Case Study of a Wounded Provincial

At Historical Nerdery, Alexander Cain just shared an essay by Joel Bohy and Douglas D. Scott, who have been studying musket balls and the damage they can cause.

In this particular posting, that damage was to the body of John Robbins, who was standing in the front line of the Lexington militia company that the 10th Regiment’s light company fired on at dawn on 19 Apr 1775.

Bohy and Scott write:

After April 19 and the Battle of Bunker Hill a few of the wounded men began to ask the state for help. Their wounds, in some cases, made them unable to work and make a living. Medical bills were also growing and with no income how could they pay the bills and provide for their families? Many of these petitions for a pension, or after December 1775 for lost and broken material, are in the collection of the Massachusetts State Archives spread through numerous volumes. The earliest petition for Robbins is from 1776. It gives a description of his wounds:

“To the Honorable the Colony Counsil & the Honorable the House of Representatives in general Court assembled The Petition of John Robbins of Lexington Humbly Sheweth, That your Petitioner was on the memorable 19th of april 1775 most grievously wounded. by the Brittish Troops in Lexington, by a musket ball which passed by the left of the spine between his Shoulders through the length of his neck making its way through and most miserably Shattering his under jaw bone, by which unhappy Wound your Petitioner is so much hurted in the Muscles of his shoulder, that his Right arms is rendered almost useless to him in his Business and by the fracture of his under jaw the power of Mastecation is totally destroyed and by his, low Slop diet, weakness, and total loss of his right arm, and the running of his wound, his Situation is rendered truly Pitiable being unable to Contribute any thing to the Support of a wife and five small Children but is rather a Burden upon them, & has no Encouragement from his Surgeon of his being Materialy better He therefor is under the disagrable Necessity of begging relief & assistance of this Honrrable Court by a Pension or other wise as your Honors Great wisdom & compations may suggest, and your Petitioner as in duty bound will Ever pray Lexington 14th June 1776 John Robbins”

This request for support echoes the public collections of funds for Christopher Monk and then Robert Patterson after they were wounded in the Boston Massacre.

To see details of Robbins’s life after his wound, including how long he lived, check out Historical Nerdery.

Lexington Lectures, 22-24 April

The Lexington Historical Society isn’t resting after a busy Patriots Day weekend. It’s offering four online presentations this week.

Thursday, 22 April, 7:00 P.M.
The Will of the People
Prof. T.H. Breen delivers a special Cronin lecture discussing how the ordinary people of New England reacted to war in their backyards. Based on his book The Will of the People, Breen’s talk will explore how debates raged throughout the country about the fate of the new nation when the outcome of the war was far from certain, while fiery Patriots like the Rev. Jonas Clarke continued to keep the dream alive.

Friday, 23 April, 10:00 A.M.
The Right to Liberty
African-Americans, both enslaved and free, grappled with what becoming part of a nation where all men were theoretically created equal meant, and often took matters into their own hands when the liberties they were owed did not come to fruition. Professional storyteller Valerie Tutson shares the heroic tales of James Forten, who as a teenager fought against the British navy and later worked to abolish slavery, and Elizabeth Freeman, who in 1781 successfully sued for her freedom, citing the Massachusetts constitution. This program is suitable for all ages.

Friday, 23 April, 2:00 P.M.
April 19th Collections Spotlight
The Lexington Historical Society’s museums hold many relics of the first day of the Revolution. Objects that witnessed bloody battle live in situ in our historic houses or rest in exhibit cases, and still more spend their time behind closed doors in our archives. Join Collections and Outreach Manager Stacey Fraser for a behind-the-scenes look at some of the most treasured, but least seen, relics of the Revolution in our museum collection.

Saturday, 24 April, 4:00 P.M.
Noble Volunteers
Author Don Hagist has spent years studying the demographics and personal stories of British soldiers. Far from nameless killing machines, these men came from a variety of ages, ethnicities, and occupations. Many had far more in common with the Americans than we remember, and most never expected to one day be waging war with their own people when they took the King’s shilling. Hagist shares surprising insights from his latest book.

Tay, Hayward, and the Massachusetts Government

On 19 Apr 1775, William Tay, Jr., of Woburn helped to storm a house along the Battle Road, kill two redcoats, and capture the third. He claimed that man’s arms for his own.

The only problem, as Tay saw it, was that Lt. Joseph Hayward of Concord came along and took those weapons for himself.

For his part, Hayward told his descendants that he had fought the redcoats and captured that prisoner. And at the end of the day, he had the gun.

Tay didn’t take that lying down. He appealed to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s committee of safety, which oversaw the first two months of the war. That body took the time to issue this resolution from its Cambridge headquarters on 24 May:

Whereas Mr. William Tay of Wooburn did on the 19th of april past make prisoner a Sergent of the greniders in the 52th Regiment of the Ministerial Troops and while he the sd Tay had the sd sergent in custody some person known did take the arm of the sd man by him taken and as sd arms are found in the hands of Lieut. Joseph Howard of Concord it is in the opinion of this Comm that as the said Tay can prove he too the abovementioned prisoner that the arms are fairly the property of the Mr. Jay and that they be returned to him accordingly.

That was signed by Benjamin White, a member of the committee from Brookline.

My thanks to Joel Bohy for spotting this document in the Massachusetts state archives and sharing his transcription with me.

The committee’s decree had no effect. So Tay went to a witness who might be deemed neutral: the captured sergeant himself. On 13 June that man deposed:

This may certify, whom it may concern, that I Mathew Hayes, a sergeant of the 52nd Regiment of the Ministerial troops, was taken prisoner on the 19th of April last past by Mr. William Tay Junr. of Woburn—further saith not.

Hayes was then in the jail at Concord alongside other prisoners of war. The local justice of the peace who took down his testimony was Duncan Ingraham, whom neighbors had actually considered a friend of the royal government just four months earlier.

Again, thanks to Joel Bohy for sharing that document.

Months passed, and Tay still didn’t have his gun. This wasn’t just a matter of a trophy and bragging rights. There was monetary value involved. With a war on, good military firelocks were a hot commodity.

Above is a blank printed certificate that the committee of safety issued on 17 June (even as a certain battle raged), as shown on the Library of Congress website. The rebel government was buying people’s guns for the army.

In the summer of 1775, the Massachusetts Patriots decided to return to their regular form of government, acting as if the royal governor and lieutenant governor were simply unavailable. They held elections for a new Massachusetts General Court and chose a new Council, now unencumbered by writs of mandamus or the gentlemen who had previously supported royal policy.

Tay took his case to that legislature late in 1775, restating his claim for the gun and concluding (as transcribed by Richard Frothingham):

all which your petitioner informed the committee of safety for this colony, who, on the 24th day of May, 1775, gave it as their opinion that these arms were fairly the property of your petitioner.

Nevertheless, the said Joseph (though duly requested) refuses to deliver the same, under pretext of his own superior right.

Wherefore your petitioner earnestly prays that your honors would take his cause under due consideration, and make such order thereon as to your honors, in your great wisdom, shall seem just and reasonable, which that he may obtain he as in duty bound shall ever pray, &c.

On 21 September, the Massachusetts House took up Tay’s claim. The published record is garbled, saying that “William Tayie…lost certain Fire Arms” during the battle. But the disposition was clear: “Mr. Tayie has Leave to withdraw his Petition”—a polite and formulaic no.

But Tay still didn’t give up. During the next legislative session he appears to have redirected his petition to the Council. On 14 December those gentlemen took up the matter and issued an order summoning

Joseph Hayward by serving him with an attested copy of the petition and order that he may have opportunity to show cause (if any he hath) on the 26th day of this instant December why the prayer of this petition should not be granted

That’s what the document in the archives says, as transcribed by Joel Bohy. The published House records give the date of 21 December for hearing Hayward’s side of the story.

And there the official record appears to end. What effect did the Council’s summons have? Was there any legal follow-up? Did the two men reach a compromise? All I can say for sure is that in 1835 the sergeant’s gun was in the hands of Joseph Hayward’s son.

COMING UP: The further adventures of Sgt. Matthew Hayes.

Joseph Hayward Comes Home from the Fight

Yesterday we heard William Tay, Jr., of Woburn describe the opening of the Revolutionary War and finally get to the point of why he was petitioning the Massachusetts General Court in September 1775.

Tay was part of the loosely organized Massachusetts militia force chasing the British troops back east along what we now call the “Battle Road.” In or near Charlestown he and “several others” came across a house with three redcoats firing from inside it. They stormed the house, killed two of those men, and captured the third with his weapons.

But that wasn’t the end of the story.

But so it happened, that while your petitioner was busied in securing his prisoner, others coming up and rushing into said house, those arms were carried off by some person to your petitioner unknown, which arms are since found in the hands of Lieut. Joseph Howard, of Concord;…

A rival claimant!

We actually have the other side of this dispute in Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 history of Concord:

Lieutenant Joseph Hayward, who had been in the French war,…observing a gun pointed out of the window of a house by a British soldier, he seized it, and in attempting to enter the house found it fastened. He burst open the door, attacked and killed by himself two of the enemy in the room, and took a third prisoner. One of their guns is still owned by his son, from whom I received this anecdote.

Hayward thus passed on much the same story as Tay, except his son got the impression that he had singlehandedly killed two soldiers and captured the third.

We also have a contemporaneous record of Lt. Hayward grabbing a horse and carriage back from British army officers racing to Boston. He had returned the carriage to Reuben Brown and was offering to return the horse to its owner.

But the captured gun? Hayward kept that. He was more senior than Tay. He had just turned sixty years old and held the rank of lieutenant since the last war. Tay was eleven years younger and wouldn’t become a lieutenant until later in the year. But he wanted the gun back.

How can we resolve this 1775 chapter of Grumpy Old Men?

TOMORROW: A third voice, and government action.

William Tay, Jr., Enters the Fight

Here’s a first-person account of the opening day of the Revolutionary War from William Tay, Jr., of Woburn.

There was a long sequence of William Tays in Woburn, and the “Jr.” suffix suggests this account came from the middle of the three then living, born in 1726 and thus in his late forties.

The picture above, which comes courtesy of the Middlesex Canal Association, shows the house where Tay grew up and his father still lived in 1775. It gained the name of the Samuel Tay Homestead after his little brother, who inherited it.

In late 1775, William Tay submitted a petition to the Massachusetts General Court describing his actions on 19 April. Richard Frothingham printed that document in his History of the Siege of Boston. Joel Bohy located the original in the Massachusetts Archives and shared a transcript with me, showing that Frothingham regularized Tay’s spelling, capitalization, and punctuation but didn’t add or remove any words. I’m using Frothingham’s version because tonight I’m too busy to fight autocorrect to reproduce the original.

Here’s what Tay would have written had he followed mid-nineteenth-century standards:

…on the 19th day of April, 1775, being roused from his sleep by an alarm, occasioned by the secret and sudden march of the ministerial troops towards Concord, supposed to intend the destruction of the colony’s magazine there deposited,—to prevent which, your petitioner, with about 180 of his fellow-townsmen, well armed, and resolved in defence of the common cause, speedily took their march from Woburn to Concord aforesaid, who, upon their arrival there, being reinforced by a number of their fellow-soldiers of the same regiment, smartly skirmished with those hostile troops, being deeply touched with their bloody massacre and inhuman murders in their march at Lexington, where we found sundry of our friends and neighbors inhumanly butchered on that bloody field;

and other salvage cruelties to our aged fathers, and poor, helpless, bed-ridden women under the infirmities of child-bearing; together with their horrible devastations committed on their ignominious retreat the same day, (shocking to relate, but more so to behold,) to the eternal infamy of those British arms so frequently and so successfully wielded in the glorious cause of liberty through most of the European dominions, now made subservient to the ambitious purposes of a very salvage cruelty, inhuman butchery, and tyrannical slavery.

Tay appears to have been trying to make a political point there, wouldn’t you say? He was also echoing the Patriot government’s official take on the events of the day, aligning himself with that stance. The petition continued:

These shocking scenes continually opening to view, served to heighten resentment, and warm endeavors to reap a just revenge upon those inhuman perpetrators, and to risk our lives in defence of the glorious cause, as the heroic deeds of our troops through the whole series of the tragical actions of that memorable day abundantly testify.

In which your petitioner, by the joint testimony of all his fellow-soldiers, lent, at least, an equal part through the whole stretch of way from Concord to Charlestown aforesaid, where your petitioner, with several others, passing by an house, were fired upon by three of the ministerial troops planted within, who, returning the fire, killed two of them; thereupon your petitioner rushed into the house, seized the survivor, a sergeant, in his arms, gave him sundry cuffs, who then resigned himself and arms to your petitioner, none others being then within said house.

But then, Tay said, a thief came along!

TOMORROW: A rival claim.

Thomas Gage Papers to be Digitized

The Clements Library at the University of Michigan just announced that it has received

a $350,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to digitize…over 23,000 items related to Thomas Gage, a famed British commander-in-chief in the early days of the American Revolution who was also the governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay from 1774 to 1775.

This collection was one of the major sources for The Road to Concord and every worthwhile book published in the last century about the start of the Revolutionary War in Massachusetts.

I visited the Clements Library years ago, before pocket digital photography changed the experience of visiting an archive. Back then, we had to type out manuscript transcripts in the reading room. And choose what pages to ask the staff to photograph while staying within our research budgets. And we liked it!

After this three-year project, there will be high-quality photographs of Gage’s correspondence and othe files for researchers to study. To test out the interface, look at how the library already shares the papers of New Hampshire colonel Jonathan Chase.

Not so incidentally, the Clements Library is having an “Adopt a Piece of History” fundraiser, inviting people to give money for particular projects. Articles range from nineteenth-century books to scanners and a 1758 letter from Gen. James Wolfe. Along the way are several volumes of the papers of Gen. Henry Clinton which need to be prepared for another digitization project.

For another look at the resources that archive digitization projects can bring to public view, check out “A Closer Look at Colonial North America Across Harvard Library,” the video recording of an online event in March. Representatives of several Harvard libraries’ staffs share notable colonial-era objects and documents from the university’s vast collection.

Online Lectures about Maps, Soldiers, and Constitutions

This month I’ve listed online events to commemorate the 19th of April, and then more of those, and then another along with two events about tavern culture.

And yet here are three more online historical events scheduled in the next week.

“Mapping and Placing 18th Century Roxbury, New England and the Imperial Atlantic”
Saturday, 17 April, 6:30 P.M.
The Shirley-Eustis House Association

Explore how eighteenth-century maps were vital to governing and expanding the British Empire, starting at Governor William Shirley’s Roxbury mansion. Garret Dash Nelson, curator of the Boston Public Library’s Leventhal Map Center explores just how Boston, New England, and the historic Shirley-Eustis House were suited in the British Empire’s Northern Atlantic ambitions. Beautifully rendered and detailed historic maps from the 1700s reveal how Governor Shirley and others tried to shape those ambitions.

Free through the sponsorship of the Massachusetts Chapter of the Society of Cincinnati. Currently filled out, though it’s possible some slots will open up. Information and registration here.

“Noble Volunteers: The British Soldiers Who Fought the American Revolution”
Tuesday, 20 April, 12 noon
The Boston Athenaeum

Dispelling long-held myths about the Revolutionary War, Don Hagist shines light on the diversity of the British soldiers—many of whom had joined the army as a peacetime career, only to find themselves fighting a war on another continent in often brutal conditions.

$5, or free for members. Registration starts here. Don Hagist’s book.

“The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions, and the Making of the Modern World”
Wednesday, 21 April, 6:00 P.M.
The Boston Athenaeum

Tracing the global history of written constitutions from the 1750s to the twentieth century, Linda Colley focuses on how constitutions crossed geographical boundaries and aided the rise of empires as well as nations, illuminating their intimate connections with print, literary creativity, and the rise of the novel.

$5, or free for members. Registration starts here. Linda Colley’s book.

From the Long Room to Online Group Tours

Here are a couple more online events coming up this week that caught my eye.

On Thursday, 15 April, the Fraunces Tavern Museum in New York will offer “The Long Room: For the Entertainment of Friends and Strangers”, featuring former guest curator Kym S. Rice.

Back in 1983, Rice organized an exhibition on ”Early American Taverns” that became one of the biggest research projects in the museum’s history and produced an illustrated book of the same name.

In conversation with Education & Public Programs Coordinator Mary Tsaltas-Ottomanelli, Rice will discuss the roles taverns played throughout the eighteenth century, paying particular attention to urban taverns and their largest spaces, often called “the long room.” [Long-time Boston 1775 readers know to be wary of descriptions of the pre-Revolutionary “Long Room Club,” however.]

This online event is free. People must register by 3:30 P.M. on the afternoon of the 15 April to receive the link, and the event will start at 6:30. Later the recorded conversation will be released through the Fraunces Tavern Museum’s podcast.

On Saturday, 17 April, and closer to home (not that it matters much online), Boston By Foot is observing Patriots Day with an “Online, On-Site, On Foot” event.

As the event description says, “It's a story that involves a spy network, a secret alert system, a ‘minuteman’ militia, a tense standoff with the most powerful army in the world, and of course, a legendary midnight ride.”

To create a special Patriots’ Day virtual experience, Boston By Foot guides will be on location from Old North Church and Boston's city limits to Lexington and Concord to take viewers on a journey examining how the Revolutionary War began.

This event will start at 11:00 A.M. on the 17th and last for about an hour. The suggested donation for watching is $10.12 (which includes a $2.12 fee for Eventbrite), but viewers can choose less or more. Register here.

More Ways to Celebrate Patriots Day 2021 Safely

As I’ve both marveled at and lamented before, it’s hard to find a truly comprehensive list of commemorations of the 19th of April because so many historical sites, towns, and organizations have their own. Some of those organizations group together in coalitions, but not all in one coalition.

This year we’re once again sticking to our houses, but people have had time to prepare online events, videos, and exhibits to illuminate the start of the Revolutionary War. Which means there are a lot of different links to hunt down!

I can’t promise this is a complete list of resources to enjoy in the upcoming week, but it will keep you busy.

Minute Man National Historical Park is already rolling out new videos on YouTube and Facebook. These include a series titled “April 19, 1775: Our Tangible Past,” about museum objects and the stories they tell, and individual shorts on “A Nervous Night at Buckman Tavern,” “Preparing for War,” “The Enemy at the Door,” and more.

On Saturday, 17 April, the park will premiere a series of video talks and demonstrations through those channels:

• 10:00 A.M., “The Minute Men: Neighbors in Arms”
• 1:00 P.M., “The British Light Infantry”
• 3:00 P.M., “Caught in the Storm of War: Civilian Stories from April 19, 1775” with Ranger Jim Hollister and author Alexander Cain

On Sunday, 18 April:

• 7:30 P.M., “The Patriot Vigil,” a candlelight tribute at the North Bridge battlefield

On Monday, 18 April:

• Throughout the day starting at 8:00 A.M., “Voices of 1775,” with reenactors and staff reading the words of people who experienced the events of April 19th

Finally, follow the hashtag #RevolutionInRealTime on Facebook and Twitter from 10:00 P.M. on the 18th through 7:00 P.M. on the 19th for regular updates on what happened on those dates in 1775.

The Lexington Historical Society’s events page is here, and that town’s community celebration is described here. These include the movie “The First Shot,” an outdoor scavenger hunt, and recordings of past reenactments which one can watch with good views and without having to wake up hours before dawn.

The Old North Church’s annual lantern ceremony will feature music, a reading of Longfellow’s poem “Paul Revere’s Ride,” and a ceremony to honor Dave McGillivray, long-time Race Director for the Boston Marathon. This is a benefit for Old North, and tickets can be purchased here.

The Paul Revere House is adding new episodes to its Revere House Radio podcast, which started with a series on “Revisit the Ride.”

The Concord Museum has a new permanent exhibit on the “Shot Heard Round the World,” and that includes a dedicated website people can enjoy at home.

Finally, check out additional book talks and podcast interviews listed on the Revolution 250 calendar.

Joseph Dobel “very unfavorably represented”

Capt. Joseph Dobel, veteran of a Boston riot, the Continental Navy, and the East India trade, was discussed at the highest levels of the U.S. government in 1799.

President John Adams was then beefing up the United States Navy. Having had the U.S.S. Constitution built in Boston, the federal government appointed Silas Talbot (1751-1813, shown here), a former officer in both the Continental Army and the Continental Navy and a former Congressman, to command it.

As with the Continental Navy, commissioning officers who could work together on board proved to be a challenge. On 17 June, the first U.S. Secretary of the Navy, Benjamin Stoddert, wrote to President Adams about two candidates to serve under Talbot on the Constitution:

Capt. Peleg Talmen, and Capt. Dobell were both in service last war—The latter I have seen, and he appears to be a well qualified man—The former lost an arm in an action, in which he distinguished himself. They are both recommended from Boston, in strong terms—and I beleive they will both be wanted by Talbott—and perhaps [Samuel] Parker, who was lately appointed, also.

I enclose Letters, enclosing Commissions for these Gentlemen—to be forwarded to them, should they meet with your Approbation—

The President wrote back on 28 June:

I yesterday sent to the post office your letter to Capt Talman, of whose intelligence, activity, bravery & property I receive very handsome accounts. The letter to Capt Dobell I have not yet sent. In truth I have not yet heard a good character of him. On the contrary he is very unfavorably represented.

The next day, before receiving that Presidential message, Stoddert repeated his endorsement: “Doble I saw—He appeared to be a fit man to be a Lt.—and he also has had experience on board of armed Ships.”

On 3 July Capt. Silas Talbot weighed in from the Constitution itself, writing to President Adams:

In obedience to what I conceived to be your wish, when last I had the honor of seeing you, I have made such enquiry— with respect to the Characters of Captain’s Tallman, and Double, as my circumstances would admit of—

Being closely confined to the Ship, I have not had that oportunity to gain a very general knowledge respecting them. But from all I have learned; I was confident that they would not suit me, or be usefull as Officers on board the Ship I now command—

Capt. [George] Little of the Boston informed me, (but somewhat confidentially) that he was most perfectly acquainted with Capt. Tallman and says that he possesses the worst of dispositions, tho’ at first acquaintance he seems pleasing: that no man ever carried worse command, or made more confusion with a crew than he did in common on board his own Ship. That he could had him as a sailing Master, on board the Boston—But knowing him well, he did not choose to have him, and said that he lost his Arm last War, when he was a Midshipman, and that he was never higher in rank.

And that as to Doble he knew nothing.—

Captain [James] Sever informed me that he knew Doble personally, and that by common report he was a very dissipated man, that he was lately mate of an India-man, commanded by Capt. [John] Kithcart in the employ of Tommy Russel deced., that the Capt. died outward bound: and the business of the Voyage devolved on Double, who spent nearly the whole Cargo, and ruin’d the Voyage.—

Something like the same information, I have had from others, respecting Capt Double these accounts from so good Authority, made such an impression on my mind, that I did not wish to have them on board the Ship with me

On 7 September, Secretary Stoddert gave Lt. Talman permission to resign his commission if “your private business compels your absence for six or eight months.” Talman left the navy on 20 September.

As for Joseph Dobel, he never received the U.S. Navy commission that Stoddert had written out for President Adams to sign. He probably never got another big merchant vessel to command, either, given his reputation in Massachusetts.

Capt. Dobel lived in Boston until 1810, dying on 19 March at the age of seventy-one. His second wife Susanna had died the previous year. He was buried in the Copp’s Hill Burying-Ground under the same stone as his first wife with the inscription:

Here rest the dead, from sin and sorrow free
They are gone to heaven, O God, we trust to thee,
Their bright examples may we make our own,
in Christ as they themselves were known.

COMING UP: Back to Owen Richards’s lawsuits.

Capt. Dobel at Home and on the Far Side of the World

Except for several months as a Continental Navy lieutenant under Capt. John Manley, which ended badly, Joseph Dobel appears to have spent the Revolutionary War ashore in Boston. Certainly when he was in charge of confining suspected enemies of the state he was at home.

After peace came, Dobel resumed work as a merchant captain, commanding a three-masted ship called the Commerce in 1789. Newspapers indicate he made regular trips to Liverpool and also sailed to Cadiz, Spain.

In December 1790, Dobel’s first wife, Mary, died at age fifty-five. I haven’t found mention of any children from this marriage. A little less than three months later, Capt. Dobel married “Mrs. Susanna Joy,” who was about forty years old.

In the early 1790s, the Boston town meeting started to elect Capt. Dobel as a culler of fish (or dry fish). That was one of several minor offices tasked with making sure that particular goods sold in town met quality standards. Dobel’s election shows what his neighbors felt he was expert in. With his colleagues he periodically advertised in the newspapers warning against unofficial fish-culling.

In 1793 Capt. Dobel was living “in Bennet-Street, opposite the North-School.” Early in that year he dissolved a business partnership with Thomas Jackson. I can’t find any earlier advertisements from this firm, so I have no idea what they dealt in.

In those years, American merchants and captains were seeking new business outside the British Empire—beginning the new nation’s “China Trade” and “East India Trade.” One distant destination was the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, then called “Isle-of-France.” In March 1792, after a full year away from Boston, Capt. John Cathcart brought in the Three Brothers from Mauritius “with a cargo of Sugars” for the merchant Thomas Russell. In May 1795 the Massachusetts Mercury ran a report that Cathcart was back at Mauritius.

Cathcart returned to Massachusetts again that year and oversaw the construction of a new ship, the Three Sisters, in Charlestown. It was about 340 tons burden, “Copper Bolted and sheathed.” Soon he took it out on its maiden voyage to Asia.

And then in May 1796 the Boston newspapers reported that Capt. Cathcart had died “two days sail from St. Jago”—Santiago, the largest island in the country of Cape Verde. The merchants who invested in that cruise and the families of all the crew must have worried about what would happen next. But all they could do was collect snatches of news brought back by other ships’ captains.

As of August, the first report to reach the newspapers said, the Three Sisters was at Mauritius, its next stop uncertain. Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser stated that in February 1797 it was at Bengal. In May the Boston Price-Current said that the ship was at Manila. By this time the principal investor, Russell, had died.

I mention all that because Joseph Dobel had signed on as Cathcart’s next-in-command. He had the responsibility of completing the voyage. Most of those dispatches listed Cathcart as the Three Sisters’ captain, adding that he was dead, while a couple gave Dobel’s name. Meanwhile, the ship was still lingering on the far side of the world. The Massachusetts Mercury reported that “The Three Sisters, Doble, of Boston, sailed from Calcutta for N. York Sept. 19 [1797], sprung a leak, and returned.”

It wasn’t until that spring of 1798 that the Three Sisters was back in the north Atlantic. In late March there were two reports of it being spotted in or near Delaware Bay. Finally, on 27 June, Capt. Dobel brought the ship into New York harbor. That was more than two years after the news that Cathcart had died.

On 31 July a notice in the New-York Gazette announced that the Three Sisters “will be sold reasonable, with all her stores as she came from Calcutta, and the terms of payment made convenient.” Another advertisement, noting that the ship was built “under the superintendence of the late Capt. JOHN CATHCART,” appeared in Russell’s Gazette in Boston the next month.

Those ads promised that the Three Sisters was “a remarkable fast sailer” and only two and a half years old. But the expense of the extraordinarily long voyage meant the ship’s owners needed cash fast.

TOMORROW: Capt. Dobel and the U.S.S. Constitution.

Joseph Dobel in the Continental Navy

Yesterday I discussed the early career of Joseph Doble, who followed his father in becoming a ship’s captain sailing out of Boston. Today I’ll skip over Owen Richards’s lawsuit and discuss Doble’s record in the Revolutionary War.

I’ll also switch from “Doble,” the spelling that the family used before the war, to Joseph’s preference of “Dobel.”

At least one of the Dobel brothers moved out to Braintree before the war. A man named Joseph Dobel enlisted in the Massachusetts army from that town in May 1775 and served most of the year as a private. It’s possible that was the sea captain, having moved out of Boston because of the Port Bill and the siege. But I suspect it was a younger relative.

The earliest I can definitely pick up Capt. Dobel’s trail is on 16 June 1776 when the Continental Congress commissioned him as second lieutenant on the warship Hancock, commanded by Capt. John Manley (shown here). During the siege, Manley had commanded one of the schooners that Gen. George Washington commissioned. He had streaks of cunning and good luck that let him capture several British ships and become America’s first naval hero. In April the Congress made Manley a captain in the Continental Navy.

Continental Navy officers spent as much time squabbling with each other as engaging the enemy. When the Congress issued a list of its captains ranked by seniority in October, Manley (number two) complained about being “under the Command of one man, whose Ability I had reason to doubt.” Meanwhile, Hector MacNeill (number three) called Manley “totally unequal to the Command with which he has been intrusted, he being ignorant, Obstinate, Overbearing and Tyranical beyond discription.”

By the spring of 1777 Dobel had risen to be first lieutenant on the Hancock, then docked in Boston. Also, in fine Continental fashion, he and Manley hated each other. Dobel laid out his side of the rift in a 2 July letter to another of Manley’s rivals, John Paul Jones:

…the 22d of april which day Capt Manley told me he had no further service for me without giving me any reason or making any enquirey into my conduct

all the reason I Can Assign is on that day he sent for to his house as soon as I enter’d the room he said to me God Damn you I order you on board the ship in half hour

the ship laying in congress road I told him I could not possibly get on board in the time

he replied that was all the time I should have

I told him I Could not go on board unless my Acct was settled as we was so near sailing and that I would be oblig’d to him to do it

he then replied God Damn you I will not pay you one farthing he then repeated the above order for my going on board

I then told him I did not understand the meaning of the words god damn you I order you on board

this answer and asking for a Settlement is all the reason of his behaveour to me that ever I knew of or ever heard, I then ask’d him if he would please to tell me where the ships Tender lay

he replied with an Oath that if I wanted her I Might go look for her, which I did and found her in order to go on board,

Capt Manley was along side of her[.] after walking on the Wharfe half an hour he said Mr Dobel, I have no further Orders for you on board the ship

I ask’d him if I was Clear of the ship

he replied no without you’ll give me your commission for which he said he would pay my wages and if not he would Try me by a Court Martial and that he would either disgrace me or I should him and still further he says he has taken Several Methods to Affront me and make me leave the ship but that he could not do it till now.

In a postscript Dobel added, “I Could Insert a great many more Abuses that I have met with but must Omitt them they being so Lengthy.” Which suggests that he and Capt. Manley had been feuding for a while and he couldn’t really have been surprised at his commander’s anger.

True to his promise, two days later Capt. Manley assembled “a Court Martial on my first Lieut for his continual neglect of Duty & possative Disobedience of Orders.” In fact, Manley was so determined to exert his authority over Dobel that he asked even Capt. MacNeill to serve on this board. I don’t know how that process worked out, but Dobel wasn’t on the Hancock when it sailed out of Boston harbor in June.

Instead, the Massachusetts board of war stepped in and gave Dobel a new assignment on 10 July:

You are hereby appointed to the command of the Guard Ship Adams now in this Harbour, by us provided agreeably to an Act of this State for the reception of all Persons convicted of being inimical to this & the other united States, & whose Residence in this State may be dangerous to the Public Peace & Safety; . . .

You are to receive Six Pounds per Month as Wages, & three Rations pr Day Subsistence…

Dobel thus got the rank of captain and his own ship to command—except the ship wasn’t supposed to leave the harbor. And his crew consisted only of a mate and four sailors. (If it was any consolation, that same July three British warships captured the Hancock, and Capt. Manley spent several months as a prisoner.)

In November, the board of war decided that the Adams would be better used as a trading ship, and better commanded by Capt. Isaac Phillips. It ordered Dobel to take his prisoners off. On 1 Jan 1778 he placed an advertisement in the Independent Chronicle:

FIFTY DOLLARS Reward.

RAN away from the House of the Subscriber, last Thursday, one CHARLES WHITWORTH, a noted Villain, who has for some Time, been confined for being an Enemy to the Thirteen United States of AMERICA; he is about five Feet 8 Inches high, light Complexion, long black Hair; had on when he ran away, a light coloured Coat and Jacket, black Breeches, a Pair light broad rib’d Stockings, and a light French Wrapper.

Whoever will take up said Run-away, and secure him in any of the Continental Goals, shall have the above Reward, and all necessary Charges paid by
JOSEPH DOBEL.

N.B. It is supposed he is gone towards Newport.

(Whitworth and his family settled in Shelburne, Nova Scotia, in 1782.)

Dobel kept his title of “Captain,” but his military service drained away on land. He witnessed the signing of papers for a Massachusetts privateer in 1777 but never commanded or owned one himself. Dobel appears as an inhabitant and property owner in the 1780 tax records of Boston. (Awkwardly, one of the properties he’d inherited from his father abutted the Boston home of John Manley.)

TOMORROW: Capt. Dobel in postwar Boston.

Profiling Owen Richards’s Attackers

Last night as I finished the posting about Owen Richards taking his attackers to court, I thought, “Who are those men he accused? Who would have more to say about them?”

And then I realized that researching bit players in Revolutionary Boston is what I do. It’s one of my signature moves. So I had to get cracking on that task.

The easiest accused man to find is Joseph Doble or Dobel. He was born about 1739, according to his reported age at death, and was one of the many children of John and Abigail Doble. John was born about 1703, reportedly in Somerset, England. Abigail was a Boston native. They married at the Presbyterian Meetinghouse in 1732.

John Doble was a sea captain who at some point retired from seafaring to become a merchant, selling Pennsylvania pork, pottery, glassware, wood, and other goods. He accumulated a wharf, at least three houses, and a shop on King Street—the Sign of Two Sugar-Loaves. Abigail Doble died in 1769. John Doble died, variously reported “in an advanced Age” and “very suddenly,” four years later. They were both buried on Copp’s Hill. Their son Joseph was the captain’s executor, and settling the estate took well over a decade.

Back on 8 Jan 1761, Joseph Doble and Mary Williams were married by the Rev. Andrew Eliot. Joseph was following his father’s career course, which is why he was legally labeled as a “mariner” in Richards’s writ. In the early 1760s, the Boston newspapers often reported on a captain named Doble sailing to or from Newfoundland and the cod fisheries. However, it’s usually impossible to know whether this was John Doble; an older son such as John, Jr., or William; or Joseph. The first definite sign of Joseph having his own command is a listing in the 18 July 1768 Boston Chronicle that he had cleared out the snow St. Joseph for Newfoundland. In August 1769 he was in charge of the brig Peggy.

None of the Dobles shows up on lists of politically active men in Boston, on either side. But John Doble’s status as a native of Britain makes it plausible that in late 1770 the Boston Gazette would sneer that Joseph’s “family Connections are among the better sort of folks, the friends of Government.” I therefore suspect he was the target of Owen Richards’s first reported writ that year, as well as the one dated January 1771 and preserved in the John Adams Papers.

Likely being involved in the attack on Richards wasn’t Joseph Doble’s only excitement in the year 1770. The 22 November Boston News-Letter reported:

Sunday Evening last about 6 o’clock, a Brig, Capt. Joseph Doble, from Newfoundland, ran on Egg-Rock near the Light-House, a Hole was beat in her Bottom, and she sunk: The Peoples Lives were saved, and the Rigging of the Vessell.

However, the 26 November Boston Evening-Post added that there were “about fourteen Hundred Quintals of Fish entirely lost.”

TOMORROW: Capt. Joseph Doble goes to war.

Owen Richards’s Lawsuits for Assault

When we left Owen Richards in May 1770, the magistrates of Boston were completely stymied in their inquiry into who had tarred and feathered him that month.

Richards, a Customs officer who had also been part of the disputes that led up to the Liberty riot of 1768, probably suspected those local officials weren’t really trying.

Eventually Richards took legal action himself. In On 24 Dec 1770 the Boston Gazette reported that he had

commenced an Action of Damage for Three Hundred Pounds lawful Money, against a young Gentleman of this Town, whose family Connections are among the better sort of folks, the friends of Government.

This Lad was taken by a single Writ and held to Bail—Upon his application to several of his near relations who are persons of fortune, to become sureties for him, we are told, they absolutely refus’d. But others had compassion upon him; for two Gentlemen were bound for his Appearance at Court.

The following 7 January an attorney—probably Samuel Fitch—wrote out a writ on Richards’s behalf, apparently aimed at another attacker:

Attach &c. Joseph Doble of Boston &c. Mariner, to answer unto Owen Richards of said Boston Yeoman, in a Plea of Trespass, for that the said Joseph, on the Eighteenth day of May last, 1770, Boston aforesaid, with Force and Arms an Assault on the Body of him the said Owen made and him did then and there violently beat, wound, bruise, and evil entreat, so that his Life was thereby put in great Danger, and He the said Joseph did then and there take and imprison him the said Owen, and him in Prison for a long Time, vizt. for the space of six hours, detained against Law, and the Custom of our Realm, and he the said Joseph then and there, did also grievously abuse the said Owen; forcibly took and placed him in a Cart, and stripped him naked to his Skin, and with Force as aforesaid, did tear off, from his Body, and take from him, his Hatt, Wigg, Coat, Waistcoat, and Shirt, and also a gold Sleeve Button, two Handkerchiefs, his Pocket Book, with sundrie Papers therein of the Value of [blank] vizt. an original Note of Hand, for seven Pounds, Ten Shillings, and Sundrie, original Receipts for Moneys paid, and other Papers of Value, also one Piece of Gold Money, called a Johannes, and two Spanish milled Dollars in Silver, being all of the Value of Thirty Pounds lawfull Money, none of which Things so taken from him the said Owen, have ever been returned to him again and He the said Joseph did then and there also cover and besmear the said Owen, Head, Face, and naked Body, with Tar and cover him over with Feathers, upon said Tar, and cruelly and inhumanly set fire to said Feathers; and then and there dragged said Owen in said Cart, through diverse Streets of said Town of Boston, and from one End of said Town to the other, for the Space of Six Hours, as aforesaid, and fixed a Label to his the said Owens Breast, with Writing thereon importing that he the said Owen was a common Informer, and in that Condition exposed him the said Owen to the Contempt and Resentment of our liege Subjects, and as a public Spectacle, thro said Town, and other Outrages and Enormities, on him the said Owen, He the said Joseph then and there committed, against our Peace, To the Damage &c. £1000.

Fitch filed that writ in April 1771, almost a year after the attack and 250 years ago this month. Richards sued two more men named Benjamin Jones and Joseph Akley (Aikley, Heakley) for assault. (That makes three or four suits, depending on whether either Doble, Jones, or Akley was the “young Gentleman” sued in December.)

Meanwhile, in February 1771 the Crown brought criminal charges for the same riot against a man named George Hamblin.

If that seems confusing, all I can say is that I’m not really clear on the whole situation myself. The colonial legal system is hard enough to understand already, few cases like these have left complete records, and I’m relying on mentions in the Legal Papers of John Adams.

TOMORROW: Tracking down the defendants?

“Strict Examination into the Affair of taring, feathering & carting Owen Richards”

Yesterday’s posting quoted two accounts of the assault on Customs employee Owen Richards on 18 May 1770.

Richards and a colleague had caught a ship’s captain from Connecticut trying to sneak in undeclared barrels of sugar. They refused a bribe and used their legal powers to confiscate the cargo and the ship.

That evening, a waterfront mob grabbed Richards, tarred and feathered him, paraded him through town, and threatened to do the same to the other Customs men.

This was a couple of months after the royal government had pulled soldiers from the center of town following the Boston Massacre. The first tar-and-feathers attack in Boston had occurred in October 1769, when the troops were still there, so there’s no guarantee a larger military presence would have protected Richards. But Customs officials certainly argued that withdrawing the regiments had turned the town over to the mob.

On 21 May, two of those officials—William Sheaffe, Deputy Collector, and Robert Hallowell, Deputy Comptroller—prepared a report on the incident for their superiors, the Commissioners of Customs. They gathered three accounts from lower-level officers called tidesmen:

• John Woart, also attacked but more mildly.
• Josiah King and Joshua Dutton, who had hidden from the mob in the captain’s cabin of the ship they were supposed to be patrolling.

The Customs service didn’t have the power to arrest anyone for assault; it could only seize property. So Sheaffe and Hallowell set about doing that. King and Dutton testified about hearing “a great noise of People on the Deck, Knocking with Sticks, or Clubs.” Sheaffe and Hallowell interpreted that as

such hideous noises & thumping of Clubs and handspikes that they durst not venture out for a great part of the night during which time it is violently suspected, that part of the sugars, with other goods were taken out, which is very much confirmed, by our going Early the next morning into the Hold, and finding a great Vacancy on the starboard side of the Vessell the Ceiling of the Hold maked with the drainings of the Sugar Casks and but one or two of those Casks marked with —> the day before by Mr. Richards. . . .

We found in the Vessell seventeen hogsheads four teirces & two barrells Sugar, which are in the Store at the Custom house, which with the Vessell will be Immediately prosecuted [i.e., seized].

I saw those documents in the Treasury Papers at the National Archives in London. In the long run they might have helped to influence royal policy in Boston, but they didn’t do much for Owen Richards. The only officials who could indict the rioters who assaulted him were the town’s justices of the peace.

The Massachusetts Council was scheduled to meet on 23 May, but acting governor Thomas Hutchinson called those gentlemen together on the same day Sheaffe and Hallowell made their report. They agreed that “it does not appear that the Justices of the Peace within the Town of Boston have made any enquiry, or taken any notice of such disorder.”

The Council therefore advised Hutchinson to send for the justices. The Boston Post-Boy reported how the governor

enjoined them to meet, and make strict Examination into the Affair of taring, feathering & carting Owen Richards, as mentioned in our last, and to bind over such Persons, as shall appear to have been active in it, to answer the same in due Course of Law; and that in all Respects they pursue the Steps of the Law, in order to bring the Offenders to Justice.

But the result?

The Same Day and the Day following His Majesty’s Justices met at the County Court-House, and sent for several Persons as Evidences, but could obtain no Intelligence of any one that was concerned.

Even though parts of the attack on Owen Richards had taken place on King Street in the center of town, no one would identify any of the men involved.

TOMORROW: Owen Richards goes to court.

Looking Back on the Owen Richards Attack

Last December, starting here, I wrote about the tar-and-feathers attack on a Customs employee named Owen Richards in May 1770.

The fallout from that event lasted for years, so I’m going to resume the story.

But first, for review, here’s the merchant John Rowe’s summary of the attack in his diary for 18 May:

Just as I was going to bed there was a very great Hallooing in the street & a mob of upwards a thousand people—it seems they had got an informer & put him in a Cart, covered with Tar & Feathers & so exhibited him thro’ the Streets.

For a more detailed description, we can turn to Esther Forbes’s Paul Revere and the World He Lived In, quoting the merchant Samuel Salisbury (shown above, decades later):

I perceived candles in a number of windows,

what, thinks I, is there an illumination tonight?

Getting home I was informed that an Informer had been carted through the streets, Tarred and feathered.

After I had been to the Barber’s my Curiosity led me to the point at New Boston [the western tip of the peninsula] where I found the Informer in a Cart before Capt [John] Homer’s door surrounded with a great number of People

he had his shirt taken off & his bare skin tarred & Feathered. Sometimes they would make him say one thing sometimes another. Sometimes he must hold the Lanthorn this way, sometimes that, then he must hold up a glass Bottle & Swear he would never do so agin & let the bottle fall down & break & then Huzzah—

from thence they carried him into King Street Let him get out of the Cart made a lane down the street where 3 or 4 carried him off from the multitude in safety, being about nine o’clock.

The mob that attacked George Gailer, another man accused of helping the Customs service, in October 1769 also made him “carry the lantren in his hand & calling to all the inhabitince to put Candles in their Windoes.”

I can’t find a precedent for making Richards swear an oath and drop a bottle, though. It looks like a folk ritual of some sort, with the extra appeal of breaking stuff.

As Salisbury reported, the crowd eventually let Richards’s friends pull him away and get him home safely.

TOMORROW: Going to court.

Commemorating Patriots Day 2021 Safely

Here in Massachusetts we’re still in a race to vaccinate people against the Covid-19 virus even as cases are rising again. The end of the pandemic is in sight, but we need to minimize casualties.

Wisely, the local organizations that lead the commemoration of the Battle of Lexington and Concord are offering online events and discouraging crowds.

On Tuesday, 6 April, the Concord Museum is hosting a “Virtual April 19, 1775, Community Night,” as described here:

Local communities answered the alarm on April 19, 1775. Now, we muster again to commemorate the towns that responded to Paul Revere, William Dawes, and additional alarm riders and converged on the British Regulars in a fight that began an eight-year war for independence.

Join us for a virtual evening with Curator, David Wood, Peggy N. Gerry Curatorial Associate, Erica Lome, and historian and author of The Minutemen and Their World, Robert Gross, for an inside look at the roles Provincials from communities across Massachusetts played in the events now celebrated on Patriots Day.

Get an inside look at the Museum’s new April 19, 1775 exhibition including animations and signature artifacts including the signal lantern hung in the North Church that began the events of that faithful day.

Other organizations involved are the Acton Historical Society, Arlington Historical Society, Bedford Historical Society, Billerica Historical Society, Cambridge Historical Society, Lexington Historical Society, Lincoln Historical Society, Maynard Historical Society, Medford Historical Society, Sudbury Historical Society, The Historical Society of Watertown, and the Edmund Fowle House & Museum.

The community event is scheduled to take place from 7:00 to 8:00 P.M. It’s possible to register and tune in for free, but a $5 donation is requested from those who can afford it.

The town of Lexington is offering similarly safe activities for families and individuals through the 19th. These include online talks by John U. Rees, Carol Berkin, Alexander Cain, and other historians through the Cary Memorial Library. The Lexington Historical Society’s historic taverns are open on a limited basis.

The Scottish Rite Masonic Museum and Library in Lexington has put up an online exhibit of a copy of Joseph Palmer’s letter reporting on the first fighting carried by Isaac Bissell and other riders.

The staff and volunteers of Minute Man National Historical Park have prepared many videos to share for a “Virtual Patriots’ Day” experience through Facebook, YouTube, and other platforms. The Friends of Minute Man webpage explains the offerings. In addition, the park’s main visitor center is now open at limited capacity seven days a week, there are staff outside the North Bridge visitor center Wednesday through Sunday, and the park grounds remain open for outdoor exploration.

History Camp America 2021 and Other Conferences to Enjoy

I’ve been presenting at and enjoying History Camp Boston since 2014 (as shown here). Last year the pandemic stopped this conference from happening. This year, the prospect of traveling and gathering is still uncertain, though the situation is looking better and better rather than worse and worse.

History Camp is therefore going online live and national on 10 July, with presentations from 8:45 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. Eastern time.

The organization has just issued an invitation to people interested in presenting live talks about historical topics to propose sessions. There’s no limitation by theme, geography, period, or methodology. Talks in the past have covered historical people and events, research methods, challenges in managing historic sites, and more.

The organizing schedule is:

• Presenter applications due by Tuesday, 1 June
• All presenters informed of status by Thursday, 10 June
• All presenters must register for the conference by Tuesday, 15 June
• Speakers supply final titles, descriptions, bios, and headshots by Thursday, 17 June
• Training and testing of people’s connections and graphics begin Thursday, 1 July
• History Camp America 2021 on Saturday, 10 July!

As at the Boston and other regional History Camps, anyone with knowledge about a historical topic is welcome to propose a presentation. Because of the limited number of slots, however, I expect the choice of sessions will be strict and narrow. The organization offers detailed guidance about presenting for people not used to the format.

Meanwhile, History Camp is still producing its weekly online discussions with historical authors and experts every Thursday at 8:00 P.M. Eastern. All those videos are available for viewing.

In other news about non-academic history conferences, the Fort Plain Museum has announced new, later dates for two of its events in central New York:

• Annual American Revolution Mohawk Valley Conference, 6-8 August
• First Annual Sir William Johnson and the Wars for Empire Conference, 15-17 October

Regrettably but understandably, the American Revolution Conference organized by America’s History, L.L.C., at Colonial Williamsburg in recent years has been cancelled for 2021. All of us who enjoyed that gathering hope to see it return in some way in a healthy new year.

Locating “Revolution Happened Here”

Here’s a digital public history project to keep an eye on the coming years: Revolution Happened Here: Our Towns in the American Revolution, from the Pioneer Valley History Network.

This website invites local history organizations from western Massachusetts to upload pictures of Revolutionary-era items and the stories behind them.

As the project description says:

This website will become a place where visitors can discover how the American Revolution, while globally seismic in its consequences, was at its heart intrinsically local and intensely personal.

To be sure, there’s some regional rivalry or healthy resentment involved:

In the conventional, top-down history of the Revolution, western Massachusetts towns simply reacted to the ideas, decisions and actions of elites from Boston, the presumed hub of Revolutionary activity. Revolution Happened Here will enrich and complicate this narrative by sharing the debates and experiences in our towns.

Because of the Connecticut and Hudson Rivers, many towns in western Massachusetts had more business and other interaction with the colonies of Connecticut and New York than with Boston. Plus, the issues of import tariffs and military occupation that roiled Boston from 1767 to the start of the war had less direct impact on farming communities.

That makes the developments at the end of summer 1774 all the more striking. While Bostonians chafed under the return of troops, most other communities were free to organize and protest against the Massachusetts Government Act. The westernmost county began the court-closing movement in August, and it spread eastward.

Western Massachusetts returned to that tactic after the war, “regulating” courts again in protest of what the region’s small farmers saw as economic and legal hardships. The Boston trading class responded by dubbing that movement “Shays’ Rebellion” and raising funds for a militia force to put it down.

Some of the interesting artifacts on display on the Revolution Happened Here site include:

• The gravestone of John Morrison, who arrived as a soldier in one of Britain’s Highlander regiments and defected.
• A letter from Continental soldier Caesar Phelps to the man who had enslaved him and sent him into the army.
• Thirteen-year-old Anna Stoddard’s sampler, from a family ostracized in Northampton for Loyalism.
• The notebooks of Dr. Estes Howe, regimental surgeon and Belchertown town clerk.
• Another copy of Paul Revere’s Massacre print, because some folks in the valley did care a little about Boston.

And this online collection should grow as the Sestercentennial proceeds.

Monumental Events, Upcoming and Recorded

Here are links to four events, two upcoming and two already recorded, about how we preserve and commemorate American history in concrete forms.

Last November, historian Judy Anderson gave an online talk about “The History of Fort Sewall.” Marblehead built a fortification on a rocky point overlooking its harbor in 1644 and then rebuilt and strengthened the structure in several stages through the end of the eighteenth century.

Today the town uses the site as a public park. Anderson spoke about how changes at the fort reflected shifts in Marblehead and the broader Atlantic world.

That illustrated talk can now be viewed on YouTube.

On Wednesday, 7 April, the Paul Revere House and the Cyrus Dallin Art Museum in Arlington will host an online presentation about Cyrus Dallin, the sculptor who spent more than half a century working to see his statue of Paul Revere installed in the North End. In the meantime, Dallin created some other iconic sculptures, including the Angel Moroni on the Salt Lake Temple and the “Appeal to the Great Spirit” in front of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.

“A 57-Year Ride: Cyrus Dallin’s Quest to Raise his Iconic Paul Revere Statue” will start at 6:30 P.M., and folks can register here.

On Thursday, 8 April, Revolutionary Spaces will host a panel discussion on the theme “A New Space for Our Ideals: Revolutionary-Era Buildings As Monuments.” The event description says:

Many Americans visit Revolutionary Era sites to connect to our national founding story and ideals. These places were not built as monuments, but previous generations turned them into just that: Iconic places that venerate the past to create a collective American identity. Yet the stories embedded in these sites are often of white founding fathers with ideas that continue to inspire us, and actions that fall well short of their rhetoric.

“A New Space for Our Ideals” asks us to reckon with the role these Revolutionary sites play as monuments in our society, and how we might view them as an invitation to a contemporary conversation about our national values.

The panelists for that discussion will be:

• Gary Sandling, Vice President of Visitor Programs and Services at the Thomas Jefferson Foundation
• Nathaniel Sheidley, CEO of Revolutionary Spaces
• Kyera Singleton, Executive Director of the Royall House & Slave Quarters
• Karin Wulf, Professor of History at William & Mary and Director of the Omohundro Institute
• moderator Cristela Guerra, arts and culture reporter for WBUR’s The ARTery

That online event will start at 5:30 P.M., and here’s the registration link.

Finally, for a more light-hearted look at the same themes, Revolutionary Spaces also offers an installment of its Tea Party Tonight! “history-themed comedy talk show” with Rob Crean on the theme of “Monuments and Historical Memory.” This episode features as guests the artist and activist Tory Bullock and the historian Jacqueline Beatty. It can be viewed here.

All these online events are free to the public, so donations to the Marblehead Museum, Paul Revere House, Cyrus Dallin Art Museum, and Revolutionary Spaces are welcome.

(The photograph above shows Cyrus Dallin’s statue “Memory” in Sherborn.)