“Even more exciting when you fully engage with its ambiguity“

Last month the Age of Revolutions site ran Tom Cutterham’s interview with Woody Holton about his new book, Liberty Is Sweet.

The conversation is as much about the process of writing that book and the current public debate about Revolutionary legacies as about the American Revolution itself.

That approach has its own interests, as this long passage from Holton early in the conversation shows:

I really wanted to reach people who love history but don’t realize that what they have seen so far—mostly wealthy white men—is only the tip of the iceberg. My pitch to American Revolution lovers is that their favorite topic becomes even more exciting when you fully engage with its ambiguity and kaleidoscopic diversity.

My focus on non-scholars shaped the book in two ways, only the first of which I anticipated. I knew history buffs would want a narrative, and I was happy to provide one, since one of my main points is that women’s, Indigenous, military, and all the other histories transpired on the same timeline, constantly influencing each other, and we miss a lot when we devote one chapter to African Americans, one to diplomacy, one to the economy, and so on. But going chronological does not have to mean merely telling stories. I tried to use events like the boughs of a Christmas tree, with the ornaments being placed where I paused the narrative to share various social historians’ insights as well as my own.

The unintended consequence of my determination to reach beyond college towns was that I became a military historian! My initial attitude toward the battles was cynical: amateur historians demand them, so I had to write them up. But as I began that research, I overcame the conventional academic prejudice that military history is mere storytelling, and I ended up offering what I consider some fairly new interpretations of the war.

Here’s one: the British realized early on that they could not win, since whenever they captured a hill—starting with Breed’s/Bunker—at the cost of 50 percent casualties, all the rebels had to do was drop back to the next hill and start the process over again. So all the Whigs (I found Patriots too partisan) had to do was stay on defense. But George Washington was initially bent on going on offense, and his classic elite-British-empire-masculine aggressiveness several times nearly ended in disaster. But he learned from his mistakes, and while he devised nearly a dozen plans to drive the British from their headquarters in Manhattan, he never actually executed even one of them. Ultimately Washington’s greatest contribution to the war effort was restraining his own aggressive instincts.

Here’s the whole interview.

“Thee, and Thy Indecencies, was the Subject of our Discourse”

Samuel Keimer was Philadelphia’s second printer, after Andrew Bradford. He opened his shop in 1723 and, on Bradford’s suggestion, hired a teenager recently arrived from Boston named Benjamin Franklin as his assistant.

Franklin is our main source on Keimer, and he wasn’t complimentary. He described the older man as owning worn-out type and an old press he needed help to get running properly. Still, working for Keimer was Franklin’s first paid job after he had released himself from his Boston apprenticeship.

In 1728 Keimer launched Philadelphia’s second newspaper (after Bradford’s American Weekly Mercury). He titled it The Universal Instructor in all Arts and Sciences: and Pennsylvania Gazette. Part of the business plan was to reprint all of Ephraim Chambers’s new Cyclopaedia in alphabetical installments.

That news annoyed Franklin, who had been planning to start a newspaper of his own. “I resented this,” he wrote later in his autobiography. Franklin responded to Keimer’s Pennsylvania Gazette like too many young men with ambition, brains, and a keen understanding of the media: he started trolling.

On 21 Jan 1729, Keimer reprinted the article on abortion from the Chambers’s Cyclopaedia, as quoted yesterday. Eight days later, two letters appeared in the American Weekly Mercury:

Having had several Letters from the Female Sex, Complaining of S.K. I have thought fit to Publish the Two following.

Mr. Andrew Bradford,
In behalf of my Self and many good modest Women in this City (who are almost out of Countenance) I Beg you will Publish this in your next Mercury, as a Warning to Samuel Keimer: That if he proceed farther to Expose the Secrets of our Sex, in That audacious manner, as he hath done in his Gazette, No. 5. under the Letters, A.B.O. To be read in all Taverns and Coffee-Houses, and by the Vulgar: I say if he Publish any more of that kind, which ought only to be in the Repositary of the Learned; my Sister Molly and my Self, with some others, are Resolved to run the Hazard of taking him by the Beard, at the next Place we meet him, and make an Example of him for his Immodesty. I Subscribe on the behalf of the rest of my Agrieved Sex. Yours
24 January, 1728.
Martha Careful

Friend Andrew Bradford,
I desire Thee to insert in thy next Mercury, the following Letter to Samuel Keimer, for by doing it, Thou may perhaps save Keimer his Ears, and very much Oblige our Sex in general, but in a more Particular manner. Thy modest Friend,
Caelia Shortface

Friend Samuel Keimer,
I did not Expect when thou puts forth Thy Advertisement concerning Thy Universal Instructor, (as Thou art pleas’d to call it,) That, Thou would have Printed such Things in it, as would make all the Modest and Virtuous Women in Pennsilvania ashamed.

I was last Night in Company with several of my Acquaintance, and Thee, and Thy Indecencies, was the Subject of our Discourse, but at last we Resolved, That if thou Continue to take such Scraps concerning Us, out of thy great Dictionary, and Publish it, as thou hath done in thy Gazette, No. 5, to make Thy Ears suffer for it: And I was desired by the rest, to inform Thee of Our Resolution, which is That if thou proceed any further in that Scandalous manner, we intend very soon to have thy right Ear for it; Therefore I advice Thee to take this timely Caution in good part; and if thou canst make no better Use of Thy Dictionary, Sell it at Thy next Luck in the Bag; and if Thou hath nothing else to put in Thy Gazette, lay it down, I am, Thy Troubled Friend,
27th of the 11th Mo. 1728.
Caelia Shortface

The editors of the Papers of Benjamin Franklin concluded that the author of these letters was actually Franklin, adopting female pseudonyms as he had earlier as “Silence Dogood” and later as “Polly Baker.”

Writing in the Mercury a week later as “The Busy-Body,” Franklin addressed the controversy: “let the Fair Sex be assur’d, that I shall always treat them and their Affairs with the utmost Decency and Respect.” Of course, he had also created the controversy.

It’s notable that the letters didn’t object to Keimer printing information about abortion as we understand it today. Indeed, except for one ambiguous phrase, the reprinted Cyclopaedia text was all about what we call miscarriages. But according to the letters, that article still exposed the “Secrets of our Sex” and amounted to “Indecencies.”

Franklin continued pick at Keimer and his newspaper as “the Busy-Body” for several more months. In October, crushed by debts, Keimer made plans to move to Barbados. Before doing so, he sold the Pennsylvania Gazette to Franklin and a partner. There were no “Busy-Body” letters in the Mercury, nor were “Martha Careful” and “Caelia Shortface” ever heard from again.

Samuel Keimer launched the Barbadoes Gazette in 1731, the first newspaper in the Caribbean. He kept it running until 1738 and died four years later.

A 1728 Cyclopaedia on “Abortion”

In the 1720s a British writer named Ephraim Chambers labored to create one of the first general reference books in English.

Chambers’s Cyclopaedia, or an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences made its two-volume debut in 1728. The University of Wisconsin shares complete scans here.

One of the early entries is the word “Abortion,” and it offers more evidence about how people of the eighteenth century viewed the termination of pregnancy. Chambers wrote:

ABORTION, in Medicine, an Immature Exclusion of the Foetus; or the Delivery of a Women with Child, before the legitimate Term; popularly call’d Miscarriage. . . .

This may happen at any time of Pregnancy; but if before the second Month after Conception, it is properly call’d a false Conception. . . .

The usual Causes of Abortion, are immoderate Evacuations, violent Motions, sudden Passions, Frights, &c. Other Causes are the largeness and heaviness of the Foetus, Irritations of the Womb, Relaxation of the Ligaments of the Placenta, Weakness, and want of Nourishment in the Foetus; excess of eating, long fasting or waking, the use of Busks for the Shape, offensive Smells, violent Purgatives; and, in the general, any thing that tends to promote the Menses.

That last item shows how people understood medicinal regimens to restore regular menstrual periods, as quoted yesterday, would also bring about abortions.

Indeed, while we treat miscarriage and abortion as separate categories, Chambers made no distinction between them. He didn’t dwell on whether an “abortion” was induced or natural. He did warn:

Abortion is dangerous where the Time of Pregnancy is far advanc’d so that the Foetus may be large, where the Cause is very violent, the Patient strongly convulsed, a large Hemorrhage precedes or ensues, the Foetus is putrify’d, &c.

Under other Circumstances it rarely proves mortal.

This Cyclopaedia entry says nothing about legal, ethical, or religious aspects of abortion or miscarriage.

Now Chambers also wrote, “We have instances of Abortions by the way of the Mouth, the Anus, the Navel, &c.” And “ABORTION [as a term] is also used where the Child dies in the Womb; tho it remain there many Years, or even as long as the Mother lives.” So I’m not saying Chambers and his contemporaries had a completely accurate understanding of pregnancy.

Soon after the Cyclopaedia appeared in London, the Philadelphia printer Samuel Keimer decided to run pieces of it in his new newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette. Keimer worked alphabetically, so it wasn’t long before he reached the entry for “Abortion.”

TOMORROW: A famous Founder’s response.

Franklin and a “common Complaint among unmarry’d Women”

Slate just published an article by Molly Farrell that puts more light on how eighteenth-century Americans really viewed abortion.

In 1748 Benjamin Franklin was preparing an edition of The Instructor by George Fisher, a popular British book of advice on “everything from arithmetic to letter-writing to caring for horses’ hooves.”

Any American printers willing to set the type could publish their own edition of The Instructor, so Franklin looked for a way to make his publication stand out. He announced his American Instructor would be “better adapted to these American Colonies, than any other book of the like kind.”

Americanizing the text meant replacing British place names with American ones, inserting histories of the colonies, and adding large chunks of new material.

Franklin’s American Instructor ended with the text of Every Man His Own Doctor: or, The Poor Planter’s Physician, by John Tennent (d. 1748). Tennent was a British phyisician who published this advice in 1725 soon after arriving in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Franklin had reprinted Tennent’s book in 1736, adding the doctor’s thoughts on pleurisy. In 1749 he would copublish a German translation. So he was quite familiar with its contents.

One of Dr. Tennent’s topics included in The American Instuctor was a “common Complaint among unmarry’d Women, namely, the Suppression of the Courses.” In other words, not having their regular menstrual periods.

For this Misfortune, you must purge with Highland Flagg, (commonly called Bellyach Root [and angelica]) a Week before you expect to be out of Order; and repeat the same two Days after; the next Morning drink a Quarter of Pint of Pennyroyal Water, or Decoction, with 12 Drops of Spirits of Harts-horn [or century plant], and as much again at Night, when you go to Bed. Continue this 9 Days running; and after resting 3 Days, go on with it for 9 more.

Angelica, pennyroyal, and century plant were all long known in Europe as abortifacients.

As Farrell points out, Tennent also advised women in need of this remedy not to “long for pretty Fellows, or any other Trash whatsoever.” Everyone knew how a pretty fellow might produce a troublesome stoppage of an unmarried woman’s menstrual flow.

The American Instructor contained a lot of other basic advice in various fields. Still, it’s striking how, forty years before Benjamin Franklin participated in the Constitutional Convention, the successful printer deemed an abortifacient regimen part of the information his fellow American colonists should know.

A Case Study of Abortion in Colonial America

In 1991 Prof. Cornelia Hughes Dayton published a paper titled “Taking the Trade: Abortion and Gender Relations in an Eighteenth-Century New England Village” in the William and Mary Quarterly.

In 2007 students at the University of Connecticut created this website exploring the same case, using Dayton’s analysis, transcriptions, photographs of the sites involved, and more. (This may have grown from the similar work of Prof. Larry Cebula or it may have been a parallel effort.)

The “Taking the Trade” paper and website examine a dispute in colonial Connecticut. In 1742, Sarah Grosvenor of Pomfret ended an unwanted pregnancy by inducing a miscarriage, having used both medicinal and surgical means, but she died two months later.

Grosvenor’s family complained about the man who had impregnated her, Amasa Sessions. Many colonial New England men in that situation married their sexual partners and went on to have more children, however grudging the partnership was. In contrast, Sessions pressed Grosvenor to take an abortifacient provided by Dr. John Hallowell of Killingley.

In 1746, Sessions and Hallowell were indicted for the reckless murder of Sarah Grosvenor—but not for trying to induce an abortion. In fact, Grosvenor’s sister had also helped her end the pregnancy, but she was not indicted. The surviving documents don’t offer answers for all the questions they raise, but they make clear that eighteenth-century New Englanders knew about abortion and viewed it primarily as a private matter not involving the government. Providing an unsafe abortion was potentially criminal.

A crucial aspect of how Sarah Grosvenor and her contemporaries understood her situation was the “quickening”—the moment when a pregnant woman can feel the fetus move inside her body. Only then, according to the thinking of the time, did a soul enter the fetus, making it a person. That was usually about twenty weeks into a pregnancy.

The U.S. of A. is currently in a heated discussion about Justice Samuel Alito’s draft decision upending American women’s right to abortion, federally guaranteed for almost half a century. That draft claims there is a longer history of laws against abortion.

However, as Prof. Holly Brewer has pointed out, all of the draft’s so-called legal precedents from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ban abortion procedures only after the quickening. Other cited laws banned abortion methods on the grounds they were unsafe for the woman, not because they ended her pregnancy.

This is a problem with “originalist” jurisprudence: determining modern law based on history requires actually understanding that history in all its nuances, not just plucking out details that suit the result the judge desires. As the “Taking the Trade” paper and website show, colonial Americans didn’t view safe abortion as a criminal matter.

A Dutch-English Graphic Novel about Slavery

I’ve written before about John Gabriel Stedman (1744–1797), a mercenary of British and Dutch parentage who volunteered to be an officer in the campaign to fight Maroons who had escaped from slavery in Surinam.

In 1796 Stedman published a memoir about that experience, which the publisher augmented with horrific illustrations by William Blake and other artists.

Stedman’s diary shows him to have been fairly active in exploiting enslaved people, especially on the sexual side, but also caustic about the institution. He carefully edited the memoir to be more acceptable on both counts to the British reading public at the time. Nonetheless, it became an important document for British abolitionists.

Among the people Stedman encountered as an officer was a recently kidnapped African boy named Quaco, loaned to him as a personal servant. The Dutch author Ineke Mok reconstructed that boy’s life for a graphic novel titled Quaco: My Life in Slavery.

Eric Heuvel drew the art for this comic using the “clear line” style that American readers probably know best from Hergé’s Tintin adventures. But here the adolescent crossing the globe after being enslaved. It feels incongruous to me at first, but Heuvel has reached a young international audience by exploring World War II in similar style.

Quaco: My Life in Slavery was published in Dutch in 2016. Recently the University of Sheffield’s School of Languages and Cultures made a collective student project out of translating the book and its teaching materials into English.

This article from Sheffield offers some sneak peeks of the project, and the book is offered for sale through this website. 

A Rare Opportunity to Own a Famous Painting

On 12 May, you’ll have the opportunity to buy Washington Crossing the Delaware as painted by Emanuel Leutze through the Christie’s auction house.

Of course, the picture could cost north of $15 million.

Leutze made three versions of his most famous painting, virtually identical images but at different sizes.

The earliest, created in 1849, hung in a German museum until it was destroyed during World War II, according to a précis on the Smithsonian Magazine website.

Leutze also painted a monumental version twenty-one feet wide, and that’s now on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Around the same time he created a six-foot-wide version, sending it to an American art dealer and engraving publisher. That’s the canvas on sale this month.

In 1973 an anonymous collector bought that painting for $260,000 and loaned it to the White House for display through the Bicentennial. In 2014 Mary Burrichter and Bob Kierlin, a hardware-store magnate, bought the painting for an unknown sum and hung it at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum, which they founded.

And now it can be yours.

The Once and Future Abigail Adams Statues

Thanks to an alert from Boston 1775 friend Patrick Flaherty, I started following a story out of Quincy about the city’s statue of Abigail Adams.

As shown here, it’s actually a statue of Abigail and her second child, John Quincy Adams, about 1777. It was created by the late Lloyd Lillie and installed near the Church of the Presidents in 1997. It faced a matching statue of John Adams across the street, symbolizing the years the couple spent apart.

About ten years ago, Quincy mayor Thomas Koch and nonprofits aligned with him set about refurbishing that area, which is also near city hall. New statues of John Adams and John Hancock by Sergei Eylanbekov now stand at entrances of the resulting park, called the Hancock-Adams Common.

In 2013 the mayor stated that the statue of Abigail and John Quincy Adams would not be removed, but as work progressed it was, and it remains in storage.

The big issue with restoring that sculpture appears to be that the new figures of Hancock and John Adams are on a larger scale, and elevated. The old statue of Adams’s wife and child wouldn’t make a good match with them.

There was a plan to put the older Adams statues in Merrymount Park, which the Adams family once owned and donated to the city. That’s the city’s largest and most visited park, but it’s not at the city center, and the size means individual monuments can be lost in it. (In fact, there was a marker with a bas-relief honoring the two President Adamses, and I can’t tell if it’s still there.) Another idea is moving the Lillie statues into Adams National Historical Park, which makes sense if Congress grants the park enough resources to install and maintain them.

The idea of naming a new performance arts center after Abgail Adams and her daughter-in-law, Louisa Catherine Adams, has also been floating around. Originally that venue was to abut the Hancock-Adams Common, but now it’s been moved down the street.

In March some Quincy residents rallied to bring a sculpture of Abigail Adams back to the city center. That prompted local press and a Boston Globe editorial in April. Notably, this attention highlighted Adams as a politically minded woman, not primarily (as the earlier statue showed her) a wife and mother. 

A couple of weeks later, Mayor Koch announced that the city (or its nonprofit partner) was commissioning a new statue of Abigail Adams from Eylanbekov, in size and style fitting with those already there. (The Boston Globe quoted one Abigail advocate as favoring a more “approachable” figure, “not being as high up on a pedestal”—though others might interpret putting her at ground level as lowering her status.)

Meanwhile, the city is also planning statues of the adult John Quincy Adams and his wife, Louisa. Plus there was an older stone statue of John Adams down the street. And what about John Hancock’s wife Dorothy? Josiah Quincy, Jr., and the other Quincys? Christopher Seider? They all came from that area.

Spilling the Tea on an Artifact

The American Independence Museum in Exeter, New Hampshire, will open for the season on Wednesday, 4 May.

Its first “Tavern Talk” of the year will be one week later, on 11 May. Alan R. Hoffman will speak on “Lafayette and Human Rights” at 6:30 P.M.

While visiting the museum website, I was intrigued by this webpage on a reported sample of “Boston Tea Party Tea,” part of a series called “30 Stories for 30 Years.” About the vial shown above, it says:

This tea is believed to have originated from Patriot Thomas Melvill (1751-1832), who participated in the Boston Tea Party. . . . It is believed that this vial contains the tea saved from Melvill’s shoe and was passed through the generations until it was eventually acquired by William Lithgow Willey [1857–1949] and donated to the Society of the Cincinnati.

However, that’s followed by a “Contemporary Interpretation” that says:

A document found in the Society’s archives pertaining to Willey’s estate following his death states that the vial is “labeled in W.L.W’s printing,” suggesting that the vial may not be the same one labeled by Melvill’s wife. The label has been dated to the nineteenth century, creating further doubt. . . . To date, no documentation has been found to determine how and where Willey acquired this vial, and its origins remain a mystery.

What’s more, the Old State House Museum in Boston holds a vial of tea from the Melvill family that was described as early as 1821, pictured in 1884, and donated to that collection in 1900, as I tracked here. That vial is featured on the Old State House’s website.

The two artifacts do look similar, which might have made them easy to confuse. Or was one created in imitation of the other?

“Underrepresented Voices” Conference in Boston, 14–16 July

The Massachusetts Historical Society has announced details of its upcoming conference on “Underrepresented Voices of the American Revolution,” to take place over three days from 14 to 16 July.

The conference introduction says:

In recent decades, scholars have unearthed and revived stories of a diverse and wide-ranging cast of characters who lived through America’s political formation. This much-needed corrective has unraveled a traditional narrative of wealthy white male revolutionaries rebelling against a white male dominated imperial government.

The lead up to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence offers an opportunity to highlight and share the latest scholarship on the topic of underrepresented voices of the American Revolution whether that be from the perspective of Native Americans, women, African Americans, loyalists, ethnic and religious minorities, children, or neutrals in a global war that put the question of representation at its core. This conference will bring together scholars to explore the broad themes associated with historic individuals or groups not traditionally considered in discussing the American Revolutionary Era.

The program for Thursday, 14 July, will take place at the M.H.S., starting in the afternoon. There will be one panel with two papers, a reception, and finally keynote remarks by Profs. Colin Calloway, Kathleen DuVal, and Chernoh Sesay. This part of the conference is free to all who register.

On Friday, 15 July, the action will move to Sargent Hall at Suffolk University. This full day’s program consists of four sessions, each with two panels featuring two to four academic papers and discussion (P.D.F. download of the full schedule). Registration for both Thursday and Friday costs $30.

Finally, on 16 July, K-12 teachers can participate in a full-day workshop led by Prof. Chernoh Sesay, Prof. (and former schoolteacher) G. Patrick O’Brien, master teachers, and M.H.S. education staff. The goals will be to “identify important takeaways from the conference, reflect on the accessibility of current scholarship for the K-12 classroom, and discuss best practices for introducing the major themes of the conference to our students.” Participants will have a chance to develop their own instructional materials in collaboration with scholars and fellow educators. This day also costs $30.

Two Revolutionary Conferences in Central New York

Two Revolutionary history conferences are coming up in central New York this spring, both put together by experienced organizers and featuring expert speakers.

Saturday, 14 May, 9:00 A.M.–4:00 P.M.
Women in War: The Revolutionary Experience
Saratoga Town Hall, 12 Spring Street, Schuylerville

The presentations at this symposium will be:

• Dr. Holly Mayer, Professor Emerita at Duquesne University, “Women Warriors”
• Todd Braisted, “The Loyalist Women”
• Jenna Schnitzer, “The Army’s Essential Support—‘Camp Followers’”
• Jonathon House, “The Baroness Frederika Riedesel, a Revolutionary Sojourn and the Marshall House, Saratoga”
• Lois Huey, “Molly Brant, Native American Leader in Colonial America”

This event will benefit the historic Marshall House in Schuylerville, New York. The Saratoga County 250th American Revolution Commission and the Saratoga County History Center are co-sponsors.

Attendees must register in advance. Registration is $50 per person and includes a luncheon and refreshments. Attendees can visit the Marshall House following the event. To register, follow this link.

Thursday through Sunday, 9–12 June
2022 American Revolution Conference in the Mohawk Valley
Fulton-Montgomery Community College, Johnstown

The Fort Plain Museum’s annual conference will start with an optional “Drums Along the Mohawk” bus tour of the region on 9 June, including visits to the Fort Plain Museum, Fort Stanwix National Monument, Oriskany Battlefield, and more.

Presentations are scheduled to begin on Friday afternoon, with a speaker schedule too long and packed to reproduce entirely here. Topics include the war on the New York frontier, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, the Valley Forge winter, the southern campaigns to Yorktown, Washington and the “Newburgh conspiracy,” Continental officers’ ideas of honor, and an American privateer’s attack on British slaving vessels.

For the full schedule, visit this page (and check back since the lineup may change).

“Styling: Historic Hair” at Historic Deerfield, 29 Apr.

Historic Deerfield is hosting a symposium on historic hairdressing and wigs tomorrow, and it’s still possible to register for online viewing by 1:00 P.M. today.

“Styling: Historic Hair and Beauty Practices” explores the visual and material culture of hairdressing in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Atlantic World.

At the start of that period, influential men like the Rev. Increase Mather and Samuel Pepys expressed misgivings about the new fashion for wigs. Eventually wigs for men became de rigueur, a style we have a hard time understanding now. But maybe this one-day forum can help.

The event description says:

For the fashionable, interest in hair and hairdressing became as integral as clothing to the creation of a cosmopolitan appearance. The resulting confections reached new literal and figurative heights in the quest for distinction on both sides of the Atlantic.

Influences on hair and head dressing came from many sources. France was an acknowledged leader in all things à la mode, but other countries also contributed styles, materials, talent, and inspiration to dress the head. As important as appearance was, the question of who had access to the latest news and services of hairdressers and fashion merchants, and who did not, is also noteworthy. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, people traditionally marginalized from the dominant fashion conversations nonetheless expressed themselves through hair and inspired others in equally inventive ways.

The presenters are:

• Debbie Turpin, Colonial Williamsburg, “18th Century Wig-Making, From Shaven Head to Style.”
• Philippe Halbert, Yale University, “War Paint and Rouge: Keeping up Appearances in New France.”
• Ned Lazaro, Historic Deerfield, “‘This famous roll’: New England’s Hairstories.”
• Jonathan Michael Square, Parsons School of Design, “Hair, Headwrapping, and Black Beauty Culture.”
• Kimberly Chrisman Campbell, fashion historian, “Poufs and Politics: Women, Hair, and Power in the Reign of Louis XVI.”

For the schedule and registration information, go to this webpage by 1:00 P.M. today

“Money to pay said Company for said service”

Yesterday we reached the moment in Westborough’s town meeting on 30 Dec 1774 when the town voted not to pay its minute men anything extra.

Someone at the meeting then asked “if the Town expected any thing more of the Minit men than they did of other men.” The clerk’s notes don’t say who, but I can’t help but imagine it was Edmund Brigham or some other officer of the minute company, possibly working hard to keep his temper. After all, those men had already been training for months. Other towns had chosen to pay for extra training.

But that question, too, “past in ye negative.” Westborough officially decided to make no distinction between the minute company and its other militia companies aside from the name that the minute men had apparently taken for themselves.

Another town meeting stretched over 7 and 8 Feb 1775. Some citizens again brought up the question of special duties or pay for Westborough’s minute men. Ultimately the town “Voted at that all the Soldiers both minit men and others Train once a Fortnit four hours in a Day without pay.” This was a significant increase from the usual pace of four militia training days a year, but the majority of the town still wouldn’t expend any extra money or grant the minute company special status.

Someone—again we don’t know who—asked the town to reconsider that vote. The attendees agreed and went home for the night. Perhaps they agreed in order to go home for the night.

Official town records don’t describe any other meeting until March. However, on 20 Feb the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman wrote in his diary about an imminent “Town Meeting on many Accounts, viz. whether they shall pay Minute Men; Contribution to Relief of Boston etc.” Charity for Boston’s poor was another financial question.

Parkman attended what he called a “Town Meeting and Training” the following afternoon. He spoke in favor of charity. He also told his congregants “exerting themselves to obtain Military skill, Arms, Ammunition etc., to improve their Time Well when they have T[own]. Meetings and Trainings — to endeavour after Unity and Harmony (for I perceived there were Jarrs).” One of Samuel Johnson’s definitions for the word “jar” was “Clash; discord; debate.”

That public discussion never went on the records as an official town meeting. There’s still no record of Westborough deciding to treat the minute company differently. People appear to have tried to get along.

On 6 March the town had its traditional big meeting of the year, electing officials and handling other annual business. That long gathering decided to make the men training on the town’s cannon part of the minute company.

Then war broke out on 19 April. Three Westborough militia companies mobilized, as David A. Nourse’s thorough research has shown. Some of those men signed on to serve for the rest of the year as part of the Massachusetts army, then the Continental Army. Others turned out for later militia duty on behalf of the state.

On 27 November, Capt. Brigham tried one more time. He submitted a document to the Westborough selectmen that said:

Gentlemen

The following is an Exact Acct. [of] what Service the Minute company performd in the training field according to the vote of the Town pass’d sometime in the last winter, and desire you wd. give me an order on the treasurer for the money to pay said Company for said service.

The document then listed forty-six men. Most were labeled as having served seven days, a couple six or five.

Notably, Westborough had just convened another town meeting on 13 November to discuss town bills, including extra pay for the Rev. Mr. Parkman, but pay for militia training didn’t come up.

At the big town meeting on 4 Mar 1776, the town elected Edmund Brigham as a constable. One of his new duties was to collect taxes. There was still no official mention of pay for his company.

However, if we look on the back of Brigham’s request for training pay, there’s a date of 16 Mar 1776 and the signatures of all the men named on the front, attesting that they had indeed received pay. Somehow, fourteen months after the issue was first raised, despite two town meetings voting to the contrary and no recorded vote in favor, Westborough officials came up with money for the minute men.

“To yncorage ye minit men so called”

In the fall of 1774, as I described yesterday, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress invited towns to form militia companies of “fifty privates, at the least, who shall equip and hold themselves in readiness, on the shortest notice.”

These special companies became known as “minute companies” or, alliteratively, “minute men.”

Not every town acted on the congress’s suggestion, however. For example, the smallish town of Lexington never formed a minute company. Technically, none of the militiamen on Lexington common during the first skirmish of the war were minute men.

Towns also differed in how they defined their minute men. Braintree, a larger town, fielded several companies of militia. Its town meeting decided to pay all members of the militia the same hourly rate for extra drills, but it asked ordinary companies to train for three hours every week and the minute company to train for four hours. Everyone was doing more military training that winter.

For Westborough we have two sources of information now handily digitized and on the internet. One is the handwritten record of the town meetings. The other is the diary of the town’s longtime minister, the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman.

As early as June 13, Westborough started to beef up its military defenses, approving the purchase of a cannon and the equipment to use it. In September, men from the town participated in closing Worcester County’s court and in the county convention that issued the first call for minute companies. But the meeting records don’t mention starting a minute company that summer or fall.

On 28 November, the Rev. Mr. Parkman wrote that there was a “Training of the Company of Minute Men, and Capt. [Seth] Morse’s Company.” Other entries identified the captain of the minute company as Edmund Brigham, who at the time was involved in a simmering dispute with the minister over a church matter. Evidently Brigham and his men had decided on their own to start doing more drills.

The Parkman diary mentions other groups, including “two artillery companys” active by August and “the (more Elderly) Alarm Men.” The alarm list was a standard part of the militia system, composed of men over age fifty and generally assigned lighter duties close to home.

Parkman also noted “a Number of Boys under their Capt. Moses Warrin.” Moses Warren (1760-1851) was only fourteen and not yet eligible to serve in the militia. His gang was probably just playing at being a military company, learning the drill to show off.

The first time the Westborough town records explicitly mention the minute company came on December 30. A town meeting on that date addressed the question:

To see if ye Town will grant any money to yncorage ye minit men so called to Train & Exercise themselves so that they may be fit & Quallified for Public Service if called there unto.

Everyone understood that “money to yncorage ye minit men” meant paying those men for their extra training. How Westborough defined its minute company thus came down to the issue that always roils town meetings—money.

The records show that proposal “past in the Negative”—i.e., the voters of Westborough chose not to pay the town’s minute men.

TOMORROW: Reconsidering.

“To be ready to act at a minute’s warning”

The minute man (or minuteman) has become an icon of the American Revolution, especially in New England.

Indeed, the term was invented just before the outbreak of war as a response to the population’s growing rift with the royal government.

The concept had deeper roots. As John R. Galvin showed in The Minute Men, the Massachusetts militia system had a tradition of developing companies of men who could turn out quickly during emergencies, fully equipped and well trained. A 1645 regulation told company commanders to choose thirty out of a hundred men “who shall be ready at half an hour’s warning.”

Other seventeenth-century wartime laws spoke of “a day’s warning” and “an hour’s warning,” based on the proximity of the danger. In 1675, as the conflict later named King Philip’s War broke out, a document spoke of militiamen “ready to march on a moment’s warning.”

In August 1774 the Massachusetts Government Act arrived from London, rewriting the colony’s constitution from above. This provoked widespread resistance in the countryside, with crowds forcing magistrates not to open the courts and driving royal appointees away. The militancy grew worse after the “Powder Alarm” of 1–2 September.

In those months, Worcester County towns were holding a series of conventions. The 21 September gathering issued a call for towns to reorganize their militia units to remove officers who accepted the Massachusetts Government Act. Another part of that call proposed that “each town of the county...enlist one third of the men of their respective towns, between sixteen and sixty years of age, to be ready to act at a minute’s warning.”

Within three weeks, on 5 October, the Boston merchant John Andrews told a relative in Philadelphia that Worcester County towns had “incorporated seven regiments” who “turn out twice a week to perfect themselves in the military art—which are call’d minute men, i.e., to be ready at a minute’s warning with a fortnight’s provision, and ammunition and arms.”

That phrasing shows that Andrews’s contemporaries were starting to use the term “minute men,” but it was still new enough to need explaining.

On 7 October, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress convened as a shadow legislature stepping into the vacuum of government outside Boston. About three weeks later that body started to organize a military force under its committee of safety. Among the steps the congress recommended to town militia companies was that officers

enlist one quarter, at the least, of the number of the respective companies, and form them into companies of fifty privates, at the least, who shall equip and hold themselves in readiness, on the shortest notice from the said committee of safety, to march to the place of rendezvous.

That official act didn’t specify a “minute,” but by November the congress was using the term “minute men” for these companies.

Nonetheless, the provincial congress issued its resolutions as recommendations, not requirements. The authority of town governments was firmer than its own, and this was supposed to be a bottoms-up rebuilding of a legitimate government. Thus, it was up to each town to decide whether to establish minute companies and how to define them.

TOMORROW: How that played out in Westborough.

Missing Militia Companies from Westborough

In 1975, during the Bicentennial, the town of Westborough dedicated a swath of land next to its reservoir, Sandra Pond, as Minuteman Park.

The town installed a bronze marker listing the names of all the members of its minute company from 1775. Those names appear to have come from the first part of The History of Westborough, Massachusetts, written by the Rev. Heman Packard DeForest and published in 1891.

More recently, Westborough resident David A. Nourse noticed some problems with that marker.

There were small errors, such as naming the captain of the minuteman company as Edward Brigham instead of (as the name appears in the local history, the original muster roll, and other documents) Edmund Brigham. Nourse spotted several other names changed to more common present-day spellings, one man with the wrong rank, and what looks like a last-minute substitute left off entirely.

But the bigger problem, Nourse felt, was that the marker commemorated only one company of local men who responded to the Lexington Alarm. Westborough had three militia companies, and all three submitted rolls to the Massachusetts government listing men who had marched on 19 April. In all there were 101 militiamen, and the plaque named only 46.

In April 2021, Nourse submitted a proposal to the Westborough select board proposing an additional plaque listing all 101 men, making sure the names appeared as they did in the muster rolls.

Nourse’s proposal on “Westborough’s Two Forgotten Revolutionary War Militia Companies” came with an impressive amount of historical documentation, including images of the three muster rolls from the state archives submitted by Brigham, Capt. Seth Morse, and Capt. Joseph Baker.

Nourse also found that DeForest’s book hadn’t transcribed any of those muster rolls but rather Brigham’s November 1775 record of distributing pay for five to seven days of training in the preceding winter. This sheet of paper includes every man’s signature as he received his pay—a striking historical record but not exactly the same thing as an April 1775 muster roll.

The select board referred the question of a new monument to the town’s Trustees of Soldiers’ Memorials. Before making any rash expenditures, they sought to have Nourse’s research vetted. That’s when a new corps entered the action: bloggers.

Anthony Vaver is both Westborough’s Local History Librarian and the creator of the Early American Crime site. On behalf of the town, he contacted me and Alexander Cain, who shares his Revolutionary research at Historical Nerdery. Vaver told me:

the Trustees are particularly interested in learning the difference between a “Minuteman” vs. a “Militiaman,” if indeed there is one. The park where the memorial sits is called Minuteman Park, and the memorial, of course, is meant to honor that name. We want to make sure that the definitions we are using are commonly, if not universally, accepted.

It turned out that Westborough had debated that very question in 1774 and 1775.

TOMORROW: The invention of the minutemen.

“I suppose they have all read it years ago”

In defending himself against the Crown’s charge of seditious libel in July 1777, the Rev. John Horne wanted to show it was reasonable of him to write two years before that Americans had been “inhumanly murdered by the king’s troops at Lexington and Concord.”

As a radical political activist, Horne probably also wanted to get the evidence behind that belief out to the public.

The Crown authorities, meanwhile, wanted to squelch Horne and his message.

One of Horne’s sources was a deposition signed in April 1775 by Lt. Edward Thoroton Gould, then a wounded prisoner in American hands. The trial record shows Horne’s struggle to get Gould’s words out in court over the obstacles of his prosecutor, Attorney General Edward Thurlow (shown here), and the presiding judge, Lord Chief Justice Mansfield.

Horne’s questioning of Gould continued like this:

I shall ask you no questions that you dislike; give me a hint if there is any one you wish to decline—Did you make any affidavit?

Yes, I did.

Will you please to read that? [Giving the witness the Public Advertiser, May 31, 1775.] I believe that to be the exact substance of the affidavit that I made.

Lord Mansfield. It cannot be read without the Attorney-General consents to it.

Attorney General. I don’t consent.

Lord Mansfield. If he consents to it, I have no objection.

Mr. Horne. May I give it to the jury?

Lord Mansfield. No; I suppose they have all read it years ago.

Mr. Horne. My lord, that is my misfortune that it is so long ago. [Mr. Horne begins to read it.]

Lord Mansfield. You must not read it.

Mr. Home. I have proved the publication by the printer.

Lord Mansfield. It will have a different consequence, if you only mean to prove that there was such an affidavit published. If you mean to make that use of it, then you may produce the affidavit, or have it read.—If you mean to prove the contents of it, they must come from the witness, and then you will have a right to have it read.

Mr. Horne. I mean both to prove the contents true, and the publication of the affidavit: that indeed, I have already proved.

Lord Mansfield. Then you may read the affidavit, if you make use of the publication of it.

Mr. Horne. I make use of both; that it was so published, and charged, and that it is true. “The Public Advertiser, Wednesday, May 31st, 1775.” [The affidavit read.]

Gould’s deposition still wasn’t included in the published trial record.

The former lieutenant agreed that the published text was accurate, but he reminded the jury he had said those things “at the time I was wounded and taken prisoner.”

Gould then went on to testify about how he and other officers marching to Lexington could see and hear the Middlesex County militia mobilizing around them. He talked about hearing “alarm guns,” even “cannon.” (“Did you say cannon?” asked Lord Mansfield.)

A juryman asked for clarification: “Pray who did the alarm guns belong to; to the Americans or our corps?” Gould affirmed those were signals from the provincials to each other.

The testimony that Horne elicited thus portrayed the Massachusetts populace as turning out for a military fight. He decided not to call Lord Percy, then in the courtroom, to add any details and rested his case.

Attorney General Thurlow then delivered a long legal argument, calling no witnesses. Chief Justice Mansfield summed up the case, particularly citing Gould’s testimony.

The jury took ninety minutes to decide the Rev. John Horne was guilty of seditious libel. He spent the next year in prison.

“Were you present at Lexington and Concord?”

The Rev. John Horne (later John Horne Tooke) was one of Britain’s political radicals in the 1770s.

He started the decade as a minister allied with John Wilkes. They quarreled, and he resigned his pulpit in order to study law (though eventually the bar wouldn’t accept him on the excuse that he had taken holy orders).

When London received the first word of the Revolutionary War breaking out, Horne immediately criticized the royal government. He even announced that he was raising money for the families of Americans “murdered by the king’s troops at Lexington and Concord.” He had fully adopted the version of the first day of the war propagated by the Massachusetts Provincial Congress.

The Crown brought Horne into court on the charge of seditious libel for using the word “murdered.” On 4 July 1777, coincidentally one year after the Declaration of Independence, he went on trial in London with Lord Chief Justice Mansfield presiding. A detailed record of the trial was made and published many times since.

Horne tried to call Lord George Germain, the Secretary of State, and Gen. Thomas Gage as witnesses. When the judges unsurprisingly didn’t allow that, he called Edward Thornton Gould, a former lieutenant in the 4th Regiment.

That young, wealthy officer had been wounded and captured in the battle. While in American hands, Gould signed a deposition that I quoted way back here.

In describing the skirmish at Lexington, Gould said, “which party fired first I can not exactly say.” About Concord he stated, “the provincials came down upon us, upon which we engaged and gave the first fire.” While this was far from supporting the charge of “murdering,” it differed from most army officers and Gen. Gage’s official report in not blaming the provincials for firing first.

At the trial, Horne, representing himself, questioned Gould this way:

Did you in the year 1775 serve in a regiment of foot belonging to his majesty?

I did.

Were you present at Lexington and Concord on the 19th of April 1775?

I was.

How came you to be there?

As a subaltern officer, ordered there.

Ordered by whom?

General Gage.

At what time did you receive those orders?

I don’t recollect immediately the time.

Was it on the 19th, 18th, or 17th of April?

I believe it was on the 18th in the evening.

Did you receive them personally from general Gage?

No such thing.

Whom then?

From the adjutant of the regiment.

When did you set out from Boston for Lexington?

I cannot exactly say the time in the morning, but it was very early, two or three o’clock.

That is in the night in April, was it dark?

It was.

Did you march with drums beating?

No, we did not.

Did you march as silently as you could?

There were not any particular orders given for silence.

Was it observed?

No, it was not observed, not particularly by me.

Were you taken prisoner at Lexington or Concord, or either of them?

At the place called Monottama, in my return from Lexington.

Then Horne turned to introducing the testimony that Gould had sworn to when he was a wounded prisoner.

TOMORROW: Getting testimony on the record.

George on William Eustis in Roxbury, 23 Apr.

At the start of 1775, William Eustis was a twenty-one-year-old Harvard College graduate studying medicine with Dr. Joseph Warren.

The Rev. Dr. G. W. Porter’s 1887 profile of Eustis for the Lexington Historical Society relates his experiences at the start of the war:

On the 19th of April, 1775, while Mr. Eustis was a student with General Warren, an express arrived in Boston. The general mounted his horse, called Mr. Eustis, and said: “I am going to Lexington. You go round and take care of the patients.”

In making the visits, the youthful physician found everything in confusion. The patriots were continually coming to the house of Dr. Warren for news; and his own mind became so inspired with patriotic ardor that, having discharged his duties to the sick, he felt that his place was at the scene of conflict.

At mid-day… [Moses] Gill conveyed him to Lexington and Concord. The next day, Mr. Eustis returned to Cambridge. The American troops were fast assembling. The time of general and combined resistance to armed aggression had come. Regiments were formed. General Warren said to his youthful and patriotic pupil, “You must be surgeon of one of these regiments.”

His answer was: “I am too young. I expect that such men as you and Dr. [Benjamin] Church will be surgeons, and that we shall be mates [i.e., assistants].”

“We have more important affairs to attend to,” said the general; “and you have seen more practice than most of these gentlemen from the country.” Accordingly, Mr. Eustis was made surgeon.

William Eustis became the surgeon of Col. Richard Gridley’s artillery regiment, later Col. Henry Knox’s. He practiced medicine after the war but soon went into politics, serving in the U.S. House, in President James Madison’s cabinet, as minister to Holland, and for the last two years of his life as governor of Massachusetts.

Tamsen Evans George has just published a biography of the doctor and statesman, Allegiance: The Life and Times of William Eustis. On Saturday, 23 April, she will sell and sign copies of that book at the Shirley-Eustis House, the Roxbury mansion that Eustis owned from 1819 until his death in 1825. The event description says:

Eustis is a fascinating figure, he was both political insider—he knew everyone, and outsider—a Republican in Federalist Massachusetts. His personal charm, discretion and devotion to friends brought him notable, albeit thankless roles in a national government and eventually propelled him to the office of Governor of Massachusetts. Drawing extensively from his correspondence, Ms. George provides an insider’s view of some of the most momentous events in the founding of the United States.

This event is scheduled to start at 11:00 A.M. It will take place in the carriage house at 17 Rockford Street if it’s warm, in the mansion otherwise. The event is free, but seating is limited. To reserve a space, register through this link or call 617-442-2275. Masks are encouraged; after all, one wouldn’t want to catch a preventable disease at an event about a doctor.

The First British Army Casualty of the Revolutionary War

In describing the skirmish at Lexington, the senior British officer on the scene, Maj. John Pitcairn of the Marines, wrote:

…some of the rebels who had jumped over the wall fired four or five shots at the soldiers, which wounded a man of the Tenth and my horse was wounded in two places, from some quarter or other, and at the same time several shots were fired from a meeting house on our left.

Reporting that the provincials had shot “a man of the Tenth” was significant for Pitcairn and army commander Gen. Thomas Gage. They wanted to portray the locals as starting the fight. But British officers typically didn’t care much about enlisted men as individuals. Maj. Pitcairn gave that wounded private about as much space as his horse.

Not until 1782, when a younger British army officer named Jeremy Lister wrote out his memoirs of army life, did our sources record the name of the wounded man—the first British casualty of the Revolutionary War.

Back in 1775 Lister was an ensign, the lowest-ranking officer, in the 10th Regiment of Foot. He volunteered to go with that regiment’s light infantry company on the 18–19 April expedition to Concord. That company became part of the vanguard of the British column. As they passed through the center of Lexington, they found a large portion of the town’s militiamen lined up on their common with firearms.

Ens. Lister’s account of that event was:

we saw one of their Compys. drawn up in regular order Major Pitcairn of the Marines second in Command call’d to them to disperce, but their not seeming willing he desired us to mind our space which we did when they gave us a fire then run of to get behind a wall.

we had one man wounded of our Compy in the Leg his Name was Johnson also Major Pitcairns Horse was shot in the Flank we return’d their Salute, and before we proceeded on our March from Lexington I believe we Kill’d and Wounded either 7 or 8 Men.

One curiosity about Lister’s report is that the 10th Regiment’s light infantry company didn’t have anyone named Johnson on its muster roll for 19 Apr 1775. So did Lister just make up that name seven years later, or assign a common name to a soldier he dimly remembered?

In Paul Revere’s Ride, David Hackett Fischer noted that muster rolls show a private named Thomas Johnson transferred into the light infantry company from another part of the 10th Regiment just five days after that battle. Was that date just an artifact of the paperwork, and Pvt. Thomas Johnson was already with the company on the 19th? That seems like the most likely explanation for Lister’s statement, though it would be nice if the evidence were more definite.

Whatever injury Johnson sustained, it didn’t stop him from proceeding with the column all the way to Concord. The lights of the 10th Regiment were among the companies deployed to guard the area around the North Bridge while other soldiers proceeded to James Barrett’s farm to search for artillery. Pvt. Johnson thus got to participate in the first two fatal exchanges of fire in the war.

As the redcoats left Concord, the provincial militia companies began a more concerted attack. Ens. Lister wrote, “I recd a shot through my Right Elbow joint which efectually disabled that Arme.” A military surgeon removed the ball at Lexington, but for weeks the ensign thought he would lose that arm.

The British soldiers made their way under fire to Charlestown by evening. Ens. Lister rode a couple of miles on a horse, but decided that made him too big a target, so he walked most of the way. We don’t know if Johnson made the whole journey on foot or became one of the wounded soldiers who crowded onto horses, artillery carriages, and confiscated vehicles. At the end of the day the 10th Regiment reported seventeen wounded, one killed, and one missing.

Parts of the 10th Regiment also fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill in June. Ens. Lister was still recovering from his wound in Boston. Pvt. Thomas Johnson went into the battle and was killed.

[The photograph above shows a member of the recreated 10th Regiment, which has been portraying the soldiers at the start of the Revolutionary War for over fifty years.]