officially discussed drafting black men to work again. There were plenty of discussions about streets needing repair in the town records from 1769 to the start of the Revolutionary War, but no lists of black citizens or discussions of how to compel them to work.

TOMORROW: One last gasp.

“Impowred to order and require so many days’ work yearly”

Yesterday I mentioned how colonial Boston selectmen’s records periodically include lists of the free black men in the town in connection with, of all things, highway repairs. Here’s more about that.

Massachusetts militia laws excluded black and Native American men from drilling with the white men required to serve, presumably to avoid giving those men of color so much military training they could start an uprising. It’s possible that the social-gathering side of militia musters also played a role in this exclusion.

Since militia duty made free white men give up four days a year for the good of society, that society felt it was only fair to require free black men to give up four days as well. Therefore, in 1707 the Massachusetts General Court passed a law that said:

Whereas, in the several towns and precincts within this province, there are several free negro’s and molatto’s able of body and fit for labour, who are not charged with training, watchings and other services required of her majesty’s subjects, whereof they have share in the benefit,—Be it enacted…

That the selectmen of each town or precinct be and hereby are impowred to order and require so many days’ work yearly, of each free male negro or molatto, able of body, dwelling within such town or precinct, in the repairing of the highways, cleansing the streets, or other service, for the common benefit of the place, as, at the discretion of the selectmen, may be judged an equivalent to the services performed by others, as aforesaid.

The result was a form of tax levied only on free black men and extracted in the form of labor. Or it was a way to continue coercing labor, at least a little, from black men even after they became free.

In fact, this custom may have already been in place before that law made it official. On 26 Sept 1704 the Boston selectmen “Ordered that Mr. Timo. Wadsworth be desired to take Care of doing what is necessary in repaireing the High way on ye neck & that as many of the free negros & poor of ye Town may be imployed therein as Shall be convenient.” Perhaps that was free labor, perhaps the town expected those workers to be paid and specified “the free negros & poor” to ensure their asking price would be as low as possible.

On 16 June 1707, the selectmen moved to take advantage of unpaid labor under the new law. They ordered “each Free negro & mollatto man of this Town, forthwith to attend and perform four dayes Labour, abt. repaireing the Streets or Highwayes.” The town announced it could call on those men for more work if needed, “reserving their remayning Service untill further order.” A constable was empowered to summon the men, putting the force of law behind this requisition.

For the next couple of decades, lists of black and Native men and their work assignments, ranging from two days to twelve, periodically appeared in the selectmen’s records. It looks like men who got out of their obligation in one year were assigned more days the next. I found lists for 1708, 1710, 1711, 1712, 1714, 1715, 1716, 1718, 1719, and 1723.

At various towns the selectmen empowered any one of them to summon free black men and appointed “Capt. Hab. Savage,” Richard Hubburt, Eneas Salter, and others to oversee those workers. Specific assignments included “clearing the valt of ye. House of Easment [i.e., outhouse] belonging to the Free Lattin School in School Street.” But most of the work was repairing the main roads.

The 1725 list, the first to include a man named Onesimus, was unusual in giving only first names for the men being drafted. Usually there was more identifying information. Sometimes those names came with other notations like “dead“ or ”gon,” or remarks about how many days men had already worked or had left to do.

There was no list of laborers in 1736 or 1737, so on 30 Aug 1738 the selectmen directed ”Thomas Cowdrey…to take a List of the Free Negro’s, Indians, and Molatto’s in the Town that are capable of Service, and to lay it before the Select men, in order to their being Employ’d in the Service of the Town, according to law.” The list entered on 13 September contained twenty-one names, including Titus Rumney Marsh, John Woodby, and Onesimus Mather.

The town drafted free black workers again in 1743 and 1744, but the practice became less common over time. On 14 June 1759 the selectmen resolved:

Whereas there is Considerable Work to be done this year on Boston Neck, & the Free Negroes of the Town have been for Several Years exempted from any duty, therefore it was Some time past Voted that they be Orderd to attend the Selectmen, & on this day the following Negroes Attended

• Bristol Jeffries who will do what Work he is orderd to do—
• Pompey Blackman who agrees to pay half a dollar p. day for so many days as he shall be orderd—
• Liecester Black ditto—
• Dick Tynge to pay half a dollar as above—
• David Primus ditto—
• Homer Blackadore Sickly.

Some of the town’s free black men now had enough money to buy their way out of service in the same way white men could pay fines so as not to attend militia drill. (Though I’m not sure how often those fines were really collected.)

TOMORROW: How a custom died in Revolutionary Boston.

Onesimus Mather in Freedom

It’s hard to find traces of the Rev. Dr. Cotton Mather’s enslaved servant Onesimus after the minister grudgingly manumitted him in late 1716 or early 1717.

In some respects that’s good because it means the man didn’t have to return to his former owner for support and thus get mentioned in his diary. (Because the minister would have been all over that.) Nor was Onesimus ever recorded entering the almshouse.

According to Mather, Onesimus had a wife and children while still enslaved. There’s no official record of this marriage, however. We don’t know the name of the wife or of any surviving children.

The vital records of Boston show two black men named Onesimus marrying and having children in Boston in the 1720s, the decade after Mather’s manumission. One of those men could have been the minister’s former servant marrying again—or perhaps neither were. Puritans knew the name of Onesimus from a slave mentioned in the New Testament, so they reused it.

The Rev. Joseph Sewall married one Onesimus to a black woman named Jane at the Old South Meeting-House on 3 June 1725. That couple baptized a son named William in that church on 23 Apr 1728. It’s not stated if they were enslaved or free.

The other Onesimus is more likely to have been the man who worked for Cotton Mather because he went to the Mathers’ meetinghouse in the North End to marry. This man was described as a free Negro when the Rev. Joshua Gee married him to a woman named Hagar on 15 Feb 1727. Gee was then Mather’s colleague at the church. Cotton Mather died a year later.

[Assuming, that is, that the marriage did indeed happen in what we now call 1727. The published Boston town records suggest that was a New Style date. But if the marriage actually took place on 15 Feb 1728, that was two days after the Rev. Dr. Mather died—too close to be a coincidence.]

The Old North Meeting’s records show Onesimus and Hagar having three children baptized:

• Onesimus on 22 Mar 1730.
• John on 10 Oct 1731.
• another Onesimus on 5 May 1734, and time Hagar is not on the record.

That indicates the first Onesimus died young, and Hagar might have died as well. As the minister’s diary shows, Onesimus had already lost one namesake son and perhaps another son before becoming free. Eighteenth-century parenting was full of sadness.

Twenty years later, in 1754, a “free negro” named Onesimus married a woman named Phillis, enslaved to Rachel Fessenden. Again, this could be the baby baptized in 1734 or it could be a completely unrelated man.

A more certain appearance of the Rev. Cotton Mather’s former servant appears in the Boston selectmen’s records of highway repairs. I’ll explore why that source exists in future postings. For this one, it’s necessary only to say that in some years the Boston selectmen made a list of all the free black men in town. As Eric Hanson Plass noted in his study of Boston’s early African-American community, this is as close as we have to a census of those men.

On 11 Nov 1725, the selectmen’s list included twenty-six Negro men, including one named “Onesimas." They were drafted for “Eight Days...in Clensing or Repairing the High wayes or other services for the Comon benefit.” Again, this could be either Onesimus who got married that decade.

Thirteen years later, on 13 Sept 1738, the selectmen drafted five men for one day’s work and sixteen men for two days. In the second group was “Onesimus Mather.”

This confirms that more than thirty years after being given to Cotton Mather, and more than twenty years after becoming free again, that man was still living freely in Boston. It’s also notable that he was using his old master’s surname, which of course carried great cachet in those parts. That’s why, even while I caution against assuming that ex-slaves adopted their former owners’ surnames, I feel comfortable referring to this free man as Onesimus Mather.

The Freeing of Onesimus Mather

As recounted yesterday, in July 1716 the Rev. Dr. Cotton Mather determined that he needed to “dispose of” his enslaved servant Onesimus in the same month that he wrote to London describing that man as “intelligent” and passing on his knowledge of smallpox inoculation in Africa.

“Disposing of” Onesimus didn’t mean selling him to another local slaveholder or shipping him to the Caribbean. Mather didn’t seek to maximize his profit. Instead, frustrated after years of trying to produce a religious conversion and probably faced with frequent requests, the minister agreed to set Onesimus free—but on what terms?

The American Antiquarian Society holds an undated memorandum in Mather’s handwriting detailing his decision. The document is undated but was probably written within a few months after that July 1716 diary entry. Mather stated:

My servant Onesimus, having advanced a Summ, towards the purchase of a Negro-Lad, who may serve many occasions of my Family in his Room, I do by this Instrument, Release him so far from my Service and from the claims that any under or after me might make unto him, that he may Enjoy and Employ his whole Time for his own purposes, and as he pleases. But upon these conditions.

First, that he do every Evening visit my Family, and prepare and bring in, the Fuel for the day following, so Long as the Incapacity of my present Servant, shall oblige us to Judge it necessary: As also, in great snows, appear seasonably with the help of the Shovel, as there shall be occasion.

Secondly, that when the Family shall have any Domestic Business more than the Daily affairs, he shall be ready, upon being told of it so far to Lend an helping Hand, as will give no Large nor Long Interruption to the Business, of his own, to which I have dismissed him; As particularly, to carry corn unto the mill, and help in the fetching of water for the washing, if we happen to be destitute. And in the piling of our wood, at the season of its coming in.

Whereas also, the said Onesimus has gott the money which he has advanced as above mention’d, from the Liberties he took, while in my Service, and for some other Considerations, I do expect, that he do within six months pay me the sum of Five Pounds, wherein he acknowledged himself Endebted unto me.

In her article “Strangers in the House of God” (P.D.F. download), Kathryn S. Koo points out that the manuscript of this manumission includes several more lines in which Mather acknowledged himself “obliged to provide for [Onesimus] in case of Sickness or Lameness”—but then crossed them out. New England slaveholders and slaves shared an understanding that masters shouldn’t abandon people when they could no longer work, that working as a slave came with support in old age (if one should live so long). But Mather decided that no longer applied to him.

Instead, the minister laid out the obligations that flowed the other way. For leaving the Mather household short-handed, Onesimus had to return to chop firewood, shovel snow, help at dinner parties, and do other chores when needed. Four years before, Mather had written in his diary about granting Onesimus “great Opportunities to get money for himself.” Now he wanted the man to pay him £5 “from the Liberties he took.”

Finally, the first condition for Onesimus’s freedom was that he had “advanced a Summ, towards the purchase of a Negro-Lad, who may serve…in his Room.” Again, Mather viewed Onesimus as leaving the household in the lurch and thus sharing the responsibility to fill that hole. The minister could have written the memo simply stating that Onesimus was paying a certain amount of money for his freedom. Instead, he insisted that the man was compensating for the labor he was taking away.

Onesimus, for his part, was willing to leave another person enslaved in his place—though it’s notable that the plan was to buy a “Lad.” Child-servants and apprentices regularly worked for no pay, just having their basic needs met. Perhaps Onesimus believed that the minister would grant his young replacement the same opportunities he had gained himself, including education, marriage, and eventual freedom.

It doesn’t appear that Mather and Onesimus had a particular enslaved boy in mind when the minister wrote that memo. Mather was surprised when he found Onesimus’s replacement on 1 Oct 1717, writing:

A strange Providence of GOD, has brought into my Family a new Servant; A Negro Boy of promising Circumstances. Oh! Let me use all possible Projections and Endeavours, to make him a Servant of the Lord. That this may be kept in Mind, I call him, Obadiah.

That name literally meant “servant of the Lord.”

Mather left no evidence of how often Onesimus returned to the household to fulfill the obligations laid upon him or for other reasons. We don’t know if he completed the payment of £5. The last time the minister mentioned his first slave in his diary was an entry on 2 April 1717:

I fear I have not been so frequent and fervent and particular, as I should have been, in my Prayers for the converting Influences of Heaven, on the Soul of my Servant Onesimus. Who can tell what may be done for him, and what a new Creature he may become, if more prayers were employ’d for him!

But, as I noted yesterday, seven years later Mather wrote again about what Onesimus had told him of smallpox inoculation. By then Boston had gone through an epidemic, and inoculation had proved an effective way of minimizing the spread and harm of the disease. Clearly Cotton Mather never forgot his first, frustrating, enlightening African servant.

TOMORROW: Glimpses of Onesimus as a free man in Boston.