The Launch of the Massachusetts Spy

On Tuesday, 7 Aug 1770, 250 years ago today, the second issue of the Massachusetts Spy appeared.

The very first issue, dated 17 July, was a test to drum up subscriptions, distributed for free. The printers had projected regular publication to start at the end of the month. That schedule slipped, and the 7 August issue was their first attempt to publish on a steady schedule.

The men behind the Massachusetts Spy were twenty-one-year-old Isaiah Thomas and his former master, Zechariah Fowle.

Since Thomas had ended their initial relationship unilaterally—i.e., he ran away to Nova Scotia in 1765 and to North Carolina the next year—one might expect Fowle to be leery of a becoming partners with him.

But Thomas had settled down a bit during his second stint away from Boston, which he spent mostly in Charleston, South Carolina. There he had worked steadily as a journeyman for a printer and bookseller named Robert Wells.

Thomas had also gotten married to a woman from Bermuda named Mary Dill. Their first child (and perhaps the reason for their marriage) was stillborn, but they were having more. Thus, when Thomas returned to Boston in the spring of 1770, he was no longer a headstrong apprentice but a practiced printer with a family to support.

Boston already had more weekly newspapers per capita than any other port in British North America, but the closing of Mein and Fleeming’s Boston Chronicle on 25 June appeared to open space for something new.

Thomas later described his business strategy like this:

The Massachusetts Spy was calculated to obtain subscriptions from mechanics, and other classes of people who had not much time to spare from business. It was to be published three times a week, viz. on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Twice in the week it was to be printed on a quarter of a sheet, and once on a half sheet. When published in this way, news was conveyed fresh to subscribers, and the contents of a Spy might with convenience be read at a leisure moment.

All the other Boston papers appeared only once a week—three of them on Monday and the Boston News-Letter on Thursday. The Chronicle had issued two full issues each week, but Mein and Fleeming had the financial backing of the Customs office and a subscriber base drawn from the friends of the royal government. Three issues a week, even if they used no more paper than one weekly, would be a strain.

Thomas and Fowle announced their price as “Five Shillings, Lawful Money per Annum.” In contrast, the Boston Chronicle charged 6s.8d. in 1767, as did the Salem Gazette in 1768 and the Norwich Packet in 1773. The Massachusetts Spy was thus a discount paper—smaller price, smaller sheet, maybe a little less news, but more often.

The July preview invited people who wanted to subscribe to visit Fowle “in Back-Street” or Thomas “in School-House-Lane, near the Latin School”—i.e., School Street. By August, the partners were issuing the paper from “the New Printing-Office, in Union-Street,” near the center of town.

“Two floating batteries came up Mystic River”

Back in June, we left the town of Malden worrying in mid-1775 about being attacked by British forces out of Charlestown, across the Mystic River.

The town had ended up with two cannon from Newburyport. Locals built earthworks near the landing of the Penny Ferry from Charlestown and strengthened the buildings there. (A comment on that June posting reminds us the ferry landing was near what’s now the Encore Casino in Everett.)

To guard that site, the Massachusetts army assigned a company of Malden men to their home town. Their leader was Capt. Naler Hatch (1731-1804), who had learned to command at sea. Locals remembered him as “a stout built man, rather rash in temper, and fiery in zeal.”

Deloraine Pendre Corey’s history of Malden says that on 23 July Christian Febiger, the Denmark-born adjutant of Col. Samuel Gerrish’s regiment in the Continental Amy, wrote of the situation at Malden:

Capt Hatch of Colo. [Thomas] Gardners Regiment is there with one Company & has to mount 20 men on Guard every Day without Officers, three Relieves is 20 men privates mounting every Day & then they have no Sentries on the River which by the Description and the Situation of the place wants at least 4 Centries every Night.

Gerrish moved Capt. Eleazer Lindsey and his company from Winnisimmet in Chelsea to strengthen that spot in Malden. Lindsey was a 59-year-old veteran of the last war from Lynn. His men had signed up from several Essex County towns.

On Sunday, 6 August, the British finally came. Lt. Benjamin Craft of Manchester, stationed at Winter Hill, wrote in his diary:

Just after [morning] meeting two floating batteries came up Mystic River and fired several shots on Malden side, and landed a number of regulars, which set fire to a house near Peny ferrys which burnt to ashes.

One Capt. Lyndsly who was stationed there, fled with his company, and got before the women and children in his flight.

We were all alarmed, and immediately manned our lines, and our people went down to Temple’s Point with one field piece, and fired several shot, at the regulars, which made them claw off as soon as possible. Gen. Gage, this is like the rest of your Sabbath day enterprises.

“Temple’s Point” was no doubt part of Robert Temple’s farm in what is now Somerville.

Katie Turner Getty described this fight in detail from the perspective of Lt. Col. Loammi Baldwin, then stationed in Chelsea, for the Journal of the American Revolution. Baldwin reported directly to Gen. George Washington:

I proceeded to Malding as quick as possable found that Capt. Lindsey was gone home, & his Company dispersd, all but a few with the Lieut. was down at the House that was Burnt[.] I went to him and enquired into the matter who Informd me that the Capt. was gone Home & near one half the Company was fled & where they were gone he could not tell, I ordred him to Rally his Company & Guard his Post which he Seem’d willing & ready to preform as far as Lay in his Power.

It appears that the lieutenant was Daniel Galeucia (also spelled Gallusia and Galushe, 1740-1825). In an odd twist, he was married to Capt. Lindsey’s daughter.

By this time the British were back over in Charlestown, parading on shore in triumph. Inside Boston, though, selectman Timothy Newell noted in his diary “several Soldiers brought over here wounded.”

COMING UP: More fighting and a court-martial or two.

How Salem Welcomed William Molineux

Yesterday I described how on 31 July 1770 the “Body of the Trade and Inhabitants” of Boston authorized a committee of five men to go to Salem and other towns in Essex County to urge their business communities to stick to the non-importation agreement.

The committee—or, as it turned out, four of the five—traveled north the next day. On 7 August those men were back at the public meeting in Boston, reporting that their discussions had gone very well.

But that wasn’t the full story. On 20 August the Boston Gazette ran a dispatch from Salem that indicated there had been some anxious moments:

…four respectable Gentlemen; being Part of the Boston Standing Committee, came to this Town on the 1st Instant [i.e., of this month], and put up at the King’s Arms.

Late in the Evening, William Luscomb, of this Place, entered the House, and enquired for Mr. [William] Molineux, &c. and being told that the Gentlemen had retired to Bed, he searched for and found their Apartment, and being admitted, represented to them, in hideous Colours, 30 or 40 People were assembled at the Long-Wharf, had agreed to beset them at one o’Clock, tar and feather them, &c. unless they immediately departed the Town.—

After this Information, Luscomb went away: Directly after a Letter was found in the Entry, conceived in the following base and insolent Terms, viz.——

“General Molineaux

Understanding yt. You are come into this Town (who are at present in a peaceable State) to Raise a Spirit of Sedition; As a Friend to Mankind in general, I would Advise you immediately to depart this Place, with all those that have enlisted under your Piraticle Banners, otherwise. Be assurd You will suffer the like Fate, with the poor Mc.Masters whom you treated with such Unparrallell’d Barbarity

Two hours are only allow’d You to Consider of this matter, and You are Surrounded with Spys to know the Effect.

Philanthrop

P S, Removing Your Logings can’t possibley secreet You

Salem 12 oClock”

As the Gentlemen were Strangers in the Town, they sent, as well for their own Satisfaction, as to quiet the Family where they put up, to a Gentleman near by, who was one of the Committee for this Town, to know whether he could account for this odd Adventure: He came, and assured them, as his Opinion, that there was no Foundation for what had been told them, and that they and the Family might rest perfectly easy.—

The Gentlemen having the next Day conferred with our Committee on the Business they came upon, and receiving Satisfaction, went out of Town, well assured, we doubt not, that this Town will steadily adhere to the Measures now pursuing for the common Good of America.

The Selectmen of the Town have preferred repeated Complaints to one or more Justices of the Peace against the said William Luscomb, praying that a Warrant might be issued for apprehending him, that he may answer for this Conduct as the law directs; but their Endeavours, it is said, has not yet proved successful. Mr. [William] Goodhue, Keeper of the King’s-Arms Tavern, has also exhibited a Complaint for the same Purpose.

In his copy of the Boston Gazette, Harbottle Dorr noted that the four Bostonians who made the trip to Salem were Molineux, William Phillips, William Cooper, and William Greenleaf. The innkeeper and the man apparently making threats were also named William. I hold out hope that the Salem committee-man had the same first name.

I’ve found out little about William Luscomb. There was a line of craftsmen in Salem with that name. This one was probably the housewright (1717-1783), which would make him fifty-three years old in 1770. But it’s possible he was that man’s namesake son (1747-1827), a housewright and later painter, or a cousin of that line.

Both William Luscombs, father and son, contributed to the building of a new Congregationalist meetinghouse in 1772, so they weren’t Anglican. There’s no evidence they were importers and wanted to break up the boycott for business reasons.

This William Luscomb had obviously heard about how a Boston crowd had attacked Patrick McMaster and threatened to tar and feather him in June. He blamed Molineux, known for leading the Boston crowds but not publicly implicated in that incident. But there’s no sign of any close tie between the Luscombs and the McMaster brothers.

So it’s possible that this William Luscomb just didn’t like the thought of a Boston merchant coming north and leaning on locals with his big-town ways. Ironically, the people of Essex County had used tar and feathers to punish Customs officers a couple of years before the practice came to Boston.

“Assertions that Salem, Marblehead and Newbury had departed”

On 31 July 1770, Faneuil Hall hosted another meeting of “The Trade and Inhabitants of the Town of Boston.” The group of people invited to participate had widened again to include not just businessmen but all “Inhabitants.”

Per the report in the 13 August Boston Gazette, the spur for this meeting appears to have been “some very positive Assertions that Salem, Marblehead and Newbury had departed from the Non-Importation Agreement.”

In his copy of that newspaper, Harbottle Dorr wrote that those assertions came from the merchant John Amory (1728-1803, shown here courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts).

Amory and his brother Jonathan (1726-1797) had a mercantile house together. They hovered in the political middle—not taking strong stands, signing the non-importation agreement but not following it strictly, protesting against too much protest. Eventually John would be a Loyalist exile while Jonathan remained in America.

At this juncture, it appears, John Amory was telling his colleagues in the Boston business community that other ports in the province would soon be bringing in goods, so they might as well drop their boycott.

The meeting responded by appointing a committee of William Molineux, William Phillips, William Cooper, William Greenleaf, and, for diversity, Ebenezer Storer ”to repair forthwith to the Towns above said and Haverhill” and find out what was going on.

In addition, the Body named a larger group of top Whig politicians—John Hancock, Phillips, Samuel Adams, Molineux, Greenleaf, Dr. Joseph Warren, Dr. Thomas Young, John Adams, Josiah Quincy, Richard Dana, Henderson Inches, Thomas Cushing, and Jonathan Mason—“to consider what may be proper to be done toward strengthening a Union of the Colonies.”

On 7 August, the Molineux committee returned from Essex County and “reported that the Conduct of our Brethren in said Towns was honorable and sincere.” The Boston meeting that day “VOTED UNANIMOUSLY” to express their “utmost satisfaction” and “sincere Respect” for their colleagues to the north.

That gathering then appointed a similar committee—Molineux, Cooper, William Whitwell, Thomas Boylston, and Mason—to take the same message to “Providence and New Port in Rhode Island.”

Only after that 7 August meeting—two weeks after the initial 31 July response to Amory—did Edes and Gill report on these proceedings. The Boston Whigs had evidently been sitting on the story until they had good news to announce. It wouldn’t have helped the non-importation movement for other port to read any hint that some Massachusetts towns were dropping out.

TOMORROW: What really happened in Salem?

“The Cryer proclaiming at every Corner”

Yesterday I quoted John Rowe’s brief and disapproving description of a political parade in Boston on 24 July 1770.

A more detailed and positive account appeared in the 13 Aug 1770 New-York Gazette, an extract of a letter from Boston dated 26 July:

The Sons got a Union [flag], on which they inscribed, Immediate Exportation without Exception, on Royal Paper [19" x 24"]: This was preceeded by the Cryer [probably Thomas Webber], and a French-Horn, and immediately followed by two Drums; the most reputable North-End Sons being principal Tradesmen, &c.

To these succeeded two Pair of Colours, and two more drums, and thus proceeded the whole Length of the Town, the Cryer proclaiming at every Corner, The Voice of the Trade and the People will be attended to this Afternoon at 3’Clock.——Now is the Crisis---Will you be enslaved by a Handful of Importers. Yea, or Nay? The Answer, NO! with the loudest Acclamations.—

The Meeting was very full, and a unanimous Vote passed, That whereas the Committee of Merchants had received a Letter from four Gentlemen in New-York, taking upon them the Stile of the Committee of Merchants of New-York, and that there was not sufficient Reason to believe, that the Contents of the said Letter (which was read in my Absence) were the Sentiments of the Committee of Merchants in New-York, the said Letter be torn to Pieces in the most indignant Manner, and committed to the Winds; and a Standing Committee was directed to write a respectful Letter to the remaining Seventeen Members, acquainting them with the above Vote, and a subsequent one, which obtained unanimously for supporting the [non-importation] Agreement.

A Committee was then appointed to wait upon all the Importers in the late Vessels, and take their Orders to the Truckmen, to take the Goods on board, and the Meeting was adjourned to Wednesday. Yesterday the Committee reported they had made great Progress in the Business, and did not doubt it would be happily effected in a short Time. Thus stands mercantile Matters here.

This correspondent urged colleagues in New York to go back to the boycott, insisting that they were hurting their trade relations with Connecticut and New Jersey, and that doing so would produce major results in Britain. “On Boston, my Friend, you can depend,” the letter promised.

To be sure, the same letter also reported this news from the shipmaster who had carried Boston’s Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre and other documents to London:

Capt. [Andrew] Gardner says, there were not less than a Thousand Scotchmen in London, who had come there with Design to embark for America, to take Possession of the forfeited Estates. What fine pickings this would be; but how sad the Disappointment! No wonder these honest Fellows hate us for behaving in such a Manner as to defeat such glorious Prospects!

Rumors of outsiders coming to take your property were a powerful political weapon, then and since.

The same day this merchant sent his letter to New York, the Whigs announced in the Boston News-Letter that all the importers who had stored their goods had indeed agreed to “Immediate Exportation.” I’m dubious—the letter said the committee had only “made great Progress.” But the Whigs had to maintain a public show of unanimity.

TOMORROW: Defections north and south?

Non-Importation to the End

In the summer of 1770 the Boston Whigs were dealing with the challenge of mixed results. As young printer John Boyle recorded in his chronicle of events on 10 June 1770:

An Act of Parliament is received for repealing part of an Act for granting Duties upon Glass, Paper, Painters Colours, &c

The Duty on Tea is to be continued.

Was this partial repeal of the Townshend Act enough of a victory to call off the non-importation boycott? The Whigs decided it wasn’t. One aspect of Whiggish thinking is a fear that any compromise with an oppressive government could start a society on a slide into political slavery. So they couldn’t accept taxation without representation on a commodity like tea, even though enjoying it depended on the global reach of the British Empire.

But New York merchants could accept that compromise. As I discussed yesterday, despite heavy criticism from that city’s radicals and from nearby towns, the leaders of non-importation in New York voted to end their pact on 9 July. That not only made the North American boycott less effective, but it also meant New Yorkers would be the first to profit from pent-up demand for British goods.

Bostonians still had hope of a further repeal by Parliament, but on 22 July more news came. Merchant John Rowe (shown above) wrote in his diary:

Capt. Smith of the Nassau arrived from London & gives an accot. of the Prorogation of the Parliament the 20th of May without Repealing the Duty on Tea—the people I hope will have Virtue enough never to make use of it as Long as the Duty is demanded.

The Boston Whigs called a public meeting on the afternoon of 24 July. This wasn’t an official town meeting, nor a meeting of the merchants like Rowe, but a gathering of “the Body of the Trade”—anyone doing business in Boston.

But first, Rowe reported, the Whigs started with a public demonstration:

just before some of them Proceeded through the streets with Dr [Thomas] Young at their head, with Three Flags Flying, Drums Beating & a french Horn—Thos. Baker carried one of them, for which he is much Blamed by me—The meeting today will I believe prove very Prejudicial to the Merchants & Trade of the Town of Boston.

As usual, Rowe was trimming back and forth politically. That month he had a private meeting with Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, who offered Rowe a commission. Two days later Rowe met with Samuel Adams, William Molineux, Dr. Joseph Warren, and Dr. Young, the most radical Whig leaders, who were recruiting for another committee. Rowe kept away from both offers, still not choosing a side.

The Whigs’ own description of their event appeared first in the 26 July Boston News-Letter:

THERE was as full a Meeting of the Trade Tuesday last, at Faneuil-Hall, as ever was known, to take into Consideration the Reports relative to the Defection of New-York, and what Measures were necessary to be pursued for re-shipping the Goods which had been stored as being imported contrary to the Merchants Agreement.——

At this Meeting a Letter was read from four Persons in New York,…informing that a Majority of the Inhabitants of New-York were for an Importation of Goods, and that many Orders had been actually forwarded; but as this Intelligence was not sufficiently authenticated, as the said four Persons had not even declared themselves to be authorized to be this Information either by the standing Committee or any other Body, said Letter was regrad as designed to impose upon this and the other American Colonies, and to induce them to break through the most salutary Plan of Non Importation, upon which the Security of our invaluable Rights and Privileges so much depend.——

It was therefore Voted unanimously, that the said Letter in just Indignation, Abhorrence and Detestation, be forthwith torn into Pieces and thrown to the Winds as unworthy of the least Notice: Which Sentence was accordingly executed.

In essence, the Boston Whigs shouted, “Fake news!” No one should believe that report from New York, they suggested. To be sure, they also voted to send a message to New York’s committee exhorting them to make people countermand any orders sent to Britain, so the Whigs must have believed at least some of this news.

The Body then agreed to stick to the non-importation agreement “against all Opposition and every Discouragement whatever.” Organizers claimed that local merchants who had agreed to store their goods until the boycott ended “have already given Orders for their being immediately trucked to the Vessel provided for that Purpose,” so they were in for the long haul.

The report for the News-Letter concluded by declaring, “There never was greater Unanimity or more Spirit discovered for the general Interest of America than at this Meeting.”

TOMORROW: Protesting too much.

Non-Importation from the Beginning

On 1 Aug 1768, the merchants of Boston agreed to non-importation as a way to pressure London into repealing the Townshend duties.

Their agreement stated:

The merchants and traders in the town of Boston, having taken into consideration the deplorable situation of the trade and the many difficulties it at present labours under on account of the scarcity of money, which is daily decreasing for want of the other remittances to discharge our debts in Great Britain, and the large sums collected by the officers of the customs for duties on goods imported; the heavy taxes levied to discharge the debts contracted by the government in the late war; the embarrassments and restrictions laid on the trade by the several late Acts of Parliament; together with the bad success of our cod fishery this season, and the discouraging prospect of the whale fishery, by which our principal sources of remittances are like to be greatly diminished, and we thereby rendered unable to pay the debts we owe the merchants in Great Britain, and to continue the importation of goods from thence:

We, the subscribers, in order to relieve the trade under those discouragements, to promote industry, frugality, and economy, and to discourage luxury and every kind of extravagance, do promise and engage to and with each other as follows:

That we will not send or import from Great Britain this fall, either on our own account, or on commission, any other goods than what are already ordered for the fall supply.

That we will not send for or import any kind of goods or merchandise from Great Britain, either on our own account, or on commissions, or any otherwise, from January 1, 1769, to January 1, 1770, except salt, coals, fish-hooks and lines, hemp, duck, bar lead and shot, wool-cards, and card-wire.

That we will not purchase of any factors, or others, any kind of goods imported from Great Britain from January 1, 1769, to January 1, 1770. That we will not import on our own account, or on commission, or Purchase from any Who shall import from any other colony in America, from January 1, 1769, to January 1, 1770, any tea, glass, paper, or other goods commonly imported from Great Britain.

That we will not, from and after January 1, 1769, import into the province any tea, paper, glass, or painters’ colours, until the Acts imposing duties on these articles have been repealed.

The Townshend Act actually taxed lead as well, but that was such an important commodity for manufacturing and military defense that this agreement specifically allowed importing it.

There were a lot of disputes in 1769 over other details of that agreement. Did merchants have to follow it to the letter if they adhered to its spirit? What about goods for the army? What about goods that non-signatories in other towns asked someone to ship in? What about, say, books?

Generally the merchants of Boston stuck to these terms, though printer John Mein was happy to point out exceptions, especially any taken by the merchants who promoted the boycott.

As the end of the year 1769, and the end of the formal agreement, approached, the Boston Whigs added pressure on all merchants to renew. In the new year they singled out importers as “obstinate and inveterate Enemies of their Country.” The large public meetings became clear that the elite merchants who had first drawn up the agreement in August 1768 were no longer in charge.

In the spring of 1770, the North American colonies got word that Parliament was repealing the Townshend Act—mostly. The tariff on tea was to remain, and that alone brought in enough revenue to provide salaries for lots of Customs officers and other royal appointees in the colonies.

The merchants of the major ports started to discuss whether they should keep up non-importation, modify the terms, or go back to business as usual. Philadelphians met in April and May 1770 and decided to send a letter to Boston opening up the idea of change. Newport’s merchants went ahead and dropped the boycott in May. New York’s committee of inspection started polling the business community in June and suggested a “General Conference of the Merchants on the Continent” to come up with terms everyone could live with.

Boston’s merchants, or at least a group speaking for them, met on 7 June and declared that any change to non-importation would show “a levity of disposition probably injurious to the common cause.” They pressured the merchants of Portsmouth and Newport to renew their commitments to the boycott.

That campaign was undercut by a letter from London claiming that in the first six months of the year £150,000 worth of goods had been shipped to Boston. A writer in the 14 June Pennsylvania Gazette wrote, “the conduct of the Boston people was not as consistent as could be wished.” Nonetheless, the merchants of Newport rescinded their previous rescinding.

In New York, the merchants’ committee circulated a survey or ballot with one question:

Do you approve of a general importation of goods from Great Britain, except tea and other articles which are or may be subject to a duty on importation, or do you approve of our non-importation agreement continuing in the manner it now is?

Reportedly, most respondents wanted change. The committee sent that news to Philadelphia and Boston, asking for the response of the committees there. Meanwhile, New York’s Sons of Liberty protested any idea of change, but they weren’t in charge as in Boston. Communities around New York also supported continuing non-importation.

On 9 July, the New York committee took these responses in mind and organized a vote, ward by ward. The result was a victory for relaxing the boycott. Immediately the city’s merchants sent orders for everything but tea off on the London packet ship, the Earl of Halifax. Then they sent letters to the other ports, breaking the news. As far as the second-largest port in British North America was concerned, general non-importation was over.

TOMORROW: Boston’s reaction.

“Massachusetts Revolts!” at HistoryAuthorTalks, 4 Aug.

On Tuesday, 4 August, I’ll participate in an online conversation on the theme “Massachusetts Revolts!: How the Feisty New England Protests Changed the World.”

This event is the latest digital discussion among historians to be organized by Roger Williams at HistoryAuthorTalks. The participants will be:

• Nina Sankovitch, author of American Rebels: How the Hancock, Adams, and Quincy Families Fanned the Flames of Revolution and The Lowells of Massachusetts.
• J. L. Bell, author of The Road to Concord: How Four Stolen Cannon Ignited the Revolutionary War.
• Paul Lockhart, author of The Whites of Their Eyes: Bunker Hill, the First American Army, and the Emergence of George Washington and The Drillmaster of Valley Forge: The Baron de Steuben and the Making of the American Army, as guest host and moderator.

Also beaming in for a few remarks will be Catherine Allgor, president of the Massachusetts Historical Society and author of Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Government, as this session’s Partner in History.

The conversation is scheduled to start promptly at 7:00 P.M. and go on for an hour. There will be a way to ask questions through the moderator. To register for this free event, go to HistoryAuthorTalks.com, where you can also see recordings of past events. Books will be available through a link to Bookshop.org. You might be able to tell that the goal of this conversation will be to sell books.

“America’s Summer Road Trip,” 1 Aug.

When History Camp Boston and then other History Camps had to be canceled this year because of the pandemic, the organizers of The Pursuit of History looked for another way to share historical information with the public.

Lee Wright and Carrie Lund have been conducting online interviews with authors every Thursday. I was the first interviewee as we all figured out what we were doing. (As a board member of The Pursuit of History, as well as a friend of Lee and Carrie, it felt fair for me to be a test pilot.)

Another new enterprise from The Pursuit of History is “America’s Summer Road Trip,” the first excursion scheduled for this Saturday, 1 August. You can watch preview videos and sign up for this streaming event here. It’s free.

For Saturday, twelve historic sites across the country have prepared longer video visits. Personnel at each site will speak live and answer questions. This should be a fun way for history fans not only to mentally get out of the house, but also to check out places and topics that you’ve never visited (yet).

Once again I’m involved, this time working with Ranger Jim Hollister at Minute Man National Historical Park to talk about the James Barrett farm in Concord. We talk about what the fighting on 19 Apr 1775 looked like from there. This property is a crucial part of that history, but it wasn’t part of the park until a few years ago and not many tours cover it. So even if you’ve been to Minute Man, this corner of the park might be new to you.

“America’s Summer Road Trip 2020” streams from 9:00 A.M. to 9:00 P.M. Eastern Time on Saturday at AmericasSummerRoadtrip.org and the Facebook page. The recorded content will also be archived on that Facebook page. Here’s the whole schedule.

9:00 A.M.: Historic New Bridge Landing, River Edge, New Jersey – The Bergen County Historical Society introduces this battleground, encampment, and intelligence outpost, with a building that served as Gen. George Washington’s headquarters in 1780.

10:00: Rebecca Nurse Homestead, Danvers, Massachusetts — The only home of a victim of the 1692 Salem Witch Hunt preserved and open to the public.

11:00: National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, Cincinnati, Ohio — Opened in 2002, its mission is to “reveal stories of freedom’s heroes, from the era of the Underground Railroad to contemporary times.”

12:00 noon: Minute Man National Historical Park, Lexington, Lincoln, and Concord, Massachusetts — Site of the first fatal battle of the Revolutionary War in April 1775.

1:00 P.M.: Faneuil Hall and the Printing Office of Edes & Gill, Boston, Massachusetts — Faneuil Hall has been the site of historic meetings, speeches, and debates for 275 years. At Edes and Gill, the documents that led to the origin of the nation are recreated on a colonial-era printing press.

2:00: Molly Brown House, Denver, Colorado — Margaret “Molly” Brown was a labor activist, suffragist, and advocate for social justice who survived the tragedy of the Titanic; her ornate Victorian-era mansion interprets her story.

3:00: Thomas Edison National Historical Park, West Orange, New Jersey — Thomas Edison’s Laboratory Complex shows the development of such innovations as the phonograph, incandescent lamps, and motion picture cameras while his home, Glenmont, is a 29-room estate with verdant grounds.

4:00: Chaco Culture National Historical Park, Nageezi, New Mexico — The ruins at Chaco Culture National Historical Park are more than 1,000 years old and offer insight into the largest and most advanced ancient Pueblo villages in the Southwest.

5:00: American Heritage Museum at the Collings Foundation, Stow, Massachusetts — This museum focuses on America’s military engagements from the Revolutionary Way to today, with an extensive collection of vehicles from the World Wars.

6:00: Heart Mountain Interpretive Center, Powell, Wyoming — More than 14,000 Japanese-Americans were confined here during World War II; this site both preserves the remains of the camp and tells the stories of the people forced to move there.

7:00: Wright Brothers National Memorial, Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina — The museum and grounds at this National Park Service site describe the Wrights’ methodical experimentation to achieve the first successful, sustained, powered flights.

8:00: Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park, Coloma, California — This California State Historic Park marks where James Marshall discovered gold in 1848, prompting the Gold Rush to California.

Getting Out of Marlborough in 1775

When we left Capt. William Brown and Ens. Henry DeBerniere, they were in a back room of Henry Barnes’s house in Marlborough, listening as he tried to send away a member of the local committee of correspondence.

Dr. Samuel Curtis had shown up that evening of 1 Mar 1775, uninvited and asking to stay to supper. Barnes told him the doctor that he couldn’t stay because the family already had company.

Dr. Curtis then turned to a child—DeBerniere wrongly understood the girl to be Barnes’s daughter—and asked “who her father had got with him.”

According to the ensign, “the child innocently answered that she had asked her pappa, but he told her it was not her business.”

Still suspicious but unable to learn more, the doctor left. Brown and DeBerniere decided he was probably going to gather his political allies, so they should stay only a couple of hours to rest. They would leave at midnight, regardless of the snowy weather.

But even that was too leisurely, DeBerniere later wrote:

we got some supper on the table and were just beginning to eat, when Barnes (who had been making enquiry of his servants) found they [local Patriots] intended to attack us, and then he told us plainly he was very uneasy for us, that we could be no longer in safety in that town: upon which we resolved to set off immediately

The two officers had been inside for only twenty minutes, they estimated. Barnes took them “out of his house by the stables, and directed us a bye road which was to lead us a quarter of a mile from the town.”

Brown and DeBerniere hiked through the blowing snow until they reached “the hills that command the causeway at Sudbury, and went into a little wood where we eat a bit of bread that we took from Mr. Barnes’s, and eat a little snow to wash it down.”

At the next house, a man came out and asked Brown, “What do you think will become of you now?” By this time the officers were totally on edge, unable to tell whether the people they met recognized who they were and were helping to plan an assault or just thought it strange for two strangers to be out walking in the night during a snowstorm.

In Sudbury the officers encountered “three or four horsemen.” Those riders moved to either side of the road, letting the strangers pass between them while they watched silently.

Brown and DeBerniere reached the safety of Isaac Jones’s Golden Ball Tavern in Weston about 10:30 P.M., having walked 32 miles that day. The next day, the officers got into Boston, where they were safe. They wrote out a detailed report for Gen. Thomas Gage, which is our source for all this information. They turned over sketches and maps of the route out of Worcester in case the general planned a march that way.

Meanwhile, back in Marlborough, soon after the British scouts left, there was yet another knock on Henry Barnes’s door. This time the whole Marlborough committee of correspondence showed up and “demanded” to see the visitors. Barnes insisted those two men were not army officers “but relations of his wife’s, from Penobscot, and were gone to Lancaster.” According to DeBerniere’s report:

they then searched his house from top to bottom, looked under the beds and in their cellars and when they found we were gone, they told him if they had caught us in his house they would have pulled it about his ears.

Among the Marlborough committee-men was Alpheus Woods. Five years earlier, Woods had also been on the town committee to make Barnes follow the non-importation agreement. Barnes’s supporters had accused Woods of sending the merchant a letter threatening to burn down his potash works and house. Now Woods had nearly caught Barnes harboring British army spies.

Henry Barnes departed Marlborough a few days after his busy evening. His wife Christian Barnes went to stay with her friend Elizabeth Inman until past the actual outbreak of fighting in April. Taking refuge in Boston, they left the Marlborough estate in the hands of Henry’s adult niece, Catharine Goldthwait.

Under Massachusetts committee of safety guidelines, local committees weren’t supposed to confiscate property from Loyalists as long as some family members were still living peacefully on it. But the Marlborough committee including Alpheus Woods did take property from the Barnes estate, including furniture they loaned to Col. Henry Knox. Catharine Goldthwait complained about that to the General Court, to no avail.

In February 1776, Henry Barnes learned that a bequest worth almost £2,000 was awaiting him in London. He and Christian sailed that month, ahead of the end of the siege. Catharine Goldthwait followed a few years later, and Massachusetts confiscated her uncle’s property. Henry and Christian Barnes received a small Loyalist pension until he died in 1808.

“Safe no where but in his house”

On the evening of Wednesday, 1 Mar 1775, Henry Barnes opened the door of his large house in Marlborough (shown above, even larger after nineteenth-century expansion).

Two strangers from England stepped inside. They apologized to Barnes “for taking the liberty to make use of his house” and revealed that they were British army officers in disguise–Capt. William Brown and Ens. Henry DeBerniere.

Barnes wasn’t surprised. His Patriot neighbors had actually expected these spies to arrive in Marlborough the previous day. Alerted by Timothy Bigelow of Worcester, “a party of liberty people” had gone to [Abraham] Williams‘s tavern to meet them. Marlborough “was very violent,” Barnes warned the officers, and they “could be safe no where but in his house.”

The merchant asked Brown and DeBerniere if they had spoken to anyone on their way into town. The officers mentioned telling a baker where they were headed. “A little startled,” Barnes explained that the baker “was a very mischievous fellow, and that there was a deserter at his house.”

Indeed, the three men soon determined that that deserter, Drummer John Swain, was from Capt. Brown’s own company in the 52nd Regiment. Swain had certainly recognized his officer and confirmed everyone’s suspicions that these visitors were military spies.

There was another knock at the door. Leaving the officers in an interior room, Barnes went to see who it was. A doctor—local historian Charles Hudson later guessed that this was Dr. Samuel Curtis (1747-1822)—had come for supper. Barnes knew that Dr. Curtis:

• hadn’t been invited for supper that evening.
• hadn’t visited the house for two years.
• was a member of Marlborough’s committee of correspondence.

The merchant told the physician that because there was company he “could not have the pleasure of attending him that night.”

Dr. Curtis then turned to a child in the room. (Ens. DeBerniere believed this girl was Barnes’s daughter, but other sources say Henry and Christian Barnes had no surviving children but raised a couple of nieces.) The doctor asked the girl who Barnes “had got with him.” Presumably all the other adults in the house held their breath.

TOMORROW: Leaving Marlborough behind.

“As we intended to go to Mr. Barns’s”

On Sunday, 26 Feb 1775, Capt. William Brown, Ens. Henry DeBerniere, and their bodyservant were in Worcester. They were all soldiers in the British army, but undercover in civilian dress.

Because New England colonies had laws against traveling from town to town on the Sabbath except for emergencies, the two officers stayed in their inn all day. DeBerniere later reported that “we wrote and corrected our sketches” of the roads out from Boston to Worcester. When the sun set, they went out to the hill around town and sketched some more.

Worcester was one of the places that the Massachusetts Provincial Congress had started to gather cannon for its army. The officers had seen some of those guns in town. Their mission was to spot such weapons and collect information that Gen. Thomas Gage would need in planning a march to seize them.

That same day in Essex County, Lt. Col. Alexander Leslie led just such an expedition to capture other cannon being prepared for the congress in the north part of Salem. He couldn’t move fast enough and withdrew empty-handed.

News of that confrontation appears to have riled up the Patriots of Worcester. About eight o’clock some men came to the inn to ask about Brown and DeBerniere, eventually telling the landlord they knew his guests were “officers of the army.”

Brown and DeBerniere decided to leave the next day at dawn, buying some roast beef and brandy from their landlord for the journey. Traveling east on foot, they were overtaken by a horseman who looked at them narrowly before riding off along the Marlborough road. Later generations identified this man as Timothy Bigelow, a Marlborough native who had become a successful blacksmith and political activist in Worcester.

The officers chose to turn off to Framingham, where they got to see a militia company drill outside their tavern. The next day they moved on to Isaac Jones’s Golden Ball Tavern in Weston, where they had also stayed on their hike west (shown above). Brown and DeBerniere sent their sketches back to Boston with their servant. Then they decided that, since no one had bothered them for a couple of days, it was safe to keep scouting the roads.

A snowstorm kept the officers indoors until two in the afternoon, but finally they set out for Marlborough. It was snowing again as they arrived about three miles from the center of town. DeBerniere wrote:

a horseman overtook us and asked us from whence we came, we said from Weston, he asked if we lived there, we said no; he then asked us where we resided, and as we found there was no evading his questions, we told him we lived at Boston; he then asked us where we were going, we told him to Marlborough, to see a friend, (as we intended to go to Mr. Barns’s, a gentleman to whom we were recommended, and a friend to government;)

Henry Barnes may have made peace with his Marlborough neighbors in 1770, but he was still a Loyalist. The British command in Boston expected he would provide a safe house for these scouts. So, however, did his suspicious Patriot neighbors.

The rider eventually came out and asked Brown and DeBerniere if they “were in the army.” They said they weren’t, but “were a good deal alarmed at his asking.” After some more “rather impertinent questions,” the man rode on into town.

The officers guessed that horseman intended “to give them intelligence there of our coming.” Indeed, as the two men reached the more thickly settled village, “the people came out of their houses (tho’ it snowed and blew very hard) to look at us.”

A baker asked Brown were they were going (addressing the captain as “master” to butter him up). Brown dropped Barnes’s name. That doesn’t seem like very good spycraft, but the captain probably figured everyone was watching where they would go anyway.

TOMORROW: Inside Henry Barnes’s house.

More Mild Mayhem in Marlborough

All right, now that I’ve calmed down from spotting William Benson staying out of the political dispute/gang brawl in Marlborough on 17 July 1770, I can move on to the people who were actually involved.

The “Honest Ploughjogger” letter published in the 6 August Boston Gazette continued its finger-pointing at Henry Barnes’s political enemies:

…the said mob alias sons of liberty knowing their cause to be bad, and their best man not coming, they dare not move forward in a body, but sent out a scout of about five in number well arm’d to reconnoitre the street, among which was Waldo Woods, the young fellow said to be wounded, as ill-bred a fellow as ever existed, who came foremost armed with a tomhawk [sic] and his mouth full of oaths, imprecations and curses, and assaulted John Gott Brigham, and swore he would split out his brains, and would bring 200 people in half an hour, upon which said Brigham told him he had better go home and be peaceable or he would flog him.

As we recall, in the previous month the Boston Evening-Post had published a letter characterizing the wounded person as a “young lad.” John Waldo Woods, son of Alpheus Woods, was actually eighteen years old. Eighteenth-century society still classified him as a boy, but that’s certainly older than the first newspaper account led me to believe.

Furthermore, by this account young Waldo wasn’t just practicing “to learn to drum” before being enticed away by four men from the gathering at Simon Howe’s house. Instead, he went out looking for trouble with a tomahawk and accosted John Gott Brigham.

As for Brigham, he was nineteen years old. So we have two older teen-aged boys, each feeling politically justified, with possible local feuds, drinking, and sharp weapons added to the mix. Oh, this will end well.

Then said Woods drew out a sharp pointed knife, and swore he would stab him to the heart, and made a pass at his belly, upon which Brigham seized him by the arm, and took the knife out of his hand and thereby saved his own life; but it seems in the scuffle of taking away the knife, Woods bro’t the point of it against his own shoulder, and made a scratch equal to the scratch of a pin, not one drop of blood lost, and then he cry’d murder and run home with wet breeches, and no other person than Brigham offered to meddle with him: and neither Brigham nor any other person who was at said Simon How’s that night, had any sort of weapon, either wood or iron with them, nor did any of them attempt to meddle with or molest any Person that pass’d the street that evening.

The previous letter claimed that Brigham and a companion had dragged young Woods back to Howe’s party, where the host said “he tho’t they had carried matters a little too far.” Then there was a discussion of legal liability with more threats and promises. The “Ploughjogger” letter didn’t mention any of that, even to deny it. Which makes me think something like that happened.

Looking at court records from the next term might reveal whether either side did proceed to filing suit for assault. In addition, the “Honest Ploughjogger” closed his letter suggesting that Alpheus Woods would be hauled up for threatening Henry Barnes:

It has been surmiz’d that A——s W—ds was the author of that villainous letter threatning of Mr. Barnes that he would murder him and destroy all his substance by fire. There is now such sufficient proof, that it is thot’ the villain will soon be bro’t to the bar to receive sentence; and if justice does but take place, there is no doubt but it will prevent his further proceeding in his wickedness.

In fact, tensions eased with the collapse of the strict non-importation movement that summer. But eventually this local rivalry came to a head, and one family had to leave town.

TOMORROW: Visitors to Marlborough in 1775.

“Pitched upon for their leader and herald”

We’re looking at two accounts of what happened in Marlborough on the night of 17 July 1770.

One, published in the Boston Evening-Post and quoted here, said that embattled importer Henry Barnes had promised free alcohol to his supporters, including young men who worked for him. They all gathered at Simon Howe’s house, and then a few went out looking for trouble.

The other was written on 25 July, 250 years ago today, and I started quoting it yesterday. Its writer, “An Honest Ploughjogger,” said the trouble started because the local Sons of Liberty gathered at Alpheus Woods’s house in order to destroy Barnes’s property and possibly him.

Both sides of the political divide therefore felt, or at least told the world that they felt, that the other side was preparing for violence, so they were justified in taking steps to defend themselves. Which is a lot like the larger political conflict in Massachusetts.

The “Ploughjogger” letter stated:

The drum beating very briskly, and the mob alias sons of liberty, collecting together, induced those persons to tarry at Mr. How’s to see the event; and about 40 of the said mob being met at said Woods with their weapons of death, waiting for orders; [but?] it seems one William Benson a negro who was pitched upon for their leader and herald being a fellow of more sense than the rest of them, did not come among them,…

Hold on—there’s a familiar name! Someone I’ve been tracking for years, in fact.

A man of African heritage named William Benson (1732-1790) was the son of Nero Benson (d. 1757) and the father of Abel Benson (1766-1843). Nero was enslaved to the Rev. John Swift of Framingham until that minister died in 1745 and then to his son-in-law in Sudbury, Dr. Ebenezer Roby. Abel grew up free in the Framingham vicinity and served in the Continental Army starting in 1781. Both grandfather and grandson played the trumpet as part of their military duties.

Locals in Framingham and Needham recalled that a black trumpeter helped to rouse local militia early in the morning of 19 Apr 1775. In 1908 a genealogist identified that trumpeter as Nero Benson, but he’d been dead for almost two decades by then. The identification then switched to Abel Benson. But no one had reported that trumpeter was only nine years old, and Abel didn’t mention military service in 1775 when he applied for a Revolutionary War pension.

I’ve posited that William, the biological link between Nero and Abel, was that trumpeter. He could have learned the instrument from his father and passed it on to his son, I suggested. He was in his early forties, of militia age, in 1775.

Now in this letter from Marlborough we have a reference to “one William Benson a negro” whom at least forty young men of the town supposedly saw as a “leader and herald”—and traditionally a herald blows a trumpet.

William Benson was born in the Swift household in Framingham. After the minister died, he probably went west with his mother to the household of another son-in-law, Joseph Collins of Southborough. By 1762 William Benson’s name appeared on the records of multiple towns in that area. He and his wife Sarah Perry, a teenager from Sudbury, were warned out of Shrewsbury. Collins tried to force Benson back into slavery, with their dispute settled in Benson’s favor by a court case in 1764.

William and Sarah Benson had their first child, Kate, in Framingham in 1763. (Kate grew up to marry Peter Salem, then going by the name Salem Middlesex.) Their subsequent children, including Abel, aren’t on the Framingham records; that might have been an oversight, but the family was probably moving around for work.

The “Ploughjogger” letter suggests that in 1770 William Benson was in nearby Marlborough, and was seen as the sort of man who could rouse the youth into patriotic action, most likely with his trumpet. Except that Benson was wise enough to stay out of the fight between the white men at Simon Howe’s and the white men at Alpheus Woods’s.

TOMORROW: When someone pulled out a knife.

“A general aversion to truth, honesty, peace and good order”

Yesterday I quoted a letter published in the Boston Evening-Post and Boston Gazette in July 1770, alleging that supporters of the Marlborough importer Henry Barnes had roughed up a “young lad” with “edged weapons.”

On 25 July someone using the pseudonym “An Honest Ploughjogger” wrote to the printers of the Gazette angrily refuting those charges. Edes and Gill waited until 6 August before running the letter, which didn’t match their usual political line. Maybe it was just to fill their extra page that day, but eventually the printers acceded to the request at the top of that letter:

Please to give the following a Place in your next, and you will oblige several of your constant Readers, as well as Friends to Peace and good Order.

IN the Boston Evening Post of the 23rd of July current, a piece was published, dated at Marlboro’, being an infamous scandalous libel, without any connection, good sense, and scarcely one word of truth in the whole. No notice would have been taken of it, had the true characters of the authors been as well known abroad as they are at home.

Every man of honesty looks upon himself even degraded, when either of them speak well of him; one of them is an old man, very enthusiastical both in religion and politics, and sometimes delirious at times, ever since he lay with a g—l at Rutland; the other, the father of the young man (said to be wounded) is a low liv’d dirty worthless fellow as ever existed, meddling with every bodies business, and much neglecting his own; deals out often scraps of latin and law; pretends to have all sorts of sense, but never yet discovered the least degree of common sense, and seems to have a general aversion to truth, honesty, peace and good order.

Later the letter stated the name of the second man: Alpheus Woods (1727-1794), a farmer who had just been named to Marlborough’s five-man committee to enforce the non-importation boycott. He would continue to be politically active into the 1780s. His gravestone appears above, courtesy of Find a Grave.

The letter never named the first man. People in Marlborough and neighboring towns presumably recognized the references to and “old man,” “enthusiastical…in religion” and in a relationship with a young woman in Rutland. But there were lots of “New Light” worshippers in Massachusetts, and Marlborough had lots of links to Rutland, where many younger sons had moved for fresher farmland. I looked in the records of the Marlborough meeting and the Marlborough Association of nearby ministers digitized at New England’s Hidden Histories, and didn’t spot clues to this man’s identity.

So the most I can pull out of those references is another example of how small-town feuds could intersect with imperial politics. This dispute wasn’t just about non-importation and how to protest the Townshend duties. It was also about this letter writer’s dislike of Alpheus Woods’s “scraps of latin and law” and the other neighbor’s enthusiasms.

As this passage makes clear in addressing the effigies of Henry Barnes:

As to the first part of their piece, relating to the old horse and the hay bags, &c. we shall take no further notice of it than only as one of those hay bags or men of straw was hang’d up and then burnt, it seems to be an emblem of the last describ’d author; who for his immorality is now hang’d up by the church, and whether he will be made better, or finally burnt, is at present very uncertain.

That boils down to, “Yes, people burned Barnes in effigy, but you’re even more disgraced.”

Then the letter offered a completely different narrative of the evening when the “young lad” was accosted, starting:

As to what they published relating to the affair of the 17th current, there is not one word of truth in the whole account, but quite the reverse; the truth of the case is, that divers of the persons mentioned in the aforesaid piece, accidentally came into Marlboro’ street that evening, and they being credibly informed that a mob who call’d themselves sons of liberty, were to meet that night at Alpheus Woods, in order to destroy Esq; Barnes’s buildings and substance, and had given it out freely, that if Mr. Barnes should oppose them, that they would cut the throats of all his family that night.

In sum, both sides claimed the others were looking for trouble.

TOMORROW: How the night turned violent.

Assault on a “young lad” in Marlborough

Now to get back to events in Marlborough in July 1770.

Back here I quoted a letter published in the Boston Gazette on 30 July 1770, describing an effigy of local merchant Henry Barnes on horseback. And here I quoted the part of that article discussing the threatening letter Barnes received in the middle of the month.

I now know that letter was first published in the Fleet brothers’ 23 July Boston Evening-Post, 250 years ago today.

That anonymous correspondent didn’t end with comparing Barnes to Don Quixote. He (or she) went on to this alarming tale, naming names all the way:

proclamation is made of liquor to be given away to all that were for Barns, whereupon there assembled on the 17th of july current a great number———Capt. Nathan Brigham jun’r, Solomon Newton and Joshua Newton all of Southboro’, Joseph Parker, John Richards, Alexander Boyd, Luke How, Thomas Swann, (all Barn’s workmen) John Gat Brigham, Joshua Lamb, Simon How, Peter Wood, Joel Barnard, Joseph Lewis, Solomon Brigham and Moses Barns, and others.

In the evening they would some of them sally out with clubs &c. and collar those that passed by in the street. A young lad in the neighbourhood had beat a drum that evening, as he had sundry evenings before, in order to learn to drum, and there came to him John Richards, and inticed him to go with him, promising no harm should befall him, & after he had got him some way from home he was assaulted by Alex. Boyd, Joseph Hale and John Gat Brigham.—

One struck him with his fist,——but two others made several passes at his throat with edged weapons, and stab’d him in his shoulder thro’ his shirt; he then cried out murder and said they had stab’d him; whereupon others came running to his relief from being murdered outright on the spot; he pleaded with them to let him go home: but Hale and Brigham would not let him and hall’d him along by Barn’s to Simon How’s, the man that had kept open doors & dealt out the liquor that evening.

Mr. How expressed himself very sorry and said he tho’t they had carried matters a little too far.—Two of them said they would detain him and lick him to death if he would not promise not to prosecute them, and Thomas Swann said he would pay the fine. Some of their company not being much liquor’d procured his liberty to go home.

The young lad is like to recover, though his life has been in imminent danger. And his father is prosecuting the affair, and it is hoped that the civil authority will prevent the repetition of such a horrid Tragedy as that of the 5th of March in Boston.

The Boston Gazette typesetters wrote of the Massacre as a “Tradegy.”

By the time Edes and Gill had published that letter, there was another, contradictory report on its way to them.

TOMORROW: “an infamous, scandalous libel.”

“In drinking of outlandish TEA”

On 22 July 1774, more than half a year after the Boston Tea Party, this item appeared in Daniel Fowle’s New-Hampshire Gazette:

Mr. FOWLE,
If you think the following Lines upon the Use of Tea worthy a Place in your valuable Collection, by inserting them in your next, you will oblige a Customer.

I.
ROUSE ev’ry generous thoughtful Mind,
The rising Danger flee;
If you would lasting Freedom find,
Now then abandon TEA.
II.
Scorn to be bound with golden Chains,
Though they allure the Sight;
Bid them Defiance if they claim
Our Freedom and Birth-Right.
III.
Shall we our Freedom give away,
And all our Comfort Place,
In drinking of outlandish TEA,
Only to please our Taste.
IV.
Forbid it Heaven, let us be wise,
And seek our Country’s Good;
Nor ever let a Thought arise,
That Tea should be our Food.
V.
Since we so great a Plenty have,
Of all that’s for our Health;
Shall we that blasted Herb receive,
Impoverishing our Wealth,
VI.
When we survey the breathless Corpse,
With putrid Matter fill’d;
For crawling Worms a sweet Resort,
By us reputed ill.
VII.
Noxious Effluvia sending out,
From it’s pernicious Store,
Not only from the foaming Mouth,
But ev’ry lifeless Pore.
VIII.
To view the same enrol’d in TEA,
Besmeared with such Perfumes,
And then the Herb sent o’er the Sea,
To us it tainted comes.
IX.
Some of it tinctur’d with a Filth
Of Carcases embalm’d;
Taste of this Herb then if thou wilt,
Sure me it cannot charm.
X.
Adieu, away O TEA be gone,
Salute our Taste no more;
Though thou art coveted by some,
Who’re destin’d to be poor.

This newspaper contributor urged readers not to drink any tea, harnessing various rumors about how it was tainted with “Perfumes” and “a Filth of Carcases embalm’d,” not to mention politically and economically unhealthy. These particular verses seem designed to be sung to familiar New England hymn tunes, making the reminder of “the breathless Corpse” fit right in.

Ezekiel Russell reprinted these lines in his Salem Gazette a week later under the title “On the Use of Tea,” but I don’t see a lot of other newspapers picking up the item.

In 1855 Evert A. and George L. Duyckinck printed the lyrics, with updated spelling and punctuation, in their Cyclopædia of American Literature. The following year, George Moore included them in his Songs and Ballads of the American Revolution, appending the titles “The Blasted Herb” and “India Tea.” That book said the song was also issued as a broadside (though I haven’t found a listing for one).

Moore also wrote of the song that “It has been attributed to Meshech Weare” (1713-1786), a leading New Hampshire Patriot. He shared no evidence for that attribution and didn’t appear fully convinced of it himself. I haven’t found other mentions of Weare writing verse. Nonetheless, later collections have confidently stated that Weare is the author.

The Travels of Arthur Bowler, Rhode Island Loyalist

Over on the Small State, Big History blog, Jane Lancaster has published an article titled “Should They Stay or Should They Go?: Rhode Island Black Loyalists after the American Revolution.”

Lancaster draws on “The Book of Negroes,” a listing of people of African ancestry who evacuated from Crown strongholds at the end of the Revolutionary War. Some of those people had come from Newport, Rhode Island, which the British had held until a couple of years earlier.

After general discussion, the article starts to profile individuals, filling out the bare entries in “The Book of Negroes” with other sources. Here, for example, is a profile of a man enslaved by a former Rhode Island judge in the house shown above:

Arthur Bowler, a “stout fellow” of thirty-four, brought from Africa as a boy and enslaved by Metcalf Bowler of Newport, wealthy merchant, colonial official and British spy, stayed in Rhode Island longer than any of his fellows, finally leaving in 1781.

He traveled from New York to Nova Scotia with his…wife and twelve-year-old daughter, both freeborn in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. They were taken initially to Port Mattoun, which almost immediately failed, and then to Birchtown where he was eventually awarded forty acres of land. He had not yet seen it, let alone started clearing it, when he decided to go Sierra Leone where he lived long enough to see his grandchildren go to school.

He was probably a Baptist, (his second wife was the widow of a Baptist elder) and thus a member of a more moderate faction in Sierra Leone. The Methodists were considerably less accommodating. In Newport he had worshiped in the “Negro Section” of the Anglican Trinity Church. In Rhode Island he was acquainted with leading members of the black community such as the entrepreneurial diarist Cesar Lyndon (who elected to stay, while one of his fellow slaves, Pompey Lindon, opted to go).

Soon after Bowler arrived in Sierra Leone he frightened a leopard away from the hut where his wife and daughter were sleeping. He outlived his erstwhile master by at least twelve years; by comparison, Metcalf Bowler died in poverty, though with his reputation intact, as his spying remained undiscovered until the 1920s. Arthur Bowler lived with a modest competence and his freedom.

The fact that Bowler had spent some childhood years in Africa might have prepared him to return to that continent, albeit probably to a different region. It’s reassuring to read an account of a black Loyalist that ends with success after so many trials.