MARCH MEETING, 1924
A Stated Meeting of the Society was held at the house of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 28 Newbury Street, Boston, on Thursday, March 27, 1924, at three o’clock in the afternoon, the President, Fred Norris Robinson, Ph.D., in the chair.
The Records of the last Stated Meeting were read and approved.
Mr. Alfred Marston Tozzer of Cambridge was elected a Resident Member; and Mr. Kenneth Charles Morton Sills of Brunswick, Maine, and Mr. William Davis Patterson of Wiscasset, Maine, were elected Corresponding Members.
Mr. William C. Lane read the following paper:
THE PRINTER OF THE HARVARD THESES OF 1771
On searching in the Boston papers of the time for notices of an episode of the Harvard Commencement of 1771, my attention was drawn to the fact that the sheet of Commencement Theses that year was printed for the first time by Isaiah Thomas instead of by Richard Draper, who had been the printer for several years previous. On looking back through the file of Commencement Theses in the Harvard Library I find that the names of Richard and Samuel Draper first appeared on the Theses and Quaestiones of 1763, no printer’s name having been given in earlier years. The same printers are responsible for these sheets from 1764 to 1766. Richard Draper’s name alone is found on the Theses from 1767 to 1770, in which last year he styles himself “Academiae Typographus.” Richard Draper had succeeded his father, John Draper, as printer of the Boston News Letter in December, 1762, and was appointed “Printer to the Governor and Council” of the province in succession to his father at about the same time. In April, 1763, apparently in consequence of a special order passed by the Council giving him exclusive right to official news, he changed the title of his paper from “The Boston News-Letter, and the New-England Chronicle” to “The Massachusetts Gazette, And Boston News-Letter.”1
Draper, as printer to the Governor and also, as he styles himself, to the College, was highly displeased to have the printing of the Theses taken away from him, and a bitter controversy resulted. This it may be worth while to follow, as several points in connection with the publication of the Theses appear which may not be generally known.
In the News Letter of July 11, 1771, we find the following paragraph:
We hear there are 622 young Gentlemen to commence Bachellors of Arts next Week at Harvard-College: It is said they have thought proper to take the Employ of printing the THESES from this Office, which has served every Class since their first being printed, and bestowed their Favor on the Printers of the News Paper called the Massachusetts SPY.
The Gentlemen who are to commence Masters of Arts we hear have agreed that their QUESTIONS should be printed as customary.3
From this it appears that the Theses were printed for the Senior Class and by their direction rather than by the College itself.4
The News Letter of the next week, July 18 (page 2/2), contained the following verses, which are worth reprinting as an indication of the political temper of the time though lacking any literary merit:
Mr. Draper, The following was wrote Extempore, by a young Gentleman, on reading a Paragraph in your last Gazette, which is at your Service to insert at Pleasure.
From a constant Reader, and Admirer of, your Weekly Productions.
To the Young Gentlemen, Candidates for their First Degrees at Cambridge.
AND is it true, ye Sons of Fame,
Are Draper’s Types thrown by? —
Reproach, Dishonour, Scandal, Shame,
Attend the dirty Spy!
How can ye patronize a Press,
The Engine of all Ill,
The God of Discord who caress,
The World with Slander fill?
Mark how the frowning Brow reproves
This Deed of Harvard’s Sons! —
Faction first vulgar Spirits moves,
Then round the World it runs.
But ah, alas! that learned Youth,
Should ever catch the Flame,
Disgraces Learning, Virtue, Truth,
And crops their rising Flame!
O ALMA MATER! Happy Seat!
Where Truth and Learning shine,
May LOYAL FIRMNESS these compleat,
And in your Breasts combine.
July 15.
The Massachusetts Spy, the most radical and lively of the five papers then being published in Boston, had been established by Isaiah Thomas July 17, 1770, at first in partnership with Zechariah Fowle, Thomas’s former employer, but from October 30 of that year had been managed by Thomas alone, first as a quarto sheet up to February 1, 1771, and then, after a short suspension, as a folio paper issued weekly, beginning March 7, 1771. Draper’s paper was the conservative government organ, Thomas’s gave expression to the strong anti-British feeling which was developing in the colony. In the Spy of July 25, 1771 (page 3/2), the following communication appears:
To the Printer of the Massachusetts Spy
SIR,
By inserting the following you will oblige a constant Reader.
Scribere jussit Necessitas.
I AM exceeding uneasy to hear the young Gentlemen who were lately admitted to the honours of the College, so scandalously calumniated with respect to their Theses being printed by a man whom the majority of the Class thought suitable to accomplish their views upon the most reasonable terms. It is very certain the Class had an indefeasible RIGHT to expend their own money as they pleased, and of consequence to print it where they thought proper, let mr: Draper insist and. persist ever so much to the contrary, pray sir, are you gifted in ability, or impowered by the authority above others, that you should be the only person capable of performing it acceptably? So much the reverse, I apprehend any Typographer in the town has an equal ability and power to your lordship, if not superior: It is almost universally asserted that you have been an exorbitant wretch ever since you first undertook its publication. And forsooth was not contented (as it is credibly reported) with calumniating the Class, but by artful insinuations and audacious assertions, endeavoured to alienate the affections of his Excellency from them, urging that it was entirely through malicious political opposition to his Excellency. — O man! beware, and adhere to this brief, though important advice — Be cautious of detraction, lest the vindication of your personal character should be demanded, which appears to be spotted like the Leopard’s skin, — love your brother — be not litigious. — If this momentous, tender, and affectionate warning is observed strictly, it will indubitably have a glorious tendency to elevate your mind above those groveling, ungentleman-like actions, which are but too apparent through the general tenour of your conduct.
— “Immania Monstra”
“non perferimus.”
The case for the students was further advocated in the Boston Gazette, a paper published by Edes and Gill and sympathetic with the same party. In the issue of July 29, 1771 (page 2/1), we find the following communication:
Messieurs Edes & Gill,
IT is always customary with Those who commence Batchellors of Arts at Harvard-College, to chuse their own Printer. The Senior Class have this Year given the Preference to Mr. Thomas; this free Act and Liberty of their own, has been the Cause of high Displeasure to that grand slavish Conformist to ministerial Instructions, which have had such Influence over his haughty arbitrary Mind, as moved him to demand of the Reverend President and Tutors of Harvard College the Reasons why the Senior Class dar’d to act so consistent with their own Free-Will and Pleasure, as to prefer the Printer of an infamous Paper in this Instance of their Favor. From the above, we may plainly see the malicious Pleasure which ministerial hypocritical Slaves take in destroying the Liberty of others, inferior in Dignity to themselves; and the Readiness of a crowded Group of foolish Flatterers, with vain and puerile Compliments, to address a sworn Enemy to the Rights, Privileges and Liberties of this Country. His Actions speak louder than Words, and plainly prove the Hypocrisy of his Heart, and the Baseness of his Intentions. It is earnestly recommended to all the succeeding Classes, to follow this Example, and act their own Liberty of Conscience, without Fear, Favor or Affection to Placemen, Pensioners, or any of their meanest Underlings; and treat with the greatest Indignity and Contempt, all such Advice as is founded on the malicious Principle of a haughty Advocate for Prerogative.
X.
In the News Letter of August 1, 1771 (page 2/2), Draper returns to the charge and defends his position:
REcollecting this Morning, that in last Week’s Spy the Publishers attempted to slur my Character, and misrepresent Facts, I imagined the Public would indulge me in a few Words to vindicate myself, notwithstanding I signified sometime since, no Notice would be taken of their Scurrility. — That the Class, some of them, were for having their Theses printed by a Man whom they thought suitable to accomplish their Views upon the most reasonable Terms, I do not doubt. — I never denied the Right the Class had to expend their own Money as they pleased, and to print their Theses where they tho’t proper: The Committee will do me the Justice to acknowledge that I disclaimed any such Right. The most that ever I pretended to was a Preference to the lowest of the Business, for I found no Application had been made to any of the established Printers in Town. — As to the extravagant Price, be it known, that for printing 3000 Sheets the Price I asked was but 13 s. 4 d. in the whole, or 4 Coppers more for each Scholar, than what Thomas asked: For this I am called an exorbitant Wretch! Can it be thought that the young Gentlemen were influenced by so small a Saving to have their Work done by the Publishers of the Spy! Or rather, is there not Grounds for Suspicion that it was from political Views? — As to the Charge of my representing it as such to his Excellency, it is false, I neither made Application to his Excellency nor to any of the Governors of the College relating to the Affair; and what Opinion any had of their Conduct, I am not accountable for. — A Threat, miscalled Advice, closes, “Be cautious, &c. lest the Vindication of your personal Character should be demanded, &c.” A DEMAND of any sort from such Incendiaries a few Months ago, I should have tho’t a momentous Affair: But thank Heaven those Times are over! — As for being spotted like a Leopard’s Skin, if that was really the Case, what Service would it be to the Public to discover them? This gives me no Uneasiness, as the Place of my Nativity and Residence is sufficient to vindicate my Character. — All that I request of the Spy-mongers, is, that when they characterize, they would not take their Draft from either the Squire from Abbington, the Doctor from —, or their Man Thomas, and palm it upon their Readers for
R. Draper’s.5
From this statement we learn that three thousand was evidently the usual number of copies printed, a surprising fact when we consider the great rarity of these broadsides at the present time. Three thousand sheets would apparently give each graduate about fifty copies to distribute to his friends; and paper being somewhat scarce at this time, we must perhaps conclude that the sheets were more valued as wrapping paper or as material for making up note-books or for correspondence than on account of their printed contents.
The three persons referred to in the last sentence, the Squire from Abington, the Doctor from —, and their Man Thomas, are Joseph Greenleaf, an uncompromising opponent of Governor Hutchinson and of the government, who wrote for the Spy under the name of Mucius Scaevola, Dr. Thomas Young,6 and Isaiah Thomas.
The News Letter of August 8 (page 4/1) inserted in its columns the article printed above from the Spy of July 25 as a “specimen of the attacks on private characters by the writers in the Spy.” This is followed in the same number (page 4/1) by a communication addressed to Mr. Draper dated Cambridge, July 31, 1771:
Cambridge, July 31. 1771.
Mr. Draper,
IN the same Page of the dirty Spy, I observe you have the Honor of being calumniated with the first and greatest Character in the Province; the Implication is extreme favourable: I almost envy you your Persecutors: Such Creatures are far from being formidable; they have a Profusion of Malice indeed, but like a Sword in the Hands of an Idiot, they wound themselves with the Point, while they aim a Blow at their Adversary with the Pummel. What a wretched Triumvirate! a poor shiftless erratic Knight from Abington, a dunghill-bred Journeyman Typographer, and a stupid phrensical Mountebank, — but scribere jussit Necessitas, —:Hungerbitten by Jupiter! Be assured Mr. D. their Wit will never wound you; but keep clear of the Teeth of such Gentry.
It is most certainly true, that the Class lately graduated, had an incontestable Right to expend their Money as they pleased; but when they or any other Employers think proper to desert a faithful Servant, without any assignable Reason, it then becomes Matter of general Curiosity; and if Caprice, Meanness, or an equally despicable Party-Zeal appear to have had any Influence in their Conduct, they become so far reprehensible.
Let the celebrated Triumvirate swagger and bluster as they will, I never knew that Mr. D. ever presumed on any Powers, or claimed any abilities superior to his Brother Types,7 but I apprehend he may (consistent with the greatest Modesty) avail himself of such a plea as this; that as he was educated in the Business from Infancy, ’tis at least supposeable, that he is possessed of Typographical Abilities equal to the Squire of Abington, or any of the Triumvirate, not excepting their Journeyman Thomas; and if we may judge from their Weekly Publications, he is vastly their superior in Judgment, for he has never nauseated the public Palate with such execrable Trash as is constantly leaking from their Sink of Ribaldry.
Another groundless Allegation against Mr. D. is, that of Exorbitance in his Demands: It appears that upon the first Application to Mr. D. his Demand for the Jobb was nominally superior to that of the Spy-mongers in the extraordinary Sum of Five Pounds old Tenor, and the Triumvirate may very probably have struck at that trifling Abatement, for the mean Purpose of pyrating the Jobb out of his Hands.
But this anonymous I professes great and exceeding Uneasiness for the doleful Condition of the poor young Gentlemen, who were lately admitted to the Honors of the College, in that they are calumniated and scandalously too; for what? for having their Theses printed by a Man (Query, was the Squire the Printer?) who was tho’t suitable for their Purpose. — It would be absurd Messieurs immania monstra to scandalize or calumniate any Man or Body of Men for employing suitable Persons to execute any Piece of Work: The whole Scandal or Calumny then according to this Author amounts to the bare Relation of the Fact, viz. that the Authors of the Spy were employed by the Class that graduated in 1771 to print their Theses, contrary to the invariable Usage of the College, who had employed Mr. Draper and his Predecessors as their Printer ab Origin: If this was a proper Preference, where lies the Scandal, where can be the Calumny? That the Class did not consult their own Honour in this particular is too apparent; much less did they pay any attention to the Inclinations of his Excellency; tho’ the conduct of the Managers in this Matter did not indicate the greatest Maturity of Judgment; yet surely the young Gentlemen could not be so egregiously mistaken as to suppose, when they abandoned an old Servant of the College, who is likewise his Excellency’s Printer, they were doing an acceptable Act to his Excellency; or when they thought proper to employ the Printers of the Spy, who from the first day of the Publication of that detestable Paper, like staunch Murderers, steady to their Purpose, have incessantly raved, rillified and abused the most immaculate Character, as well as the most respectable Person in the Province; They could not surely conjecture that such Creatures as these were Objects of his Excellency’s Predilection, or that they could conciliate his Excellency’s Esteem by employing them.
As to personal Characters, I will not injure Mr. D. by a Comparison, the Authors of the Spy must know their weak side too well to venture their Bread on so slender a Stake: Therefore I shall address them with the following Couplet of Lord Littleton, and conclude,
Lie on, while my Revenge shall be,
To speak the very Truth of Thee.
In the Spy of the same date, August 8 (page 3/2), Thomas printed a neat and brief note addressed to his opponent which is worth quoting:
To Mr. Richard Draper.
Recollecting Sir!
IF your customers are satisfied to maintain a weekly news-paper, sacred to the ebulitions of your envy and private resentment, I have nothing to say in the affair. But though I might perfectly equal you in random invective, I have not the ambition to conceit my performances would add any thing considerable to the entertainment of my generous encouragers; whom I wish to divert in a much more agreeable manner, than by any thing which can arise from the uninteresting squabbles of Mr. R. Draper, and
I. THOMAS.
Another letter in the same issue (page 3/3), in denunciation of Draper, is signed “Musacolis.”
In the Spy of August 15 (page 3/3) a new writer, A. B., apparently a member of the Class of 1771, comes to the defence of Thomas in behalf of his classmates:
To Mr. R. Draper.
THOUGH considered as a meer mechanic in the art of setting and blacking types, you are below the notice of a freshman, or even a school boy; the pother kept up about you in your own paper, as a very important person, no less a character than his Excellency’s Printer, will excuse a youth who has borne some share of your smutting to address the Governor’s printer upon the delicate piece you received from Cambridge, wherein the complaint of the Bachelors of 1771, is with amazing dexterity fathered on gentlemen, whom you would have the world believe your foul-mouthed impertinence has rendered inconsiderable. But in the first place, Sir, suffer me to assure the public, that neither Joseph Greenleaf, Esq; Doctor Thomas Young, nor Mr. Isaiah Thomas, have had any thing more to do in the composition of the paper in question, than Mr. Wilkes or Parson Yorick. And further, that all the wonderful cunning of yourself and your assistants will fall short of appeasing the class for the impudent, unmannerly and insolent abuse you have lavished upon them, and still continue, in as plain terms as you dare. But should you proceed in the manner you have gone on, since you sold yourself to work wickedness for the most abandoned villains in the universe, determined enemies to learning as well as liberty, which every man above the rank of idiot in understanding, knows must stand or fall together, you and probably your patrons will be “hunger-bitten by Jupiter!” for if a Jupiter, or any just and potent being governs the affairs of men, such hypocrites, robbers and public enemies to the happiness and security of his creatures must be objects of his vengeance. It is not with wit, Mr. Draper, you are to be attacked, nor will the teeth of your opponents, as yet, fix upon so vile a morsel.
It is most certainly true, your writer observes, “that the Class lately graduated had an incontestable right to expend their money as they pleased; but when they or any other employers think proper to desert a faithful servant without any assignable reason, it then becomes matter of general curiosity; and if caprice, meanness, or an equally despicable party-zeal appear to have had any influence in their conduct, they become so far reprehensible.”
To this nucleus of the whole essay, I would thus answer. The Class in question never received any services from Mr. Draper which they esteemed more faithfully performed than the like services of transmitting news, speculations, &c. were by Mr. Thomas. Indeed the preference alledged to be given to Thomas, seems to determine the agreeableness of the service at least in his favour. And that I should think reason sufficient for any freeman to assign for the exercise of an incontestable right. The affair’s becoming a matter of general curiosity may affect Mr. Draper as it pleases for all the Class cares about it. Caprice and meanness are terms more easily hove at, than fixed on any of Mr. Draper’s Scourgers; and for party-zeal, Lycurgus has told us, that in a general commotion of the state there should be no neuters.
Your kind stars, in combining Triumvirates, have certainly been uncommonly auspicious the past week. Had either the Class or the Spy-mongers been such officious friends to his Excellency as to pack him Bernard and Tryon,8 it is probable the next paper would have bellowed with more than Ætna’s thunders at the flagrant abuse of the most immaculate character.
Your great judgment in selecting entertainment I esteem as much as any man. I never wish your able correspondents a more scanty flow of sense or fine expression; his Excellency must surely be eminently gratified with the amazing abilities of his vindicators, and the zeal of his Printer.
A. B.
This communication is followed by a short letter (page 3/4) from J. Greenleaf in answer to several defamatory letters in the News Letter, including that of the “anonymous author from Cambridge,” begging his enemies to “take the field in open day-light,” subscribe their future productions and “let mankind judge of the truth of the charges by the credibility of the accusers.”
In the News Letter of August 15 (page 3/2), we find a short paragraph by Richard Draper in answer to the Spy in which he finally begs leave “to withdraw from publick view, asking pardon for having claimed their attention so long, in a frivolous disputation with persons of little or no consequence either to the Church or State;” but in the same paper in another column (page 3/1) we find an anonymous writer, speaking apparently in behalf of the class, who writes as follows:
MR. Draper, having seen the Disputes relating to the printing the Theses, I take this first Opportunity after the Vacation, on my Return, to inform you that it has been discovered, the Class were greatly taken in, in changing their Printer, for instead of a saving, as it was pretended, what with the Printer and Paper-maker together, the Price exceeded what you asked, and for which you have been scurriously treated as an exorbitant Wretch: The Public may rely on this as Fact, and any further Dispute about the Affair, to them but trifling, be prevented.
*******
Cambridge, August 15.
Two days later Thomas wrote the following notice, which was printed in the Boston Gazette of August 19 (page 311):
WHEREAS a scandalous & malicious Falshood, was inserted in Mr. Draper’s Massachusett’s Gazette last Thursday, viz. “It has been discovered, the Class were greatly taken in, in changing their Printer, for instead of a saving, as it was pretended, what with the Printer and Paper-maker together, the Price exceeded what you [Mr. Draper] asked.” In order to confute so bare-faced an untruth, the Subscriber would refer all those, who have the Curiosity to know the true state of the matter, to the Committee of the Class, who employed the Printer of the Theses; or to the Printing-Office in Union street, where an exact account of the charge of the Paper and Printing, as also of Cash received, may be seen properly attested, which will convince every Person of the Falsehood of the Charge, which otherwise may have a Tendency to injure the Reputation, and thereby distress the Family, by destroying the Business of
|
Boston, Aug. 17, 1771. |
ISAIAH THOMAS.9 |
This drew from Draper, in the News Letter of August 22 (page 3/1), a specific statement in regard to the price asked by himself and by Thomas for doing the printing:
MR. I. Thomas, in very high Terms in the Boston Gazette, having charged the Cambridge writer in our last, with publishing a “scandalous & malicious Falshood,” and which perhaps was done in that Paper,10 that his Assertions might have the more Credit, — we are requested to publish the Facts, which are as follows:
The Printer hereof offered to print 3000 Theses for £6. and procure the best of Paper made at Milton, without any Advance on the same, at such a Rate that according to computation the Charge in the whole would amount to £11 17s.
The Printers of the Spy, it is said, offered their Printing Work for £5 6s. 8d. which with the additional Price of the Paper, made the Sum amount to £12 10s. — No doubt a Reason will be given why the Expence was more, namely, that not having Types the Theses were usually printed with, they were obliged to have Paper of a larger Size and higher Price. — But the Question is, whether the Class have not upon the whole paid more by changing their Printer, as the Cambridge Writer asserted.
In the Spy of the same date, August 22 (page 3/1), a member of the Class Committee takes up the cudgels in behalf of the Class and of Thomas and gives his statement of the affair including details in regard to price:
For the Massachusetts Spy.
To Mr. R. Draper
I HAVE long remained a silent witness to your unparalleled abuse of my Classmates, and notwithstanding the share I have borne in it, I have declined so mean a task as to enter into a public contest with you, had I not been concerned for the reputation of those whose friendship I esteem. Not that they can receive any injury from your aspertions; but that those who are unacquainted with the matters, and have not heard them contradicted, may give you some credit, I have ventured to deliver my opinion, however, I may verify the old Roman maxim,
— Quando cum Stercore certo,
Vinco seu vincor, semper ego maculor.
I shall, therefore, in the first place, give a true state of the facts, and leave the public to draw what inferences they please from them. At a meeting of the Class about a fortnight before Commencement, a large committee was chosen to act from that time till Commencement as the class; this Committee which consisted of ten, at a subsequent meeting, elected a sub-committee for the purpose of employing a Printer, to print the Theses, repeating to them the instructions which they had originally received from their constituents, viz. that they should employ the cheapest workman. Mr. Draper immediately applied for the work; being asked his price, he replied 100 l. being again asked whether that was the lowest he could afford it at, he answered yes; but rather than lose the job he would do it for 5 per cent cheaper than any other, or for nothing. The committee rejoined that they did not desire he should do it a penny less than he could afford, and if no Printer could afford it for less than what he had offered he should have the employ. The Committee then applied to Mr. Thomas to know his price, who immediately made a calculation, and in a few minutes told them he would undertake it for 95 l. and this being 5 l. cheaper than Mr. Draper could afford it for, the Committee saw fit to employ Mr. Thomas. The Committee afterwards ordering a paper of a better quality, as well as of a larger size, agreed to allow 98 l. 10 s.
This being the true state of the affair, I shall proceed to make a few remarks upon the pieces published by Mr. Draper, upon the occasion; beginning with his poet, who undoubtedly laboured whole nights and days to apply the word “faction” to the conduct of the Class. But how the meer act of passing by Mr. Draper’s office without employing him may be termed faction, I am unable to account for any other way, than by virtue of that poetical licence, which was granted only to the great geniuses that flourished under the republics of Greece and Rome. Perhaps your poet, Sir, intends that Greece and Rome shall not be the only states that can boast of great geniuses.
In the piece signed by yourself, you insinuate (as though it was a crime) that we did it “from political views,” for my own part (for I can speak but for one) had that been my motive I should have gloried in the virtue, and I am very sensible that such a conduct would have gained me, the highest honour my wishes can aspire to, the approbation of every good citizen.
As your first writer from Cambridge says little more than to allow, that “the Class had an incontestable right to expend their money as they pleased;” we would advise him to leave us to the free exercise of an incontestable right without his impertinent molestation — but stay — he has said something more — “that the Class did not consult their own honour in this particular is too apparent; much less did they pay any attention to the inclinations of his Excellency.” To pay any attention to the inclinations of any one, or even our own, when they militate with our instructions, his Excellency himself knows, is so far from reflecting an honour upon the agent, that it is immediately derogatory thereto, and why the Committee should give away 5 l. or 5 d. of the Class’s money merely to gratify his Excellency’s inclination, is a question perhaps they could not have answered.
Upon your last week’s letter from Cambridge, I shall only remark, that had it been from one of the Class (every individual of whom has an undoubted right to enquire into facts) I should have endeavoured to convince him of his mistake; but since it is one who is utterly unacquainted with the matter, and seeing he has intermeddled where he had no concern, I shall take the liberty to tell him, that he has published to the world an absolute falshood, and unless you, Mr. Draper, can persuade your writer to demonstrate to the public, that the “class were greatly taken in,” and that “what with the Printer and Papermaker together, the price exceeded what you asked,” it will but aggravate the vengeance which you have already justly merited.
Upon the whole, Sir, seeing you have wantonly published whatever came to your press, without ascertaining the truth, and blazoned falshoods at large, unless you reconcile all the inconsistencies contained therein on your own behalf, I think you are chargeable for the whole; and therefore stand exposed to the public eye in the glaring character
Counter-Stamp
Stamp
Issued under the Act of 1765
engraved for the colonial society of massachusetts
from originals owned by the massachusetts historical society
of a street-bully; and I would have you remember that by your repeated insults you have probably subjected yourself to the chastisement of the Class, as you certainly have to the displeasure of
UNUS EORUM.
With this communication, the controversy apparently came to an end.
Mr. George P. Anderson exhibited a shawl woven in the Mackintosh plaid, in which red predominates and which is said to have suggested a name for the apple known as the “Mackintosh Red;” a letter written May 1, 1826, by Paschal Paoli Mackintosh, the oldest son of Ebenezer Mackintosh; a picture of David Mackintosh, also a son of Ebenezer Mackintosh; and one of the stamps issued in accordance with the Stamp Act of 1765.11 He then read the following paper:
EBENEZER MACKINTOSH: STAMP ACT RIOTER AND PATRIOT
In a recent course of lectures on British History before the Lowell Institute in Boston, George Macaulay Trevelyan, the English historian, pointed out that when, following the Roman invasion of Britain, about twenty centuries ago, constructive public works, especially roads, were built by the Romans, their efforts stopped short when they encountered the barriers of the mountains in Wales and the mountains in Scotland. In Scotland the Highlands remain to this day an important factor in influencing the life and character of the inhabitants of that section. A certain independence, a certain native fierceness, is rightly associated with the men of the Highlands. It was so twenty centuries ago, and it is so even to-day, as is witnessed by the deeds of the “Ladies from Hell” in the Great War.
If one goes to-day into the Highlands of Scotland, into the district of Inverness-shire, there will be found thousands of representatives of the Clan Mackintosh who typify this independence, resolution, and courage. This Clan’s history can be traced back definitely to the twelfth century, and with more or less vagueness to a very much earlier period. To-day the Clan as of old is regularly organized and has a chief, who is Alfred Donald Mackintosh of the twenty-eighth generation from Shaw Mackintosh, the first recognized chieftain who ruled from 1163 to 1179.12 Numerous as the Mackintosh clansmen still are in the Highlands and elsewhere in Scotland, their lines have gone out to the ends of the earth, and many indeed are the Mackintoshes in the United States.
Hardy in physique and vigorous in action, for centuries the Mackintoshes of Scotland contended with varying success with many of the neighboring clans. With the Camerons they carried on a dispute over title to certain lands which lasted three hundred and fifty years and caused much bloodshed. The Mackintosh of those days who did not fight was not a true Mackintosh. At Bannockburn in 1314 the Clan had a goodly representation in the defeat of Edward II by Robert Bruce and his followers; at the time of the contest between Charles I and Oliver Cromwell, it aided the king, and thus was on the losing side; and it was for the Jacobite cause in 1715.
Mackintoshes were among the early settlers in several of the American colonies, particularly Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Georgia. Some of the very early Mackintoshes in New England were deported but pardoned Scotch prisoners,13 who had been taken by Oliver Cromwell at the battles of Dunbar on August 3, 1650, and of Worcester on August 3, 1651, and sent to Boston and sold as redemptioners. In a list of 272 such Scotch prisoners recorded May 14, 1652,14 there appear the names John Mackenthow, William Mackentoss, and Daniell Mackendocke. It seems probable that the surnames of all three properly spelled would be Mackintosh. The first shipload of Scotch prisoners sent by Cromwell had arrived some time before the Rev. John Cotton, the eminent New England divine, wrote to Oliver Cromwell on July 28, 1651:
The Scots, whom God delivered into your hand at Dunbarre, and whereof sundry were sent hither, we have been desirous (as we could) to make their yoke easy. Such as were sick of the scurvy or other diseases have not wanted physick and chyrurgery. They have not been sold for slaves to perpetuall servitude, but for 6 or 7 or 8 yeares, as we do our owne; and he that bought the most of them (I heare) buildeth houses for them, for every 4 an house, layeth some acres of ground thereto, which he giveth them as their owne, requiring 3 dayes in the weeke to work for him (by turnes) and 4 dayes for themselves, and promiseth, assoone as they can repay him the money he layed out for them, he will set them at liberty.15
Historians have given almost no attention to the influence springing from these two shiploads of Scotch prisoners who arrived in New England in 1651 and 1652, but the descendants from these immigrants are numerous and some have been distinguished — among them Oliver Wendell Holmes, former Governor Frank Sweet Black of New York, and William Claflin, who was governor of Massachusetts from 1866 to 1869.16
A large number of Cromwell’s Scotch prisoners were sold to the managers of extensive iron works established in Braintree, Lynn, Boston, Hammersmith (Saugus), and other places in Eastern Massachusetts.17 This enterprise, which is said to be the first manufacturing of iron in Massachusetts, was projected in England about 1643, a company being formed under the name “The Company Undertakers of the Iron Works.” It was fostered by John Winthrop, Jr., of Massachusetts. The undertaking got under way about 1644 or 1645 and operations continued until 1653, when the business failed. An appraisal of the assets in that year showed a value of £666, a large sum for that period.
In 1652, when Cromwell’s prisoners arrived, the managers of the iron works were greatly in need of cheap labor and they secured a large number of the Scotchmen and sent them to the Lynn and the Braintree plants. John Mackintosh was sent to Lynn, while William Mackintosh went to Braintree. John, under the name Toish, made a deposition at Lynn, January 25, 1654, aged about twenty-four.18 After the failure of the iron works, John Mackintosh probably was sold to some one residing in Dedham or vicinity. Both appear to have changed their surnames to Tosh or Toish when sold as redemptioners, and William retained the surname Tosh after he regained his freedom, but John went back to the original spelling.19 On April 5, 1659, which would be after a sufficient period had elapsed to permit the removal of his disability as a redemptioner, John Mackintosh was married in Dedham to Rebecca Metcalf, daughter of Michael Metcalf. It is the career of one of John Mackintosh’s descendants which interests us.20
Briefly stated, the second generation from John Mackintosh is represented by William (baptized November 25, 1665) and his wife Experience (Holbrook) Mackintosh.21 The selection of William as a name is presumptive evidence of close relationship between John and the before-mentioned fellow-prisoner William. William Mackintosh of the second generation had several children, including a son named Moses, born September 1, 1708, in Dedham, who married Lydia Jones in Dorchester, August 5, 1734.22 This Moses Mackintosh was the father of Ebenezer Mackintosh of Boston, who has come down in local history mostly under the surname Mackintosh, with the subtitle of “The Rioter,” but occasionally as “Captain” Mackintosh, though he is also known as “Mackintosh the shoemaker.” The given names Moses and Ebenezer show the New England influence which selected names from the Bible.23
Not much is known of Moses Mackintosh, father of Ebenezer. He seems either to have met with more than the usual share of misfortune, or to have been singularly improvident. His mother died when he was six years old and his father before he had reached his majority,24 and he appears never to have made any material headway in the world. For at least a century before this period the towns of Massachusetts Bay and other colonies had followed the practice of “warning out” residents who in the opinion of the selectmen might become public charges. The purpose of warning out was not necessarily to drive the person named out of the town, although it often so resulted, but in fixing the responsibility for support of the individual and his family, if occasion arose, upon the colony rather than upon the town.25 About 1753 Moses Mackintosh was warned out of Boston. In September, 1761, he was warned out of Wrentham. On December 7, 1770, Moses McEntosh and thirteen others were warned out of Boston. A memorandum accompanying the document says:
November 14, 1770, Moses McEntosh Last from the Castel he has lived in Several towns in the Country or Provance But has been warned in his Majestys Name out of them all He says he was warned out of Boston abote 17 years ago By 2 men in Boston But he says he was born in Dedham warned in his Majestys name to Depart this town of Boston in 14 Days.26
It is doubtful if Mackintosh left town on this occasion, for an order committing him to the almshouse, made by the selectmen December 17th, was withdrawn.27 This looks as if some occupation was found for him on this occasion. The last entry which presumably refers to him is a resolve which passed February 3, 1778:
Resolved that the Commanding Officer at Castle Island be & he hereby is directed to receive Moses Mackintosh (who was formerly a Sergeant there) into the pay & service of this state at that Island, there to do duty & to receive pay & rations as other Private Soldiers of that Garrison.28
Moses Mackintosh was then seventy years old, and presumably able to perform only the lightest type of military service.
Moses Mackintosh may have followed some trade, but the only records available show him as a soldier. His name is found in a muster roll dated December 5, 1737, as being in the command of Spencer Phips at Castle William, where he served from May 21 to December 2.29 Whether he continued without interruption to serve in the military force in Boston is unknown, but on November 20, 1748, he is entered as being a sergeant in the company of Spencer Phips at Castle Island, Mackintosh’s service extending from May 21 to November 20.30
Although born and reared in Dedham, Moses Mackintosh apparently was living in Dorchester as early as 1733, and it seems probable that he was a neighbor of Ebenezer Jones who lived on Dorchester Neck, adjacent to the highway leading to the Castle, now a part of South Boston. A deed31 given by Ebenezer Jones and his wife, Lydia, dated June 27, 1733, at Dorchester conveying about eleven and a half acres of upland and swamp land to Ichabod Jones, their son, cordwainer, permits some interesting conjectures. To this deed Moses Mackintosh is one of the subscribing witnesses, and the knowledge that a little more than a year later he married Lydia Jones, daughter of Ebenezer and his wife Lydia, makes it safe to assume that Moses Mackintosh was a close friend of the Jones family. Lydia Jones, the mother, signed the deed in her own hand, but her husband signed by making his mark.
The marriage of Moses Mackintosh to Lydia Jones took place August 5, 1734, in Dorchester.32 They had two children, a daughter, named Lydia, who was born in Dorchester July 17, 1735, about whom nothing is known; and a son Ebenezer born in Boston June 20, 1737, the subject of this inquiry.33 The wife seems to have had the naming of the children, for the daughter is called after herself and her mother, while the son is named Ebenezer for his grandfather Jones. Their married life apparently was full of hardship and poverty. On September 24, 1751, Lydia Mackintosh, mother of Ebenezer, died in Dorchester, perhaps having returned to her old home for an illness which proved fatal34 Within two years, probably about 1753 as we have seen, Moses was warned out of Boston. It seems probable that at this time Ebenezer, being then fourteen years old, remained in Boston, but his father on March 30, 1754, married Mary Everit in Dedham,35 and presumably did not at once return to Boston as he was later warned out of Wrentham.
The knowledge that Ebenezer Mackintosh became a cordwainer or shoemaker suggests the conjecture that he became associated as an apprentice with Ichabod Jones his uncle, who it will be recalled was a cordwainer. At any rate Ebenezer learned the trade of shoemaker. Left to his own devices at the age of fourteen, his mother being dead and his father warned out of town and taking a second wife in another town, it would seem that early in life Ebenezer was compelled by circumstances to become self-reliant. Very little has been learned relative to his childhood and youth, but it is known that he could read and write and that he developed a love for poetry, being especially fond of Edward Young, some parts of whose Night Thoughts he committed to memory. Probably his attendance at school was confined to the years before his mother died. If he was thereafter apprenticed to his uncle, little time was permitted him for study.36
When Ebenezer’s father moved from Dorchester some time between 1735 and 1737, he settled in the South End of Boston, and located in Ward 12, the most southern section of the town. The first definite mention of Ebenezer, besides the record of his birth in Boston, is found in “the alarm list of militia”37 in Ward 12, dated December 7, 1754. In this list his name appears as a private. The list was made by Ephraim May, clerk. May was an innholder on Orange (Washington) Street. The limits of Ward 12 may be described in general as running from Beach Street south to the Roxbury line. The ward thus embraced that part of the town known as Boston Neck upon which the gallows was erected. The district was a community by itself and the ward when fused with the adjacent parts of Ward 11, particularly Essex Street, constituted the South End and exhibited sharp rivalry with the North End, especially on each November 5th, the anniversary of the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot. How this rivalry manifested itself later will be considered. The South End was not so thickly populated nor so influential in town affairs as the North End, but it numbered fully as many daring patriots as lived in the North End. At a slightly later period it had its South End Caucus to match the North End Caucus.
After 1754 the next trace of Ebenezer Mackintosh is found in connection with the enlisting of troops for the expedition against Canada in 1758. A broadside dated March 17, 1758,38 announced that able-bodied and effective men who voluntarily enlisted before April 15 would receive 30 shillings, and upon passing muster would be given a good blanket and 50 shillings for furnishing themselves with clothes. The pay for a private was to be £ 1.16.0 per month. This military venture attracted Mackintosh, and on April 12, just three days before the bonus would expire, he enlisted. He was enrolled in the company of Captain Eliphalet Fales in Colonel Ebenezer Nichols’s regiment. These troops were attached to the ill-starred expedition of General James Abercromby, who attacked General Montcalm at Ticonderoga July 5, 1758, but was unable to capture the fort and sustained heavy and discouraging losses.39 Mackintosh participated in some fighting, being in that part of the army which on July 20, 1758, was waylaid and ambushed at Half Way Brook between Fort Edward and Lake Georges.40 The French and Indians surprised the British on that day and more than twenty Massachusetts soldiers were slain in the skirmish. The losses were especially heavy in the company from Groton, its Captain, Thomas Lawrence, being killed. Command of that company fell to Ephraim Wesson, who in later years lived in the same town in New Hampshire to which Mackintosh retired, just before the opening of the Revolution. Mackintosh returned to Boston safe and sound on November 12, 1758, having had what must have been a disappointing army experience,41 lasting seven months and nineteen days. The soldiers in his division of the army late in July were almost ready to desert in a body, but were held to their duty by the influence of the officers. The troops, with good reason, were dissatisfied with the management of the campaign.
Many readjustments occurred in Boston after the great and destructive fire of March 20, 1760, and one of them was a closer scrutiny of the personnel of the nine fire companies in the town. The fire showed how necessary it was that the master of an engine company should be active and capable of endurance. Solomon Kneeland of engine number nine, a leather dresser located in the South End, was sixty-two years old, and the conflagration apparently called attention to his advancing years. Furthermore, in 1759 a fire had occurred at his own house and the men from engine number eight, a rival organization, put out the fire in his home and claimed and received a bonus from the town. No doubt to Mr. Kneeland this was a humiliating incident. Accordingly soon after the big fire Kneeland resigned and Stephen Greenleaf, who had been second in command, was named in his place on June 18, 1760.42 On the same day, Mr. Greenleaf requested that Ebenezer Mackintosh be added to the membership of engine number nine, there being fourteen men in all. The selectmen approved the appointment of Mackintosh and he began his duties as engineman, being as such exempt from military service. Engine number nine was located “near Mr. Allen’s,” which probably refers to James Allen who lived near what is now Park Square.
However humble the position of enginemen, or firemen as they are now called, may seem to the present generation, the position lifted Mackintosh from obscurity and gave him training and experience in meeting emergencies. Nothing is known of his personal record as a fire-fighter, but the engine to which he was attached was prompt in getting to fires, as is seen by the occasional payment of a bonus to its members for throwing the first stream of water. In view of his known daring there can be no doubt that Mackintosh did his full share of the fire-fighting.
As an engineman he was more than ever identified with the South End. A central point of that district was Deacon John Eliot’s, which was at the junction of what is now Essex and Washington Streets. On that corner stood a lofty elm known as Liberty Tree. Mackintosh lived somewhere in this district, but did not own a house. At this period he may have occupied a small shop, but more probably followed the cordwainer’s custom of going to the home of his patron and there making shoes for the family, usually from leather furnished by the customer.
If you go into any large New England town to-day there will be found to exist a certain rivalry and jealousy between different sections of the town. It has been so in many towns, and it was so in Boston long years ago. For many years the rivalry between the North End and the South End of Boston had been marked and showed itself on public occasions, especially on November 5th. It is not necessary to dwell on the Pope Day celebrations,43 but it should be remarked that in 1764 the celebration was unusually sanguinary.44 The partizans from the rival sections of the town fought with staves and clubs for hours at the Mill Bridge in the North End and there were many broken heads. Early in the day the wheel of the wagon on which the figure of the Pope was fixed passed over the head of a five-year-old boy named Brown and he was instantly killed. Regrettable as the incident was, the fight went on, the magistrates and militia being powerless. Finally the South End won. Usually these contests ended the other way, the North End in previous years having almost uniformly been victorious.
As a result of this celebration Ebenezer Mackintosh and others whose names are unknown were arrested. The charge probably was not for causing the death of the Brown boy, but for disturbing the peace or for the destruction of property. Whatever the charge, the defendants were not tried until about three months afterwards, on February 7, 1765,45 when they were before Justice Richard Dana and Justice William Story. Apparently the defendants were discharged, or perhaps were made to pay a light fine. Judge Dana lived in the South End and was a patriot, while Judge Story was a North End man and a tory. The court records are lacking and the facts are not known. Whatever happened, the reputation of Mackintosh with the townspeople did not seriously suffer. Thus Mackintosh passed through his first public ordeal. Had he not been prominent he would not have been arrested. Leadership of the South End gang for the next few years belonged to him. He apparently became “Captain” Mackintosh about this time, a courtesy title like unto that of “Colonel” bestowed in our own day on many a Kentuckian.
The next heard of Mackintosh is his election as one of five sealers of leather at the Boston town meeting March 12, 1765.46 His connection with the Pope Day affair, it is thus seen, did not hurt his standing in the town. It was the duty of a sealer of leather to pass upon the merchantability of leather, the use of unsealed leather being prohibited. The sealer had two seals, or hammers as they are sometimes called in the Boston town records, one for “all sufficiently tanned” leather and the other for “all sufficiently curried” leather. The town records of Boston show that for years there had been considerable friction in connection with the office of the sealers. Sometimes the sealers seized articles that had been made of unsealed leather and the owners sued the sealers and trouble followed. In 1762 the town passed a vote that “no tanner shoemaker, or currier shall be chose as sealers of leather.”47 This vote disqualified the very persons who were best fitted to act and the policy, which did not yield satisfactory results, was soon reversed, and in 1765 Mackintosh, who in former years would not have been eligible, was elected a sealer. He was reëlected in 1766, 1767, and 1768,48 in each of these three years being named first on the records and presumably, therefore, chairman of the board. He worked in harmony with his colleagues because during the three years that he was chairman the other four sealers also were reëlected. Thus his administration was marked with harmony, a good sign in one who has come down in history under the stigma of being only a rioter.
One incident that occurred during his administration deserves mention. Mackintosh and the other sealers appeared before the selectmen on July 22, 1767,49 and stated that they had been sued by Samuel Hughes,50 a merchant, because the sealers had seized and pronounced as unmerchantable some leather that Hughes had exposed for sale and which had been consigned to him from North Carolina. Hughes claimed that this was imported leather, that it was from an outside colony and therefore not within the jurisdiction of the sealers. This incident and Hughes’s attitude well illustrate the condition of the times, each colony regarding itself as substantially independent of the others. After Hughes had invoked the law against the sealers, the sealers went to the selectmen for counsel and requested that if they went on with the action and were “cast,” that is, were losers, they be reimbursed by the town. The selectmen said that it was important to know if leather from another colony was subject to inspection and advised testing the question. Some time later the matter was adjusted by two of the selectmen, Samuel Sewall and John Rowe, who conferred with Hughes. The record says:
The Selectmen having considered the offer made by Mr. Hughes of dropping the Action with the Sealers of Leather, for some Carolina Leather they siezed — do desire Mr. Sewall & Rowe the Committee to treat with him, to agree with his proposal to drop the Suit, deliver him the Leather, and leave it with two Gentlemen to determine what shall be paid for damages.51
During these years Mackintosh was plying his trade of shoemaker, going from home to home, but there is a possibility that by this time he had opened a shoe-shop in partnership with Benjamin Bass. On the second Tuesday of July, 1765, Samuel Adams was given a verdict of £12 10s 8d damages against Ebenezer Mackintosh and Benjamin Bass, cordwainers.52 The cause of the action is obscure. Adams was not a collector of taxes in that year or in the previous year, but the action may have originated still earlier when he was collector, as the case had been appealed from the lower court. In later years Mackintosh is referred to as a “tradesman,” which gives some color to the supposition that he once had a shop in Boston. The above-mentioned action by Samuel Adams, however, may have been a personal matter and not have related to unpaid taxes. The record at least shows some coördinate trade relationship between Bass and Mackintosh.
It is necessary now to return to the stirring events of 1765, in particular to the Stamp Act riots — the events which among historians have given Mackintosh the title of “rioter.” It has been seen that whatever happened in 1765, in the following three years Mackintosh was reëlected to town office and served on a board whose sessions were harmonious and whose services presumably were efficient. Boston in April, 1765, received the news of the passage of the Stamp Act. That information found the town in a state of indignation, and as the months went by the townspeople developed an ugly mood. Mackintosh shared in the dislike of the law, but it did not directly touch his personal business. It promised, however, to bear heavily on all tradesmen and to entail hardships on the people as a whole. If the Stamp Act had been strictly enforced, the colonists in a relatively short time would have been in a state bordering on actual financial distress. There was not enough coin in Massachusetts or in any of the colonies to pay the taxes demanded if the money was to be sent to England. In this situation men harangued excitedly in the streets, the better sort of citizens debated the outlook in their clubs, and the gang, the South Enders and the North Enders, in militant spirit prepared when a chance came to reflect public opinion. The chance soon came, or rather the crowd made an opportunity to show the prevalent unrest.
On February 6, 1765, Isaac Barré had made his famous speech in Parliament which furnished the phrase “Sons of Liberty”53 and led to the formation of the well-known pre-Revolutionary organization of that name. It was at a period when Mackintosh had become a well-known leader, and among his kind a commanding and popular figure. Somewhat later he was known as “First Captain General of Liberty Tree,”54 a title which in itself was a satirical jibe at Governor Francis Bernard, who as chief executive signed all proclamations as “Captain General and Governor in Chief in and over his Majesty’s Province of the Massachusetts-Bay in New England and Vice Admiral of the Same.” This is a long title, but Mackintosh was satisfied with one half as long. Furthermore, he was in actual control of his followers, while Bernard was a craven, hesitating and fearful, not to say pusillanimous executive.
On August 12, 1765, the birthday of the Prince of Wales was observed in Boston. This event called together many of the patriots, who in discussing the political situation decided that an object lesson should be given to the people. In two days they planned and fashioned effigies of Bute and Oliver — the one hated in England, the other hated in Boston. Mackintosh as “First Captain General of Liberty Tree” had charge of the hanging of effigies on the tree and of illuminations. One of the lanterns that formerly hung on Liberty Tree is preserved and is now owned by the Bostonian Society.55 On the morning of August 14, 1765, there hung on the tree the quickly constructed effigy of the stamp distributor, Andrew Oliver, and beside him was a boot which represented the Devil coming out of Bute. As soon as the effigies were discovered, the authorities ordered them removed, but no official had the daring to undertake their removal, and they remained undisturbed until taken down by their sponsors. With the knowledge that Mackintosh was in charge of the effigies and the knowledge that he was a shoemaker, it may be conjectured that perhaps he made the boot which stood for the detested and unpopular John Stuart, third Earl of Bute, then Prime Minister. The pun of the boot was one readily grasped in an era when many tavern keepers and tradesmen employed signboards of material articles to indicate the location of their places of business. The effigy of Oliver was prepared by Benjamin Edes, Thomas Crafts, John Smith, Stephen Cleverly, John Avery, Jr., Thomas Chase, Henry Bass, and Henry Welles.56 Of these Edes, Bass, and Chase were later identified with the North End Caucus, so the enterprise was a popular town affair and not confined to the South End. No matter how sharp the rivalry between the North and South Ends might be on Pope Day, they were united in any cause that called for patriotism. In 1773, the North End Caucus bought a flag for Liberty Tree.57
After the effigies had swung in the breeze all day, they were taken down in the evening and carried in a parade through the principal streets. It was on this occasion that the first of the Stamp Act riots occurred. Mackintosh is not blamed for all that occurred that night, but he was one of the principal figures in the mob. It is said that there were many gentlemen in that procession, which finally developed into a disorderly crowd. This mob, after shouting “Liberty, Property and No Stamps,” swung into King Street and at last, after destroying a building which it is said was designed by Oliver to be an office for the distribution of stamps, passed on to Fort Hill, where considerable damage was done to the home of Andrew Oliver. The crowd then marched across the town to the home of Hutchinson on Garden Street in the North End, but being told by one of Hutchinson’s neighbors that he was not at home, left, having caused only trivial damage. As a matter of fact Hutchinson was in the house and the crowd afterwards found this out, which was another reason why twelve days later the mob with savage gusto attacked this structure.
The events of August 14, 1765, were only a prelude to the more serious disorders of August 26. The disturbances of that night began just before dark. Some boys lighted a bonfire before the Town House and soon there was a great assembly. The phrase “Liberty and Property” was heard in the crowd, an ominous signal at that period indicating that trouble was brewing. Before long the crowd started toward the residence of Charles Paxton, where they were foiled by a tactful landlord who ordered drinks for the crowd, and assured them that Mr. Paxton with his effects had left the house. Having drunk a barrel of punch at the expense of the owner of the house where Paxton lived, the crowd moved on. It was now greatly augmented, and, after looting the houses of William Story and Benjamin Hallowell, arrived before that of Hutchinson in Garden Street. What happened there can best be told by Hutchinson himself, who on August 30 wrote as follows to Richard Jackson, the province agent in London:
I came from my house at Milton with my family the 26 in the morning after dinner it was whispered in town there would be a mob at night & that Paxtons, Hallowells, & the custom house & admiralty officers houses would be attacked but my friends assured me the rabble were satisfied with the insult I had received & that I was become rather popular. In the evening while I was at supper & my children round me somebody ran in & said the mob were coming. I directed my children to fly to a secure place & shut up my house as I had done before intending not to quit it but my eldest daughter repented her leaving me & hastened back & protested she would not quit the house unless I did. I could not stand against this and withdrew wth her to a neighbouring house where I had been but a few minutes before the hellish crew fell upon my house with the rage of devils & in a moment with axes split down the door & entred my son being in the great entry heard them cry damn him he is upstairs we’ll have him. Some ran immediately as high as the top of the house others filled the rooms below and cellars & others remained without the house to be employed there. Messages soon came one after another to the house where I was to inform me the mob were coming in pursuit of me and I was obliged to retire thro yards & gardens to a house more remote where I remained until 4 o’clock by which time one of the best finished houses in the Province had nothing remaining but the bare walls and floors. Not contented with tearing off all the wainscot & hangings & splitting the doors to pieces they beat down the Partition walls & altho that alone cost them near two hours they cut down the cupola or lanthern & they began to take the plate and boards from the roof & were prevented only by the approaching daylight from a total destruction of the building. The garden fence was laid flat & all my trees &c broke down to the ground. Such ruins were never seen in America. Besides my plate & family pictures household furniture of every kind my own my children and servants apparel they carried off about £900 sterling in money emptied the house of every thing whatsoever except a part of the kitchin furniture not leaving a single book or paper in it & have scattered or destroyed all the manuscript & other papers I had been collecting for 30 years together besides a great number of publick papers in my custody.
The evening being warm I had undressed me & slipt on a thin camlet surtout over my wastcoat, the next morning the weather being changed I had not cloaths enough in my posession to defend me from the cold & was obliged to borrow from my friends. Many articles of cloathing & good part of my plate have since been picked up in different quarters of the town but the furniture in general was cut to pieces before it was thrown out of the house & most of the beds cut open & the feathers thrown out of the windows. The next evening I intended with my children to Milton but meeting two or three small parties of the ruffians who I suppose had concealed themselves in the country and my coachman hearing one of them say there he is, my daughters were terrified & said they should never be safe and I was forced to shelter them that night at the Castle.
The encouragers of the first mob never intended matters should go this length & the people in general express the utmost detestation of this unparalelled outrage & I wish they could be convinced what intimate hazard there is of the most terrible consequences from such dæmons when they are let loose in a government where there is not constant authority at hand sufficient to suppress them.
I am told the government here will make me a compensation for my own & my family’s loss wch I think cannot be much less than £3000 sterl. I am not sure they will.58 If they do not it will be too heavy for me and I must humbly apply to his Majesty in whose service I am a sufferer but this & a much greater sum would be an insufficient compensation for the constant distress & anxiety of mind I have felt for some time past & must feel for months to come. You cannot conceive the wretched state we are in. Such is the resentment of the people against the stamp duty that there can be no dependance upon the general court to take any steps to enforce or rather advise as to the payment of it. On the other hand, such will be the effects of not submitting to it that all trade must cease all courts fall & all authority be at an end. Must not the ministers be extremely embarrassed. On the one hand it will be said if concessions be made the parliament [will] endanger the loss of their authority over the colonies on the other hand if external force should be used there seems to be danger of a total lasting alienation of affection. Is there no alternative? May the infinitely wise God direct you.59
Two days after the riot, at the Council meeting on August 28, 1765, Governor Bernard asked the opinion of the Council as to the advisability of writing to General Thomas Gage in New York and to Lord Colville. He was advised by the Council that it was not expedient to write to them. This action must have been a parliamentary defeat for Bernard, because on the day preceding the session of the Council, he had taken upon himself to write to both Gage and Colville. The letter to Gage shows how thoroughly distressed and frightened the Governor was:
I doubt not but you will have an account of the riots at Boston, upon the business of the Stamp Act before this comes to hand. The Mob was so general & so supported, that all civil power ceased in an instant, & I had not the least authority to oppose or quiet the Mob. You are sensible how extreamly weak an American Governor is in regard to popular tumults, without a file of Men at his Command, & having no regular troops, at present, within call. In this state, I could look only towards you: and I was assured that you had but two Companies with you, and those I conceived could not be properly moved from their present stations for obvious reasons. I therefore listened to flattering hopes that these Troubles might subside of themselves, & that temporary Quiet might take place till we could hear from England. But in this I have been deceived: for the fury of the mob is grown more extravagant than ever. Last night they destroyed & rifled the Lt Govrs House from Top to Bottom; all his Cash, papers, furniture, Cloaths, &c, are carried off, & wasted & burned; They served Mr Hallowell’s, Comptroller of the Customs, after the same manner; also Mr Story’s, the Register of the Admiralty’s House, all whose papers & Books, among which were all the records of the records of the Admiralty, were burned before his door: Another House, Mr Paxton,60 was intended for ruin; but begged off by the Landlord of the House. My House was not attacked at all; which I wondered at: for the other persons having offended them only by being in Office under the King, I should have thought, that I should have been reckoned the most offensive. More mischief is daily expected: Where it will end no body knows. In short, The Town of Boston is in the possession of an incensed & implacable Mob; I have no force to oppose them; I know not whether I shall be able to preserve this Castle, which is threatened to be attacked, if the stamped papers from England should be, as is designed, placed here. The Garrison, when compleat, amounts but to 60 men; & I dare not reenforce them out of the Country, for fear it should be the Means of betraying the place. Under these difficulties, I have nothing to do, but to apply to you, as his Majesty’s Military Commander in chief; and I can only recommend to you to use such means as you shall think proper to preserve his Majestys Dominion over this Town. I am going to Cambridge to hold a Council there, & consider what is to be done on this occasion; one Measure must be to remove the Government to a place of Security, & there call the Assembly, who, I doubt not, will testify their abhorrance of these rebellious proceedings.61
Mixed emotions were experienced throughout Boston on the morning following the wrecking of Hutchinson’s house. The North part of the town doubtless had been sleepless the greater part of the night, for the work of destruction went on until four o’clock the following morning, when daybreak admonished the mob to cease its efforts. One of the immediate results of the rioting was the calling of a town meeting. Though hastily called, the meeting was attended by quite a large concourse, including, as is suggested by several authorities, some of the citizens who were in the rioting a few hours before. They were there, doubtless, to see what was going to be done about it, with mental reservations in all that they voted that day. It does not appear that Mackintosh himself was at the town meeting, but he might have been there. It is known that he appeared in King Street that very day and before long was arrested by Sheriff Stephen Greenleaf, who had a warrant which had been issued by the Council. Just what conversation passed between Mackintosh and the Sheriff is not revealed. No blows were struck, and Mackintosh created no disturbance. Perhaps he knew that he was standing on relatively safe ground. What happened may best judged by what is written in the diary of Thomas Hutchinson, the man most interested, and presumably as well informed as any person could be:
The Governor had summoned a council the day after the riot. The Sherriff attended; and upon enquiry, it appeared that one Mackintosh, a shoemaker, was among the most active in destroying the Lt Governor’s house and furniture. A warrant was given to the Sherriff to apprehend him by name, with divers others. Mackintosh appeared in King Street, and the Sherriff took him; but soon discharged him, and returned to the Council Chamber, where he gave an account of his taking him; and said that Mr Nathl Coffin,62 and several other gentlemen, came to him, and told him that it had been agreed that the cadets and many other persons should appear in arms the next evening, as a guard and security against a fresh riot, which was feared, and said to have been threatened, but not a man would appear unless Mackintosh was discharged. The Lieut. Governor asked, “and did you discharge him?” “Yes.” “Then you have not done your duty.” And this was all the notice taken of the discharge. The true reason of thus distinguishing Mackintosh was that he could discover who employed him; whereas the other persons apprehended were such as had collected together without knowing of any previous plan. It was plain the Governor thought the state of the province would not bear the execution of the law, and never moved for any other steps for a prosecution.63
It is not difficult to read between the lines, and perhaps in the entry itself, a feeling against Bernard, as consciously or subconsciously felt by Hutchinson. The Governor was a craven-hearted official, and having had advance notice that riots might occur that night, he had retired to Castle William, a safe place. Hutchinson, no doubt, felt that his superior should have stood by him with some show of fortitude, but in this he was disappointed.
In Hutchinson’s account of the riot, a number of features invite comment. If he intended to suggest that the patriot leaders countenanced or arranged for the riot, the innuendo is unsupported by any known evidence. It is not at all probable that any of the Whig political leaders would have prearranged violence of that type. Nobody anticipated such a complete destruction as occurred, but nobody knew how deep was the resentment of the common people, the democrats, against the officials of the colony, the aristocrats. Class feeling entered into that short reign of terror more than has been realized. If the patriots did not arrange for the riot, they at least were able to control their grief. Behind the refusal of Greenleaf to hold Mackintosh was public opinion. Greenleaf doubtless felt that an attempt to detain the shoemaker would lead to a worse riot, and there can be no doubt that an attempt to rescue him would have occurred at once. The Lieutenant Governor evidently regarded Mackintosh not as a principal but as an agent. To this day the principals, if there were any, are not known.64
A reward offered by Governor Bernard for the arrest of the leaders of the mob produced no results. There were many needy citizens in Boston who could have used the £300 offered, and anybody who took Mackintosh would have been entitled to that sum, but the shoemaker remained unmolested. There were many British sympathizers who so heartily hated the radical element that they would have done almost anything to bring trouble on the leader of the mob, but they lacked courage to initiate the arrest of Mackintosh. The theory that Boston merchants, who in past years had successfully smuggled in their goods and now since the enforcement of the revenue laws were being compelled to pay duty, connived at the rioting, must have some weight. It is significant that not only in this colony, but in others wherever smuggling previously had prevailed on a large scale and now was greatly reduced through the activity of revenue officials, the rioting was most marked. Many examples in support of this observation might be cited, but one will suffice, — Newport, Rhode Island, where violence was almost as severe as in Boston. In other words, the Stamp Act got a warm reception in the colonies where a stiffening of the backbone of revenue officers through a change of policy had made a dent in the pocket-books of the merchants, who in order to recoup themselves had been obliged to advance prices of commodities to their customers. The ultimate consumer always pays. It was some of the ultimate consumers who were rioters. If the man “higher up,” in this case the merchant, quietly dropped the hint that a little intimidation might help to restore the old easy conditions, when bribery was the accepted rule, it fell on willing ears. Mackintosh must bear the blame for his acts, but the responsibility for the uprising no doubt should rightfully be shared by some of the Boston merchants.
No serious efforts had ever been made to collect the duties of the Molasses Act of 1733, and so for a generation relaxation and petty corruption were the rule. It was only after the close of the French and Indian War, when England decided to revise its duties and to enforce their collection, that New England exhibited an ugly temper. Touch a man’s pocket-book and you touch his primal instincts. The efforts of the Customs officials to prevent the illicit trade, which they had laxly permitted for more than thirty years, were among the chief causes of the Stamp Act rioting. Governor Bernard wrote on this point in 1764: “if conniving at foreign sugar and molasses, and Portugal wines and fruit, is to be reckoned Corruption, there was never, I believe, an incorrupt Custom House official in America till within twelve months; and, therefore Incorruption in the best of them must be considered, not as a positive, but comparative term.”65 In this observation, from a high British official who must have known what the state of the province was, the key is found to the reason for the attacks upon the offices of Story, Hallowell, and Hutchinson. That Paxton’s house and the Custom House were two other intended points of attack but escaped, one through the special pleading of a friend and the other because too securely guarded, is also significant. With these conditions in mind, it is easier to understand why Mackintosh was not apprehended and jailed. Why arrest a shoemaker of most humble circumstances when the real offenders were the substantial merchants of the town, some of whom were known smugglers, Daniel Malcom and John Hancock, for instance? The list might be lengthened.
Mackintosh was not the only person who was arrested for the Hutchinson riot. A man whose surname was Moore was apprehended, and at least two others were committed to jail.66 Moore possibly was Hugh Moore, whose son Thomas Moore is known to have been in the Boston Tea Party eight years later. The identity of this group of rioters is a matter of conjecture. Early in October, before the trial of these men was due, a party of men entered the house of the jailer in the night, compelled him to deliver up the keys of the prison, which they opened and set the accused and other prisoners — seven or eight in all — at liberty. All this was effected without tumult or alarm to any except the jailer and his immediate family. The persons liberated kept out of sight for a time; “but there was no authority,” says Hutchinson, “which thought it advisable to make any inquiry after them.”67
There can be little doubt that many of the rioters at Hutchinson’s house were not Boston men, although the greater part of them probably came from the South End. The attack on these several houses had been whispered about for a day or so in advance. On the water front in particular this rumor was current. The Boston News Letter for November 7, 1765, hastens to pass the responsibility for the riots to outside parties, in the following account written in approval of the union celebration of Pope Day that year:
The Evening was more remarkable for Peace and Quietness than common; a circumstance that would at any Time redound to the Honor of the Town, but was still more agreeable, as the Fears of many were great least it should prove another 26th of August; for the horrid Violences of which Night we hope the good Order of this will in some Measure atone, as it is a proof such Conduct was not agreeable to the Sentiments of the Town, but was only the lawless Ravages of some Foreign Villians, who took Advantage of the overheated Temper, of a very few people of this Place, and drew them in to commit, such Violences and Disorders as they shuddered at with Horror in their cooler Hours (p. 1/3).
By “cooler hours” presumably is meant after the fumes of the Madeira wine had cleared from their brains. Eight pipes of wine were consumed from the Hutchinson cellar alone, and there was considerable wine at the sacking of Story’s house.
The ease with which Mackintosh secured his release from the sheriff is a striking commentary on the state of discipline in the town. Greenleaf was a tory, but he was an easy-going one. He continued to live in Boston after the Declaration of Independence. He seems ever to have moved along the lines of least resistance, and to have had some appreciation of the limits of authority in a town where public opinion did not support the execution of the law. Perhaps his liberal attitude toward political offenders saved him from being driven out of the town.
Because the Stamp Act riots of Boston occurred almost ten years before the American Revolution began, there has been a general disposition to minimize their importance. They are looked upon as disgraceful and almost indefensible. Granted their unpleasant features, it is significant that following the riot of August 14, 1765, when Oliver’s house was injured, a “union” or agreement was formed in town not to import any goods from England until the Stamp Act was repealed. This decision shows the influence of the merchants. It suggests that if they were not physically members of these disorderly crowds, they at least sympathized in a measure with the vengeance that the rabble directed against the officials engaged in enforcing the new revenue laws. So Hutchinson was right in regarding Mackintosh as an agent and not as a principal.
As might be expected, the protesting patriots formally observed the day which was set for the Stamp Act to go into operation — November 1. The effigies of George Grenville and John Huske were hung on Liberty Tree, where they remained until afternoon, when they were taken down, borne about the streets, and again hung up on the gallows on the Neck, and “after continuing some Time were cut down, when the Populace, in token of their utmost Detestation of the Men they were designed to represent, tore them to Pieces and flung their Limbs with Indignation into the Air.”68 Great fears were entertained before the arrival of Pope Day, four days later, lest there should be a duplication of the rioting of the preceding August 26th. These fears were entirely unfounded, due to the fact that influential persons took precautions to prevent disorder. It thus happened that on November 5 the two factions of the North End and South End harmonized and, after a friendly meeting in King Street, marched together to Liberty Tree. The leaders — Mackintosh of the South End and Samuel Swift of the North End — appeared in military habits, with small canes resting on their left arms, having music in front and at flank. All the property used on such occasions was afterward burned on Copp’s Hill.69 This shows that Mackintosh could be a force for order as well as disorder.
It is hard to say which was the more unpopular in Boston at the time of the Stamp Act, Hutchinson or Oliver. Probably the Lieutenant Governor was more generally detested by the patriots, but Oliver was a close second, and as time went on he did not improve his standing, as is seen by the fact that in 1772, when his body was being lowered into the grave, some irreverent townsman headed the giving of three cheers. The destruction of the building on King Street, in the course of the riot of August 14, 1765, which was supposed to be designed as a Stamp Office, and owned by Oliver, was regarded as a bit of effective work by the opponents of the Stamp Act, but the story went about the town, a little later, that Oliver intended to attempt to administer the office of distributor of stamps. This aroused the populace, and he was asked to make a declaration that he did not intend so to act. Accordingly Oliver gave out a statement to the Boston newspapers, disclaiming his intention to act under the Stamp Act. The statement read well enough and should have been satisfactory, but it was not so received and a more unequivocal declaration was demanded. Accordingly Oliver was summoned to appear at Liberty Tree,70 at 12 o’clock noon, December 17, 1765, and make a plain and acceptable statement of his intentions. Oliver tried to avoid such a public humiliation, but the Sons of Liberty were insistent and he had to yield. “It happened,” writes Drake, “to be a rainy and tempestuous day, and Mr. Oliver was obliged to march through the streets exposed to the weather. But what added, probably, not a little to his mortification, Mr. Mackintosh, a chief leader among the Liberty Party, attended him at his right hand to the Tree, at the head of an immense multitude.”71 Mr. Adams gives a brief but satisfying picture of what happened:
Although Andrew Oliver had resigned his office as distributor, he was forced by the Sons of Liberty, with much indignity, to appear at Liberty Tree on December 17th, and in the presence of two thousand people to declare on oath that he would never take any measures to enforce the act. The shoemaker, Mackintosh, the leader of the earlier rioters, stood at his right hand; no grand jury would consider the proceedings unlawful, and apparently they were instigated by the popular leaders. One of the remarkable features of the day was that the militia having refused to muster at the governor’s order, Mackintosh, who claimed to have one hundred and fifty trained men, took charge of the town and paraded the streets arm in arm with Colonel [William] Brattle, a member of Council, although known as the leader of the mob in various riots, including the destruction of the lieutenant-governor’s house.72
This certainly is a very interesting picture, both of the meeting at Liberty Tree and of its aftermath in which Brattle and Mackintosh fraternized. During the reading of Oliver’s disclaimer, Mackintosh stood at his right hand, not for the purpose of intimidating him but for the protection of the unlucky official on the colonial grill. As “Captain General of Liberty Tree” it doubtless was one of his duties to see that any tory who appeared by invitation, especially any there for the purpose of renouncing a royal appointment, was treated with some show of courtesy, and was at least not assaulted or given over to the mob to be tarred and feathered. Oliver was safer than he would have been if the Stamp Act rioter had not been on hand. It is significant that the selectmen and other town officers were spectators at the above described scene of renunciation under the elm, and it is apparent that public opinion was in favor of the action taken by the Sons of Liberty.
From this account and from the action taken by him at the time Hutchinson’s house was wrecked in seeing that the building was not set on fire, it is evident that Mackintosh, while believing in what we to-day call direct action and sabotage, was no mere brawler. He had qualities of leadership that fitted him to command the support of the crowd. If he had, as is said, a hundred and fifty men who were willing to be led by him, he had no mean following, and was a local power with which the authorities must reckon. Mackintosh’s appearance with Brattle may have been vanity, or it may have been due to the fact that Brattle had a good number of glasses of Madeira under his belt. The parade may have been done on impulse as a burlesque, but it is noteworthy that no riot occurred that day.
So busy had Ebenezer Mackintosh been in directing Pope Day celebrations, in seeing that riots were not turned into disastrous arson parties, in arranging that Liberty Tree should shed its light in proper effulgence, to say nothing of the daily task of making shoes, that he reached the age of twenty-nine before he was married. This is late in life for a colonist of that period to begin wedded bliss, but the delay may have been caused by the fact that he did not have enough money to warrant matrimony. It may be, however, that he was regarded as such an apostle of violence by the women of Boston that none of them took a chance until he was past the age of burning youth. At twenty-nine, however, he married into a good family, and it is noticeable that he did not unite with one of the South End girls, but with one from the North End, where his reputation supposedly was held in no high esteem, as broken heads on Pope Day could testify. His bride was Elizabeth Maverick, baptized December 25, 1743, daughter of Jotham and Mehitable (Banks) Maverick.73 The branch of the family into which he married was eminently respectable, but like himself not well endowed with worldly goods. Elizabeth and Ebenezer were married August 7, 1766,74 not quite a year after the wrecking of Hutchinson’s house and about six months after the sensational seizure of a Stamp Act clearance at the Custom House, the latter of which will be mentioned later. The ceremony was performed by no less a personage than the Rev. Andrew Eliot, minister of the New North Church. It was he who a year before had searched the muddy streets near Hutchinson’s house in a surprisingly successful effort to restore to the owner the manuscripts of historic value which had been scattered by the crowd.75 The fact that Mr. Eliot officiated at this wedding is something of a surprise. There is no other clew in the life of Ebenezer as to his church preference, if he had any, but being of Scotch stock, he perhaps was a dissenter in religion. At any rate the Mavericks were Congregationalists and Elizabeth was married by her pastor.
Two children were born of this marriage: Elizabeth, born December 12, 1767, and Paschal Paoli, born March 31, 1769.76 Both lived to maturity and have numerous descendants, but so far as is known not a single descendant of Ebenezer lives in Boston or vicinity. Apparently married life steadied Mackintosh, for nothing is found recorded against him from that day until the time of the Boston Tea Party, so for about seven years he either stayed his hand or acted cautiously, in spite of numerous temptations, for there were plenty of riots in Boston between 1766 and 1773. The Liberty sloop riot of June 10, 1768, when the houses of revenue officers were damaged, caused a great commotion in town, but there is no mention of Mackintosh as a participant, and the British would have been quick to put the blame on him, if they could. Perhaps Elizabeth Maverick exacted a pledge of orderly public conduct from Ebenezer before she consented to the wedding; at any rate, it was not until after she was dead that he seems to have resumed his avocation of master of destruction.
Selection of the name Paschal Paoli for his child, as already indicated, was a tribute to the Corsican revolutionary leader whose name was on the lip of many patriotic citizens at this period. Toasts to Paoli were common, towns were named for him, and for a short time he was a hero to the radical colonists in America. On March 10, 1769, a patriotic group met at a tavern in Philadelphia in commemoration of Paoli’s birthday. The Sons of Liberty in Boston often spoke and wrote about Paoli, and it is no surprise that children should be named in his honor. The Boston Evening Post for April 24, 1769, issued less than a month after the birth of Mackintosh’s child, has this item: “A person in this town lately had a child baptized by the name of Paschal Paoli.” Probably this referred to the addition to Ebenezer’s family, but it may have referred to some other family, for the name is by no means extremely rare.77 The name Pascal (thus spelled) has been carried on in the Mackintosh family, but the Paoli has disappeared.
While Ebenezer seems to have been leading a reasonably quiet family life, one incident must have embittered him more than ever against the British. This was the Boston Massacre, which occurred March 5, 1770, in which one of the victims was Samuel Maverick, a half-brother of his wife Elizabeth. This young man was only seventeen years old, and his death seems to have been more of an accident than that of some of the others who were out that night for trouble. Maverick had only just left a house that was near, and had arrived at the scene of the turbulence, when a bullet laid him low and he died the next day. Doubtless the loss of this promising young man, for he was well regarded, did not improve Mackintosh’s disposition. Incidentally it may be observed that Mackintosh himself was not a participant in the Boston Massacre.
Emphasis has been laid on the fact that Mackintosh was of Scottish extraction. Quite a number of the Scots of Boston supported the British official régime, but that there was a division of opinion is evident from a letter written November 24, 1774. This extract follows:
It is great injustice to the Patriots on your side of the water to charge the Scots here with being enemies to the Americans. A Scotch shoemaker was the leader of all our mobs during the time of the Stamp-act, which pulled down the Stamp Office, demolished the Lieutenant Governor’s house, and broke into the Secretary’s, and forced him to Liberty Tree, where they swore him out of office. This person, whose name is Mackintosh, has ever since continued a leading man among us. Another Scotchman, whose name is H—p,78 (originally a weaver from Haddington, a small town somewhere in the south of Scotland, but who left Glasgow in the year 1746, from an apprehension of the prophecies of Thomas, a Rhymer,79 being nearly accomplished) has also made a considerable figure among us in our late disturbances. This man, naturally of a superstitious turn of mind, brought with him to America all the necessary qualifications for a New England saint80 of the first order; and he has not hid his talent in a napkin. Having been very successful in trade, he purchased an estate in Brooklyne, a few miles from this town; and pretending to be a friend to government, he got himself made a Justice of the Peace by Governor Bernard; but was no sooner appointed, than he acted in direct opposition to his former pretences. He was Moderator of the town meetings at Brooklyne, where he lives; was of the Committee of Correspondence, and one of the Committee that came in from the neighboring towns to assist and advise with the metropolis on the destruction of the teas. This Justice of the Peace had too much prudence, and too much regard for his own person, to go on board the ships himself; but it is certain he came into Boston, and lent his advice, and the tea was accordingly destroyed. In all our late commotions he has professed himself on the side of the saints, and an enemy to the British merchants. He will soon go to Great Britain, and has promised to tell the people of England that they are imposed upon; and the merchants that they must be ruined, if the Parliament pretend to usurp any authority over our House of Assembly. While he remains in Britain, he will, I suppose, reside at Glasgow, where you will have an opportunity of seeing this Scotch American patriot. By the vessel which will bring you this letter, I shall send a packet of news-papers; so need not repeat to you any of our publick news; they will come to you without any postage, as she is bound for the Clyde. I hope you will make this public, that the stains that have been thrown upon the Scotch in New England, for their want of patriotism, and for their taking part with Government, may be wiped off.81
For four generations tradition has preserved in the Mackintosh family the account of an incident occurring in Boston in the Stamp Act era, in which Ebenezer Mackintosh figured, which it is possible to identify with reasonable certainty. This account as related by Mrs. Grace Arabella Gray of Northfield, Minnesota, great-great-granddaughter of Ebenezer, before the Josiah Edson Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, at a meeting in December, 1922, is as follows:
Ebenezer was a leader in many acts considered by the Mother Country as highly rebellious. As far as we know his first recorded doings are in connection with the Stamp Act, 1765. He and his patriotic companions, “the Sons of Liberty,” conceived the idea of seizing the Stamp Act Papers one evening from the British officers who were having a meeting there in a hall in Boston. On arriving at the door, the fellows with him were chary about going in, so left. Mackintosh entered alone and demanded the papers. The presiding officer white with fear promptly delivered the document into his hands. He passed out with no delay and later with his companions made a bonfire of it. The British officers were amazed at such boldness, but did not dare to harm him, thinking he must be backed by a large force outside.
After a careful survey of the various Boston events of the Stamp Act period, of which there is known record, it seems probable that the foregoing incident happened on Monday, February 24, 1766. No other known occurrence so well fits the Mackintosh family tradition, although the news accounts of the events of that day reveal some variations from the foregoing account. The patriots in practically all the colonies began to stage demonstrations against enforcement of the Stamp Act, soon after it went into effect, November 1, 1765. The custom of these remonstrants was curiously uniform and shows that the patriots read the current newspapers with care, and copied each other’s methods. The plan usually was to seize a document to which one of the stamps had been affixed or was imprinted and burn it after public or semi-public exercises. Throughout the colonies by agreement, February 20, 1766, had been selected as a day on which Stamp Act papers would be publicly burned. On that day some papers were burned in Boston with due solemnity,82 and previously on February 14 some were burned on Boston Neck. In neighboring towns, particularly Salem,83 Marblehead, Newburyport,84 Newport, Rhode Island,85 and in New London, Connecticut,86 there were exciting scenes of Stamp Act conflagrations at about this time. In Boston, on Monday, February 24, 1766, there occurred the incident in which Mackintosh is thought to have figured. On Saturday, February 22, there arrived in Boston from Jamaica a vessel of which Captain Thacher was in charge. His ship had a clearance, issued in the West Indies, which was on stamped paper. Soon after his arrival this news reached the ears of the local patriotic organization calling itself “the True-Born Sons of Liberty” and its members took appropriate action. As a result of the conference among themselves, a request for action was issued in writing to one of their resolute members. This request, as printed in the Boston News Letter of February 27, 1766 (page 3/2), reads as follows:
Boston, 24th Feb. 1766.
Monday, XI o’clock
******
THE Sons of Liberty being informed that a Vessel has arrived here with stamped clearances from Jamaica, desire that you would go and demand in their Names those marks of Creole Slavery; and when you have obtained them, commit to the Flames in King-Street, This Day at one o’clock; and for so doing this shall be your warrant.
Signed, by Order of the True-born SONS of LIBERTY.
M. Y. Sec.
Whereupon the Person to whom the above was directed, with a Number of others, immediately on the Receipt thereof, repaired to the Vessel, and being told the Captain was gone to enter at the Custom-House, they proceeded thither; when the above Warrant being shewn, the said stamped Clearance was delivered to them; they then fixed it on a Pole, and carried it to the lower End of the Court-House, where they put the Pole in the Stocks, and exposed the Paper to publick view until the Time appointed for Execution: At one o’clock the Warrant was read with an audible Voice, the Executioner then carried the guilty Criminal to the Centre of King-Street, and with a lighted Match set Fire to one of the S—–p-A—ts, and with that burnt the Offspring of the Hydraheaded Monster; while the Smoak was ascending the Executioner pronounced the following Words, viz. — “Behold! The Smoak ascends to Heaven, to witness between the Isle of Britain and an injured People!” — Three Cheers were then given and the Change clear in a few Minutes, without the least Disorder.87
It seems altogether probable that it was Ebenezer Mackintosh who went to the Custom House with this mandate of the True Born Sons of Liberty. If so, it was to him that the stamped clearance was delivered, since he was alone. He may also have been the so-called “Executioner,” but there is no evidence on that point. In view of Mackintosh’s prominence in the destruction of Hutchinson’s house, and his subsequent release from arrest, naturally he would be one of the first considered for such an errand. Having established his immunity from arrest on a previous and more trying occasion, he could be depended upon to take care of himself and perform the desired service, in a relatively unimportant enterprise. Such would be the line of reasoning. The True Born Sons of Liberty counted on results, and they were not disappointed when Ebenezer was involved. After a careful study of this incident and of others which might possibly refer to the traditionary account, it would seem, beyond a reasonable doubt, that it was Ebenezer who performed this deed of daring. It was such a public event that no newspaper at that period would omit mention of it, and an examination of the newspapers of 1765 and 1766 produces nothing that can fit in so many respects the tradition of the Mackintosh family.
There are some variations, however, between the news account and the family version, and they deserve to be mentioned. The tradition says there was a meeting in a hall. That variation is not serious, since it may well have been that the arrival of a stamped clearance would call the customs officials together to consider the situation. Mackintosh may have arrived just as the deliberations were under way. The tradition, however, that the affair happened in the evening is too important to be explained except on the ground that the tradition is in error on that point. There is the bare possibility that Mackintosh demanded and secured the paper on the previous night, but the fact that his mandate is dated Monday, and that Sunday night presumably was not a time when the British officials would be holding a session, gives little weight to such a supposition. The tradition, so well sustained by the news account in other respects, must be judged to be wrong in the time at which the incident is said to have occurred. Not many traditions which come down only by word of mouth for four generations will stand such a critical test.88 In another respect the tradition of the family coincides with the news event related. The family believe him to have been an active Son of Liberty, and this deed was initiated by that organization. He was a militant member of this group of patriots and he named his first-born son Paschal Paoli, a name that would not have been selected had he not been an enthusiastic radical.
So far as public acts are concerned, nothing in Mackintosh’s known record after the Stamp Act period and until the Boston Tea Party requires comment. Much weight should be given to the Mackintosh family tradition that he participated in the Boston Tea Party. Descendants of children by his first wife, and by his second wife as well, living somewhat widely apart, have the same story, namely, that he was an active participant in the affair. Inasmuch as this information originally came from Mackintosh himself, in the absence of contradictory statements it must be given a full measure of credence. In later years Mackintosh repeatedly claimed that he was the leader of the Tea Party. He was not its originator, but that he had a hand in the affair seems reasonably certain.
Benjamin B. Thatcher, writing in 1835, when seven or eight of the participants in the Tea Party were living, gives a Mackintosh as being in the party, but the given name is omitted.89 This omission has permitted writers to conjecture that Peter Mackintosh was in the party, but Peter Mackintosh was only about fifteen years old at that time, and the earlier record for violence, established by Ebenezer, gives weight to the theory that the Mackintosh named was the Stamp Act rioter returned to his old trade.90 The Boston Tea Party was a most serious affair, a very bold piece of work, and just the kind of an undertaking that would have appealed to the daring Mackintosh. This event was much talked about in England and in all the other colonies. Great efforts were made by the British to connect Hancock and Adams with the plans for destroying the tea. Perhaps Mackintosh knew more about the origin of the affair than the leaders liked. At any rate Mackintosh left town some months later. Many years afterward, about 1810, he said to a young man named Schuyler Merrill of Haverhill, New Hampshire, in speaking of the Tea Party: “It was my chickens that did the job.” This remark was not then understood by Merrill, who was only ten years old, but in later years its full significance came to him.
Some time between the date of the Tea Party, December 16, 1773, and the following summer, when the Boston Port Bill and other parliamentary repressive measures had gone into effect, Mackintosh left Boston, and so far as is known never returned. He thus missed Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill, doubtless greatly to his regret, when he heard of those conflicts. It was time that Mackintosh left Boston, for if any resident had shown open treason, he was the one. The British had evidence against him, had long had it, but had merely not found it expedient to take any action. It is true that when compensation was voted to Hutchinson and the other sufferers from riots in 1765, a clause was attached to the measure, pardoning any offenders or participants in those violent scenes, but this clause was not inserted particularly to shield Mackintosh and his associates from prosecution, but was designed to release from thraldom some clients of Joseph Hawley, who had been convicted of disturbances in the Berkshire district of this colony, at the time of the Stamp Act, and who had gone to jail rather than pay a fine. Mackintosh, however, was saved from prosecution by the exemption clause in the act granting compensation.
The Mackintosh family tradition is that the British offered a reward for him dead or alive. This is understood to have been after the Tea Party. No known handbill or executive order makes any offer for his capture. It is perfectly plain that it was as necessary for him to get out of Boston as it was for Hancock and Adams at a slightly later period to leave the town. The British would have enjoyed deporting all three of them, and others as well. Indeed, a rumor that their deportation had been ordered soon became current. This news item, taken from a London paper of April 7, 1774, was reprinted in the Massachusetts Spy of May 19:
It may be depended on that a sloop of war sailed from Plymouth 14 days since for Boston, with orders to bring to England, in irons, Messrs. Hancock, Row, Adams, and McIntosh; the latter has been very active among the lower order of people, and the other among the higher.
Should government kidnap and bring over as prisoners the leading patriots at Boston, it is much to be feared it will cause an insurrection.91
Mackintosh, accordingly, left Boston, and in so doing probably acted with prudence.
A modern Boston author, James H. Stark, who sympathized with the loyalists of the Revolutionary period, referring to the Boston Port Bill and other repressive parliamentary measures says:
That these Acts of the British Parliament at this time was necessary is beyond question, for there was a mob in Revolutionary Boston at this time, scarcely less foul-mouthed, pitiless, unscrupulous, than that which roared for the blood of the Bourbons in revolutionary Paris, or that of the Communes of later times. Mackintosh and his crew were unmistakably in evidence, certainly not restrained, but connived at by the better men, so that those just as conscientious and patriotic, who tried by lawful ways to oppose, found destruction for their property imminent; and could feel that their lives were secure only when they had fled down the harbor to the Castle.92
This comment is not entirely fair, but it has some force. However, the Boston rioters of the Stamp Act period never killed anyone. They directed their attention almost entirely to the destruction of property belonging to British officials. One reason why no fatalities ever occurred in these riots was because the objects of the mob’s wrath always fled. The Paris mob to which the Boston rioters are compared was actuated by hunger, whereas the Boston building-wreckers caused the ravage in support of what they deemed to be patriotic principles. Each demonstration staged was an object lesson.
When Mackintosh left Boston, it is known that his wife had died, and it seems probable that he was thinking more of the safety of his two motherless children than of his own possible peril. The tradition of the family is that he walked through the forests until he came to Haverhill, Grafton County, New Hampshire, a town on the Connecticut River distant in an air line about a hundred and fifty miles from Boston, and a considerably greater distance by any route which he may have taken. He presumably started northward sometime in the spring or summer of 1774. He took his two children with him, leading Elizabeth, aged about seven, by the hand and carrying Paschal Paoli, aged about five, in his arms. His route is not known, and it is not known whether when he left Boston he even knew what his destination might be. If Mackintosh passed through the town of Groton, Massachusetts, about thirty miles northwest of Boston, he may have there learned that his old army associate, Captain Ephraim Wesson, whom he must have known in the campaign of 1758, had settled in Haverhill, New Hampshire, and may have heard favorable accounts of the future of that town. In any event, he finally reached Haverhill. This was before September 27, 1774, for on that date his name is affixed as a witness to a contract to build a house, executed in Newbury, Vermont, which town is across the Connecticut River at a nearly opposite point.
This journey through the wilderness, encumbered as he was with two small children and carrying his shoemaking implements, was a remarkable feat. Perhaps he travelled by easy stages from settlement to settlement, and no doubt he was assisted by kindly pioneers whom he met, but the undertaking, nevertheless, was a most difficult task. The brief published accounts of Mackintosh’s life, in the History of Ryegate, Vermont, a town across the river from Haverhill, but a little farther north, in which Mackintosh lived for a time, and in the History of Haverhill, both intimate that he was obliged to leave Boston by “men higher up,” who feared that he might talk too much about the Boston Tea Party. It was a decided change for Mackintosh to leave a town of fifteen thousand inhabitants, one of the largest towns on the continent, and move to a settlement in the wilds of New Hampshire containing less than four hundred people. He at once began to ply his trade as shoemaker not only in Haverhill but in the adjacent towns. He presented a claim for shoemaking against the estate of John Hazen, who died in Haverhill, September 23, 1774, so it is evident that he was well settled at that time. Thereafter he was busy at his trade and probably placed his children in the home of some kindly settler. It is known that his daughter Elizabeth, when grown up, was in the family of General Moses Dow. His son Paschal Paoli emigrated to northeastern Ohio about 1786, and must have been one of the very early settlers in that part of the state known as the Western Reserve.
The story of Mackintosh’s life in Haverhill and vicinity reveals nothing of his former genius for leadership, nor is there any known event of violence in which he was involved. His circumstances ever remained humble; in fact it was practically impossible for a shoemaker in those days to acquire more than a modest competence. He took part in town affairs at Haverhill, and in 1782, 1783, and 1784 was elected sealer of leather. He held no other town office and seems not to have owned any real estate at a time when land was cheap.
For ten years after he arrived in Haverhill, Mackintosh remained unmarried, but his children having grown up, on November 11, 1784, he was married to Elizabeth Chase of that town, a widow, and the census of 1790 records them as being a family of five — two boys and a girl. This total probably records three children by his wife’s first marriage. The only children whose births are on record are John Mackintosh, born December 20, 1791, and David Mackintosh, born July 26, 1794.93 There was another child named Moses, probably born after David, but whose birth is not recorded in Haverhill. All three of these sons later removed to Ohio and settled near their half-brother. David became quite prominent, served in the Ohio Legislature, and was active in military affairs. When he died he left a provision in his will that American flags should be purchased for each town in Portage County, the county in which Shalersville, the town in which he lived, is located.
Early in the summer of 1777, it was known in the northern colonies that General Burgoyne was planning to strike a blow from the northward. There was great anxiety in the towns along the valley of the Connecticut River for fear that Burgoyne would send his army, or a part of it, by that route. This fear, as it finally proved, was unfounded, but New Hampshire and Vermont — to give the latter, then the New Hampshire Grants, its present name — as a measure of safety, called out all their available military forces. On this occasion Ebenezer Mackintosh enrolled in the service as a private, but saw no fighting. General Jacob Bayley of Newbury, Vermont, headed a brigade in the Eastern Division of the Northern Department under the command of General Horatio Gates. It was in a company attached to Bayley’s brigade that Mackintosh was enrolled. The company94 to which he belonged was captained by Joseph Hutchins of Haverhill, the chief tavern keeper of the town, and some of the most prominent citizens, thirty-four in all, enlisted at this time. Mackintosh served from August 18 to October 6. The battle of Bennington occurred August 16, 1777, and although it was a complete victory for the Continentals, fear that Burgoyne might send more detachments into Vermont, or into the Connecticut River valley, may have caused the raising of Captain Hutchins’s company. Burgoyne did not surrender until October 17, but his ultimate defeat was indicated some weeks before that time. That is the reason why Captain Hutchins’s force was disbanded eleven days before that event, and perhaps three weeks before the news of the capture reached them. For the service performed at this time Mackintosh was paid £5.7.11.
On at least one other occasion Mackintosh was in the field, that being in October, 1780. This was a brief service as a scout. The record does not state in what the scouting consisted, but known historic events in northern Vermont in October, 1780, probably indicate the scene of his services. Early in that month Major Guy Carleton sailed down Lake Champlain from the north, with a force of about a thousand British soldiers, including Loyalists and Indians. He captured Fort Ann and Fort George on Lake Champlain, and alarm spread throughout northern New England. At about this time Lieutenant Horton and a party of about three hundred, most of whom were Indians, ascended the Onion (Winooski) River and, on October 16, penetrated to Royalton, Vermont, which they burned, killed two people, took captive thirty persons, and made a rapid retreat.95 Royalton was less than thirty miles from Haverhill, and it seems probable that the scouting duty of Mackintosh and several other Haverhill men was an effort to find out whether other British forces were in that neighborhood or might be expected. Mackintosh was paid eighteen shillings for his service, which was rendered in his fiftieth year.96 This is an indication that he was vigorous and thoroughly trusted.
Nothing will better illustrate the hardy qualities and self-reliance of Mackintosh than the fact that in 1802, when he was sixty-five years old, he walked from New Hampshire to Mantua, in the northeastern section of Ohio, to visit his son Paschal. On this long journey he had with him his son David, then only eight years old. Later he returned to Haverhill, leaving David, having walked the entire distance. This was a journey of not less than thirteen hundred miles through forests. Probably he travelled by easy stages and went from settlement to settlement plying his trade as shoemaker on the trip. The undertaking, however, was such as only a capable and resourceful man of that advanced age would have attempted. A little later David returned to New Hampshire to complete his education, but after some years went back to Ohio.
Mackintosh’s oldest son, Paschal Paoli, of Mantua, a small town in Ohio, seems to have lost touch with his father as the years passed, and to have developed a deeply religious state of mind. He may have been influenced by some revivalist. The following letter, written when he was fifty-seven years old to his sister in Ryegate, Vermont, is that of a man who is brooding on the thought of his approaching end. It is the only letter from him preserved in the Mackintosh family. The text follows:
My Dear & only sister.
I recd your agreeable Letter of August — 1823. I rejoicd to learn that you, Mr. Bigelow, & all the family were in health, that four of your children were honourably married, & settled near you in comfortable circumstances. We have eight children, the oldest is 23, the youngest 8. None of them are married. We have had nine, the youngest died three years ago, aged 3½ years. I will give you the names of our children in order, I wish you to do the same by me: Laura, John W., Amanda, Hannah, William F., Mary, David S., Jerome, Norman. I am greatly comforted concerning Norman, because I believe, that through the mercy of God in Christ Jesus all Infants dying in Infancy, will surely be sav’d. Our remaining children are in health, but do not appear to manifest serious concern for the salvation of their souls; O my sister; pray for them, & for your brother, & sister.
You have given me good counsel from time to time in your Letters, you have warned, & admonished me, O that your labor of love may not be lost upon me. About twenty years ago your sister, & I, were convinced (by the Grace of God) that we were in a very dangerous situation, on account of our sinfulness of heart & life. We were assisted by the spirit of God, so to repent, so to believe, & seek for mercy, by humble prayers, at the feet of Jesus, that we rec’d a hope of the remission of our sins; we often had peace, & joy, through believing; we have at some seasons, had such assurance of our acceptance with God, & of an interest in Christ, that all fear of death, & hell were removed.
We join’d the Methodist Church nearly twenty years ago, but we have been unfaithfull, we have often turnd aside from the holy commandment deliver’d unto us, & we have not now that evidence of our acceptance with God that we have had in times past; we do not however despair of mercy, we endeavour to use such means of grace, as God has appointed. Pray for us that God woud revive his work in our souls. There is reason to fear that the Methodist people as a body are falling, and becoming more & more conformd to this world; O, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord upon all his Churches of every denomination.
I desire to see you, but it is not probable that I ever shall in this world, & if I shoud, time has made such alterations in your appearance, that I shoud hardly believe you to be that sister, which I beheld with a pleasing sorrow, at our last parting twenty three, or four years ago. Neither shou’d I appear to you like that boy, that bid you farewell, & left you in tears, (at Gen. Dow’s97) more than forty years since; to go & seek his fortune in lands to him unknown. You saw him no more, for six long years …
You kept a lock of my hair when I was a youth, to remember me by, you wou’d find now no similarity between that hair, & these white locks, which have been ever since bleeching in the wind. When you saw me last, I was in the prime of life, & vigour of manhood. Were you to see me now, you wou’d cry out, O, Time! What hast thou done? Is this Pascal? Is this my brother? O, how chang’d! — Yes, my sister, I am now a poor, old, one eyed man. I lost my right eye ten years ago, by a wheat-beard, when reaping. I find my mental, as well as bodily faculties, are fast failing, my memory has greatly faild, I am easily overcome by care, & am subject to perplexity, anxiety, discontent, uneasiness, & sometimes fretfullness of mind, without being able to tell the particular cause. O, my dear sister! God only can help our infirmities let us look to him, let us give up ourselves to him, just as we are, praying, & endeavouring, that he may make us new creatures in Christ Jesus, that we may die happy, & have inheritance among his saints, in his kingdom which is not of this world, where evil or sorrow can never come; but where all is love, & joy & peace. O, may you, & I, & all yours, & mine, & all for whom we shou’d pray, be prepard to meet together there, to worship God, in the beauty of holiness, and enjoy his love forever.
All my Brothers have good farms near me, and are doing well, for this world, they are moral, but they do not appear to extend their views beyond this world. Moses is yet unmarried.
Your sister, & all our children desire to be remembered by you, & all your family. I wrote to our Father, in 1814. (soon after my brothers returnd here, from Vermont) I am anxious to know whether he receiv’d the communication,98 before his death; I likewise wish you to inform me, if you are able, concerning the state of his mind in his last moments.
I remain, Dear sister, your loving, & only brother.
Pascal P. M’Intosh99
Elisabeth Bigelow.
Mantua May 1st 1826.
Elizabeth Mackintosh, the first child, who, when only seven years old, made that trip of a hundred and fifty miles with her father through the wilderness to Haverhill, was married in 1786 to Jabez Bigelow, shoemaker, tavern keeper, and farmer. He was a son of Jabez and Deborah (Knowlton) Bigelow of Newbury, Vermont. They removed to Ryegate, Vermont, a town about ten miles north of Newbury, and had eleven children. Ryegate was settled in 1773 by a colony from Scotland,100 and the atmosphere must have been congenial for Ebenezer, on account of his Scotch extraction. It is in Caledonia County, so called because of early predominating Scotch influences in that part of Vermont. At one time Mackintosh lived in Ryegate with his daughter.101
Not much is known about Mackintosh’s personal appearance, but when he was an old man he was described as being “of slight build, sandy complexion and nervous temperament.”102 This description while brief and somewhat disappointing prevents the visualizing of a huge burly and fierce figure. A riot leader is not necessarily a man of bulking stature, but it is natural in the absence of data to imagine a man of commanding size to qualify as leader of a mob. The dominating character of any mob leader must be his spirit and his intelligence. It was Mackintosh’s spirit, his nerve, that made him foremost in any forum where determination or violence had a place. It is probable that Mackintosh was a social and companionable man, alert and vigorous, and that as he stitched the shoes for his customers he chatted with them about the state of the country, and perhaps recited some poetry for the entertainment of those who were about him. A short sketch of him says that in his later years “he talked too much” — a fault not confined to the Mackintosh family.103
Although no monument or memorial to Ebenezer Mackintosh stands in Boston, there is in North Haverhill, New Hampshire, what purports to be a monument erected to his memory. This was placed there under rather unusual circumstances. It appears that in 1913 officers of the Coosuck Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution in North Haverhill received from the estate of John B. Peaslee of Cincinnati, Ohio, a gift of $75, which had been left by him in his will to erect a monument to “Philip Mackintosh,” of Revolutionary fame. Mr. Peaslee had formerly lived in Plaistow, New Hampshire, and is said to have known about the lack of a memorial to Mackintosh. The given name as furnished by the Peaslee estate was Philip, and the officers of the local organization erected a monument to Mackintosh and inscribed it as directed. If Ebenezer Mackintosh was ever known by that given name it was within a small circle. There is the family tradition that he did change his name, but the evidence that he was known as Ebenezer in New Hampshire, in Haverhill and vicinity, is overwhelming. He signed a contract as a witness at Newbury, Vermont, in 1774, as Ebenezer, presented a bill to the estate of John Hazen in North Haverhill, in 1774, as Ebenezer, was a soldier in the uprising to repel Burgoyne in 1777 as Ebenezer, was sealer of leather in Haverhill town records as Ebenezer in 1782–1784, and was in the Census of 1790 as Ebenezer. The “Philip” is plainly wrong.
The tablet is of sandstone four feet high, twenty-six inches wide at the base, tapering to twenty-three inches at the top. It is about a foot in thickness. In the centre of the stone is set a marble slab on which appears this inscription:
It would seem as if in the interest of historical accuracy the name Ebenezer should be substituted on the tablet for Philip. Mr. Peaslee, who made the tablet possible, never knew Mackintosh, for they were not contemporaries.
The “Hurlbutt House” mentioned in the inscription was on the poor farm of Haverhill. The town sold Ebenezer Mackintosh’s services about 1810 or 1811 by auction and the manager of the poor farm, Elisha Hurlbutt,105 bought him, and there he remained until he died. With four prosperous sons in Ohio, one of whom visited him in 1814, and with a daughter and several grandchildren living in nearby Ryegate, Vermont, it is hard to understand why their father and grandfather was thus permitted to spend his last years. The true explanation may be that he was then too old to go to Ohio, and he may have preferred to remain where he was. To the present generation his end seems melancholy.
Mackintosh is buried in Horse Meadow Cemetery, which is located between North Haverhill and Woodsville, New Hampshire. At the time the monument was erected his grave could not be identified, and so the stone was placed on the site of the house where he died.
In the early part of this study of Mackintosh emphasis was laid upon his basic Scottish extraction, and the violence and fighting through which generations of his Clan passed. The purpose of introducing those details was to permit the reader to join in the conclusion that Ebenezer Mackintosh was not a vicious and ignorant malefactor, not a man who deserves to be dismissed with the descriptive phrase “the rioter,” but a man born with a militant nature within him, with a fighting impulse and the spirit to champion the cause he thought to be right. He regarded the colonists as right in resisting British misrule, and he acted in accordance with that belief. Three generations of quiet toiling Dedham yeomen preceded him, and then he developed in an era of stirring times. Crises appeared when direct action was demanded. He rose readily on these occasions, and fearing nothing, acted with a daring that stamps him as sprung from the Mackintoshes of old, the men of the Highlands, who lead, who defy if necessary, but who never willingly yield. Some of Mackintosh’s acts cannot well be defended, but in most of his acts he appears to have been supported by that intangible but ever powerful force — public opinion.106
1 See our Publications, ix. 478.
2 The Quinquennial Catalogue gives 63 names. The member of the Class who did not graduate in 1771 was Amos Windship. As a matter of fact he never received the degree of A.B., but in 1790 was given the degrees of A.M. and M.D.: see our Publications, xxv. 144, 162 note 2.
3 P. 2/2. Draper continued to print the sheets of Quaestiones in 1772 and 1773, but the Theses of these years were printed by Thomas and John Fleet. In 1774 and 1775 no Commencement sheets were issued. In 1776 Powars and Willis were the printers, but the Fleets were again employed to print these sheets from 1777 to 1785.
The question of how many days before Commencement the programmes were printed is of some interest. In 1771 Commencement came on July 17. A writer (p. 13, below) says that a Class committee was chosen “about a fortnight before Commencement,” — i.e. about July 3. A rumor that a new printer had been selected reached Draper by July 11, but clearly the programme had not then been printed. Cf. our Publications, xviii. 328 note.
4 Doubtless the custom was of long standing. In 1702 Cotton Mather, in his account of the College says, “At the Commencement, it has been the Annual Custom for the Batchelors to publish a Sheet of Theses, … and those Theses they dedicate as handsomely as they can, to the Persons of Quality, but especially the Governour of the Province, whose Patronage the Colledge would be recommended unto. The Masters do, in an half sheet, without any Dedication, publish only the Quæstiones pro Modulo discutiendæ,” etc. (Magnalia, bk. iv. ch. i., § 7, p. 131).
An earlier glimpse of the same custom is seen in an entry in the diary of William Adams (H. C. 1671). Under date of August 2, 1671 he notes, “Was printed our theses for ye commencement” (4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, I. 13). He would hardly have mentioned the fact unless he and his classmates had had a hand in the affair.
5 Underneath Draper’s communication is the following: “[Just as the above was finished, a Letter came to Hand from Cambridge, upon this Affair, but shall not take up any more Room this Week, perhaps it may be in one Corner of our next.]”
6 For a memoir of Dr. Thomas Young, see our Publications, xi. 2–54. Mr. Anderson tells me that Dr. Young attended Richard Draper’s nephew, Samuel Draper, who died March 21, 1767 (our Publications, ix. 438 note 2), in his last illness, that Richard Draper was dissatisfied with Dr. Young’s treatment of the case, and that a bitter feud ever after existed between Richard Draper and Dr. Young.
7 Neither “type” (as here used) nor “typo” (in the same sense) is recognized in the Oxford English Dictionary. The Century Dictionary recognizes “typo,” though with no examples, but not “type.” In his American Glossary (ii. 913), R. H. Thornton, though citing examples of “typo” dated 1816 and 1902, does not recognize “type.” Both words were in more or less common use in this country before 1800.
8 William Tryon, Governor of North Carolina.
9 P. 3/1. It was also printed in the Spy of August 22 (p. 3/3).
10 It seems more likely that Thomas inserted his notice in the Boston Gazette because that paper appeared three days before his own.
11 See p. 64 note, below.
12 G. Eyre-Todd, Highland Clans of Scotland (1913), ii. 334–346.
13 Pardoned by ordinances of Parliament, October 20, 1651 (Suffolk Deeds, i. 7).
14 Suffolk Deeds, i. 4 ff.
15 Hutchinson Papers (Prince Society), i. 264–265. I am indebted to Mr. Albert Matthews for this helpful reference.
16 On the authority of the Rev. Everett S. Stackpole of Bath, Maine, who has extensive manuscript material on these Scotch prisoners.
17 S. A. Bates, Ancient Iron Works at Braintree (1898), pp. 1 ff.
18 Essex Antiquarian, x. 81.
19 They went into the battle of Worcester free men, hopeful and confident. They were young, John then being only about twenty-two years old. A few hours later the army in which they fought was crushed and defeated by Cromwell and they were no longer free. Instead of suffering the fate of soldiers taken by Cromwell in Ireland, where it is said that he put to the sword several hundred thousand of his prisoners, the Scotch soldiers were sold into servitude and sent to America. As soon as they arrived in Boston and were disposed of, probably out of family pride they adopted the surname Tosh, the last syllable of their clan name.
Whether the name Tosh was selected by accident or by design and instinctively because of the fact that it was nearly a restoration of the ancient Gaelic name of the family, “Toisech,” can only be conjectured. I am indebted to President Robinson for the suggestion that possibly the prisoners, wittingly or unwittingly, had gone back to the Gaelic root for their substitute surname. The Gaelic form of Mackintosh is “Mac-an-Toisich,” the son of the leader, or Thane’s son. “Toisech,” the nominative case, in Gaelic signifies leader or chieftain. The prefix “mackin” thus signifies “son of the,” and “Mackintosh” therefore means “son of the leader.” The spelling “Toish” adopted by John Mackintosh is even closer to “Toisech.” He may have been enough of a scholar to have known about the Gaelic root. It is significant, however, that as soon as he once more was a free man he restored the surname Mackintosh.
20 Not all the early Mackintoshes of Boston and its vicinity are descended from John Mackintosh of Dedham. Some of them who came from Bristol, Rhode Island, and who married into the Royal family, have no close connection with the Dedham family. Peter Mackintosh, the Boston blacksmith, who is sometimes confused with Ebenezer and incorrectly called the rioter, may have been a descendant of John Mackintosh of Dedham, but his relationship to Ebenezer cannot be stated. If Peter’s grandfather came from Scotland, as is said to be the tradition in his branch of the family, they were related only in a most distant way, and perhaps not at all. Cf. p. 52 note 2, below.
It is a significant fact, however, that Moses Mackintosh, father of Ebenezer, had a brother named John, and a John Mackentosh was married to Jane Blair in Boston, November 11, 1731 (Boston Records, xxviii. 173), only three years before the marriage of Moses in Dorchester. If this was in fact his brother, and this John was the father of Peter Mackintosh, then Peter and Ebenezer were cousins. Cf. O. A. Roberts, History of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, ii. 423, where it is said, on the authority of a manuscript in the Peter Mackintosh branch of the family, that the grandfather of Peter Mackintosh, Jr. (born January 3, 1788) was named John and came from Scotland. The services of a trained genealogist will perhaps be needed to establish the relationship, if any, between Peter and Ebenezer.
On the other hand, the McIntoshes of Needham were rather close relatives of Ebenezer. Col. William McIntosh of Needham was a half-brother of Moses, the father of Ebenezer. Col. McIntosh served with credit as an officer in the French and Indian War. He had a son named Ebenezer, who thus was a cousin of Ebenezer of Boston. Col. William McIntosh spelled his surname differently from the other members of the family. He kept a tavern in Needham which was quite famous in its day, and is described by John Rowe as a convivial place. (Cf. G. K. Clarke, History of Needham, p. 43.)
21 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, lxvii. 24–25.
22 Dedham Records: Births, Marriages and Deaths, p. 35; Boston Records, xxviii. 186.
23 The surname of this patriot appears under four different spellings, and members of the family in this country have at least a half-dozen other ways of spelling it. The spelling that Ebenezer himself used was Mackintosh, but his name is usually spelled McIntosh in the Boston town records; it is McKintosh in John Rowe’s Diary, and in his military records in New Hampshire; while it is McKentosh in the 1790 Census of New Hampshire. In the United States as a whole, to-day without doubt the favorite spelling is McIntosh. The name of a county in Georgia is spelled in that form, and in the Boston Directory for 1923 there are seventy-seven names spelled McIntosh and only thirteen spelled Mackintosh. There are ten people in Boston spelling it MacIntosh and five Macintosh. The rubber coat inventor spelled his name Macintosh. In whatever way the name is spelled the original source is the same Scotch Clan from Inverness-shire.
24 On November 19, 1725, Joseph Wight of Dedham was appointed guardian of Moses Mackintosh, then seventeen years old (Suffolk Probate Files, no. 5166).
25 “The effect of warning out as thus practised upon persons who remained in the town after being warned was to relieve the town from all obligation to aid them if they became poor and in need of help or support. They were inhabitants of the town for all purposes except being helped if they needed help. They paid taxes, they could vote, they could hold office, they could perform all the duties of citizenship and of tax-payers, and yet, if they had been warned out, they could have no help from the town. They might be taxed for the support of others who were in need, but, when they came to be in need, they were entitled to no help from the taxes of the town. They were spoken of among their neighbors as persons who had ‘been warned’” (J. H. Benton, Warning Out in New England, 1911, p. 116).
26 Records of the Supreme Judicial Court, no. 89, 905.
27 Boston Records, xxiii. 72.
28 Massachusetts Province Laws, xx. 272. It seems not improbable that the helping hand of Col. William McIntosh of Needham was behind the placing of Moses Mackintosh at the Castle, because in a letter dated Needham, January 31, 1778, to Caleb Crafts of Brookline, the Colonel says that the transports are soon “Expected for the purpose of Carring Burgoynes’ army to Europ” (Harriet F. Woods, Historical Sketches of Brookline, p. 382), and gives directions for the detaching of 86 men to be sent to the Castle to do duty there until the troops are embarked.
29 Massachusetts Archives, xci. 302.
30 Id. xcii. 179.
31 Suffolk Deeds, li. 153.
32 Boston Records, xxviii. 186.
33 xxi. 88, xxiv. 230.
34 xxi. 249.
35 Dedham Records: Births, Marriages and Deaths, p. 119.
36 The signature of Ebenezer Mackintosh which is reproduced herewith is the only one known to be in existence. The signature is in a firm hand, as if the writer were accustomed to the use of a pen. He spells the surname as did his ancestors, although his children wrote it “McIntosh.” The signature is attached as witness to a contract executed at Newbury, Vermont, September 27, 1774, a few months after he left Boston. The contract is signed by John Young and he agrees to do certain masonry on a house to be erected by Col. Thomas Johnson (1742–1819). Col. Johnson was one of the wealthiest men in that section of Vermont and the house he built is still standing. The frame was put up the day the news of the battle of Lexington and Concord reached Newbury. The original of this contract is in the Johnson Papers in the Tenney Memorial Library at Newbury. It was placed at my disposal by Frederic Palmer Wells, the historian of Newbury, Rye-gate and Barnet (Vermont).
37 Massachusetts Archives, xciii. 147a.
38 2 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, vi. 31.
39 A. Holmes, Annals of America, ii. 82–83.
40 2 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, vi. 22–23; New England Historical and Genealogical Register, x. 308; S. Sewall, History of Woburn, p. 551.
41 Massachusetts Archives, xcvi. 437.
42 Boston Records, xix. 120.
43 Cf. our Publications, viii. 90–92, 104, xii. 288–294, xvii. 314 note, xviii. 12–14.
44 Boston News Letter, November 8, 1764.
45 J. Rowe, Letters and Diary, p. 76.
46 Boston Records, xvi. 132.
47 Boston Records, xvi. 70.
48 xvi. 166, 203, 235.
49 xx. 261.
50 Samuel Hughes became a Loyalist at the time of the Revolution.
51 November 18, 1767, Boston Records, xx. 277.
Mackintosh received only limited financial return from the discharge of the office of sealer of leather. The fees must necessarily have constituted a relatively small part of his income. There were four sealers of leather in Boston at this period, whereas a decade or so before there had been six. The law provided that in addition to the regular fees, travel fees of three pence per mile should be paid to the sealers for distances above one mile travelled by them in the discharge of their duty. Inasmuch, however, as the extreme limits of the town of Boston were only about a mile apart, and the south part of the town was a long narrow neck of land on which no tanner or currier was likely to locate, it is doubtful if any travel fees were ever collected by the Boston sealers of leather. The law by which Mackintosh and his associates were governed, offered many opportunities for disputes between the sealers and the tanners and curriers: see “The County and Town Officer, or an Abridgment of the Laws of the Province of the Massachusets-Bay. By a Gentlemen” (Boston, 1768), pp. 72–73.
52 Records of the Supreme Judicial Court, no. 86,536.
53 See Jared Ingersoll’s Letters relating to the Stamp-Act (1766), pp. 14–16.
54 The tree was so named on September 11, 1765. The supplement to the Boston Gazette of Monday, September 16, said: “The Great Tree at the South End of the Town, upon which the Effigies of a Stamp Master was lately hung, was honour’d last Wednesday with the Name of, The Tree of Liberty; a large Plate of Copper, with that Inscription, in Letters of Gold, being fixed thereon” (p. 2/2). Cf. the Boston News Letter of September 12, p. 1/1.
55 When the Sons of Liberty and the South Enders were opposed to any British official or sympathizer, their state of mind was shown by the appearance of effigies on Liberty Tree. By the same token when satisfaction or joy prevailed the same Liberty Tree reflected their change of attitude. Thus when the news of the repeal of the Stamp Act was received in Boston the tree was elaborately decorated with lanterns and there was general rejoicing. As Mackintosh had led in the disorders and acts of disapproval, so did he lead in the expression of satisfaction, and as First Captain General in charge of illuminations on Liberty Tree, it is reasonably safe to assume that the celebration of the repeal of the hated Stamp Act was at least partly under his direction.
The news of the repeal reached Boston May 16, and May 19 was selected as a date for general rejoicing. On that night the tree was bedecked-with many lanterns — one account says 108 were hung on the boughs — and the spectacle must have been pleasing. The lantern owned by the Bostonian Society is in almost perfect condition. It is stoutly built, hexagonal in shape, and has a graded turret, with a circular fastener at the extreme top. Within are two sockets for the candles. The whole is about a foot and a half high. This lantern was given to the Bostonian Society by the estate of J. H. Hunneman in 1889. An inscription in gilt upon the bottom of the lantern shows that it was originally owned by Eleazer Johnson:
This
LANTERN
Was on the Northwest
Bough, (opposite Frog-lane), of the
LIBERTY TREE
Illuminated last night with
Several hundred Lanterns, on the
Arrival of the News of the
“Repeal of the Infamous
GEORGE GRENVILLE
Stamp Act.”
Boston May 21st 1766.
Eleazer Johnson
It is probable that Eleazer Johnson, who at this time had a store at Number 9 Long Wharf, took the lantern from his own stock, as he dealt in a variety of metal articles ranging from fish-hooks to anchors, dealing also in some dry goods and in wine. The inscription on the lantern purports to have been placed there on May 21, 1766, two days after the festivities at the tree. The inscription for the most part is in script, with the words “Lantern, Liberty Tree, and George Grenville” in large ordinary type letters. Eleazer Johnson in 1798 was living on Marlboro (Washington) Street in a brick house which, with the land, was valued at $2500. His wife was Elizabeth Le Crass and they were married June 13, 1758, in Boston. It is noteworthy that he was a merchant, showing once more the activity of that class in the public demonstrations of that period. Frog Lane, it will be remembered, is the present Boylston Street.
56 W. Gordon, History of the American Revolution, i. 175.
57 E. H. Goss, Life of Paul Revere, ii. 643.
58 On December 6, 1766, an act was passed granting compensation as follows: to Hutchinson, £3194.17.6; to Oliver, £172.4.0; to Hallowell, £385.6.10; and to Story, £67.8.10. The act was disallowed by the Privy Council. See Massachusetts Province Laws, iv. 903–904.
59 Massachusetts Archives, xxvi. 146–147.
Some months after the wrecking of Hutchinson’s house, Daniel Leonard, a young attorney at Taunton who then had colonial sympathies but who finally turned loyalist, related to John Adams some gossip he had gleaned in Providence at a then recent session of court in that town. Leonard spent an evening with the political club there, and on January 20, 1766, Adams wrote in his Diary this account of what Leonard had reported to him relative to the impressions of the Rhode Islanders:
Thought Hutchinson’s history did not shine; said his house was pulled down to prevent his writing more, by destroying his materials. Thought Otis was not an original genius, nor a good writer, but a person who had done and would continue to do much good service.
Were very inquisitive about Mackintosh; whether he was a man of abilities or not; whether he would probably rise, in case this contest should be carried into any length (Works, ii. 182).
60 Charles Paxton, marshal of the Court of Vice Admiralty, lived on the east side of Hutchinson (now Pearl) Street, about the fifth house from Milk Street: cf. C. H. Snow, History of Boston (1825), p. 260; Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, lvi. 343–352; our Publications, xxv. 285 note 1.
61 Bernard Papers (Harvard College Library), iv. 62–64.
62 Nathaniel Coffin was born in 1725, graduated from Harvard College in 1744, was a merchant, and at the time of the Stamp Act riots was King’s Cashier of the Customs (J. H. Stark, Loyalists of Massachusetts, pp. 234–235). He was a tory in sympathies and his intercession in behalf of Mackintosh probably arose from fear of what might happen to himself, or to the Custom House to which he was attached. As receiver of customs he might be without a position if the excesses continued and the Custom House, a shining mark, should be sacked. Doubtless Sheriff Greenleaf, knowing Coffin to stand high in the opinion of the Governor’s party, felt that he would be an excellent witness to cite to Hutchinson and the Council, when explaining his unwillingness to function as sheriff. Coffin may have had no regard whatsoever for Mackintosh, but it is a significant fact that he lived at the corner of Essex Street and Rainsford Lane (Harrison Avenue), and this was only a very short distance from Liberty Tree. Coffin thus had reason to know the power of the South Enders. Coffin was one of the addressers of both Hutchinson and Gage and went to Halifax when Boston was evacuated in March, 1776. He died in 1780. It is said that it was one of his sons who in August, 1775, helped cut down the Liberty Tree, when the British had complete control of the town.
63 T. Hutchinson, Diary and Letters, i. 70–71.
64 In the author’s copy of Snow’s History of Boston, acquired by the Boston Public Library, are annotations in ink by Mr. Snow, and corrections for a future edition. Opposite the account of the destruction of Hutchinson’s house is this entry: “Mr John Rowe is said to have been the leader of the party which went to Hutchinson’s. They had no design to commit such violence. C. Hopkins to R. Webster.” Below this is another entry: “Similar in appearance to H. G. Otis.” From this it would appear that Mr. Snow had learned that Caleb Hopkins had related to Redford Webster the above incident. It is not at all probable that John Rowe was active at the destruction of Hutchinson’s house, but he may have been a spectator, and may even have gone along with the mob to see what was going to happen. Cf. Memorial History of Boston, iii. 14.
65 Cited by J. T. Adams, Revolutionary New England, p. 269.
66 S. G. Drake, History and Antiquities of Boston, p. 701.
67 History of Massachusetts, iii.126. An account of the jail delivery and escape of these prisoners was reported to the Council at its meeting on October 2, 1765, by Sheriff Greenleaf. He said that divers prisoners had escaped, three of whom had been committed on account of the late riots. The Council must have received the news with equanimity, for on October 3 their disposition of the problem was as follows:
The Board were of opinion that it does not appear the Escape was effected by any armed force, but that the Prisoners were privately assisted by some of their friends without, and that they accomplished their purpose thro’ the weakness of the Goal, and that it being the duty of the Sheriff in such cases to issue his advertisement for the recovery of such prisoners, it is not incumbent on the Government to issue any Proclamation on this occasion (Council Records, xvi. 52, 54).
Search of the Boston newspapers of that period does not disclose any advertisement issued by the Sheriff for the apprehension of these prisoners, or for the arrest of those who released them.
68 Boston Gazette, November 4, 1765, p. 1/3.
69 F. S. Drake, Tea Leaves, p. cxxvi.
70 1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xii. 246–247.
71 S. G. Drake, History and Antiquities of Boston, p. 712.
72 J. T. Adams, Revolutionary New England, p. 334.
73 W. P. Greenlaw, manuscript genealogy of the Maverick family (New England Historic Genealogical Society).
74 Boston Records, xxx. 54.
75 Massachusetts and its Early History (Lowell Institute Lectures, 1869), p. 23.
76 Boston Records, xxiv. 315, 319.
77 On January 14, 1769, a son of Elihu and Elizabeth Hewes was baptized by the name of Paoli (Boston Records, xxiv. 318).
78 The reference is to William Hyslop, who was born about 1711 in Scotland, came to this country and was living in Brookline in 1767, and resided there until his death in 1796. He was accounted wealthy for that time, having started as a pedler of dry goods and afterwards became a tradesman. He was moderator of the Brookline town meetings in 1771 and 1772, and was made a member of its Committee of Correspondence in December, 1772. He was abroad at the time the American Revolution opened and was unable to return until the war closed. In 1793 he gave the town of Brookline funds with which to build a schoolhouse. His daughter Elizabeth married Governor Increase Sumner. (Harriet F. Woods, Historical Sketches of Brookline, pp. 301–306.)
79 For Thomas the Rhymer, see Dictionary of National Biography and Encyclopudia Britannica under Erceldoune.
80 For the expression “New England saints,” see our Publications, xiv. 190–191.
81 Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser, February 25, 1775. For this extract I am indebted to Mrs. James F. Willard of Boulder, Colorado.
82 See Boston News Letter, February 27, 1766, p. 3/2. On that occasion Liberty Tree was pruned. The Boston Evening Post of February 17 stated that the carpenters were offered pay for their work but refused, stating that it was work done for the public good. The account says that “a gentleman well skill’d in those affairs” acted “as director” (p. 2/3). Perhaps this is a reference to Mackintosh, as he was First Captain General of Liberty Tree.
83 Boston News Letter, February 6, 1766, p. 3/1.
84 Boston News Letter, March 20, 1766, p. 1/2.
85 Boston News Letter, April 10, 1766, p. 2/3.
86 Boston News Letter, March 27, 1766, p. 3/3.
87 See p. 64 note, below.
88 For two remarkable cases of verification of family traditions, see Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xlii. 193–195.
89 Traits of the Tea Party, pp. 262, 264. Cf. F. S. Drake, Tea Leaves, pp. xciii, cxxvi–cxxviii.
90 There is considerable confusion in various publications as to the identity of the Mackintosh who was in the Tea Party and the Mackintosh who led the Stamp Act riots. Caleb A. Wall says that Captain Peter McIntosh had a blacksmith shop near the wharf where the tea was thrown overboard, and that the men went into it to blacken their faces preparatory to the work of throwing the tea overboard. He adds: “He resided during his last years in North Haverhill, Grafton County, N. H., where he died in 1810 or 1811 in the family of a Mrs. Hurlbut” (Historic Boston Tea Party, 1896, p. 64). This is an error. No Peter McIntosh lived in North Haverhill, N. H., at this period, and it was Ebenezer who lived at the home of Mrs. Hurlbutt. Through Mr. Wall’s investigations the name of Peter McIntosh has been placed on the Slater monument in Worcester, Mass., in the list of participants in the Tea Party. It is probable that he was not engaged in that undertaking, and it is absolutely certain that he was not the leader of the Stamp Act riots. Thatcher makes this comment:
The Mr. McIntosh mentioned above is said to be still living in Vermont. Mr. Peter McIntosh, of this city, was at that time a blacksmith’s apprentice, and upon the mention of the fact spoken of in the text, — that some of the Party ran into such places to disguise their faces hastily with the soot, — recals the circumstance that several of them visited his master’s premises with that view. He remembers [Thomas] Spear, among them (Traits of the Tea Party, p. 262).
Though Thatcher was mistaken in supposing that Ebenezer Mackintosh was still living in 1835, since he had died in 1816, yet his statement about Peter Mackintosh, made during the lifetime of the latter and by inference after a discussion with him of the events attending the Tea Party, would seem to be almost conclusive evidence that Peter Mackintosh was not an active participant in the destruction of the tea.
91 P. 2/1. Although this statement was incorrect, as time disclosed, the publishers may have believed that it was true. Mackintosh and the three others mentioned, and others not mentioned, may well have felt that their personal liberty was in danger and have governed themselves accordingly.
The information that the above-named mixed quartet of three high-brows and one low-brow was about to be transported in irons was supposed to inspire terror. As a matter of fact it merely made the Boston leaders more wary and cautious, for they relaxed their campaign but little. The British plan to seize and transport the most troublesome patriots was not a new proposal. Six years before Lord Hillsborough in anger had proposed to invoke a statute passed in the reign of Henry VIII, which enacted that English subjects charged with committing treasonable acts beyond the confines of England might be brought home for trial. Friends of the American colonists at once pointed out that the act was passed at one of the worst periods of English history and before any English colonies had been planted in America. Moreover it was designed to meet a different situation. Hillsborough, however, stubbornly persisted that the statute was legally available, but to meet the objections of the critics of the ministry, the next year (1769) he induced Parliament to pass an act which extended the operation of the statute of Henry VIII so that unquestionably it could be invoked to meet the situation in America. Hillsborough’s influence waned at this juncture and nothing was done toward creating a test case. Thereafter the statute was a standing menace and threat to all American colonists who presumed militantly to act or speak in behalf of their rights. But nobody was sent across the water to face a treason charge in English courts. Soon after the Boston Tea Party rumors were revived in London that the leading incendiaries of Boston were to be brought to England to answer for the destruction of the tea. In Boston the Hutchinson party tried hard to find someone who would implicate Hancock and Adams in the plan to destroy the tea, but evidence was not forthcoming. It was about this time that the London news item quoted in the text appeared, mentioning not only Hancock and Adams but Rowe and Mackintosh. Why they left out William Molineux and Dr. Thomas Young, who were known participants in the Tea Party, does not appear. Why they included John Rowe is a puzzle, unless they credited him with the remark (which he probably did not make): “Who knows how tea and salt water will mingle?” Inclusion of Mackintosh’s name in this list is a straw indicating that he was in the Tea Party and had remained in Boston up to the spring of 1774, being “active among the lower order of people,” — which can be taken to mean the working people, or people of moderate means.
92 Loyalists of Massachusetts, p. 167.
93 Records of Births, Haverhill, N. H.
94 New Hampshire Revolutionary Rolls, ii. 280.
95 H. Hall, Early History of Vermont, p. 321.
96 New Hampshire Revolutionary Rolls, iii. 539.
97 Moses Dow, born February, 1746, at Atkinson, New Hampshire; H. C. 1769; removed to Plymouth, New Hampshire, in 1774, to Haverhill, New Hampshire, in 1779; a prominent patriot; died March 31, 1811: see W. F. Whicher, History of Haverhill, New Hampshire, p. 514.
98 Mrs. Goodhue suggests that possibly “communication” is here used as in Philippians, iv. 10–18.
99 For this letter I am indebted to its owner, Mrs. Sarah Arabella (Bigelow) Goodhue, of Northfield, Minnesota, a great-granddaughter of Ebenezer Mackintosh.
100 E. Miller and F. P. Wells, History of Ryegate.
101 One of Elizabeth’s eleven children was John Bigelow, who became prominent in the affairs of the town of Ryegate and who represented that town in the Vermont Assembly in 1869. John Bigelow is the father of Mrs. Sarah Arabella Goodhue, of Northfield, Minnesota, who supplied me with useful data relative to Mackintosh. Elizabeth (Mackintosh) Bigelow died October 10, 1848, aged eighty-one. The name Pascal appears among her descendants, and also Maverick, both used as given names.
102 F. S. Drake, Tea Leaves, p. cxxvii. The description is by Schuyler Merrill of North Haverhill, N. H.
103 W. F. Whither, History of Haverhill, N. H., p. 578.
104 A copy of this inscription was furnished to me by Mr. Robert H. Large of Woodsville, N. H., who also described the tablet.
105 Sometimes spelled “Hurlburt.” Possibly Mrs. Hurlbutt was a relative of Mackintosh’s second wife.
106 The illustrations accompanying this paper, for which I am indebted to the courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society, require some explanation. That facing page 14, above, reproduces a stamp and a counter-stamp issued under the Stamp Act of 1765. They were thus described in 1902 by Dr. Samuel A. Green:
Apparently with a die an impression was made on faded blue paper pasted over parchment, and fastened to it by a narrow strip of tin-foil; and a small piece of white paper, bearing a device as described below, was stuck on the back over the ends of the tin-foil. The impression on the blue paper is not very deep, but yet quite distinct. It contains a crown, with the word America over the top, and the letter A on one side; and the money value of the stamp is given at the bottom. In the centre of the impression is a double Tudor rose surrounded by the motto of the Order of the Garter. In the cut the foil is represented on the right of the rose. The counter-stamp, which was stuck on the back, has a crown with the letters “G R,” — one letter on each side, — and the figure 3 slightly below; and a double cipher or monogram of G. R. under the whole.
The blue stamps were intended for deeds, wills, and other formal documents, and the price varied according to circumstances. All the specimens that I have seen appear to have been cut out of the corners of parchment, which have been duly embossed, but never used, as the odious Act was so soon repealed (Ten Fac-simile Reproductions Relating to New England, pp. 37–38, 42. Cf. Memorial History of Boston, iii. 12 and note).
The illustration facing page 50, above, reproduces an embossed piece of stamped paper preserved in the Belknap Papers. The words “A piece of stamped paper saved out of the fire — when some bales of it were burned at New York. Jany 1766” are in red ink in the hand of the Rev. Jeremy Belknap. On the verso of the sheet are written, in black ink and in an unknown hand, the words: “One of the Detestable Marks of Slavery Recd from the sons of Liberty in Boston, & is one of those that were taken at New York.”
107 The standard work on the subject is Alexander Starbuck’s History of the American Whale Fishery from its earliest inception to the Year 1876 (Waltham, 1878), originally printed in Report of the Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries for 1875–’76, Volume II, Appendix A (Washington, 1876: Senate, 44th Congress, 1st Session, Mis. Doc. No. 107).
108 Mourt’s Relation (ed. H. M. Dexter, 1865), pp. 4, 36.
109 1 Massachusetts Historical Collections, i. 119.
110 3 Massachusetts Historical Collections, viii. 156.
111 Hakluyt’s Voyages (1904), viii. 10.
112 Id. viii. 162.
113 In John Pory’s Lost Description of Plymouth (ed. C. Burrage, 1918), pp. 5, 11. Cf. Purchas his Pilgrimes (1906), xix. 179, 184.
114 History of New England (1825), i. 157.
115 C. F. Swift, History of Old Yarmouth, p. 84.
116 F. Freeman, History of Cape Cod, ii. 50.
117 O. Macy, History of Nantucket (1835), p. 29. The man was Ichabod Paddock.
118 A reproduction of this photograph faces this page. Underneath the original is the caption:
CAPTAINS OF THE STONE FLEET
Which Sailed From New Bedford, Nov., 16TH, 1861.
Capt. Rudolphus N. Swift (standing) was the general agent of the affair, and Capt. Fred A. Stall and Capt. James B. Wood were the assistant agents. The names of the other captains, and those of their ships (printed in italics), are as follows: Thomas S. Baily, Maria Theresa; William A. Beard, America; Shubael F. Brayton, Courier; Thomas Brown 2nd, Potomac; David P. Chadwick, South America; John D. Childs, Cossack; Michael Cumiski (or Cumiskey), Frances Henrietta; Commodore Rodney French, Garland; A. H. Gifford, Herald; Joseph Howland, Leonidas; Martin Malloy, L. C. Richmond; Jotham S. Swift (sitting), Amazon; W. W. Taylor, Harvest; Benjamin W. Tilton, Kensington; James M. Willis, Rebecca Simms; William Worth, Archer.
119 Our Publications, vol. xxii. pp. xxxi-xxxii.
120 Diary, i. 472–473.
121 Rev. John Cotton (H. C. 1730; d 1789), first minister of Halifax, later of Plymouth, a son of Josiah Cotton (H. C. 1698; d 1756), who was a son of the Rev. John Cotton of Plymouth.
122 Rev. Josiah Cotton (H. C. 1722; d 1780), son of the Rev. Rowland Cotton (H. C. 1685; d 1722), who was a son of the Rev. John Cotton of Plymouth.
123 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, lvi. 30–31.
124 See our Publications, xxiv. 200.
125 Id. xxiv. 250.
126 Lieut.-Col. Bernard is a son of the late Mrs. Napier Higgins, who published a work on the Bernards of Abington and Nether Winchendon in 1903–1904.
127 Pickering Papers, liii. 230. Cf. 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, viii. 489. At the top of the document is the word “Copy,” but in a different hand and in a later ink.
128 The New England Company of 1649 and John Eliot (Prince Society, 1920).
129 Lt.-Col. Benjamin Bernard.
130 P. 2/2.
131 Historical Magazine, June, 1868, p. 377.
132 Force, American Archives, 4th Series, ii. 1118–1119.
133 Id. ii. 1126.
134 E. Stiles, Literary Diary, i. 580, 581.
135 Historical Magazine, June, 1868, p. 384.
136 Pp. 29, 30.
137 “From his [Page’s] and De Bernier’s maps, Mr. Stow, the list of regiments to which the killed belonged, and all authorities, it seems certain that the regiment of Welsh Fusileers was not in the battle” (History of Bunker Hill Battle, 2nd ed., 1826, p. 31).
138 “Hence several of the regiments — among them the 23d, or Welsh Fusileers — had only their Grenadiers, or Light Infantry Companies, in the battle” (1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xiv. 61).
139 For a detailed account of troops engaged, see my paper on “The American Defence,” pp. 130–132, below.
140 Massachusetts Royal Commissions, 1681–1774.
141 Land-Bank and Silver-Bank Papers; Bibliography of the Massachusetts House Journals, 1715–1776; Bibliography of the Massachusetts Laws, 1641–1776.
142 Check-List of Boston Newspapers, 1704–1780.
143 Plymouth Church Records, 1620–1859, Part i.
144 Plymouth Church Records, 1620–1859, Part ii.
145 Those portions of the report omittea here are entered in the Council Records.
146 At the meeting of the Council held on December 3rd, the following minute was adopted:
Moved, that the Council place upon record the sense of profound gratitude we feel for the services of Albert Matthews, who gives up the office of Editor at the end of this year. For twenty years Mr. Matthews has held this important office. His salary has never been more than merely nominal. He has discharged his duties with that quality of zeal and thoroughness which no money could ever purchase, but which must be prompted by genuine interest in the work, and profound affection for the Society. We have been wonderfully fortunate in having his help during these formative years. Thanks to him, the Society enjoys its present prominent and respected status. The Publications of the Society up to date, the greater part of which are stamped by his careful and scholarly oversight, will ever stand as an enduring memorial to his faithful, competent, and devoted labors.
147 Pp. 135–158, below.
148 Poor did not command the New Hampshire troops before Boston. These troops before the Battle of Bunker Hill voluntarily placed themselves under Ward’s orders. At a meeting of their field officers held as early as April 26, it was voted, pending action by the New Hampshire authorities, to advise the men to enlist in the service of Massachusetts. The records of this meeting are in the Massachusetts Archives.
149 John Adams to George Brinley, June 19, 1818, from the original letter in the Massachusetts Historical Society. In his History of the Siege of Boston (1849), p. 173, Frothingham quotes the passage, but not altogether accurately. The letter was written in reply to a request by Brinley (dated June 16, 1818) to be allowed to quote in an article shortly to appear in the North American Review a passage from Adams’s letter to Daniel Putnam of June 5, 1818. The article in question, written by Daniel Webster, was printed in the number for July, 1818, vii. 225–258.
150 Siege, p. 217 note 2.
151 July 27, 1775, in id. p. 217 note 2.
152 Id. p. 218 note.
153 This is clearly evidenced in the Proceedings of the Provincial Congress. Dawson discusses the matter in his article in the Historical Magazine for June, 1868, p. 329. All references in these footnotes to the Historical Magazine are to the number for June, 1868.
154 Journals Massachusetts Provincial Congress, p. 230.
155 The original of this letter is in the Samuel Adams Papers in the New York Historical Society. It is printed in Frothingham’s Life of Joseph Warren, pp. 495–496.
156 J. T. Austin, Life of Elbridge Gerry, i. 78–79.
157 June 21, 1775, in 1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xiv. 81.
158 June 23, 1775, in Historical Magazine, p. 377.
159 Printed in Frothingham’s Siege, p. 118 note.
160 This is attested by a letter of Dr. Grant, a British surgeon, dated Boston, June 23, 1775, in the New York Historical Society: “The Provincials had either exhausted their ball, or they were determined that every wound should prove fatal; their muskets were charged with old nails and angular pieces of iron” (Historical Magazine, p. 361).
161 There is also the testimony emanating from the Prescott family, embodied first in what is known as “the manuscript,” and second in the memoir written by Judge Prescott, the Colonel’s son. Neither of these is to be regarded as in any sense contemporaneous authority, being probably of even later date than the affidavits of 1825. The manuscript said to have been written by different members of the family is brief and commonplace and nowhere suggests collaboration. The memoir is free from the bitterness that characterized the output of so many partizans in the Putnam-Prescott controversy and is evidently inspired by the loving pride of a son in the achievements of a worthy sire. It is open to the criticism that attaches to any recollections of this sort. The name and high respectability of the aged writer have won for this document the confidence of many historians and it has had a marked influence in shaping the commonly accepted story of the battle. It is of no importance to us in our effort to get back to original sources and should, I think, be rejected by every one, in so far as it conflicts with what Colonel Prescott said himself in 1775. The manuscript is printed in C. Butler’s History of Groton (1848), pp. 337–341, and in the Historical Magazine, pp. 437–438; and the memoir will be found in full in 1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xiv. 68–78.
162 In Frothingham’s Siege, pp. 395–396.
163 Collections New Hampshire Historical Society, ii. 144–145; reprinted in Historical Magazine, pp. 370–371.
164 Dearborn’s account and much of the controversial matter it inspired is reprinted by Dawson in the Historical Magazine, pp. 402–437.
165 Reader’s Handbook of the American Revolution (1880), pp. 43–44.
166 I Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, ii. 231 note. Cf. ii. 224, 225.
167 This theory rests largely upon statements made by Daniel Putnam, the General’s son.
168 Orders were issued that the men should be supplied with one day’s provisions, but as they found themselves short of food and drink in the morning, this may have been one of the important matters that was overlooked. Mr. Charles Martyn in his life of Artemas Ward (1921, p. 123) puts proper emphasis on the entry in Stow’s Orderly Book for June 17, which proves that the regiments of Nixon, Little, and Mansfield with 200 Connecticut troops were to relieve Prescott on the afternoon of that day. Prescott doubtless knew this and did not expect earlier relief. Stow’s entry throws discredit upon statements in the Prescott manuscript and other late authorities.
169 Frothingham, Siege, p. 395; Historical Magazine, pp. 390–391.
170 Richard Gridley.
171 Frothingham, Siege, p. 395.
172 Force, 4 American Archives, ii. 1373–1376; reprinted in Frothingham’s Siege, p. 382, and in Historical Magazine, p. 387. The italics are mine.
173 General Heath’s memorandum, probably contemporaneous, is worth quoting: “Just before the action began, Gen. Putnam came to the redoubt, and told Col. Prescott that the entrenching tools must be sent off, or they would be lost; the Colonel replied, that if he sent any of the men away with the tools, not one of them would return; to this the General answered, they shall every man return. A large party was then sent off with the tools, and not one of them returned; in this instance the Colonel was the best judge of human nature” (Memoirs, 1901, p. 123).
174 Frothingham, Siege, p. 395.
175 Id. p. 395.
176 Probably Prescott was not altogether fair to Knowlton. He had evidently expected the Connecticut men to move in the direction of Moulton’s Point, whereas by marching “a different course” they gained a better position and constructed the rail fence. Capt. Callender of “the train” was court-martialed and dismissed the service, but lived to re-establish his reputation for courage upon many a well fought field.
177 Doubtless Knowlton’s command.
178 Frothingham, Siege, p. 396.
179 It may have been this detachment which occupied the barn shown on de Berniere’s map and fired upon the flank of the Marines in the final attack upon the redoubt.
180 Frothingham, Siege, p. 396.
181 See the letter in Stiles’s Literary Diary, i. 595–596; also in Frothingham’s Siege, pp. 392–393, and in the Historical Magazine, pp. 396–397.
182 2 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, vii. 191.
183 I do not think that this can be construed as the wail of a teetotaler. The men were up and down from Charlestown village all the morning and had free access to the town wells. What Brown yearned for was a long drink of the wine of the country — that is, cider and beer. A letter written to Jeremiah Powell from Newburyport June 21, 1775, says that the men “were almost suffocated with dust & choak’d for want of liquor.” Jonathan Trumbull writes August 31, 1779, that the men were “not even furnished with provisions and liquors for their refreshment” (1 Massachusetts Historical Collections, vi. 159).
184 The armed transport Cymetry, mounting eighteen 9-pounders, bombarded the Neck from Charles River.
185 Dawson made a curious misreading of this passage, interpreting it to mean that 700 men left the works, the words “not deserted” being added by way of satire. Brown was not satirical and meant that there were 700 left in the redoubt after all desertions.
186 This may refer to the appearance of Stark’s vanguard of 200 men or to some unidentified Massachusetts troops who reached the redoubt.
187 Capt. John Callender.
188 See his diary in 2 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xv. 255.
189 Rev. Andrew Eliot says: “great part of the time the firing seemed incessant” (Historical Magazine, p. 369). The merchant in Boston: “the most incessant discharge of guns that ever was heard with mortal ears, continued for three quarters of an hour” (Force, 4 American Archives, ii. 1079). Richard Pope: “It resembled rather a continual sheet of Lightning, and an uninterrupted peal of Thunder, than the explosion of Fire arms” (manuscript diary in the Huntington Library, photostat in the New York Public Library). A British officer: “an incessant stream of fire poured from the rebel lines, it seemed a continued sheet of fire for near thirty minutes” (in Detail and Conduct of the American War, 3rd ed., London, 1780, p. 13. This letter is found in an earlier but undated edition of the same pamphlet, entitled A View of the Evidence relative to the Conduct of the American War, etc., London, p. 73).
190 Force, 4 American Archives, ii. 1094–1095.
191 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xiv. 62.
192 Frothingham, Siege, p. 391.
193 Historical Magazine, p. 374.
194 Frothingham, Siege, p. 390.
195 Memoirs (1901), p. 13.
196 See pp. 151–152, below.
197 Thacher’s manuscript draught of the report is printed by Dawson in the Historical Magazine, p. 384, from the original in the possession of the American Antiquarian Society. It is also printed in the Proceedings of that society for April, 1909, xix. 438–442.
198 Frothingham, Siege, p. 390.
199 5 Massachusetts Historical Collections, iv. 292.
200 Force, 4 American Archives, ii. 1089; Historical Magazine, p. 374.
201 Rev. Andrew Eliot says the action lasted “perhaps an hour” (Historical Magazine, p. 369). The merchant in Boston has it, “three quarters of an hour” (Force, 4 American Archives, ii. 1079). J. Waller, officer on a British ship, thought “about forty minutes” (letter in my possession). “Another account” from Boston says “after an obstinate attack of an hour” (Rivington’s Gazetteer, July 13,1775).
202 Capt. Chester’s letter: “We lost our regularity, as every company had done before us, and fought as they did, every man loading and firing as fast as he could” (Frothingham, Siege, p. 391).
203 Stiles, Literary Diary, i. 576.
204 “Near one half the troops engaged on each side, being either killed or wounded; that is, of the British 1100, and of the Americans more than 300” (1 Massachusetts Historical Collections, vi. 160).
205 Frothingham, Siege, p. 394.
206 Id. p. 193 note.
207 According to a return of June 14, Reed’s regiment, a smaller organization than Stark’s, had 486 rank and file. (Frothingham, Siege, p. 187.) These two regiments alone had a strength on paper of more than one thousand men.
208 Frothingham, quoting this passage, vaguely attributed it to Lee’s “Vindication, published in 1778” (Siege, p. 375). “General Lee’s Vindication to the Public,” prefaced by a brief note from Lee himself, was printed in the Pennsylvania Packet of December 3, 1778: see Lee Papers, iii. 255–265 (Collections New York Historical Society for 1873), where the passage in question occurs on p. 262.
209 The best account of this confusion in the rear is to be found in Capt. Chester’s letter (Frothingham, Siege, pp. 389–391).
210 Two companies of this regiment were already in Boston, having arrived in the Rose man-of-war from Newfoundland, October 12, 1774. Thomas Newell in his diary (Frothingham, Siege, pp. 363–364) says three companies arrived at that time, but this is probably an error as it disagrees with subsequent military returns.
211 Diary of Lieut. John Barker, Cambridge, 1924, p. 47. The balance of the 600 appears to have landed on May 23 (id., p. 50).
212 Printed in S. A. Drake’s “Bunker Hill. The Story told in letters … by British officers engaged” (Boston, 1875), pp. 74–75.
213 The 22nd Regiment is included in the garrison by many American writers. This blunder is undoubtedly due to the appearance of Col. Abercrombie’s name in the death-roll of Bunker Hill. Abercrombie arrived in Boston on special duty in the spring and was appointed Adjutant, and later to the command of the Corps of Grenadiers. He did not live to rejoin his regiment, which landed in Boston in August.
214 These three companies of the 18th (Royal Irish) arrived from New York on October 23, 1774 (Diary of Thomas Newell).
215 Barker, p. 50.
216 Orders reached Boston in November, 1775, authorizing an increase in the company strength from 38 to 56 men, and providing that two additional companies of 56 men should be recruited in England for each regiment. Howe’s Orderly Book, p. 132. Because of slow recruiting this augmentation is only slightly reflected in the strength of Howe’s regiments up to the time of his sailing from Halifax to New York.
217 Lieut. Mackenzie, 2 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, v. 396.
218 Roster and losses printed in Historical Magazine, June, 1868, p. 369. All references in these foot-notes to the Historical Magazine are to the number of June, 1868.
219 Force, 4 American Archives, ii. 1097.
220 Gage’s perturbation of mind is reflected in a letter to Lady Gage, mentioned in Hutchinson’s Diary and Letters, i. 223.
221 J. T. Adams, Revolutionary New England, 1691–1776, p. 425.
222 Force, 4 American Archives ii. 1094–1095.
223 Mr. Frothingham names General Grant as being present. This officer did not arrive in Boston until late in July. See Howe’s Orderly Book (London, 1890), p. 57.
224 Letter to Lord Stanley, Farce, 4 American Archives, ii. 1094–1095.
225 “Had we have intended to have taken the whole rebel army prisoners, we needed only to have landed in their rear and occupied the high ground above Bunker’s-[Breed’s] hill. By this movement we shut them up in the peninsula as in a bag, with their rear exposed to the fire of our cannon, and, if we pleased, our musquetry: in short, they must have surrendered instantly or been blown to pieces” (letter of an officer in Boston in Detail and Conduct of the American War, reprinted in Historical Magazine, p. 368). This letter, frequently cited in this paper, was one of the evidences upon which General Howe based his request for a Parliamentary investigation.
226 The British maps of Page and de Bernière mentioned later in the text show only three ships engaged: the Lively and Falcon, sloops of war, in the stream between Boston and Charlestown, and the Cymetry, an armed transport, off Lechmere’s Point, to bombard the Neck. The Somerset and Glasgow may also have been engaged, but their stations are not shown. The drawing of the battle made for Lord Rawdon (see Memorial History of Boston, vol. iii, frontispiece) shows a man-of-war in action, up the stream from the sloops. The gondola was a small gun-boat, musket-proof, and mounting a heavy piece of cannon.
227 See letter in Detail and Conduct of the American War, in Historical Magazine, pp. 367–368.
228 “At 7 oclock the Grenrs. and Light Infantry had orders to keep in readiness” (Barker, Diary, p. 60).
229 Thomas Graves was appointed to command on the North American station in 1774. On May 26, he was saluted by the ships in the harbor on being promoted to Vice-Admiral of the White. There was much friction between him and the military authorities in Boston, and he is freely criticized in the correspondence of Burgoyne and other officers. The truth seems to be that he was sent out with an inadequate force, his ships were undermanned for war conditions, and he lacked light craft capable of operating against the Americans in shallow waters. He was superseded in January, 1776.
230 Howe’s Orderly Book, p. 1.
231 Dawson names these flank companies as those of the 18th, 22nd, and 63rd Regiments. He did not know that the Marine battalions were organized with Grenadiers and Light Infantry. The 18th Regiment, as we have seen, consisted of only three companies serving in the Incorporated Corps. Their losses in the field fell upon men drafted from these companies to fill up the flank companies of the 65th, also serving with the Incorporated Corps. The 22nd, as stated in a previous note, was not in Boston. The mention of the 63rd marks the full measure of Dawson’s accuracy.
232 This is indicated on de Bernière’s map, the flank companies of the 35th being the only ones to serve with the twenty “eldest companies” in Howe’s first detachment. Dawson refers to some specific operations performed by this company, and cites de Bernière as his authority. He was wrong again, basing his story on Swett’s adaptation of de Bernière’s map. Swett took some strange and unwarrantable liberties with that historic document.
233 It is probable that Howe’s force was closer to Gage’s figure than I have estimated. My figure of sick and unfit for duty amounts to only 5 per cent of the garrison, while on October 1, according to Howe’s return, it exceeded 20 per cent. It is also probable that the flank companies averaged more than thirty men and the battalion companies less than that number.
234 Siege, p. 191.
235 This roster is printed in S. A. Drake’s Bunker Hill, pp. 74–75.
236 Sir Thomas Hyde Page (1746–1821) was appointed Lieutenant of the Royal Engineers in 1774. He served on Howe’s staff at Bunker Hill, where he was wounded. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1783 and was knighted the same year in recognition of his distinguished military services. In 1784 he was transferred to the invalid corps of the Engineers. He published several important works on professional subjects between 1784 and 1801. A portrait of him by Sir Joshua Reynolds is in existence.
237 He executed orders in February, 1775, “to go through the counties of Suffolk and Worcester, and sketch the roads as we went, for the information of Gen. Gage.” See General Gage’s Instructions, etc., 2 Massachusetts Historical Collections, iv. 205.
238 A portion of de Bernière’s map is reproduced facing the opposite page. The legend reads as follows:
REFERENCES
|
A.A. |
First position, where the troops remained until the re-inforcements arrived |
|
B.B. |
Second Position |
|
C.C. &c. |
Ground on which the different Regiments marched, to, form the line |
|
D.D. ➳ |
Direction in which the attack was made, upon the Redoubt & Breastworks |
|
E.E. |
Position of part of the 47th and Marines to Silence, the fire, of a Barn at E. |
|
F. |
First Position, of the Cannon |
|
G. |
Second Position, of the cannon in advancing, with the Grenadiers, but Stopt by the Marsh |
|
H. |
Breast work formed of Pickets, Hay, Stones &c. with the pieces of Cannon |
|
I.I. |
Light Infantry, advancing along the Shore to force the right of the Breast work H. |
|
K.L. |
The Lively and Falcon, hauled close to shore to Rake, the low grounds before the troops advanced |
|
M.M. |
Gondolas, that fired on the Rebels in their retreat |
|
N. |
Battery of Cannon, Howitzers & Mortars, on Cop’s Hill, that battered the Redoubt and set fire to Charles-Town |
|
O.O.O.&c. |
The Rebels behind all the Stone walls, Trees, and brush-wood, &c their numbers uncertain, having constantly large Columns to re-inforce them, during the action |
|
P |
Place, from whence the Grenadiers received a very heavy fire |
|
Q |
Place, of the 52d Regiment, on the night of the 17th |
|
R.&c. |
47th Regiment in Charles-Town, on the night of the 17th |
|
S |
Detachments, in the Mill, & 2 Store Houses |
|
T |
Breastwork thrown up by the remainder of the Troops, on the night of the 17th |
|
Note |
The distance from Boston to Charles-town, is about 550 Yards, over which a bridge has since been built |
239 See Page’s map. Copied by Stedman and Frothingham.
240 See Page’s map.
241 The burning of Charlestown occasioned not only bitter Provincial denunciation against “those bloody incendiaries,” but expressions of regret in the British camp. On the other hand, there is no reason to question that it was a justifiable military act. British evidence is overwhelming that the houses were used to harass the British flank, and the Committee of Safety practically confirmed this fact by admitting that Provincial regiments were in the place shortly before it was fired. Our New England ancestors stolidly refused to concede that the use of houses as fortresses constituted a valid reason for their destruction in battle.
242 “Had we only wanted to drive them from their ground, without the loss of a man, the Cymetry, transport, which drew little water and mounted eighteen nine-pounders, could have been towed up the Mystic channel, and brought to within musket-shot of their left flank, which was quite naked; and she could have lain, water-borne, at the lowest ebb tide; or, one of our covered boats, musket-proof, carrying a heavy piece of cannon, might have been rowed close in, and one charge on their uncovered flank would have dislodged them in a second” (letter in Detail and Conduct of the American War).
According to Lieut. Barker (Diary, p. 62), three of these small boats went up the Mystic on the 18th. His comment is interesting: “had these boats been with us on Saturday at the time of the Attack they cou’d have been of great use, as they wou’d have taken a part of the Rebels intrenchment in flank and in their retreat wou’d have cut off numbers; instead of that they were on the other side and of no manner of use.”
243 The letter in Detail and Conduct of the American War has it that “Our Light-infantry were served up in Companies against the grass fence, without being able to penetrate — indeed how could we penetrate? Most of our Grenadiers and Light-infantry, the moment of presenting themselves lost three-fourths, and many nine-tenths of their men.” This would certainly indicate that the Grenadiers were closely and disastrously engaged.
244 See Page’s map. The Grenadiers were supported on their left by the 43rd and 52nd Battalions.
245 The following picturesque account must refer to the Light Infantry attack: “They advanced in open order, the men often twelve feet apart in the front, but very close after one another in extraordinary deep or long files. As fast as the front man was shot down, the next stepped forward into his place; but our men dropt them so fast, they were a long time coming up. It was surprising how they would step over their dead bodies, as though they had been logs of wood” (Rivington’s Gazetteer for August 3, 1775, in Historical Magazine, p. 390).
246 “Our manner of attacking in front was ruinous. In advancing, not a shot should have been fired, as it retarded the troops, whose movement should have been as rapid as possible. They should not have been brought up in line, but in columns, with Light-infantry in the intervals, to keep up a smart fire against the top of the breastwork. If this had been done, their works would have been carried in three minutes, with not a tenth part of our present loss” (letter in Detail and Conduct of the American War). General Dearborn’s comment made in 1818 is interesting: “It is a most extraordinary fact that the British did not make a single charge during the Battle, which if attempted would have been decisive and fatal to the Americans as they did not carry into the field fifty bayonets.” We are not using Dearborn as a witness, but this is in harmony with what we learn from contemporaneous accounts.
247 “We went to battle without even reconnoitring the position of the enemy” (letter in the Detail and Conduct of the War).
248 Id.
249 History of the Royal Artillery. See S. A. Drake’s Bunker Hill, p. 35.
250 There was much conflicting gossip in 1775 as to the time that Charlestown was fired, estimates varying from ten o’clock in the morning to some hours after the battle. The real facts, however, are clear. The Committee of Safety says that it was at the “instant” the British began their advance; General Heath, “at the time the British made their attack;” Barker, “just about the beginning of the attack.” J. Waller, an officer on a British ship, writes: “when the attack was first made” (letter in my possession). There is no good evidence contradicting these positive statements. General Gage says, “during the action.”
251 See Prescott’s statement in my paper on “The American Defence,” p. 120, above. The statement of the British Headquarters that Pigot’s men retreated by order stirred some caustic criticism in the garrison. “Observe, our men were not driven back; they actually retreated by orders. Great pains have been taken to huddle up this matter” (letter in Detail and Conduct of the War).
252 Quotations from Burgoyne in this paragraph are from his letter to Lord Stanley, Force, 4 American Archives, ii. 1094–1095.
253 1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xlviii. 118.
254 Further confirmation of these facts will be found in the letter in Detail and Conduct of the American War and in a letter printed in Mrs. Stirling’s Annals of a Yorkshire House (London, 1911), ii. 13, written by Major Sill (misprinted there as Till). The Major crossed with the flank companies of his regiment (63rd) and met wounded men retreating. Swett seems to have been the originator of the idea that the troops whom Clinton and Burgoyne saw standing on the beach were refugees from Pigot’s column. He assumed that the reinforcement that Clinton accompanied or followed was a third detachment. Being puzzled by the losses of the Second Marines in the casualty list he ventured to make marines of this mythical force, with Major Small in command. Small was a major in the 42nd Regiment (Highlanders) and was on special duty in Boston. He was appointed Brigade Major of Pigot’s Brigade in 1774 and served in that capacity at Bunker Hill. I find no authority for Swett’s suppositions, and no evidence whatever that any troops save the detachments mentioned in the Morning Orders crossed the river during the battle.
255 This is doubtless where Captain Harris of the 5th Regiment was dangerously wounded after two unsuccessful attempts to mount the wall (Lushington’s Life of Lord Harris, pp. 54–56).
256 In this advance the troops suffered heavily for a few moments when they came within range of the fire of the Connecticut men at the rail fence. See my article on “The American Defence,” p. 126, above.
257 See joint letter written by Capt. Chester and Lieut. Webb, June 19, 1775, 1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xiv. 62.
258 “The retreat was no flight: it was even covered with bravery and military skill” (Burgoyne to Lord Rochfort, in de Fonblanque’s Burgoyne, p. 147). Curiously enough most American narratives are in disagreement with Burgoyne and suggest a rout.
259 Letter of Samuel Paine, Historical Magazine, pp. 440–442.
260 Letter in Detail and Conduct of the American War.
261 For duration of the battle, see my paper on “The American Defence,” p. 128, above.
262 Gage’s Report, 226 killed, 828 wounded.
263 Force, 4 American Archives, ii. 1092–1093.
264 Historical Magazine, p. 360.
265 De Fonblanque, Life and Correspondence of Gen. John Burgoyne, pp. 147–148.
266 London Chronicle, February 24, 1776, p. 186.
267 Attributed to Marshal Soult.
268 See our Publications, xviii. 15–17.
269 New-Englands Memoriall, by Nathaniel Morton; with an introduction by Arthur Lord. Boston, 1903.
270 See our Publications, xviii. 17–26, especially 21–23.
271 See the notice of him in 1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, ii. 560–561.
272 B. Kingman, Epitaphs from Burial Hill, pp. 150–151.
273 Cf. our Publications, xviii. 23.
274 This agreement was printed in full, id. xviii. 21–22.
275 W. T. Davis, Ancient Landmarks of Plymouth, p. 196.
276 W. T. Davis, Plymouth Memories, p. 167; John J. May, Danforth Genealogy, p. 172.
277 See our Publications, xviii. 25, xxiii. 549–550, 561, 562, 568, 570–572.
278 See also Commonwealth of Massachusetts, House Document No. 1815: Presentation of the Portrait of William Stoughton … to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts by the Boston Athenaeum … May 20, 1924, which contains addresses by J. Randolph Coolidge, Jr., Esq., Mr. Charles Knowles Bolton, and the Honorable Benjamin Loring Young, together with a formal acceptance on behalf of the Commonwealth by His Excellency Channing H. Cox.
279 See our Publications, xvii. 250–271.
280 Amos Lawrence, 1814–1886, became Treasurer of the Emigrant Aid Company after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill in 1854. For the naming of Lawrence, Kansas, see 2 Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, xii. 132, 133.
281 Josiah Royce, Provincialism, in his Race Questions, etc. (New York, 1908).
282 Since the present year (1925) is the bicentennial of Paoli’s birth, it seems appropriate to give a brief summary of his career, which will also serve to make clear various points which occur below in the text. He was born April 25, 1725, at Rostino, Corsica, the son of Hyacinth and Dionisia Valentini Paoli. His mother was of noble birth, and his father had fought bravely as a Corsican general in 1734 in an uprising against the Genoese. Pascal (or Pasquale) received a good education, learned several languages, acquired military experience, and, in 1755, found himself already, at thirty years of age, benevolent dictator of Corsica, an office to which he was called by the people. He expelled the Genoese, who had long held most of the island in subjection, and ruled with conspicuous wisdom for fourteen years. In 1768 the Genoese sold their rights to the French, and Corsica was overrun by these new foes. This meant that Paoli was now called upon to face a resourceful European power, and it is remarkable that for a year he was able to withstand the assaults of the French. Defeated in battle on May 9, 1769, he retired to Leghorn, and in September went to England, where he remained for the rest of his life except for a visit to Corsica in the period from 1791 to 1795, at which time he tried in vain to free the island from the control of France. Seeing that the attempt was doomed to fail he turned the island over to the English. He hoped to be made governor of the island, but, for political reasons, that position was given to Sir Gilbert Elliot, and Paoli, discouraged, returned once more to England, where he resumed a pension, formerly granted to him, which now amounted to two thousand pounds. He died in England February 5, 1807. An impressive memorial to him was erected in Westminster Abbey. His body was buried in old St. Pancras Churchyard, but in 1889 it was removed to Corsica. The Latin inscription on his tomb in St. Pancras Churchyard is printed in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1808, p. 61.
Paoli’s public aims were essentially insular, and his sole idea in life was independence for Corsica. He never allowed his activities to be diverted to other channels and so never showed the world what he might have accomplished in a larger field. At heart he was a more constructive statesman than Napoleon, the other great Corsican in European history since the tenth century, for his thoughts were always close to the people and he was always seeking their prosperity and happiness.
A short but interesting account of Paoli will be found in the Dictionary of National Biography, and there is a longer appreciation and critical study of him in Historical Studies, by Herman Merivale (1865), pp. 75–129. See also F. M. Giamarchi, Vita Politica di Pasquale Paoli (Bastia, 1858), K. L. Klose, Leben Paskal Paolis (Braunschweig, 1853), C. B. Tinker, Nature’s Simple Plan, and H. Murdock, Earl Percy Dines Abroad (Boston, 1924). In 1769 there was published in London a poem by George Cockings, called The Paoliad, or Corsican Memoirs. This was in praise of Paoli and the liberty-loving Corsicans.
Throughout this paper the usual modern spelling of Pascal for Paoli’s Christian name is adopted, although in many of the quoted passages Paschal appears.
283 Samuel Quincy, Solicitor General of Massachusetts in the time of Hutchinson, in his diary, under date of January 1, 1777, while a refugee in London, tells of seeing Paoli at court. See Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, xix. 217.
284 Guizot, History of France from the Earliest Times to 1848 (London, 1872–1881), v. 230–232 (Chapter LIV).
285 Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), the eminent French philosopher and author, was a friend of Paoli.
286 I have not discovered that there were any American subscribers to this fund.
287 This translation of a letter from Paoli to Barlow Trecothick and S. Vaughan was printed in the London Chronicle, April 22–April 25, 1769, p. 390. The original letter was dated at Corsica March 20, 1769. The London Chronicle for 1768, 1769, and 1770, passim, contains many references to Paoli’s activities in Corsica, and after his arrival in England.
288 For English impressions of Paoli, see the London Chronicle, November 20–November 22, 1766, p. 498, and September 30–October 3, 1769, p. 328; The Letters of Horace Walpole, ed. by Mrs. Paget Toynbee, vii. 328; a poem by the Rev. T. Tournay, called Ambition, an Epistle to Paoli, in the London Chronicle, March 21–March 23, 1769. Walpole writes: “The King and_Queen both took great notice of him … he was everywhere received with much distinction.”
289 This letter first appeared in the Political Register, an English illustrated monthly magazine, for January, 1769, p. 31. The original, in French, was printed, together with an English translation. The London Chronicle for December 31–January 3, 1769, p. 4, reprinted the translation. It was then copied in the Connecticut Courant for March 27, 1769, and also in the Boston Gazette, April 10, 1769. I am indebted to Mr. Albert C. Bates, Librarian of the Connecticut Historical Society, for first calling my attention to this item. The text given here is that of the letter as printed in the London Chronicle.
290 The Comte de Marbeuf (c. 1712–1786) was one of the leading French generals serving in the campaign to annex Corsica. He was tactful and efficient, and later acted as the first governor of Corsica under French rule. He tried unsuccessfully to reconcile Paoli to the conquest of the island.
291 James Boswell (1740–1795).
292 An Account of Corsica; the Journal of a Tour to that Island; and Memoirs of Pascal Paoli, London, 1768.
293 The reference is to Mrs. Catharine Macaulay (1731–1791), whose History of England from the Accession of James the First to that of the Brunswick Line was, in its day, highly popular. Mrs. Macaulay had the support of the Whigs in England, and was a favorite in patriot circles in America. She was especially well liked in Massachusetts, and sent James Otis a set of her writings. In 1784 and 1785 she was in America and in the latter year was a guest of Washington at Mount Vernon. She married William Graham, December 17, 1778, and is sometimes referred to in books of biography as Mrs. Graham. On April 15, 1770, Mr. and Mrs. Nathaniel Barber of Boston had a daughter born whom they named Catharine Macaulay Barber. See Boston Records, xxiv. 320.
294 Boswell’s book contains an engraving of Paoli, probably made from a painting by Henry Bainbridge of London, who was sent by Sir John Dick, the English consul at Leghorn, to Corsica to paint the general’s portrait. This was done shortly before the French completely dominated the island.
295 Account of Corsica, p. 370.
296 John Dickinson (1732–1808), author of Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies, published in twelve successive numbers of the Pennsylvania Chronicle, beginning December 3, 1767. They were instantly popular.
297 Boston Gazette, April 10, 1769.
298 Pennsylvania Journal, April 13, 1769.
299 John Glynn (1722–1779), counsel for John Wilkes. Glynn himself later was elected to Parliament in the political overturn of this exciting period. It was of him that Wilkes said to George III: “Ah, Sir! he was a Wilkite, which I never was.”
300 Daniel Dulaney (1721–1797), of Maryland. In 1765 Dulaney strenuously opposed the Stamp Act, and in the same year published his Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes in the British Colonies. In 1769 he was at the height of his popularity. Later he became a Tory.
301 Doubtless Samuel Adams, as at this time John Adams was less prominent than his cousin.
302 The number 45 which was popular at this period represented the number of the North Briton, John Wilkes’s publication, which had been attacked by the Crown for its treasonable utterances. There were forty-five toasts at many of the jollifications of the Sons of Liberty, but the colonists were said to have drunk as many as ninety-two toasts and still, according to John Adams, to have remained sober.
303 This information was secured for me by Mr. Thomas L. Montgomery, Librarian of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
E. D. Mansfield, in his Personal Memories, p. 51, describing a journey made through Pennsylvania about 1812, speaks of taverns, saying, “These taverns had special names, such as ‘The Black Horse,’ and ‘The General Wayne,’ ‘The Ship,’ ‘The Paoli,’ etc., and were noted throughout the country.”
304 At intervals along the Lancaster road there were several other hostelries, one of which came to be known as the Warren. (Lossing’s Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution, ii. 163.) It stood about two miles south of the Paoli. It was originally called the Admiral Vernon. See J. T. Faris, Old Roads Out of Philadelphia, p. 140.
305 See A. E. Newton, The Greatest Book in the World, chap. 5, “Change Cars at Paoli.”
306 Wayne’s defence of his precaution is stated in H. B. Dawson, Battles of the United States, i. 315–317.
307 For Wayne, see C. J. Stillé, Major-General Anthony Wayne and the Pennsylvania Line in the Continental Army.
308 Lossing, Pictorial Field-Book, ii. 166–167 note.
309 Only 53 were buried at this point, but 8 others were killed in this night attack.
310 Lossing’s Pictorial Field-Book, i. 764 note. General Grey is not unknown in New England annals, as is seen in the following extract from the Journal of Captain John Montresor in New York Historical Society Collections (Publication Fund Series, 1881), p. 513: “[Sept.] 19th. [1778]…. This day arrived Major-General Grey from his Expedition — the last to Martha’s Vineyard where he took 10,000 sheep, 300 head of Cattle, besides Hogs and 400 stand of arms and 1000 pounds in Paper, Congress Tax — 6000 of the sheep were sent to Rhode Island which the Garrison were much in want of.”
Lossing says of the affair at Paoli (Field-Book, ii. 164 note): “A Hessian sergeant, boasting of the exploits of that night at Paoli, exultingly exclaimed, ‘What a running about, barefoot, and half clothed, and in the light of their own fires! These showed us where to chase them, while they could not see us. We killed three hundred of the rebels with the bayonet. I stuck them myself like so many pigs, one after another, until the blood ran out of the touch-hole of my musket.’”
American charges against Grey’s inhumanity led Sir George Otto Trevelyan, in his American Revolution (N. Y. 1907), Part iii. 234 note, to come to the English general’s defence, and to question the authenticity of the letter just quoted. He points out that there were no Hessians in Grey’s column and that the letter has the air of a forgery.
Trevelyan also says (pp. 233 and 234): “It once was the fashion in America to write about General Grey as if he was of a pair with Governor Tryon; but in truth he was a high-minded and honourable gentleman, and a soldier every inch of him. He had been on Prince Ferdinand’s staff in Germany; was wounded at Minden; and afterwards, like a good comrade, went back to his regiment, and was wounded again at Kloster Kampen. In that memorable camisado Grey learned by personal experience the important truth that, in a night attack, the less noise the better.… The affair has often been called, unfairly and almost absurdly, the Massacre of Paoli. Men always attach the idea of cruelty to modes of warfare in which they themselves are not proficient; and Americans liked the bayonet as little as Englishmen approved of taking deliberate aim at individual officers. It was currently reported throughout the Confederacy that quarter had been refused, and that the wounded were stabbed where they lay; but there is no arguing against figures. When the neighboring farmers assembled next morning to bury their fallen countrymen, they found only fifty-three dead bodies.”
311 Stillé: Major-General Anthony Wayne, p. 96.
312 J. T. Faris, Old Roads, p. 141. For the Admiral Warren tavern, see p. 192, note 2, above.
A recent account of the battle, written by Hon. Samuel W. Pennypacker for the dedication at Valley Forge of an equestrian statue to Wayne, says, “At Germantown his [Wayne’s] division encountered and attacked the right wing of the British army to the east of the town, charged with bayonets, crying out for ‘Paoli and revenge,’ put the enemy to rout and pursued them for three miles, killing with little mercy those who were overcome.” (Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 1908, xxxii. 267.)
313 Massachusetts Gazette, August 21, 1766.
314 Massachusetts Gazette, August 18, 1768; Boston Records (The Town of Roxbury), xxiv. 165–166.
315 Boston Gazette, Supplement, August 15, 1768.
316 Boston Post-Boy & Advertiser, June 19, 1769.
317 Charles Lucas (1713–1771), Irish physician and politician who as a pamphleteer offended the House of Commons and was voted by it an enemy to the country. He retired to France but was pardoned by George III, and subsequently was elected to the House of Commons. He advocated more liberal rights for the Irish Parliament, and defended the interests of the Protestants in Ireland. He championed principles much the same as those urged by the modern Protestant leaders of Ulster.
318 Cantons or districts are mentioned in the French treaty of 1452 and in the treaties of Westphalia in 1648, but are not officially recognized in Switzerland until 1799. At the time of this toast the Helvetic Society, founded in 1762, was advocating the establishment of a republic in Switzerland.
319 The reference is to Frederick II, known in history as Frederick the Great, who ruled Prussia from 1740 to 1786. He greatly increased the prestige of Prussia and was aided at times in his military conquests by England, which explains his popularity in America.
320 Charles Emmanuel III, in whose reign of forty-three years (1730–1773) the prosperity of the island was very marked.
321 Russia was harassing Poland at this time and Prussia was assisting her. The situation was preliminary to the first partition of Poland, which occurred in 1772.
322 The States-General of the Netherlands. The States-General, while disappearing as a political unit in 1796, is the title borne by the Dutch Parliament of today.
323 Boston Gazette, September 26, 1768.
324 Boston Gazette, January 16, 1769; Boston Post-Boy, January 16, 1769.
325 A. E. Brown, John Hancock, His Book, p. 170.
326 The original document is in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
327 Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, xlvii. 210.
328 Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, xlvii. 202.
329 Boston Evening Post, August 21, 1769.
330 Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, xi. 140–142; Boston Evening Post, August 21, 1769.
331 The expression “in the Fields” perhaps is the adoption of an English phrase, meaning outside the city limits; other newspaper notices of this meeting say that they met “on the Green.”
332 Holt’s New-York Journal, March 23, 1769.
333 Gaines’ New York Gazette & Weekly Mercury, November 6, 1769. This reference and the previous one were furnished me by Mr. Alexander J. Wall, Librarian of the New York Historical Society.
334 I. Q. Leake, Life of John Lamb, p. 62; Holt’s New-York Journal, March 29, 1770.
335 Public Papers of General Clinton, i. 622. This item was called to my attention by Mr. Julius H. Tuttle.
336 See pp. 45–46, above.
337 P. F. Leavens, The Leavens Name, its Origin and its Track Through New England to Northern Vermont, p. 17.
338 The Tenney Family, pp. 159, 316; Oakham Vital Records, p. 49.
339 American Museum, iv. 188 (August, 1788).
340 It is worth noting, however, that P. P. is an abbreviation for “parish priest,” and p. p. for “per procurationem,” “by proxy,” and the initials on the document in question may represent no more than such an abbreviation.
341 Boston Records, xxiv. 316.
342 For an interesting discussion of the significance of Joyce Junior, see two articles by Mr. Albert Matthews in our Publications, viii. 90–104, and xi. 280–294.
343 Leake, Life of John Lamb, pp. 13, 14, note.
344 Harlow Lindly, Indiana as Seen by Early Travellers, p. 201.
345 So far as I have been able to learn there is no monument to him in America.
346 “The Deplorable State of New-England,” 5 Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, vi. 99*. This tract was inspired by Cotton Mather.
347 History of Massachusetts (1768), ii. 213.
348 ii. 214. This is cited with approval by Parkman in his Half-Century of Conflict (1906), i. 107.
349 History of New England, iv. 344.
350 History of the United States (1883), ii. 68.
351 History of the United States, ii. 169.
352 English Colonies in America (1889), iii. 217.
353 Public Life of Joseph Dudley (1911), pp. 1 ff., 204 ff. The comparison with Louis XI is mine.
354 American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century (1907), iii. 385.
355 Founding of New England (1921), p. 408 and note 4.
356 This is well brought out by Kimball, pp. 112, 115, 206.
357 Dudley’s term as governor ran from 1702 to 1715.
358 See the address of the Council and Assembly of Massachusetts of July 12, 1704, in the Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies, 1704–5, no. 451, and that of the Council and Assembly of New Hampshire of October 22, 1707, in id., 1708–9, no. 65, iv. This publication will be cited henceforth as Calendar.
359 Three pamphlets called forth by the controversy of this period are printed in 5 Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, vi. Two of them set forth the case against Dudley; the third is a defence.
360 Hutchinson, ii. 141.
361 Collection de Manuscrits contenant Lettres, Mémoires, et autres Documents Historiques relatifs à la Nouvelle France (Quebec, 1884), ii. 425. This will be cited henceforth as Collection de Manuscrits. The letter is translated in the Massachusetts Province Laws, viii. 498. Practically all the documents bearing upon the negotiations are printed in the notes to that volume by its editor, Mr. A. C. Goodell.
362 Council Records, iv. 79.
363 Council Records, iv. 125; Province Laws, viii. 499; G. Sheldon, History of Deerfield (1895), i. 325–326.
364 Council Records, iv. 128; Province Laws, viii. 362.
365 Court Records, viii. 95; Massachusetts Archives, cviii. 23.
366 Calendar, 1704–5, no. 1274.
367 Id. 1704–5, nos. 679, 680.
368 Id. 1702–3, no. 673.
369 Province Laws, viii. 500; Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 428.
370 Sheldon, i. 329.
371 His instructions are in Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 432. They are translated in Province Laws, viii. 480.
372 Their course is traced in Province Laws, viii. 480–482, 511–514.
373 Id. viii. 512; Sheldon, i. 329.
374 Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 438; Province Laws, viii. 513.
375 Province Laws, viii. 538; 6 Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, iii. 317; 5 Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, vi. 142. There are two slightly different versions of the proposed treaty, one in Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 440–447, the other in New York Colonial Documents, ix. 770–772. They are carefully collated by the editor of the Province Laws (viii. 541–543).
376 Province Laws, viii. 149, 543.
377 New York Council Minutes, ix. 574. Cornbury’s answer to Dudley has not been preserved. Mr. Goodell merely says (Province Laws viii. 543) that his assent was never given.
378 Province Laws, viii. 613; Sheldon, i. 332.
379 Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 451, 452; Province Laws, viii. 614.
380 Calendar, 1706–8, no. 69.
381 The date is given in Vaudreuil’s letter to Dudley of June 2, 1706, in Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 452.
382 Calendar, 1706–8, no. 456. Dudley enclosed copies of the proposals in two letters, first in a letter dated November 1, 1705 (id. 1704–5, no. 1423), and again in his letter of February 1, 1706 (id. 1706–8, no. 69). As Vetch did not reach Boston till November 21, 1705, the enclosures in the letter of November 1 must have been added later, probably a not unusual proceeding. Some light might be thrown upon the question under consideration if we had a copy of Dudley’s draught. Unfortunately the editor of the Calendar did not see fit to summarize it and, so far as is known, no copy exists in this country. The fact that Dudley draws a clear distinction between what he proposed and the draught treaty which Vaudreuil sent back by Vetch goes to show, however, that there were essential differences between them. Other evidence of this will be adduced later.
383 Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 450, 470; New York Colonial Documents, ix. 779.
384 Parkman, Half Century of Conflict, i. 103; Kingsford, History of Canada, ii. 428. E. B. Greene in his Provincial America, p. 148, is also of this opinion.
385 Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 438.
386 While preparing this paper, I wrote to Ottawa to see whether the original of Dudley’s letter was preserved there in the Canadian Archives. Replying to my letter, Mr. Francis J. Audet said that it was not, that they had only a copy of the transcript made in Paris and now in the Massachusetts Archives from which the Collection de Manuscrits was printed. Both Mr. Audet and Mr. Pierre-Georges Roy, Provincial Archivist of Quebec, to whom Mr. Audet referred my inquiry, gave it as their opinion that Dudley wrote in French, partly because French was the diplomatic language of the time, partly because they felt that had the letter in Paris been in English, the transcriber would merely have copied it as it was. Of course, the original may be lost and Vaudreuil may have sent only a translation to Paris. There is also the possibility that in translation the text of Dudley’s letter may have been purposely altered, but I see no good reason for such a supposition.
387 This cartel is calendared fully in Calendar, 1704–5, no. 860, i. A portion of it, as it appeared in the Boston News-Letter of April 9–16, 1705, is reprinted in Province Laws, viii. 482. See also An Historical Digest of the Provincial Press (Boston, 1911), pp. 173, 189.
388 Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 452; Province Laws, viii. 614.
389 Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 450; Province Laws, viii. 544; New York Colonial Documents, ix. 775.
390 Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 452.
391 5 Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, vi. 37*.
392 Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 449, 451; New York Colonial Documents, xi. 779; Province Laws, viii. 512.
393 Court Records, viii. 183.
394 Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 451; New York Colonial Documents, ix. 775. Modern writers have differed on this point. Kingsford (History of Canada, ii. 428) believes Dudley was sincere. J. T. Adams in his usual iconoclastic fashion affirms that neither was sincere (Revolutionary New England, p. 69). Charlevoix evidently got his views from the letters of Vaudreuil above cited. See his History of New France (ed. Shea), v. 176.
395 Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 461.
396 Acts of the Privy Council, Colonial, vi. 53.
397 History, ii. 165.
398 Calendar, 1706–8, no. 69.
399 Vaudreuil himself points out this fact (Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 450).
400 Kimball, pp. 104, 115; Osgood, American Colonies in the Eighteenth Century, i. 418; Sheldon, i. 330; Hutchinson, ii. 153. J. T. Adams is the only writer to question Vaudreuil’s sincerity. See p. 222 note 6, above.
401 Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 448.
402 Again we have only the abridgment of a letter, in this case that of Vaudreuil written October 19, 1705. The abridgment reads that Dudley “propose par la lettre qu’il écrit à Monsieur de Vaudreuil une espèce de trève entre les deux gouvernements” (id. ii. 449).
403 There is no really good account of this part of Vetch’s life. Parkman has summarized the information contained in the only two attempts known to the writer to sketch his career in his Half-Century of Conflict (i. 133 ff). Vetch married a daughter of Robert Livingston, and was, therefore, a brother-in-law of John Livingston and through him a connection of the Winthrop family. Hence the statement which follows in the text.
404 Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 439; Province Laws, viii. 514.
405 This information rests chiefly on Vetch’s petition of February 20, 1707, to the Privy Council (Acts of the Privy Council, Colonial, vi. 52 ff). See also Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 448, 451; Shea’s Charlevoix, v. 217 note 1; Osgood, American Colonies in the Eighteenth Century, i. 420 note 2 and citations.
406 This charge was based upon a voyage made by Vetch to Acadia in 1706, not upon his 1705 voyage. See Hutchinson, ii. 154 ff.
407 Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 448; Province Laws, viii. 545.
408 Calendar, 1701, nos. 785, ii, iii; Documentary History of the State of Maine, x. 96, 103.
409 Calendar, 1702, nos. 593, 679, 728, 780, 966.
410 See p. 216, above; also Calendar, 1704–1705, nos. 679, 680, 1274, 1423.
411 Calendar, 1706–1708, no. 526.
412 See p. 223, above.
413 Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 333–334.
414 New York Colonial Documents, ix. 721, 739.
415 Id. ix. 728; Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 394.
416 Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 405, 406.
417 New York Colonial Documents, ix. 748, 755.
418 Collection de Manuscrits, ii. 450, 461.
419 Id. ii. 448.
420 Id. ii. 470, 474; New York Colonial Documents, ix. 779.
421 “John Harvard and his Ancestry,” in New England Historical and Genealogical Register, July, 1885, and October, 1886, xxxix. 265–284, xl. 362–380; Genealogical Gleanings in England (1901); “John Harvard’s English Home and Parentage,” in Harvard Graduates’ Magazine, June, 1907, xv. 543–560. Some interesting illustrations and facsimiles relating to John Harvard will be found in the Publications of this Society, xi. 366–382.
422 “The Discoverer of John Harvard,” by Edwin H. Abbot and William R. Thayer, in Harvard Graduates’ Magazine, December, 1913, xxii. 234–240.
423 Waters, Genealogical Gleanings, i. 126–129.
424 Genealogical Gleanings, i. 132.
425 Public Record Office, L. C. 4/66
426 Genealogical Gleanings, i. 257.
427 167 Memorandum quod Vicesimo Nono die Novembris Anno praedicto Robertus Houghton Civis et Pandoxator Londoniarum … recognovit se debere Jacobo Baldwin de Worlington in comitatu Suffolkie generoso Sexcentas libras solvendas in ffesto Natalis Domini proximo.
428 117 Memorandum quod Decimo tertio die Octobris Anno praedicto Ricardus Yerwood de parochia sancti Olavi in Southwark in comitatu Surr’ Armiger . . recognovit se debere Ricardo Britten de eadem ffeltmaker Ducentas et Viginti libras solvendas in ffesto Omnium sanctorum proximo.
429 Probably Levi Mills, born in Newburyport, 1758, married to Lucy Palmer (Plummer?) in Watertown in 1790, and father of Lydia Plummer and Mary Plummer Mills, born in 1796 and 1791 respectively. He died November 24, 1817. See Newburyport Vital Records, i. 263, ii. 315, 718, and T. B. Wyman, Charlestown Genealogies, ii. 675.
430 For Captain Nathaniel Nowell, see W. H. Bayley and O. O. Jones, History of the Marine Society of Newburyport, p. 324.
431 Captain Sylvanus Lowell (1746–1830). See D. R. Lowell, Historic Genealogy of the Lowells of America, p. 328.
432 J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches, i. 464, no. 131.
433 Jeremiah Wise was the elder son of the famous John Wise (1652–1725), and graduated from Harvard College in 1700. In 1707 he became minister at Berwick. He died in 1756.
434 These memoranda are in the Library of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
435 Cf. K. B. Murdock, Increase Mather (1925), p. 395.
436 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, iii. 466–467 note; S. Sewall, Diary, i. 255 and note; J. Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, iv. 494 (henceforth cited as Savage); New England Historical and Genealogical Register, iii. 38–39 (henceforth cited as Register); Memorial History of Boston, i. 581. By Bethia Tyng he had three sons: William, born in 1663; Richard, born in 1664; and Humphrey, born in 1666. Boston Records, ix. 89, 94, 101.
437 William Tyng arrived from England in 1638. An inventory of his estate taken in 1653 placed its value at £2774–14–94. Savage, iv. 356–358; Register, viii. 62.
438 Savage, iv. 356–358; Register, iii. 38–39. I doubt if he deserved this reputation. At the time of his death in 1683 his estate was valued at nearly £8000, but in the tax list of 1674 there were a few whose taxes were much higher than his. Boston Records, i. 22.
439 Savage, iv. 357; Register, xi. 284.
440 Savage, iv. 357.
441 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, iii. 466–467 note; Register, i. 71, ix. 172.
442 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, iii. 466–467 note; Sewall, Diary, i. 255 and note; Register, vi. 342. By Sarah he had four daughters: Sarah, born in 1671; Bethia, born in 1672; Frances, born in 1673; and Catherine, born in 1674. Boston Records, ix. 120, 125, 130, 134. One of Wharton’s children died in 1677, but which one I do not know. Sewall, Diary, i. 12.
443 Savage, iv. 612, 613; 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, iii. 466–467 note. By Martha Winthrop he had three daughters: Ann, born in 1679; Martha, born in 1682; and Dorothy, born in 1686; and one son, John, born in 1684. Boston Records, ix. 150, 159, 164, 172; Memorial History of Boston, i. 574.
444 Wharton used a seal bearing the arms of the Whartons of Yorkshire, a branch of which family was ennobled, but he was not, as the editor of the Connecticut Colonial Records thought, a son of Philip, Lord Wharton, whose only son was Thomas (1648–1715). Connecticut Colonial Records, iii. 306 note; Sewall, Diary, i. 255 and note; Register, xxxi. 66, xl. 170; Encyclopædia Britannica.
445 Boston Records, vii. 74, 93, 117; Suffolk Deeds, xiii. 53, 65, 123; Register, lxi. 313, xxxvii. 270; 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, iii. 466–467 note; Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, 1675–1676, § 816 (henceforth cited as Calendar); New York Colonial Documents, ii. 662.
446 Massachusetts Colony Records, vol. iv. pt. ii. p. 538, v. 6, 13, 24–25, 36, 56, 98, 102, 105–106, 153, 235, 397, 432; Register, xii. 53; Savage, iv. 494.
447 Calendar, 1675–1676, § 1018; 1677–1680, §§ 503, 581.
448 Records of the Court of Assistants, i. 129; 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, iii. 458, 460; Connecticut Colonial Records, iii. 296; New York Colonial Documents, iii. 582; Calendar, 1677–1680, § 1360–1.
449 The word Tortuga occurs in colonial records in many different forms. Sewall uses Taboodas, Tartooda and Tarbooda; Turtooda appears in the laws of Massachusetts, while the French Protestant Refugee (p.4) speaks of the island of Tortilla. Sewall, Diary, i. 124, 423, 495; Colonial Laws of Massachusetts (1887), p. 54.
450 In 1637 a tailor named Fitt was empowered “to set up a salt pen, if he can live upon it, and upon his trade,” and the following year, John Winthrop, Jr., was given liberty to set up salt works at Royal Side. W. B. Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England, i. 168–169. In 1641 the General Court of Massachusetts granted a monopoly of salt-making to S. Winslow for ten years (by his own process), and in 1648 to John Winthrop, Jr., for twenty-one years. Winthrop was to make salt from “meer salt water” for the use of the country. Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 331, ii. 229.
451 Colonial Laws of Massachusetts (1887), p. 54; Calendar, 1675–1676, § 953; American Antiquarian Society Proceedings, xiii. 468; Massachusetts Archives, cxxviii. 2; French Protestant Refugee, pp. 24, 41; Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England, i. 246–247. The committee appointed by the General Court of Massachusetts to treat with Wharton concerning his proposal, reported that they believed there was “so faire a probabillity for the raysing of salt in that way, & rationall encouragement for persons to advance as adventurers therein, that the Generall Court, in granting a charter for empowring a company of adventurers thereunto, may doe a publicke service for the country.” Massachusetts Colony Records, vol. iv. pt. ii. p. 505.
452 Register, ix. 339; Eleanor L. Lord, Industrial Experiments in the British Colonies in North America, p. 22. Plymouth made the grant on condition that the other colonies of the confederation give him the same privilege. Plymouth Colony Records, v. 65.
453 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, v. 11–14.
454 The following names are contained in the petition presented on February 10, 1688: Sir John Shorter, Lord Mayor of London, John Lacy, Daniel Cox, Robert Wolley, Richard Butler, Edmond Cox, Richard Wharton, Elisha Hutchinson, Jaheel Brenton, and Thomas Brattle, who petitioned for themselves and others. Acts of the Privy Council, Colonial Series, 1680–1720, § 251. An extract from the petition is cited in Lord, Industrial Experiments, p. 16.
455 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, v. 14.
456 Calendar, 1677–1680, § 1349–i; 1685–1688, §§ 901, 1629, 1809, 1839, 1840, 1850, 1855, 1859, 1863; 1689–1692, §§ 1811, 2466–i, 2467–ii–xi; Massachusetts Colony Records, v. 383; R. N. Toppan, Edward Randolph (Prince Society), iv. 4, 221; 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, v. 11–14, 14–15; Andros Tracts, iii. 8.
457 There were before 1680 twenty-seven proprietors. After that date, the number increased. Among the new proprietors was Lord Culpeper, who acquired one-sixteenth interest and was appointed agent in England. 5 Massachusetts Historical Collections, ix. 111.
458 Massachusetts Archives, ii. 137; 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, iii. 466; 5 id., ix. 111; Calendar, 1677–1680, §§ 1532, 1537; 1681–1685, § 1556; 1685–1688, § 91–i.
459 Suffolk Deeds, xiii. 203; 3 Massachusetts Historical Collections, ii. 29; Massachusetts Colony Records, v. 370; Plymouth Colony Records, v. 210; Narratives of the Indian Wars, 1675–1699 (Original Narratives Series), pp. 13, 16.
460 See p. 256 note 1.
461 York Deeds, iii. 112 (Index of Grantees), viii. 56, 57, 58, 59; Savage, iii. 494; Maine Historical and Genealogical Recorder, vi. 437, ix. 6, 132, 133, 196; Register, vi. 375, xiii. 264, xxi. 356–357, xliii. 152 note; Massachusetts Archives, iii. 352. Wharton wrote Wait Winthrop in July, 1683, that his business in Maine succeeded beyond his expectation and he hoped “to patch up matters to look like a whole piece.” 5 Massachusetts Historical Collections, ix. 113. See also R. H. Akagi, Town Proprietors of New England Colonies, pp. 244–245.
462 One of Wharton’s tenants at Kennebec, in possession of land for about twenty-six years, held of Wharton on condition that he pay yearly two dozen cusk or two dozen fish if demanded, to Wharton and his heirs forever. Maine Historical and Genealogical Records, ix. 6. The Purchas property carried the reservation of the right to the fur trade. 2 Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, xiii. 244.
463 Acts of the Privy Council, Colonial, ii. § 177; Calendar, 1685–1688, §§ 81, 153, 155.
464 Calendar, 1685–1688, §§ 166, 169, 276, 277, 360, 720.
465 Jeffries Papers (Massachusetts Historical Society), iv. 108, 111; Massachusetts Archives, cxxvi. 30–31, 138–150; Suffolk Deeds, xiii. 365, 366, 367; Calendar, 1685–1688, §§ 2128, 2176; Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, xiii. 255, 256; Register, xxxi. 59; New York Colonial Documents, iii. 365 note. The stockholders were John Blackwell, Samuel Shrimpton, Charles Lidgett, William Stoughton, Joseph Dudley, Peter Bulkley, John Usher, Richard Wharton, Daniel Cox, Robert Thompson, Edmund Harrison, William Blathwayt, Edward Randolph, Thomas Henchman, Jonathan Tyng, John Hubbard, Thaddeus Mackarty, and three other persons to be named by Blackwell, Shrimpton, and Lidgett.
466 Connecticut Colonial Records, iii. 486–488; Massachusetts Colony Records, vol. iv. pt. ii. pp. 560–561.
467 Massachusetts Archives, lxi. 11. At about the same time, the General Court in declaring a Thanksgiving Day expressed its policy of peace and neutrality, “the Lord our God hath also been intreated to continue unto us our outward peace, notwithstanding the approach & success of enemies upon our neighboring coasts.” Massachusetts Colony Records, vol. iv. pt. ii. p. 565.
468 Calendar, 1669–1674, § 1144; 1675–1676, § 531; Register, xl. 170; Historical Magazine, 1867, pp. 297–298.
469 New York Colonial Documents, ii. 536, iii. 207, 211–212.
470 Massachusetts Archives, lxi. 12, 13, 18, 52, 115; Calendar, 1669–1674, § 1421.
471 Massachusetts Archives, lxi. 18, 115, 52; Records of the Court of Assistants, i. 5.
472 New York Colonial Documents, ii. 658, 659, 662, 663, 664, 667.
473 New York Colonial Documents, ii. 667; Massachusetts Archives, lxi. 52. Massachusetts was similarly aroused in 1655 when Captain Leverett seized a Dutch vessel trading in the colony, because he had acted “without the consent or allowance of authoritje heere established.” Massachusetts Colony Records, vol. iv. pt. i. pp. 229, 234.
474 A document (Massachusetts Archives, lxi. 52–53), dated June 30, shows by its context that it is the petition handed by Wharton and associates to the General Court in December, 1673. The June dating is probably due to the fact that the petition was used by the court when it accused the associates of insubordination in March and again in June. Massachusetts Colony Records, vol. iv. pt. ii., p. 577, v. 13.
475 The Dutch were also desirous that the English colonies and New Netherland maintain friendly relations for trade purposes. In the secret resolutions of the States General is an acceptance of a proposal of the Board of Admiralty of January 29, 1674, to try to maintain neutrality with the English colonies, notwithstanding the war, and to conclude a treaty of commerce with them. The end of the war made such arrangements unnecessary. New York Colonial Documents, ii. 536.
476 Massachusetts Archives, lxi. 26, 34, 45, 47, 48, 55; Records of the Court of Assistants, i. 15, 16; Massachusetts Colony Records, vol. iv. pt. ii. pp. 573, 574; Calendar, 1669–1674, §§ 1357, 1421.
Massachusetts admiralty matters were usually conducted with juries, although the authorities, apparently appreciating that the colony’s laws did not conform to English admiralty law, tried to give the impression that admiralty cases were tried without juries. On June 9, 1680, Randolph reported a case in which the accused was acquitted because the jury was made up of merchants and masters of ships, yet in a letter dated that same month, the governor in answering queries of the Lords of Trade reported that admiralty cases were tried “without a jury according to the Sea Laws.” Calendar, 1677–1680, §§ 1383, 1494; 3 Massachusetts Historical Collections, viii. 332–338.
477 Massachusetts Archives, lxi. 39, 43; Massachusetts Colony Records, vol. iv. pt. ii. p. 577, v. 13. Wharton considered this decision most unjust, and in 1677 succeeded in getting the restraint against his pleading in the courts removed. In 1683 he appealed for a grant of land in compensation for the wrongs he had suffered. The court, “understanding that the effects of the sajd sentence had exceeded the intentions thereof, and that if the sajd Wharton had then so fully & clearly represented his case as now he doth, he might have binn acquitted, therefore, for the sajd Whartons releise, and in manifestation of the Courts respect and favour,” ordered “that the sajd sentence be totally and effectually reversed, and that for his full sattisfaction one thousand acres of land in the Province of Mayne” be granted to him. Massachusetts Colony Records, v. 153, 397. This grant was the nucleus of his Pejebscot Purchase.
478 Connecticut Colonial Records, ii. 294 and note; Calendar, 1675–1676, § 816; Narratives of the Indian Wars, 1675–1699, pp. 48, 57–61, 63, 64, 66–68, 81–82.
479 Hutchinson Papers, pp. 508, 509; Calendar, 1675–1676, § 721; 1681–1685, §§ 645, 1135.
480 Toppan, Randolph, iii. 273–274; Massachusetts Colony Records, v. 421–423, 424, 439–441; Calendar, 1681–1685, §§ 1145, 1445, 1566.
481 Toppan, Randolph, iii. 283–284, iv. 244; Calendar, 1681–1685, § 1589.
482 Calendar, 1681–1685, § 2033.
483 Edward and Jonathan Tyng, Wait and John Winthrop, Dudley, Usher.
484 Dudley, Stoughton, Randolph, Usher, Bulkley, Jonathan Tyng.
485 John and Wait Winthrop, Simon Bradstreet., Bradstreet, however, refused to serve as councillor.
486 Bulkley, Usher, Stoughton, Gedney, Pynchon.
487 Randolph soon accused him of conniving with illegal traders. Toppan, Randolph, iv. 114; New York Colonial Documents, iii. 582.
488 New Hampshire Provincial Papers, ii. 13–14; 3 Massachusetts Historical Collections, vii. 161; 2 Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, xiii. 231, 236, 240, 261, 262, 269; Toppan, Randolph, iv. 49–50, 58–59, 67–68, 69, 71; Calendar, 1685–1688, §§ 468, 472.
489 2 Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, xiii. 248–249; Calendar, 1685–1688, § 2132.
490 2 Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, xiii. 244–245.
491 Id., xiii. 272; Massachusetts Archives, cxxvi. 104–106.
492 Massachusetts Archives, cxxvi. 24; 2 Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, xiii. 242, 244.
493 Massachusetts Archives, cxxvi. 30–31; 2 Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, xiii. 255, 256.
494 Now Kingston: see Publications of this Society, xxi. 295 note 2.
495 Connecticut Colonial Records, iii. 201, 202, 208–209, 353; Toppan, Randolph, i. 289–290; 2 Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, ix. 469; 5 Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, ix. 153; Calendar, 1685–1688, §§ 702–iii, 819, 925; Rhode Island Colonial Records, iii. 197.
496 Massachusetts Archives, cxxvi. 113, c. 389; 2 Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, ix. 469. Randolph Holden of Rhode Island complained to the king that “since Joseph Dudley has been installed President they have taken the government of the province from us, and by a Committee, consisting of Elisha Hutchinson and John Saffin of Boston, formed to dispose of those lands, they have been making sale and merchandise of them, turning your Majesty’s province to their private advantage and to your great loss.” Calendar, 1685–1688, § 819.
497 That is, except those who had refused to accept office under Dudley, — Simon and Dudley Bradstreet, Nathaniel Saltonstall, and Francis Champernoon. For the names, see Andros’s instructions in Laws of New Hampshire, i. 156; Publications of this Society, xvii. 32–44.
498 Randolph, in a letter to the Lords of Trade after the revolution, in 1689 made this charge against the Massachusetts merchants, but he cites as his only evidence, Wharton’s acting as attorney for Lamoyn, who was a privateer, not a pirate. He added, “I forbear to trouble your Lordships with the instances of any more pyratts who have bin received and protected by some now in the present government.” Toppan, Randolph, iv. 279; Calendar, 1689–1692, § 152, p. 47.
499 Laws of New Hampshire, i. 172; Calendar, 1685–1688, §§ 909, 929, 944.
500 Wharton’s paper is to be found in Massachusetts Archives, c. 162–163, incorrectly dated. See V. F. Barnes, Dominion of New England, p. 163 note 75.
501 Goodrick, Randolph, vi. 216, 219, 235, 236, 251.
502 Calendar, 1685–1688, §§ 360, 856.
503 Massachusetts Archives, cxxvi. 203; Toppan, Randolph, ii. 33; Calendar, 1685–1688, §§ 1319, 1414.
504 Massachusetts Archives, cxxvi. 63, 204; Gay Manuscripts (Massachusetts Historical Society), State Papers, vi.; Andros Tracts, iii. 74; Calendar, 1685–1688, §§ 1414–iv, 1496.
505 Samuel Sewall wrote to a friend, “The most remarkable within my view since your being here is the Going off of Counselour Wharton, Mr. Charles Morton, Mr. Woodrof, the Scotch Minister, Madam Bridgett Usher and her daughter which fell out last Tuesday.” Sewall, Letter Book, i. 50.
506 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, v. 9. Povey wrote Randolph from London, April 25, 1688, “Mr. Wharton has severall businesses depending tho I doubt not much to his satisfaction.” Toppan, Randolph, iv. 221.
507 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, v. 9, 14–15, 15–16; Calendar, 1685–1688, §§ 1594, 1695.
508 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, v. 17. He wrote practically the same letter to Hinckley, former governor of Plymouth. 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, viii. 713, 714, 712–713; Massachusetts Archives, cvi. 369, xi. 44; Calendar, 1685–1688, §§ 1860, 1878, 1879; Hutchinson, History of Massachusetts, i. 367.
509 Massachusetts Archives, cxxix. 317, 345; Andros Tracts, iii. 152–153; Gay Manuscripts, Phips Papers, i. 17, 18, 19–20; New York Colonial Documents, iii. 574; Calendar, 1689–1692, §§ 18, 25, 123, 124, 144, 145.
510 Acts of the Privy Council, Colonial, ii. 124–125, 129, 130; Gay Manuscripts, Phips Papers, i. 21; Calendar, 1689–1692, §§ 28, 75, 90, 102; 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, ii. 298; New York Colonial Documents, iii. 573, 574.
511 Toppan, Randolph, ii. 79 note; Sewall, Diary, i. 225. John Higginson, a brother-in-law, wrote to his brother Nathaniel in 1692, “Our brother Wharton died in London about two yrs since, as suppose you haye heard. His estate, being much entangled, I doubt there will be nothing left for his two daughters Sarah & Bethia.” 3 Massachusetts Historical Collections, vii. 198. John’s father, the Rev. John Higginson, also wrote to Nathaniel, who was apparently a wealthy man, exhorting him to “remember your sister Wharton’s two daughters to help forward their shop-keeping, for they keep a small shop at Boston; and are like to continue as ancient maids, I know not how long, Sarah being 25 or 26 years old.” Id., vii. 198, 199.
The Superior Court of Judicature of Massachusetts in 1697 authorized Ephraim Savage as administrator of Wharton’s estate to sell the Pejebscot Purchase to pay his debts. York Deeds, viii. 58.
512 Mather skilfully used the occasion of the war to insist that the New England colonies would coöperate better if charter governments were restored. Andros Tracts, iii. 151–152 note, 153.
513 Andros Tracts, iii. 198; Calendar, 1689–1692, §§ 1390, 1393, 1404; 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, ii. 301–302.
514 Increase Mather greatly modified his position after the granting of the charter of 1691. Having failed in his efforts to bring about complete restoration of the old charter, he accepted the compromise charter as the best that could be had under the circumstances and thenceforth became its defender.
515 John Langdon to Robert Morris, November 10, 1777. Letter printed in S. V. Henkels’s Catalogue No. 1183.
516 James Wilkinson, Memoirs of My Own Times, i. 309–310.
517 New Hampshire State Papers, viii. 635–637.
518 George Otto Trevelyan’s American Revolution, pt. iii. p. 130. Langdon’s speech is also quoted in the following works, ranging in date from 1834 to 1916. The titles are listed here in chronological order:
J. M. Whiton, Sketches of the History of New Hampshire, p. 136; C. J. Fox and Samuel Osgood, The New Hampshire Book, p. 25; Lossing, Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution, i. 393; W. H. Bartlett, History of the United States, i. 437; C. W. Brewster, Rambles about Portsmouth, i. 361; Caleb Stark, Memoir of General John Stark (1860), p. 46; E. D. Sanborn, History of New Hampshire, p. 182; W. C. Bryant and S. H. Gay, Popular History of the United States (1879), iii. 580; J. L. Elwyn, “Some Account of John Langdon,” in New Hampshire State Papers (1891), xx. 858: C. R. Corning, “John Langdon,” in New England Magazine, New Series (1897), xvi. 622; F. B. Sanborn, New Hampshire, p. 226; H. D. Foster, “Stark’s Independent Command at Bennington,” in New York State Historical Association Proceedings (1905), v. 24; E. S. Stackpole, History of New Hampshire, ii. 136.
519 Jared Sparks, American Biography, i. 78.
520 Marquis de Chastellux, Travels in North America (London, 1787), ii. 232. Cf. William Gordon, History of the American Revolution, ii. 569.
521 Isaac Hill, Address delivered before the Republicans of Portsmouth and Vicinity, July 4, 1828, p. 4.
522 For the collection of portraits of the governors made by the Commonwealth, see also my remarks referred to on pp. 162–164, above.
523 The Beginnings of New England (1902), p. 142.
524 See Harvard Graduates’ Magazine, December, 1925.
525 Our Publications, xxii. 265–266. The incident is recorded under date of July 3, 1689.
526 Rev. Ichabod Wiswall (d. 1700).
527 Rev. Jonathan Russell (H. C. 1675).
528 Joseph Dassett (H. C. 1687).
529 Peter Burr (H. C. 1690).
530 John Leverett (H. C. 1680).
531 Rev. William Brattle (H. C. 1680).
532 Rev. Thomas Symmes (H. C. 1698).
533 Rev. Eliphalet Adams (H. C. 1694).
534 See Sewall’s Diary, i. 439. In my list of temporary students (our Publications, xvii. 275, 282), I assigned Eyre and Maxwell conjecturally to the class of 1699. From what Josiah Cotton says, it is a fair guess that Eyre was of the class of 1698. President Mather’s sermon, referred to by Josiah Cotton, was entitled “A Discourse Concerning the Uncertainty of the Times of Men, … Preached at Cambridge … Decemb. 6. 1696. On Occasion of the Sudden Death of Two Scholar belonging to Harvard Colledge,” Boston, 1697. Maxwell was probably the only Harvard student who had two sermons preached on him on two continents. For in addition to Mather’s sermon, “J. G.” published at London in 1697 “A Funeral Sermon Preached at Newport-Pagnell, April 11. 1697. On the Occasion of the Sudden Death of William Maxwell, A Pious and Hopeful Young Scholar, belonging to Harvard-Colledge, in Cambridge, New-England.” Newport Pagnell is in Buckinghamshire. For my knowledge of this sermon, I am indebted to the late Mr. Frederick L. Gay, who gave his copy to the Harvard College Library, where it is catalogued under “G., J.” The author was the Rev. John Gibbs, who was vicar of Newport Pagnell in 1647 or 1655, was ejected about 1660, later became an independent minister, and died June 16, 1699, in his seventy-second year: see J. Staines, History of Newport Pagnell (1842), pp. 97–102, 104–105, 108–112, 126–129, 137, 192; F. W. Bull, History of Newport Pagnell (1900), pp. 5, 110, 120, 134, 138, 140–141,150, 283; S. Palmer, Nonconformist’s Memorial (1803), i. 308. He was in some way related to the Maxwells.
535 In an earlier portion of the Diary. Increase Mather’s first wife was Mary (or Maria) Cotton, a sister of Josiah Cotton’s father.
536 Cf. our Publications, xviii. 373.
537 James Oliver (H. C. 1680).
538 Boston Public Latin School.
539 Rev. John Cotton (H. C. 1678).
540 Nathaniel Hubbard (H. C. 1698).
541 John Radcliffe of Hitchin Priory, Hertfordshire, who represented St. Albans borough from 1768 to 1783. In 1768 he married Lady Frances Howard, daughter of the Earl of Carlisle. He died December 21, 1783. This identification is based on the fact that the text of the letter makes it clear that the Radcliffe addressed was a “Parliament Gentleman” and in 1775 John Radcliffe was the only Radcliffe in Parliament. See Gentleman’s Magazine (1783), liii. 1066, and R. Beatson, Chronological Register of Both Houses of Parliament (1807).
The writer of the letter was doubtless Harry Farrington Gardner, Captain Lieutenant in the 16th Light Dragoons (Army Lists, 1775–1777). Burgoyne was colonel of this regiment. Gardner came out with him as his Aide-de-camp (note 2 below). After Burgoyne’s return to England in the fall of 1775, certain of his affairs were left in Gardner’s hands, for, in Howe’s Orderly Book, p. 106, there is an entry under the date of October 7, 1775, which reads, “Whereas the House of Mr Quirney in South Street late the Quarters of Major General Burgoyne has been broke open and many Valuable Effects taken away, any person who will give Information so that the Offenders may be Apprehended & brought to Condign Punishments, shall receive Five Guineas Reward by applying to Capt. Gardner.”
542 Burgoyne wrote to Lee, July 8, 1775, “Among other supporters of British rights against American claims, I will not speak positively, but I firmly believe, I may name the man of whose integrity you have the highest opinion, and whose friendship is nearest your heart — I mean Lord Thanet, from whom my Aid de Camp has a letter for you, and also one from Sir Charles Davers.” Almon’s Remembrancer, 1775, p. 139. In his answer to this letter Lee writes, “He begs General Burgoyne will send the letters which his Aid de Camp has for him. If Gardiner is his Aid de Camp, he desires his love to him” (id., p. 140).
543 “On the same day, vizt, the 5th of September 1775, Lord Dartmouth, in a secret Dispatch, acquaints General Howe with the application made to the Empress of Russia for a Body of Infantry to serve in North America, that in consequence of a favorable answer from that Court the Minister was Instructed to agree for a Corps of 20,000, that the greatest part would be sent to Quebec early in the Spring, and it was hoped that we should have an equal number of British Troops in North America in the next year.… On the 27 Octo 1775, Lord Dartmouth acquaints General Howe with the Arrangements made for Recruiting the different Corps in America, and for the augmentation of each Corps, & signifies to him His Majesty’s Pleasure with regard to the Officers to be sent to England for raising those Recruits, and the new Levies; and his Lordship, in that Letter, acquaints him that the fair Prospect we had of succeeding in our Treaty with Russia for a Body of Infantry was, at best, but doubtfull” (Précis of correspondence in Howe’s Orderly Book, pp. 301–302). Evidently Gardner had heard of the plan to secure Russian troops very early, probably from Burgoyne.
544 A reference to Radcliffe’s residence at Hitchin Priory.
545 Lady Frances was Radcliffe’s wife. Sir Charles may have been Sir Charles Davers. See p. 292 notes 1 and 2, above.
546 Gage’s report to the Earl of Dartmouth, dated June 25, 1775, summarizes the loss as 1054.
547 Our Publications, xxv. 150 note 1.
548 The half-title reads: “Mr. Dexter’s Century Sermon, on the Publick Thanksgiving November 23. 1738.” The title-page begins “Our Fathers God, the Hope of Posterity.”
549 P. 51. Cf. Massachusetts Province Laws, xiv. 186.
550 “It was for many years a part of Dedham, being called the Fourth, or Springfield, Parish” (F. Smith, History of Dover, 1897, p. 2). It will be remembered that the present Norfolk County was incorporated in 1793 from the county of Suffolk.
551 Mr. Anderson’s paper will be printed in the Transactions of a future meeting.
552 This letter is owned by the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Librarian of which has kindly allowed it to be printed.
553 J. L. Sibley, Harvard Graduates, iii. 61, No. 52.
554 January 7, 1698_(i. 246–247).
555 What reason Dunton had to expect to publish the Magnalia we do not know: he was quite capable of making the statement without any encouragement from the author. Note that in his Letters from New England, ed. Whitmore, p. 75, he says of Cotton Mather: “He has very lately finish’d the Church-History of New-England, which I’m going to print.”
556 For Hackshaw see note 4 on page 301, post. The Bromfield referred to seems to be Edward Bromfield of Boston, whom Sewall calls a merchant “well known here and in England” (6 Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, i. 224). He was born in England in 1649, came to New England in 1675, was a member of the “South Church,” and died in 1734. There is an extended notice of him in the New England Weekly Journal for June 10, 1734. More than once he was Mather’s literary patron, as appears from the references to him in Mather’s Diary, passim. Mather’s Memoria Wilsoniana, 1695, was dedicated to him, and the address to him makes it plain that the book was published at his expense. Sewall records that “Capt. Mason sailed June 13th, and Capt. Foster June 14th, 1700. At 6 mane, Mr. Bromfield went off from Scarlet’s Wharf. Mr. Elm Hutchinson and I accompanied him thither. I went and staid at his house till he was ready to goe.” (6 Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, i. 239.) Probably, then, Bromfield went to England in June, 1700. That he was back in Boston in 1703 is shown by Sewall’s Diary, ii. 72. The date when Mather records the sending of the Magnalia to England and the date of Bromfield’s sailing are so close as to make it possible to wonder whether Bromfield was not trusted to carry the precious manuscript. Entry for June 8, 1700, in text above.
557 Was this Bromfield, or Quick, or someone else?
558 Presumably Hackshaw.
559 Presumably Parkhurst.
560 Arber, Term Catalogues, ii. 400. One of the Harvard Library copies has the following autograph inscription: “For my very Honoured Friend Elisha Cook Dr of Physick & one of ye Council of New England at his House in Boston, from ye Publisher his very much obliged Friend & servant. John Quick. London, ye 6th. 24. 94.” One would like to know more about Quick’s relations with Cooke, of whom — see the index to his Diary — Cotton Mather did not approve.
561 See the sketch by Alexander Gordon in the Dictionary of National Biography, and in his Freedom after Ejection, p. 337; also the authorities mentioned at the end of these two sketches, and J. G. White’s Churches and Chapels of Old London.
562 In a page headed “Advertisements” in Quick’s Serious Inquiry … Whether a Man may Lawfully Marry his Deceased Wife’s Sister, London, 1703, it is said: “Whereas there was about Three Years since Published by Mr. Quick, Proposals for the Printing his Icones Sacræ, being the Lives of Seventy Eminent Divines … the Reason of it’s not Publication is this, the very next Week after the Death of his most noble Patron, who would have Printed his Works at his own Expences, it pleased God to visit Mr. Quick with those cruel Torturors of Scholars the Stone and Gout … under which he has groan’d Night and Day for above these Three Years time, so that till the Lord shall please to restore him to his former Health, that he may be able to get in Subscriptions, or to raise up for him some other munificent Mecænas, the Publication is suspended.”
563 K. B. Murdock, Increase Mather, p. 198.
564 Diary, i. 364.
565 Samuel Mather, H.C. 1690, son of Increase Mather and brother of Cotton. For him see Mr. T. J. Holmes’s paper, pp. 312–322, post.
566 Excepting what appears in the letter I have found almost nothing about Robert Hackshaw, merchant, of London. Bromfield’s letter of March 28, 1701 (Diary, i. 400), speaks of him as “a very serious and Godly man.” Cotton Mather (id., i. 550) includes in his list of his European correspondents in 1706 “Mr. Robert Hackshaw, Merchant, at Hogsdon [Hoxton], a suburb of London. A Robert Hackshaw was a cousin of Thomas Prince of Boston, and there are two letters from him to Prince in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society, dated August 23, 1723, and August 1, 1726. In the first of these he says his family consists of a wife, son, and daughter, and speaks of his “Mother Buckle” as still alive, of his sister Robinson as dead, and of a brother Buckle. He says his own father died in October, 1722. Was the father Mather’s Robert Hackshaw? The will of Robert Hackshaw, merchant of London, was proved in 1738. Presumably this was the son. See New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xlii. 401; Memorial History of Boston, ii. 221 note, and W. H. Whitmore, Catalogue of the Prince Library (Wiggin and Lunt edition). In Hoxton, where Robert Hackshaw lived in 1706, there lived also the Rev. Edmund Calamy, and one or two other eminent nonconformist divines, and there was there “a noted college for training ministers of the Independent denomination.” Wheatley and Cunningham, London Past and Present, ii. 246.
567 Of Thomas Parkhurst, whom John Dunton calls “the most eminent Presbyterian Bookseller in the Three Kingdoms,” there is a short notice in the Dictionary of National Biography. The eulogistic notice of him by John Dunton, who had been his apprentice, is well known. See Dunton’s Life and Errors, Nichols edition, i. 205. Note that before the Magnolia Parkhurst had published at least five books for Cotton Mather. See Arber, Term Catalogues, ii. 342, 521; iii. 242, 271.
568 To the first of the two folio volumes of the Whole Works of John Flavell (1630–1691), the second edition of which was published in 1716, there is prefixed a sketch of Flavell’s life. No author’s name is mentioned in connection with it, however, and therefore one is puzzled by Quick’s statement. This edition of Flavell is among Parkhurst’s books advertised at the end of the Magnalia.
569 Almanacs of the period often include, to show “The Dominion of the Moon in Man’s Body passing under the 12 Signs of the Zodiack,” a rude woodcut with short straight lines drawn from the different parts of the body to the names and signs of the various constellations in the margin. These lines do look like arrows. Indeed, some of the cuts (e. g. the one in Coley’s Merlinus Anglicus Junior for 1700) show daggers or arrows instead of lines. Cf. G. L. Kittredge, The Old Farmer and his Almanack, pp. 53–61.
570 Quick [does not quite accurately remember his Homer (Odyssey, ix. 152 ff.).
571 On Raleigh’s publisher, Walter Burre (fl. 1597–1621), see Arber, Stationers’ Register, v. 224. He was made a freeman of the Stationers’ Company on June 25, 1596. (Id. ii. 716.) Raleigh’s History was entered April 15, 1611 (id. iii. 457), though not published until 1614. If Burre was as unsatisfactory as Quick suggests, it seems strange that Ben Jonson should have been content to have him publish Every Man in his Humour, The Alchemist, and The Silent Woman. (Id. iii. 169, 445, 498.) On the legend, which Sir J. K. Laughton and Sir Sidney Lee reject, that Raleigh threw his manuscript into the fire, see John Aubrey, Lives, ed. Clark, ii. 191. Aubrey apparently got the story from William Winstanley’s England’s Worthies (1660). In the second edition (1684) it occurs on page 300 (wrongly numbered 360 in the Harvard copy). The Dictionary of National Biography tells us that Winstanley’s material was “principally stolen from Lloyd,” but in Lloyd’s State Worthies I do not find the story in the account of Raleigh.
572 As copy for the parts of the Magnalia that had already appeared in print Mather apparently sent over — as he naturally would — either the Boston or the London editions of the books in question. See, in Sibley’s list, Harvard Graduates, iii. 42–158, Nos. 5, 7, 32, 33, 52, 65, 66, 68, etc. Comparison of the text of these works as originally printed and as reprinted in the Magnalia would throw further light on the question of responsibility for the frequent misprints in the Magnalia. In sixteen cases, taken at random, where errors in the Magnalia are pointed out in the errata sheet found in a few copies of the Magnalia, the “prints” are correct in fourteen. That is to say, if given anything like the chance an author now has of assisting in the correct production of his book, Cotton Mather would probably have shown himself, if not an impartial judge, at least the painstaking scholar that he was.
573 Joseph Dudley is said to have reached London some time before February, 1693, and to have sailed for Boston on April 13, 1702. See E. Kimball, Public Life of Joseph Dudley, pp. 65, 75. In the Magnalia (1702), Book II, p. 16, the elder Dudley is called a “Steward” to the Earl. The same is true of the earlier account in Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, xi. 207 ff., 212. On the differences between Mather’s earlier account of Dudley and that in the Magnalia, see K. B. Murdock, Selections from Cotton Mather, p. xliv. Note the interesting passage in the Magnalia (1702), Book ii, p. 16: “I had prepared and intended a more particular Account of this Gentleman [Thomas Dudley]; but not having any opportunity to commit it unto the Perusal of any Descended from him, (unto whom I am told it will be unacceptable for me to Publish any thing of this kind, by them not Perused) I have laid it aside, and summed all up in this more General Account.”
574 Large paper copies of the Magnalia are to be found occasionally: the catalogue of the Church Library (No. 806) mentions seven besides its own. In the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society there are two copies not mentioned in the Church Catalogue, one being the copy that belonged to Samuel Mather and that was used by him while he was engaged upon an abridgment of the Magnalia. See Cotton Mather’s Diary, ii. 88, 142–143. This copy is about 1415⁄16 inches high and 93⁄16’ inches wide. Small paper copies are usually about 12 inches by 7¾ inches.
575 Strange as it may seem that an author’s representative should unsuccessfully beg the privilege of seeing proof sheets, we must remember that in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century the author had nothing like the control of his text and front-matter that he now has. On this point see my article on John Cotton’s Singing of Psalmes a Gospel Ordinance, in our Publications, xx. 241 ff.
576 Whether Quick here refers to the proposals for printing his own Icones Sacrae or those for the Magnalia is not clear. But we know that shortly before December, 1701, proposals for printing the Magnalia were issued over the names of Hackshaw and Parkhurst. Evidence of this is found in the following advance notice of the Magnalia in John Dunton’s The Post-Angel for December, 1701 (ii. 468), which on account of its rarity may perhaps be worth reprinting here: “Proposals were lately Publish’d for Printing The History of New-England from its first Plantetion [sic], in 1620. unto 1690. By Cotton Mather, Pastor of a Church in Boston, in New-England, containing seven Books. … As to the Author of this Elabrate History, HE IS A PERSON OF GREAT LEARNING AND PIETY: I had the Happiness formerly to be acquainted with him, and have heard him Preach many Excellent Sermons in New-England, being once in his Company (which I took for Heaven; ‘twas always so good and Spiritual) he shew’d me his Library, and I do think, he has one of the best (for a Private Library) that I ever saw: Nay, I may affirm, that as the Bodleian Library at Oxford is the Glory of that University, if not of all Europe: So I may say, Mr. Mather’s Library is the Glory of New-England, if not of all America. I must own, I was greatly wanting to my self, if I did not learn more in that Hour I Enjoy’d his Company, than I cou’d in a Week spent in other mens: And therefore, none can doubt of an Extraordinary History, from an Author so well Provided with Books, and of such Great Parts; but I shan’t Enlarge for the Work will recommended it self, for the Rich Variety of its Materials and for its most Exact Fidelity and Impartiality observed in its Collection. The whole containing 220 Sheets, or there abouts; it is to be Printed in Folio, on Paper and Print according to Proposals; deliver’d out by Thomas Parkhurst, at the Bible and Three Crowns, in Cheapside, near Mercers Chappel; and Mr. Robert Hackshaw Merchant in London. To Encourage Subscribers, to this Great and Useful Work, he that brings the first Payment for Six Books, — is promis’d a Seventh Gratis, in Larger or Smaller Paper; and it has already found, such great Encouragement, That the whole Book will be Finish’d about Lady-Day next.” Parts of this are identical with Dunton’s Letters from New England, ed. Whitmore, p. 75.
577 John Howe (1630–1705) lived on for four years more in spite of his severe labors. See Dictionary of National Biography; Calamy’s Memoir prefixed to Howe’s Works, 1724, and Gordon’s Freedom after Ejection, pp. 287–88. In 1697 Howe and two others had signed the prefatory note recommending Cotton Mather’s Life of Sir William Phips (Sibley, iii. 64, No. 66). One of Howe’s books is mentioned with approval in Mather’s Diary, i. 56. George Hamond (Hammond) (1620–1705) was still lecturer at Salters Hall. See Dictionary of National Biography. For Vincent Alsop (1630–1703), see Gordon, p. 199. Perhaps “Mr. Griffyth” is Roger Griffith (d. 1708). Id. p. 275. Mr. Bragge is presumably Robert Bragge (1627–1704), who was in 1702 the minister of a congregation in Pewterers’ Hall, Lime Street, London. Id. p. 220; J. G. White, Churches and Chapels, Part II, pp. 17–18. At least two of these divines had known Increase Mather in England: see K. B. Murdock, Increase Mather, Index, s. v. Alsop and Howe.
578 Increase Mather’s sermon on Ezek. 9.3 is printed in his “Ichabod,” Boston, 1702, where appears also an “Epistle to ye Reader” dated November 14, 1701, which explains how apt churches are to degenerate, that “Christians may be called to suffer for their Testimony unto Truths which are not Fundamentals in Religion,” and that there is reason to fear great calamities are impending for the English nation. I have not been able to find the sermons by Quick to which he refers; perhaps they were not published.
579 See, among other titles, Sibley, iii. 51–157, Nos. 24, 41, 49, 52, 53, 55, 66, 68, 74, 77, 111, 118, 157, 159, 187, 213, 226, 250, 254, 261, 280, 301, 305, 307, 327, 330, 333, 338, 349, 362, 377, 394, 400, 419, 421, 423, 428, 429, 432, 441, 451.
580 See Helper’s Lexicon and Du Cange.
581 The Oxford Dictionary also gives five examples — all in the seventeenth century — of “magnale” as a singular or “magnalls” as a plural form.
582 The Harvard library has a copy of this book.
583 The Harvard library has a copy of this book.
584 Edition of 1811, vii. 480.
585 The Harvard library has a copy of this book.
586 Page 89 has the following heading, printed like a chapter-title: God on the Mount, Or A Continuation Of Englands Parliamentary Chronicle.
587 Mr. Julius H. Tuttle is my authority for this statement.
588 Cf. his Right Thoughts in Sad Hours (1689) with Thomas Fuller’s Good Thoughts in Bad Times (1645–46) and Good Thoughts in Worse Times (1647); note also Mather’s Balsamum Vulnerarium e Scriptura; or the Cause and Cure of a Wounded Spirit (1691), as compared with Fuller’s The Cause and Cure of a Wounded Conscience (1647). These resemblances are not the only ones between Mather’s titles and those of certain predecessors: the kind of learning and wordplay that he delighted to show lent themselves perfectly to this sort of thing. Nor are these the only examples of Cotton Mather’s indebtedness to Fuller. That subject would, in all probability, be worth investigating.
589 See the London Gazette.
590 Diary, i. 433.
591 C. Robbins, History of the Second Church, p. 216.
592 Sewall, Diary (July 2, 1690), i. 324.
593 Sewall, Diary, i. 259.
594 Mather Papers in 4 Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, viii. 67 and note; and J. L. Sibley, Harvard Graduates, i. 189–190.
595 See K. B. Murdock, Increase Mather, p. 197 and note 36.
596 Sewall, Diary, i. 259–261, 270, 301, 307; Sewall, Letter Book, ii. 262.
597 Sewall, Letter Book, i. 117.
598 Cotton Mather, Diary i. 148. See also, K. B. Murdock, Increase Mather, pp. 284–286; and Increase Mather’s MS Autobiography now owned by the American Antiquarian Society at Worcester. In a note recording his return to Boston in 1692, Increase Mather says that he came home to his house in Boston, “my Samuel with me.”
599 Magnalia, Book IV, 138. For the noting of the significance of this entry I am indebted to Mr. Albert Matthews, who writes in part as follows: “There is evidence that he [Samuel Mather, 1674–1733] received the A.M. degree from his own Alma Mater. This is furnished by the 1925 Quinquennial and by the only two Triennials I have at hand for consultation. No copy of the 1698 Triennial is known, but that it was issued as a broadside is my opinion, for I believe that the Catalogus given in Cotton Mather’s Magnalia (Book IV, p. 138) was merely copied from a broadside. But however that may be, ‘Samuel Matherus Mr.’ is there found. And ‘Samuel Matherus Mr’ is also found in the 1700 Triennial (1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, viii. 28). I am aware that these entries are not absolutely conclusive, for I have found various errors both in the old Triennials and in the modern Quinquennials.… Now if S. M. was in Boston in 1693 it is reasonable to suppose that he would have turned up at Commencement for his A.M., and since that degree was accorded him in the 1698 and 1700 Triennials it seems to me a safe guess that he actually got it in 1693.”
600 Harvard Students “. : . such of them as had studied Three Years after their First Degree, to answer the Horatian Character of an Artist.… And besides their Exhibiting Synopses of the Liberal Arts by themselves composed, now again publickly disputed on some Questions, of perhaps a little higher Elevation; These now, with a like Formality, [of receiving a book from the hand of the President] received their Second Degree, proceeding Masters of Art.” Magnalia, Book IV, p. 128. However there is no specified period of study included in the requirements for the Master’s degree as set down in section 18 of the laws of Harvard College printed in the Magnalia, Book IV, p. 133.
601 In Attestation, to Cotton Mather’s Magnalia.
602 Sewall, Letter Book, i. 201, 203. A passage in Increase Mather’s manuscript autobiography (American Antiquarian Society) shows Samuel was still in Boston in 1695.
603 Nathanael died in 1697.
604 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xlv. 296, 297.
605 6 Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, v. 200.
606 Page 11.
607 Diary, ii. 665.
608 See his letter in Cotton Mather’s Diary, ii. 322–323.
609 “It is situated in the Marlborough Yard, in Meeting-House Lane, Witney, Oxford, England. In recent years it was an agricultural implement warehouse, today — significant change — it has become a garage,” says the historian of Witney, William J. Monk, Burford, Oxford, in a letter November 17, 1921, to the William Gwinn Mather Library.
610 It was a William Townsend, doubtless of the same family, who carried the entire cost (one thousand pounds) of erecting, in 1828, the new chapel mentioned above. W. J. Monk cites a resolution of the Witney Blanket Company in the year 1714, desiring Mrs. Townsend to provide a dinner for the company. See W. J. Monk, History of Witney, pp. 75, 226, 229.
611 Poor, weak, good-natured, scape-grace young “Cressy,” son of Cotton Mather, found his aunt at Witney good and handsome. She received him when he arrived about May, 1715, worn and reduced, after his rather unsuccessful first venture to sea. Later, after she had tenderly cared for him through months of illness, he expressed a “passion of Gratitude and admiration” for her and her accomplishments. See Cotton Mather’s letters to his son Increase, August, 1715, and to Mrs. Samuel Mather, 1715–16, in his Diary, ii. 323, 325; Samuel Mather’s letter to Cotton Mather, id. ii. 322–323; Thomas Reynolds’s letter to Cotton Mather, id. ii. 319; and Sir Henry Ashurst’s letters in 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, v. 200, 216.
612 Possibly the painting may have been that owned by Miss Jane Mather of Newcastle-on-Tyne, which the genealogist of the Mathers saw in 1887, but which has since disappeared. See H. E. Mather, Lineage of Richard Mather, p. 9, and note 4 on page 320 below.
613 See K. B. Murdock, The Portraits of Increase Mather.
614 See K. B. Murdock, Increase Mather, p. 390, and The Portraits, passim. Increase Mather died in 1723.
615 It is practically certain, too, that Samuel of Dublin left no portrait of himself. See 4 Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, viii. 18, 19.
616 Prints of Increase Mather, not intended for use as frontispieces, have been found inserted in some of the extant copies of various of his works.
617 ii. 355.
618 Portraits of the Founders, iii. 875–880, where the painting is reproduced.
619 Cf. note 1 on page 319, ante.
620 Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, x. 45–46.
621 In connection with the question of the Bocquet engraving of Samuel Mather for the 1802 Calamy, see K. B. Murdock, The Portraits, pp. 50–55. However, if the Townsend portrait of Samuel became shortly after 1802 the property of Samuel Mather’s grandniece Mrs. Hannah (Mather) Crocker of Worcester, Massachusetts, as Mr. Bolton supposes, then the Samuel Mather portrait owned in 1887 by Miss Jane Mather of Newcastle-on-Tyne may have been the original of the J. Simon mezzotint.
622 The copy as prepared by Samuel Mather for publication is now owned by the Massachusetts Historical Society. See Cotton Mather, Diary, ii. 88,142–143.
623 This book has been sometimes attributed to Edmund Calamy, who wrote the Preface.
624 Charles W. Baird, History of the Huguenot Emigration to America, ii. 224. His name appears also as Lawrence Vandebost, Laurent Van den Bosck, Laurence Vandenbosk, Lambertus van der Bosch, Laurence van den Bosch, Vandenbosch, and Vanden Bosch.
625 “Primo die Augusti 1682, Laurentius Van den Bosck Flandriae Natione in Sacros Diaconatus et presbyteratus Ordines fuit admissus.” Ordination Book, 1675–1809, in Bishop of London’s Registry, Doctor’s Commons.
626 Boston Record Commissioners’ Report, x. 55.
627 Id., x. 60. This appears to be a very early, if not the earliest, reference to marriage ceremonies performed by a clergyman in the colony. In the Memorial History of Boston, ii. 315, referring to the Rev. Charles Morton installed pastor of the Church in Charlestown, November 5, 1686, it is stated that “He was the first clergyman in this place to solemnize marriages, which previously to 1686 were performed by civil magistrates.” In addition to the marriage recorded by Sewall as performed by Van den Bosch in September, 1685, cited below in the text (page 325), he also noted several marriages soon after the arrival in Boston, in May, 1686, of the Rev. Robert Ratcliffe of King’s Chapel. “[1686] Tuesday, May 18. A great Wedding from Milton, and are married by Mr. Randolph’s Chaplain, at Mr. Shrimpton’s, according to the Service-Book, a little after noon, when Prayer was had at the Town-House: Was another married at the same time. The former was Vosse’s Son. Borrowed a Ring. ’Tis said they having asked Mr. Cook and Addington, and they declining it, went after to the President and he sent them to the Parson.” Diary, i. 139. “Wednesday, Septr. 15, Mr. David Geffries marries Mrs. Betty Usher before Mr. Ratliff.” Diary, i. 152.
628 Andros Tracts, Prince Society, ii. 36, 37, in a reprint of “A Vindication of New England.” Mr. Murdock has clearly shown the erroneousness of previous attribution of the authorship of this tract to Increase Mather. K. B. Murdock, Increase Mather (Cambridge, 1925), pp. 225–227.
629 W. C. Ford, Ezekiel Carré and the French Church in Boston, in Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, lii. 121–132.
630 Henry Compton (1632–1713), Bishop of London from 1675 to 1713.
631 Ford, Ezekiel Carré, pp. 122, 123. Gay Transcripts, in Massachusetts Historical Society, State Papers, iii. 84.
632 Diary, i. 98.
633 Baird, History of the Huguenot Emigration, Appendix, ii. 398–400.
634 Id., Appendix, ii. 400.
635 E. T. Corwin’s Manual of the Reformed Church in America, p. 499, states that Van den Bosch was at Boston, 1685; Rye, 1686; Staten Island, 1686–1687; Kingston, 1687–1689. I have not been able to verify the statement as to Rye.
636 Ecclesiastical Records of the State of New York, ii. 936.
637 Ira K. Morris, Memorial History of Staten Island, ii. 275, states that “For nearly two years — say 1687–8 — the Church at Stony Brook was supplied by a certain Laurentius Van den Bosch, or Van Bosen, as it was sometimes written.” J. J. Clute, Annals of Staten Island, p. 256, gives the years as “1687 to 1689.”
638 Foreign Protestants, and Aliens, resident in England 1618–1688. Publications of the Camden Society, 1862, pp. 57–59.
639 Ecclesiastical Records, State of New York, ii. 1003.
640 Minister at Albany.
641 Ecclesiastical Records, ii. 1005.
642 Id., ii. 1007.
643 Id., ii. 1020, 1021.
644 Id., ii. 1021.
645 Id., ii. 1043.
646 Id., ii. 1083.
647 Rev. Ethan Allen, Historical Notices of St. Ann’s Parish in Ann Arundel County, Maryland, p. 23: “At this time [1692] there appears to have been only four Church of England clergymen in Maryland — Mr. Crawford in St. Mary’s, Mr. Moore in Charles, Mr. Lillingstone in Talbot, and Mr. Vanderbush in Cecil.”
648 Archives of Maryland, Proceedings of Assembly, xiii. 425–430.
649 Archives of Maryland, Proceedings of Council, viii. 474.
650 George Johnston, History of Cecil County, Maryland, p. 207.
651 The two Churches are about sixteen miles apart, the two parishes being divided by the Sassafras River. I am indebted to the Rev. Edmund Burk, a former Rector of North Sassafras Parish, for valuable information concerning the two parishes. St. Paul’s, Shrewsbury, is now in the County of Kent.
652 George A. Hanson, Old Kent of Maryland, p. 344.
653 800 lbs. in text but should be 8000 lbs. At a vestry meeting of St. Stephen’s Church held January 20, 1693, “it was ordered that the sum of 12430 lbs. of tobacco, assessed this year upon this parish, by Act of Assembly, be disposed of as follows:
|
To the Minister, Mr. Lawrence Vanderbush |
8000 lbs. |
|
To the Sheriff for receiving tobacco |
622 lbs. |
|
To Thomas Pearce Clerk |
800 lbs. |
|
9.422 lbs.” |
I am indebted to the Rev. Mr. Burk for this citation from a History of St. Stephen’s Parish by David P. Davis.
654 Hanson, Old Kent, p. 345.
655 Hanson, Old Kent, p. 346. Record of a Vestry Meeting of St. Paul’s, July 2, 1697.
656 Massachusetts Archives, Council Executive Records, ii. 52.
657 Baird, History of the Huguenot Emigration, ii. 225.
658 Id., i. 231, 232.
659 See page 326, above.
660 The name, in the transcript of the correspondence of the Classis, is said to be undecipherable. In Selyns’ letters and the acknowledgments from Amsterdam and Haarlem, it appears as Morpo, Mageto, Moyro, and Morpe. Ecclesiastical Records, State of New York, ii. 936, 945, 948, 1172.
661 Id., ii. 1172.
662 The Report of a French Protestant Refugee, Brooklyn, 1868, pp. 34, 35. It comprises a letter dated Boston, November 15–25, 1687, in which reference is made to Mr. Bondet as Minister in the Nicmock Country [i.e. Nipmuck Country, at Oxford, Mass.], and to Mr. Carré as minister at “Noraganzet” (Report, pp. 18, 19); and also a letter (undated but containing a reference to a previous letter, dated December 1, describing a journey to Narragansett), which has the reference to de Bonrepos, apparently written some time in December, 1687.
663 November 24, 1687. “Liberty is granted to the French Congregation to meete in the Latine Schoolhouse att Boston as desired.” Massachusetts Archives, Council Executive Records, ii. 155.
664 Baird, History of the Huguenot Emigration, i. 211.
665 Ecclesiastical Records, ii. 959. It is not possible to determine whether the words within parentheses are part of the original letter or are an editorial interpolation.
666 The Rev. Charles H. Stitt in his “Huguenots of New Palz,” Collections Ulster Historical Society, i. part 3, p. 194, wrote that “We learn further from the Documentary History of New York, that David De Bonrepos was naturalized under the seal of the Province, February 6th, 1696.” No volume or page reference is given, and I have been unable to verify this statement from the Documentary History.
667 Ecclesiastical Records, ii. 1172, 1173. See sketch of Daniel Bondet, page 335, below.
668 Magazine of American History, i. 96.
669 W. S. Perry, History of American Episcopal Church, Boston, 1885, ii. 423, 424. The Rev. Mr. Wittmeyer was then Rector of the Church of the Saint Esprit, New York, and Secretary of the Huguenot Society of America.
670 Collections New York Historical Society, 1893, Abstracts of Wills, ii. 127. Richmond County comprises all of Staten Island. Clute, Annals of Staten Island, p. 256, states that in 1717 de Bonrepos was obliged to give up his ministerial duties on account of the infirmities of age.
671 Collections New York Historical Society, 1894, Abstracts of Wills, iii. 148. See also Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, lii. 125 note 1.
672 Baird, History of the Huguenot Emigration, i. 304 note 1. (From the Livre du Recteur: Catalogue des Etudiants de l’Académie de Genève, de 1559 à 1859, p. 158.)
673 Id., ii. 297.
674 Id., ii. 170. See also Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, lii. 125–128.
675 Baird, ii. 226. Ford states that Carré preached a sermon “in the French Church at Boston” in 1689 on The Charitable Samaritan which “was translated by Nehemiah Walter and published by Samuel Green in that year.” Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, lii. 128.
676 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, lii. 128–132. The title-page of the tract is reproduced at page 126.
677 Baird, ii. 307.
678 Id., ii. 310.
679 Council Executive Records, ii. 67.
680 Ecclesiastical Records, State of New York, ii. 1172.
681 Mary de W. Freeland, Records of Oxford, p. 167. When Mrs. Freeland received a translation of the record she was informed by the Bishop of London that “No less than 27 Frenchmen were ordained by the Bishop of London between Feb. 28, 1685, & Aug. 26, 1686, and all of them were made Deacons and Priests at the same time.” He drew the inference that the French Clergy were ordained for service abroad since it was contrary to custom to ordain to both offices on the same day. (Id., p. 166.)
682 Id., p. 149. This Society was also known as the Corporation for Promoting the Gospel among the Indians in New England and quite commonly was referred to as the New England Company. See our Publications, vi. 180 note 2, 181 note 1, and 506, for a detailed account of this Society and its various designations by Mr. Henry H. Edes.
683 Abiel Holmes (3 Collections Massachusetts Historical Society, ii. 1, 29 note) and George F. Daniels (The Huguenots in the Nipmuck Country, p. 67 and note 4) favor 1686. Baird (Huguenot Emigration, ii. 255) and Freeland (Records of Oxford, p. 149) give 1687.
684 Interpolation by the editor of the Ecclesiastical Records.
685 Ecclesiastical Records, iii. 1493. Documentary History of New York, 8.vo, iii. 929, 930. Daniels, Nipmuck Country, pp. 120, 121. The object of the petition was for relief on account of the loss of an allowance, and of a pension, of which he had been deprived on account of having incurred the displeasure of the Earl of Bellomont.
686 Ecclesiastical Records, iii. 1494. Documentary History of New York, 8vo., iii. 931.
687 Daniels, Nipmuck Country, pp. 83–85.
688 Id., pp. 88, 89.
689 Baird, Huguenot Emigration, ii. 226. Memorial History of Boston, ii. 252 note 3. For Bondet’s removal to Boston in 1694 see also Daniels, Nipmuck Country, p. 82, and Freeland, Records of Oxford, p. 149.
690 See above, page 334.
691 Ecclesiastical Records, ii. 1172, 1173.
692 Id., ii. 1321.
693 Id., iii. 1750, 1751.
694 Id., iii. 1751.
695 Documentary History of New York, 8vo., iii. 941.
696 Classified Digest of the Records of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, p. 59. In the tabulated list of Missionaries is this entry: “Bondet, Daniel, (a French Minister driven out of France); o. Bp. Lon., and employed under the New England Company. S. New Rochelle, 1709–1722. Died 1722.” (Id., p. 855.)
697 Bondet was named as a beneficiary to the amount of £10 in the will of Elias Neau, merchant, of New York, which was dated August 15, and proved September 17, 1722. Collections New York Historical Society, 1893, Abstracts of Wills, ii. 255.
698 Id., Abstracts of Wills, ii. 255, 256.
699 Magazine of American History, i. 91.
700 Perry, History of American Episcopal Church, 1587–1883, ii. 418. Mr. Wittmeyer was doubtless the “eminent authority” cited by Baird.
701 Ecclesiastical Records, ii. 866, 867. The Rev. John Gordon preceded, as Chaplain at the Fort in New York, the Rev. Josias Clarke, who in 1686 became the assistant minister at King’s Chapel, Boston.
702 Baird, Huguenot Emigration, ii. 397. Translation of a letter in the Mather Papers in the Boston Public Library.
703 Collections Ulster Historical Society, i. part 3, pp. 191, 192. Baird (Magazine of American History, i. 93) makes a similar statement as to the organization of the church but gives the date as June 22, 1683. This may be accounted for on the supposition that the month is not legibly written in the records. But in a statement under date of October 18, 1750, made by the Church of New Palz when involved in a controversy with the Church of Kingston, an entirely different month is given “For, as early as August 22nd, 1683, under Monsieur Pierre Daille there were elected and installed an elder and deacon — Louis Du Bois as elder and Aughe Frere as deacon, as appears from their Church-Book.” Ecclesiastical Records, iv. 3142. The variation in the month would be of little importance except for the fact that if January 22 is correct it furnishes the earliest reference to Daillé in this country, and establishes his arrival as being in 1682. The following extract from R. Lefevre, History of New Palz (Albany 1903), p. 136, would seem to be decisive in favor of the earlier date provided that the French record has been correctly transcribed. Referring to the Church records, it reads that “The first entry is as follows in the handwriting of Louis Du Bois: ‘Le 22 de Janv. (Janvier), 1683 monsieur pierre daillie, minister de la parole de dieu, est arive (arrive) au nouveau palitinat etc.’”
704 Magazine of American History, i. 95. Perry, History of American Episcopal Church, ii. 419. Selyns, Varick, and Dellius wrote the Classis, October 12, 1692: “Meanwhile, we must not omit to inform your Reverences, that the two French churches (New York and New Palz) have been united, and that Domine Perrot will generally preach here in the city, while Domine Daillé will generally preach in the country.” Ecclesiastical Records, ii. 1043.
705 Ecclesiastical Records, ii. 1172.
706 Id., ii. 1089.
707 Perry, History of American Episcopal Church, ii. 422.
708 Magazine of American History, i. 95. But Mr. Stitt in Collections Ulster Historical Society, i. part 3, p. 192, wrote that Daillé’s last recorded service at New Palz was a marriage ceremony performed April 18, 1692. The records of the Church of the Saint Esprit, New York, show that Daillé performed baptisms May 30, and June 11, 1693, and a marriage ceremony May 31, 1693. Collections Huguenot Society of America, i. 28.
709 Freeland, Records of Oxford, pp. 160, 161.
710 Magnalia, ed. 1820, book i. 80.
711 Boston Record Commissioners’ Report, ix. 230.
712 See Baird, Huguenot Emigration, ii. 226–239, for a detailed account of his ministry in Boston.
713 Massachusetts Archives, xi. 150. Baird, Huguenot Emigration, ii. 235, states that in response to this petition it was ordered that “there be paid unto their Minister Twelve pounds out of the Publick Treasury.”
714 Id., xi. 165. This petition was read in the House, February 25, 1701[–2], and sent to the Council, which concurred on the same day.
715 See p. 330 note 2, above.
716 Massachusetts Archives, lxxxi. 472, 473.
717 Boston Record Commissioners’ Report, xi. 42.
718 Id., xi. 43.
719 Baird, Huguenot Emigration, ii. Appendix, p. 401.
720 Perry, Historical Collections, iii. 80, 81. Mr. Bridge, in his letter, referred to Daillé as having been Episcopally ordained. There is no evidence to substantiate this statement. It is possible that he may have confused him with Daniel Bondet who had been so ordained. It is not probable that Dudley, Myles, and Daillé himself would have omitted to mention it if it had been a fact.
721 Baird, Huguenot Emigration, ii. 236.
722 Diary, ii. 153.
723 Id., ii. 407.
724 Id., iii. 45.
725 Boston News Letter, May 23, 1715, p. 2/2: “On Friday Morning last the 20th Currant, Dyed here the Reverend Mr. Peter Daille, Pastor of the French Congregation, Aged about 66 Years. He was a Person of great Piety, Charity, Affable and Courteous Behavior, and of an Exemplary Life and Conversation, much Lamented, especially by his Flock; and was Decently Interr’d on the Lords Day Evening the 22d Instant.” See also Baird, Huguenot Emigration, ii. 237; Memorial History of Boston, ii. 252, and note 6. The inscription on his tombstone gives the date of his death as May 21. N. B. Shurtleff, Topographical and Historical Description of Boston, p. 224.
726 Baird, Huguenot Emigration, ii. 238 note.
727 See our Publications, xvii. 220 note 3. Le Mercier’s name appears in the Catalogue of the Academy of Geneva in the year 1712 under the heading of “Theologiae candidati.”
728 Brief Memoir of Rev. Andrew Le Mercier, New England Historical Genealogical Society, xiii. 315, 319. The account of Le Mercier which follows, unless otherwise noted, is based on this Memoir, pp. 315–324, in volume xiii of the Society’s publications. Cf. Memorial History of Boston, ii. 255–258; and Baird’s Huguenot Emigration, ii. 239–245.
729 Treatise against Detraction in Ten Sections, page v. See also our Publications, xvii. pp. 118–120, for an account of a rare pamphlet entitled “Some Observations upon the French Tongue,” Boston, 1724, printed by B. Green. While the name of the author does not appear on the title-page, the Dedication is signed A. L. M., as is the Dedication to the Church History of Geneva, and it seems probable that Le Mercier was the author. The Minutes of the Selectmen of Boston contain the following entry, under date of January 16, 1733[–4]: “Messrs. Boutineau and Johonnot with others applying to us, On accot of the School lately under the care of Mr. Samuel Grainger Deceased, which is become vacant by the Death of Mr. Grainger. And his Son Thomas Grainger being some time Usher to his Father who had Several Boarders, Desire, That his Son Thomas Grainger may have Leave to carry on the School for Three Months under the Inspection of Mr. Andrew Le Mercier. Voted, that upon Condition Mr. Le Mercier takes the Oversight of the School, that Mr. Grainger have Liberty to Instruct the Youth for Three Months.” Boston Record Commissioners’ Report, xiii. 248, 249.
730 Gay Transcripts, Nova Scotia Papers, iv. 91–94.
731 Id., iv. 97, 98.
732 Id., v. 113–118.
733 P. 3/1. Printed in full in the Memoir, pp. 317, 318.
734 P. 2/2.
735 P. 2/2.
736 The deed of the church was dated May 7, 1748; acknowledged by the French, March 7, 1748[–9]: and recorded April 10, 1749. Suffolk Deeds, Lib. 76, fol. 128, 129. In 1751 Stephen Boutineau, as the only surviving elder of the late French Church in Boston, executed a quitclaim deed to a warehouse which had been bequeathed to the church by Andrew Faneuil. The deed was signed July 10, and recorded August 2, 1751, and recited that “Whereas the said Church is now absolutely and finally ceased and utterly dissolved and their meeting-house sold” the warehouse reverted to the Faneuil heirs. Suffolk Deeds, Lib. 80, fol. 42.
737 Boston Records, xvii. 213.
738 P. 3/1.
739 Pages 15–64, above.
740 Egerton Manuscript 2671, in the British Museum. My quotations are from a copy in the Gay Transcripts in the archives of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
741 Thomas Whately was intensely interested in the American colonies. During his life he was a member of Parliament, a member of the Board of Trade, and was Secretary of the Treasury under George Grenville. A number of letters, sent to England in 1768 and 1769 by Andrew Oliver, Thomas Hutchinson, and Charles Paxton, and made public in Boston with disastrous effects upon their popularity, were written to Whately. Hutchinson esteemed Whately very highly and on April 24, 1771, named a town in Franklin County in his honor. The town still retains the name of Whately.
742 The comparison of Mackintosh to Masaniello (Tomaso Aniello, 1622?–1647) of Naples shows that Oliver had read European history. Perhaps he knew F. Midon’s The History of the Rise and Fall of Masaniello, the Fisherman of Naples. Containing an Exact and Impartial Relation of the Tumults and Popular Insurrections, that happened in that Kingdom (in the Year 1647), on Account of the Tax upon Fruits. London, 1729.
743 The date of this parade probably was December 17, 1765.
744 See page 53, above.
745 See page 43, above.
746 Massachusetts Historical Society, Savage Collection. The letter is printed in the Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, xliv. 688–89. Samuel Phillips Savage was born in Boston, April 27, 1718, son of Arthur and Faith Savage. Boston Records, xxiv. 131. He was a prominent merchant, and a judge of the Court of Common Pleas for Middlesex County from November 2, 1775, until his death, December 9, 1797.
747 The account of Oliver’s resignation was printed in the Boston newspaper of December 23, 1765.
748 Doubtless William Savage, son of Samuel Phillips Savage. He was born in Boston, December 26, 1745. Boston Records, xxiv. 258.
749 Faith Savage and Henry Bass were married in Weston April 16, 1767, by Rev. Samuel Woodward. She was the daughter of Samuel Phillips Savage, born in Boston, May 7, 1744. Boston Records, xxx. 322, and xxiv. 252.
750 Gordon’s History of the American Revolution, i. 175.
751 Adams, Works, ii. 156.
752 Id., ii. 178, 179.
753 Thomas Crafts, Jr., writes John Adams, under date February 15, 1766, requesting that he write some inscriptions, “one in favor of liberty, not forgetting the true-born sons, and one on King George, expressive of our loyalty.” He also requests that after reading it, Adams should destroy his letter. Id., ii. 184.
754 See page 209, above.
755 Chalmers Papers, Papers Relating to New England (1768–1770), iii. 40, Harvard College Library.
756 “A declaration of one’s assent to articles of religion … spec. in the Church of England, assent to the Thirty-nine Articles.” See New English Dictionary, under “subscription.”
757 Presbytery.
758 “An hour’s time shall not be fitting or suitable to us” — i. e. for preaching a sermon. An hour was generally recognized as the proper time for a preacher to hold forth in the Anglican pulpits of the period, as appears, for example, in certain of Donne’s sermons.
759 Peter Ramus (Pierre de la Ramée, 1515–1572), a French philosopher and foe of Aristotelianism (the school of the “Stagyrite” or “stagerite”) was much read by Puritan theologians.
760 “Kata pantos” (κατὰ παντός), “kathauto,” (καθ’ αὑτό), and “kathaloo”(καθόλου, καθ’ ὅλου) are all terms used by Aristotle. Matthias Kappes, Aristoteles-Lexikon, p. 32, says “καθόλου (καθ’ ὅλου) allgemein (universalis); einem Subjektsbegriffe kommt alles καθόλου zu, was ihm nach dem ganzen Umfange (κατὰ παντός) oder an sich (καθ’ αὑτό) oder, insofern es ein solches … ist, also mit Notwendigkeit zukommt.… Daher ist καθόλου ein Allgemeines, welches mehreren Dingen nicht bloss zufälligerweise, sondern vermöge ihrer Natur … gemeinschaftlich zukommt…. Das καθόλου ist also ein κοινόν, aber nicht jedes κοινόν ein καθόλου. Τὸ καθόλου ist daher überall das Allgemeine, welches in dem Besonderen zum Dasein kommt und in demselben das Wesentliche bildet, der Inhalt des allgemeinen Begriffes.” The sense of the passage is simply-that Ramus, not Aristotle, shall be the basis of all general and particular conceptions — the philosophical master and guide, and that degrees at the universities shall be based on proficiency in his philosophy and not (as heretofore) on Aristotle’s.
761 Separation from the established church.
762 Predicament, in logic “the ten categories or classes of predications formed by Aristotle.” Compare Milton, “Then Ens is represented as the Father of the Praedicaments his ten Sons.”
763 Hair.
764 Foretops are locks of hair growing on the fore part of the crown, or arranged ornamentally there.
765 Possibly a spelling of ruff, or rug, rugge, a frieze, cloak, or mantle, or of roudge, a kind of coarse cloth, or, perhaps, shags of hair, used to describe “these foretopes,” — in general, “shaggy heads” as opposed to close-cropped hair.
766 Flounderkin was a contemptuous designation for a Dutchman. Flounderkin is probably used here as a name for Dutch breeches.
767 Pickadills, borders on a ruff or collar, or stiff bands or collars and to support ruffs.
768 Loose, baggy trousers.
769 Probably “Peeter” is used in a vulgar sense here.
770 If the reading “Meate” is right, the sense must be “well-fitting ornaments are scandalous.” Perhaps the word should be “Neate,” foppish, elegant.
771 Marowe: partner, mate, fellow-worker.
772 Doom.
773 Cf. 1 Corinthians, xv. 28, “That God may be all in all.”
774 Wilson, Code of Honor, p. 18.
775 Commentaries (Oxford, 1769), Book iv. 145, 185, 199. Cf. L. Sabine, Notes on Duels and Duelling (Boston, 1856), p. 357. For a good modern summary see Sir J. F. Stephen, History of the Criminal Law of England (1883), iii. 99–102. He points out that duelling in England has been dealt with “on principles applicable to fighting, wounding or homicide generally,” rather than by special legislation.
776 Boswell (Hill’s ed., 1887), ii. 179–181.
777 Parliamentary History, xxi. 319–325; Lecky, England in the Eighteenth Century (N. Y., 1883), ii. 318–322; vi. 266–267. Cf. Sabine, pp. 176–178, 274–276.
778 T. J. Wertenbaker, Patrician and Plebeian in Virginia, pp. 75–81 and authorities there cited; M. N. Stanard, Colonial Virginia, pp. 158–160.
779 North Carolina, Colonial Records, ii. 651 (1726); iii. 473–474 (1733); vii. 5, 9, 10, 39, 159, 197, 290. For another case in which one Dr. —– Skinner and two seconds were acquitted for lack of evidence, see id., ix. 356.
780 McCrady, South Carolina, 1719–1776, p. 352; Wallace, Laurens, pp. 214–216, 439 and notes; T. Gamble, Savannah Duels and Duellists, Chap. 1; South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, v. 125–130; xvi. 186.
781 There does not seem to have been much duelling in the middle colonies. There was one striking case, in 1715, recorded by the Boston Newsletter of Sept. 19, 1715: “New York, September 12, … on Thursday last Doctor John Livingstone was kill’d here In a Duel by Mr. Thomas Dungan, who on Saturday last was Try’d for that Fact in our Supream Court and found Guilty of Manslaughter.” Cf. Stokes, Iconography of Manhattan Island, iv. 484.
782 Lecky, vi. 266.
783 Diary, i. 410.
784 Diary, ii. 334.
785 6 Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, v. 256.
786 Diary, iii. 208. Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, xvi. 48–52.
787 Acts and Resolves, ii. 135; House Journal (Massachusetts Historical Society ed.), ii. 139, 142, 144, 145.
788 L. M. Sargent, Dealings with the Dead, pp. 549–566, brings together a considerable number of the sources for this case. Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, v. 64–80, 165; Shurtleff, Topographical and Historical Description of Boston, pp. 221–223.
789 Quoted in Sargent, p. 554.
790 Joseph Sewall, He that would keep God’s commandments must renounce the Society of Evil Doers. A sermon preached at the publick lecture in Boston, July 18, 1748. After a Bloody and Mortal Duel. Boston, 1728. (Prince Collection, Boston Public Library.)
791 Two other expressions of Puritan opinion may be noted in this connection. One is a statement by Cotton Mather in his life of Phips, “Upon certain affronts he has made sudden returns that have chewed choler enough, and he has by blow, as well as by word, chastised incivilities: he was, indeed, sufficiently impatient of being put upon; and when base men, surprizing him at some disadvantages (for else few men durst have done it) have sometimes drawn upon him, he has, without the wicked madness of a formal duel, made them feel that he knew how to correct fools.” Magnalia (1855), i. 218.
The other is contained in a tract by Isaac Watts, A Defense against the Temptation to Self-Murder, London, 1726. The copy of this tract in the Prince Collection indicates that Prince received it from the author about two years before the Phillips-Woodbridge duel. In this tract, Watts devotes several pages to a denunciation of duelling as unchristian and contrary to the law of the land.
792 Acts and Resolves, ii. 516–517.
793 A precedent for this method of burial may be found in the old English custom of burying a suicide at cross-roads with a stake driven through the body. Stephen, History of the Criminal Law, iii. 105. The ignominious burial of suicides was also provided for in the early years of the Massachusetts Bay colony (Colony Records, iv, part 1, p. 432; Laws of Massachusetts, 1672, p. 137).
794 Mr. Andrew McFarland Davis communicated to this society in 1895 the copy of an indictment of two negroes in 1742 for attempting to fight a duel with swords on Boston Common. See our Publications, iii. 154–155.
795 Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania, ii. 51.
796 Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, iii. 89; T. J. Wertenbaker, Patrician and Plebeian, pp. 75–81.
797 Cf. Hugh Graydon, Memoirs, Chap. 2.
798 This clause did not apply to challenges sent to civilians. See the discussion of this whole subject in W. Winthrop, Military Law and Precedents (Boston, 1896), ii. 912–919.
799 Text of the “Articles” in George B. Davis, A Treatise on the Military Law of the United States (1915), Appendix B, Section 7.
800 Journals of the Continental Congress (Library of Congress ed.), ii. 114, June 30, 1775. The Massachusetts articles of April 5, 1775, with the Continental articles of 1775 and 1776, are in Winthrop, Military Law, ii. Appendix viii–x. The paragraphs dealing with duelling are substantially the same in both codes (Article 10, Mass.; Article xi., Continental); neither contains the clause of the British code, which attempted to give moral support to the refuser of a challenge.
801 Journals of the Continental Congress (Library of Congress ed.), v. 670, 788; Burnett, Letters of Members of the Continental Congress, ii. 102.
802 Burnett, ii. 54–56.
803 Id., i. 253–254.
804 Cf. Sabine, p. 10.
805 John Jay, Correspondence and Papers, i. 402–403.
806 Hamilton, Writings (Lodge ed.), vii. 562; Graydon (1846), pp. 322–324; Lee Papers (in New York Historical Society Collections), iii. 283; iv. 152.
807 Gamble, Savannah Duels and Duellists, pp. 11–16. Cf. Burnett, ii. 439, 444; Washington, Writings (Ford ed.), xii. 30.
808 Washington, Writings, vii. 206–208 and notes; Tower, Lafayette in the American Revolution, pp. 31–35.
809 G. W. Greene, Nathanael Greene, iii. 527–529 notes; Gamble, pp. 73–76; Washington, Writings, ix. 452.
810 G. W. Greene, Nathanael Greene, i. 105, 198.
811 Greene, iii. 527–529, note. Gamble, pp. 73–76. A letter of Cadwallader to Greene, December 5, 1778, which apparently alludes to the Cadwallader-Conway duel, suggests that Greene approved that encounter referred to vaguely by Cadwallader as “a late affair.” Lee Papers, iii. 270.
812 Memoirs, p. 180.
813 McCrady, South Carolina in the Revolution, 1775–1780, pp. 305–308.
814 North Carolina Colonial and State Records, xvi. 626.
815 Hamilton, Writings, vii. 576.
816 Sabine, p. 130; Graydon, pp. 300–302.
817 Military Journal (1823), p. 176.
818 Id., pp. 250–251.
819 Id., pp. 197–198.
820 Id., pp. 370–371.
821 Greene, i. 196.
822 Thacher, pp. 369–371. Cf. Heath, Memoirs, p. 331.
823 J. Drayton, Memoirs of the American Revolution, i. xxiii–xxv. Several Revolutionary duels are listed by Sabine. Unfortunately he does not, as a rule, indicate his sources. It seems to me that in his preliminary statement (p. 10) he minimizes unduly the duelling of this period.
824 Burnett, ii. 384–386.
825 North Carolina Colonial and State Records, xvi. 83–89.
826 T. Paine, Writings (ed. Conway), i. 40.
827 Writings (Smyth ed.), ix. 236.
828 Jefferson, Writings (Ford ed.), ii. 207. Jefferson cited in support of this proposal the act of 25 George II, c. 37, which provided for gibbeting in cases of murder. The practice was much older. Cf. Stephen, i. 477. See also Jefferson Papers in 7 Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, i. 416.
829 North Carolina Colonial and State Records, xx. 336–337; xxiv. 39.
830 J. Drayton, Memoirs, pp. xxiii–xxv.
831 Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania, ix. 336–338.
832 Id., xii. 320.
833 Acts and Resolves, 1784–85, pp. 24–26 (1784, Chap. 9). The French writer, Eugene Cauchy, in his comprehensive study of the duel, commented on the withdrawal of political rights as the distinctive feature of American penal legislation on this subject. See Du Duel consideré dans ses origines et dans l’état actuel des mœurs (1846), ii. 140–154.
834 Connecticut Acts and Laws (1796), p. 148.
835 Public Laws of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (1798), p. 593. Cf. Field, Rhode Island, ii. 436, for a different statement.
836 Laws of New Hampshire, iv. 51 (1776–84).
837 Joseph Green (1701–1770), on May 12, 1725, was ordained minister of the East Church at Barnstable, and continued in office there until his death. Probably he was born on June 21, 1701, as Sibley says (Ms. Memoranda at the Massachusetts Historical Society), although Freeman’s History of Cape Cod (1860), i. 567 note, gives June 21, 1704, and, in another place (ii. 302), June 21, 1700. Neither of these dates accords with the inscription on his tombstone, where the date of his birth is given as June 21, 1701, and that of his death as October 4, 1770, being “in the 70th year of his age.” (Genealogical Notes of Barnstable Families, i. 447.) He was born in Boston, the son of Joseph and Mary (Beck) Green, and his baptism at the Second Church is recorded under the date of June 22, 1701. See C. Robbins, History of the Second Church, p. 250, and Boston Records, ix. 243. In id., xxiv. 7, the date of Green’s birth is given as June 22, 1701, but it seems probable that June 21 is correct.
838 He was the son of the Rev. John Williams of Deerfield, and was born in 1693. He married Abigail Davenport of Stamford, Connecticut, in 1718. He died in 1782. See S. W. Williams, Genealogy and History of the Family of Williams, pp. 71–84, and, especially, Proceedings at the Centennial Celebration of the Town of Longmeadow (1884), pp. 319–320.
839 The item in the Courant reads, “We hear the Reverend Dr. Cotton Mather has been desir’d to take the Charge of the College at Newhaven, in the room of the Reverend Mr. Timothy Cutler who has resign’d that Place.”
840 The name Mirrick or Merrick was common in Springfield and its vicinity at this time. See M. A. Green, Springfield, 1636–1886, History of Town and City, passim. Thomas Merrick of Springfield was the son-in-law of the Rev. Daniel Brewer, referred to later in the letter. See W. C. Fowler, Memorials of the Chaunceys, p. 197.
841 Samuel Sewall also describes this fast in his Diary for September 25, 1722. On the observance of similar days of fasting in the other Boston churches at this time, see H. A. Hill, History of the Old South Church, i. 409–410.
842 The ministers here referred to are Benjamin Wadsworth (1693–1737), at this time Teacher of the First Church; Nehemiah Walter (1688–1750), brother-in-law of Cotton Mather, and minister of the church at Roxbury; and Benjamin Colman (1673–1747), minister of the Brattle Street Church.
843 “Ye old Dr” is Increase Mather, Teacher of the Second Church. The reference to him is peculiarly interesting, since this occasion was his last public appearance in the pulpit. Cotton Mather says (Parentator, p. 200), “On Sept. 25. [1722] he did with an Excellent and Pathetic Prayer, in a mighty Auditory, Conclude a Day of Prayer kept by his Church, to obtain a Good Success of the Gospel, and the growth of Real and Vital PIETY, with Plentiful Effusions of the Good SPIRIT, especially upon the Rising Generation. Within Two Days after This, he fell into an Apoplectic sort of Deliquium; (very much occasion’d, as it was thought, by too extreme a concern of his Mind on some late Occurrences at New-Haven:) out of which he Recovered in a few Minutes; but it so enfeebled him, that he never went abroad any more.”
844 Cotton Mather.
845 This reference is especially interesting as showing that there was on September 27, 1722, at the New Brick Church, a service at which music was a special feature, with singing by what must have been virtually a choir of more or less trained voices. G. Hood, History of Music in New England, pp. 179 ff., discusses the origin of choirs in New England, and concludes that, after 1720, when singing schools were beginning to be known, it came gradually to be the custom for the most expert singers to sit and sing together at church. Hood, however, mentions no record of anything as “advanced” as the 1722 service at the New Brick Church, except in connection with the later period, and cites an instance which occurred in 1762, when the church at Rowley voted to permit the best singers to sit together in the front of the gallery. They did not avail themselves of this permission. L. C. Elson, History of American Music (1925), pp. 10, 11, says “choir-singing began to take the place of the crude congregational psalm-singing as early as the middle of the eighteenth century.” See also F. L. Ritter, Music in America, pp. 39, 48, who cites the episode at Rowley, referred to by Hood, but dates it 1752, and quotes an account of how in Worcester opposition to the singers’ sitting in special seats persisted as late as 1779.
The New England Courant for March 5, 1722, has the following item: “On Thursday last in the Afternoon, a Lecture was held at the New Brick Church, by the Society for promoting Regular Singing in the Worship of God. The Reverend Mr. Thomas Walter of Roxbury preach’d an excellent Sermon on that Occasion, from 2 Sam. 23. 1. — The Sweet Psalmist of Israel, —The Singing was perform’d in Three Parts (according to Rule) by about Ninety Persons skill’d in that Science, to the great Satisfaction of a numerous Assembly there present.” The Courant for March 19, 1722, refers to a similar “Singing Lecture” at Reading. On May 14 there is an item about a similar meeting at Dorchester, and on June 4 there is a reference to such a “Lecture” at the New Brick Church on “Thursday last.”
That the service in Boston on September 27 was another of these “singing-lectures” is clear from the entry in Jeremiah Bumstead’s Diary (New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xv. 196): “A sing lecture att ye North Brick. Mr. Coleman preached from those words — They sung a new song. Revelations. 5 & 9. Sung Tate & Brady 4 psalms, namely, 108. first, 147. next, 89 next, 98 last, noted by titles in that psalm book.”
This evidence together with that contained in the Courant, makes it clear that as early as 1722 certain New England churches opened their doors for special services, under the auspices of those interested in “Regular Singing,” and that the singing at these services was performed by those best trained in the art. Also, it shows that Tate and Brady’s “new version” of the Psalms — probably the Boston edition of 1720 — was in use as early as 1722 in at least one Boston church. The Green letter, with its specific reference to the singers’ occupying special seats together, adds a significant detail, showing by what means and how early a long step was taken toward the establishment of formal choirs in Congregational churches in New England.
Apparently the New Brick Church at this time was especially identified with musical progress. I find no record in the Courant for 1722 of any other Boston church which was hospitable to similar musical exercises. It seems, however, that choir singing was not yet in vogue at the regular services at the New Brick. See C. Robbins, History, p. 180.
846 A Thomas More or Moore, known as “The Pilgrim Botanist,” came to New England in 1722. Extracts from the Literary and Scientific Correspondence of Richard Richardson (ed. Dawson Turner), refers to him several times. On pp. 181, 182, there appears a letter from Dr. W. Sherard to Dr. Richard Richardson, May 12, 1722. This says, “I have advanc’d money to send Pilgrim Moore to New England, and all is ready: … he is to go after to New York, New Jersey, and Pennsilvania.” The editor of the Richardson correspondence says (p. 181 note) that Sherard and Richardson had known Moore in Wales, in 1718. Earlier in 1722, Sherard wrote Richardson saying, “the Pilgrim Botanist, Mr. Moore, is desirous of going to New England and the rest of our colonies in North America. He is an excellent collector of all parts of Natural History, and desires no more than a poor subsistence; a mere philosopher, who designs printing tables of all parts of Natural History: he is now busy in copying them out on parchment; his paper scheme being worn out and torn. They look like so many tailor’s measures, joined at top and rolled up. It is pity he is not younger; and I am sorry I did not know him sooner: he would have done more service than all that have been sent abroad.” (Id., p. 181 note.)
More’s expenses in America were paid by Dr. Richard Richardson, Dr. William Sherard, Sir Hans Sloane, Charles Dubois, John Bellers, R. Mead, and Herman Boerhaave. (Id., p. xv.) Of these all except Boerhaave were members of the Royal Society in 1722, so that Green’s statement that More was “sent over” by the Royal Society, is justified, perhaps. What the King’s part in sending More may have been does not appear, except for what Green says in this letter. More himself was not a member of the Royal Society.
Apparently More did not meet Sherard’s expectations in regard to trustworthiness or success. On August 13, 1723, Sherard wrote, “Mr. Moore, from New England, writes he’ll send specimens and seeds, which I expect in two months.” (Id., p. 201.) On June 30, 1724, he tells Richardson that “Mr. Moore is now in England, but returns speedily, and promises to follow my instructions for the future, better than he has hither to.” (Id., p. 207.) A clue as to the reasons for Sherard’s dissatisfaction appears in his words, “I have heard nothing yet from the Pilgrim Botanist, which I admire at. Colonel Dudley wrote word he was gone up into the country, to visit his old acquaintances the Indian Kings, that were in England. I had rather he would first send what grows near Boston; but they have all a notion that, the further they go, the more rare things they find.” (Id., p. 206 note.)
In the Philosophical Transactions, xxxi. 147, there is a communication by Sherard on the “Poyson Wood Tree” in New England. This begins, “The Account I had of the Poyson-Tree from Mr. More (which probably he had from Mr. Dudley) is as follows.” Then comes More’s description, ending with “I have sent you all the seeds of it, I can get.” This is printed in Number 367 of the Philosophical Transactions, which is “For the Months of January, February, March, and April, 1721.” If the number was issued promptly, More must have been in New England as early as April, 1721, but according to Sherard’s letter quoted above, he was in England on May 12, 1722. Either he made two trips, or, as seems more probable, Number 367 of the Philosophical Transactions did not actually appear until some time in 1722, after More had had a chance to write from New England, and Sherard then contributed to it his communication on the “Poyson-Wood” tree as a sort of appendix to Paul Dudley’s paper on the same subject which immediately precedes it in the volume as printed. Volume xxxi, which contains Number 367, is dated 1723. Number 367 bears no separate date.
More’s “old acquaintance, the Indian Kings, that were in England,” referred to by Sherard, were, of course, the five Iroquois chiefs who visited the court of Queen Anne in 1710. They are referred to in both the Tatler and the Spectator. See S. G. Drake, the Aboriginal Races of North America (Philadelphia, 1859), pp. 509–512; Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies,1710–11, Nos. 103, 194, 310; and William T. Morgan’s “The Five Nations and Queen Anne” in the Mississippi Valley Historical Review, vol. xiii, no. 2, p. 169, which refers to the entertainment of some North American Indians by Queen Anne at her court, “when for the first time the problems of imperial defense and Indian politics assumed a place of real consequence in British policy.” More, apparently, met these chiefs in London in 1710.
847 I have found no record of the exact date when Dr. Zabdiel Boylston (1680–1766) left Boston on a trip which carried him to England, where he was in 1723. See our Publications, xiv. 114; H. A. Kelly and W. L. Burrage, American Medical Biographies, p. 134, and J. Thacher, American Medical Biography, i. 185–192.
848 Hugh Hall married Elizabeth Pitts, October 31, 1722. (Records of the Church in Brattle Square, Boston, p. 239.) She was the daughter of John and Elizabeth (Lindall) Pitts. Hugh Hall (1673–1773) graduated from Harvard in 1713. From 1716 to 1720 he lived in Barbadoes and in London. After 1720 he settled in Boston, where he became a successful merchant. See New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xlii. 305. The Reverend Joshua Gee, who became minister of the Second Church in Boston in 1723, married Sarah Rogers, daughter of Nathaniel Rogers, on December 13, 1722. See id., xiv. 107 note; xxiv. 16.
849 Thomas Fish was born in Duxbury on May 22, 1700. He graduated from Harvard in 1719, being a classmate of Warham Williams, Stephen William’s brother. According to Sibley’s Ms. Memoranda at the Massachusetts Historical Society, he was a passenger from Duxbury to Boston in a coaster which was upset off Nantasket “not far from the lighthouse,” September 22, 1722, and was drowned. The Courant, September 24–October 1,1722, says, “On Saturday the 22d Instant, a Wood Sloop was forc’d ashore in a Gust of Wind, and stove to Pieces near Nantasket, and three of the Passengers, viz. the Wife and Daughter of the Rev. Mr. Robison of Duxbury, and a young Schollar were drown’d.”
Sibley says that Fish was published to Ann Turner of Scituate, “who afterwards married Deacon Joseph Stockbridge of Pembroke.” This is not correct, however, as Ann Turner of Scituate married Joseph Stockbridge in 1716. (Scituate Vital Records, ii. 300.) Instead, one may accept Green’s statement that Fish’s fiancée was drowned with him. She was Mary, the daughter of the Rev. John Robinson of Duxbury, aged 16 in 1722. See J. Winsor, History of Duxbury, p. 185; Duxbury Vital Records, p. 407.
850 In 1722 several Puritan ministers went over to the Anglican church, to the consternation of some of their brethren. For this sufficiently celebrated chapter in New England history, see, for example, W. S. Perry, History of the American Episcopal Church, i. 247–256.
851 What Mr. Chauncey is referred to I do not know. No one of the Chaunceys who are known to have been ministers at this time seems to have been “converted,” though possibly some one of them professed an inclination toward Anglicanism and later recanted. For the possibility of this, see Perry, i. 250, note 1. If the Chauncey referred to was not a minister, it is even more difficult to tell of whom Green speaks.
852 Compare here “Checkley and his party had no more earnest opponent than the Rev. Henry Harris [minister at King’s Chapel], who, though a loyal member of his church, had no sympathy with their extreme opinions or their extravagant methods. The line of division was as sharp between the two parties in the King’s Chapel as it was between either of them and the churches around them. Unfortunately in Mr. Harris’s mind his catholic convictions were mingled with an alloy of feeling against Dr. Cutler.” (H. W. Foote, Annals of King’s Chapel, i. 286.) In June, 1724, Harris wrote to Bishop Gibson in England, calling Cutler an erstwhile “Dissenting Minister” and saying of him “I had a great deal of reason to believe that the chief motive of this person’s conversion was the prospect of a new Church in this Town.” Id., i. 287. See also id., i. 311–321.
853 See Cotton Mather, Diary, ii. 634, and passim.
854 This refers to the founding of Christ Church, for which see Perry, i. 582–583; Foote, i. 315–316, and H. Burroughs, Historical Account of Christ Church, Boston, p. 4.
855 On the day after Green wrote this, October 2, Timothy Cutler was virtually promised Christ Church. See Foote, i. 316–317.
856 John Usher (H. C. 1719), later Anglican clergyman at Bristol, Rhode Island. See C. R. Batchelder, History of the Eastern Diocese, ii. 334, 335.
857 Rev. Daniel Brewer (H. C. 1687), minister of the first parish in Springfield. His son, Daniel, referred to a few words later in the text, was sixteen years old in 1722. He graduated from Harvard in 1727. See Sibley, Harvard Graduates, iii. 383–385.
858 The Rev. Samuel Hopkins, a graduate of Yale in 1718, became minister of a church in West Springfield in 1720. See W. B. Sprague, Historical Discourse at West Springfield, December 2, 1824, pp. 29, 57, 58.
859 There were many Dwights in western Massachusetts at this time, but the reference here may well be to Joseph Dwight (H. C. 1722), who after leaving college went to Springfield, where “he was engaged in trade” until 1730. See B. W. Dwight, Descendants of John Dwight, ii. 625, 626.
860 In 1723, when Green was to be ordained at Barnstable, Cotton Mather wrote to the church there, under the date of April 26, saying of Green: “We do … signify to you … not only that he has been a Brother in the Communion of the Church from which he now transfers his relation [The Second Church of Boston] but also that he has been a beauty unto it. He has been indeed known unto us from a child, having been baptized in our arms … An excellent piety has recommended him unto us, and such a good spirit, that we cannot but think that all that have a good spirit in them, will be well affected unto him … the kind usuages he shall receive among you, we shall reckon shown unto ourselves.” The original letter is in the records of the Congregational Church of the East Parish of Barnstable. I print from a copy furnished me by Mr. Francis T. Bowles.
861 See, for the chronology of the events under discussion, F. B. Dexter, Documentary History of Yale, pp. 225–231.
862 Id., p. 228.
863 Id., pp. 226–229.
864 In 2 Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, ii. 129–131.
865 Under the date of September 25, 1722, Sewall writes: “Dr. I. Mather pray’d, much bewail’d the Cōnecticut Apostacie; that Mr. Cutler and others should say there was no Minister in N. E.” Sewall, Diary, iii. 309. Cotton Mather was present, and preached.
866 Notes and Queries, cxlviii. 424. Cf. cxlix. 13, 22, 445.
867 See Robert E. Hunter’s “Shakespeare and Stratford-upon-Avon, a ‘Chronicle of the Time:’ comprising the salient facts and traditions, biographical, topographical, and historical, connected with the Poet and his Birthplace; together with a full record of the Tercentenary Celebration.… London: … 1864,” pp. 87–246. The event was also celebrated in this country.
868 The words quoted in the text are taken from the Oxford English Dictionary under “centenary.” The earliest example there given of the word in the sense of “A centennial anniversary; the celebration of the accomplishment of a centennium,” is dated 1788.
It will interest our members to learn that the late John Wilson, of The University Press, presided at a Burns celebration in Boston: see Report of the Meeting held to celebrate the Centenary of the Birthday of Robert Burns, at the Revere House, Boston, January 25, 1859 (Boston, 1859).
869 William S. Childe-Pemberton, The Earl Bishop: The Life of Frederick Hervey, Bishop of Derry, Earl of Bristol (1924), ii. 409.
870 The dedication is “To the Committee of the Society for commemorating the Glorious Revolution.”
871 The Advertisement states that the reason for celebrating November 4, instead of November 5 (on which day King William landed at Torbay), “appears to have been, to avoid confounding the commemoration of the Revolution with the anniversary of the Gunpowder plot” (p. iv). The event was widely celebrated in England in 1788.
In 1789 Richard Price published in London “A Discourse on the Love of our Country, delivered on Nov. 4, 1789, at the Meeting-House in the Old Jewry, to the Society for Commemorating the Revolution in Great Britain.” “We are met,” he said, “to thank God for that event in this country to which the name of The Revolution has been given; and which, for more than a century, it has been usual for the friends of freedom, and more especially Protestant Dissenters, under the title of the Revolution Society, to celebrate with expressions of joy and exultation” (p. 30). The Discourse was reprinted in Boston in 1790. For the Revolution Society, see “An Abstract of the History and Proceedings of the Revolution Society, in London. To which is annexed a copy of the Bill of Rights. Printed by order of the Committee. M.DCC.LXXXIX;” “The Correspondence of the Revolution Society in London, with the National Assembly, and with various societies of the Friends of Liberty in France and England.… London. mdccxcii;” and Notes and Queries, 11th Series, v. 152.
872 January 30, 1649, and May 29, 1660. I do not find either in the Gentleman’s Magazine or in the London Magazine accounts of celebrations in 1749 and 1760. In the former for May, 1766, is this item:
“Being the anniversary of the restoration of King Charles II. (now 106 years ago) the same was observed as usual. The house of peers attended divine service in Westminster Abbey; as did the house of commons at St. Margaret’s church. The lord mayor. aldermen. &c. went to St. Paul’s” (xxxvi. 246).
873 In 1696 Dawes had published in London “A Sermon Preach’d before the King at White-Hall, Novemb. 5. 1696.” The Boston libraries contain over fifty sermons preached on November 5 in the years 1634–1775, but apparently only one after 1775.
874 “The Daily Chronicle of London states,” wrote Mr. Philip Hale in the Boston Herald of January 9, 1926, “that America, ‘badly bitten by the centenary craze, is celebrating the “centennial,” as they prefer to phrase it over there, of rubber boots.…’”
875 On January 22, 1862, “An able and interesting paper was then read by Henry Clark, Esq., of Poultney, upon ‘Centennial Celebrations in Vermont — their historical importance and social advantage to Towns’ — in which Mr. Clark embodied practical suggestions in regard to the best mode of making such celebrations attractive and useful.” The exact title of the paper is “Town Centennial Celebrations; their Historic Importance and Social Advantages;” and the running headline reads “Centennial Celebrations.” “This memorandum of fixed dates,” wrote Mr. Clark, “has been enumerated … as a proper prelude to the consideration of the topic of our paper, viz: The Historical importance and Social advantages of Centennial Celebrations to the several Towns in our Commonwealth.” (Proceedings of the Vermont Historical Society, at the special meeting held in Burlington, January 22d and 23d, 1862, pp. 22, 27, 28.) Mr. Clark dealt only with town celebrations in Vermont.
876 For the title of a sermon preached by the Rev. Daniel Lewis of Pembroke “at the North-Precinct in Plymouth” (now Kingston) on November 2, 1720, and published the same year in Boston with a preface by the Rev. Ephraim Little of the First Church, Plymouth, see our Publications, vol. xxii, p. lv. This was so near the centenary of the landing that an allusion to that event might not unreasonably be expected, yet none is found either in the sermon or in the preface. Indeed, Forefathers’ Day was first celebrated at Plymouth on December 22, 1769: see our Publications, xvii. 297–300.
There is no allusion to the landing of Endecott in the Boston News Letter or in the Boston Gazette for September, 1728.
877 Curiously enough no example of the attributive use of “century” is given in the Oxford English Dictionary. As later extracts will show, such use has been common here for two centuries.
878 Quoted in Daniel A. White, New England Congregationalism in its Origin and Beauty (1861), pp. 109–110.
879 Rev. John Barnard (H. C. 1700).
880 The church records say: “upon which the 107th Psalm, the three first stanzas in it, was sung.”
881 Mr. Fisk’s sermon was never printed.
882 Rev. Benjamin Prescott (H. C. 1709) of Salem.
883 New England Weekly Journal, August 18, 1729, p. 2/2. Another account, almost but not quite identical, was printed in the Boston News Letter of August 21, 1729, p. 2. No account appeared in the Boston Gazette. The passage quoted in the text has often been reprinted, though not always either in full or accurately: see 1 Massachusetts Historical Collections, 1795, iv. 219–220; C. W. Upham, Principles of the Reformation, 1826, p. 56; C. W. Upham, Principles of Congregationalism, 1829, pp. 3–4; New England Historical and Genealogical Register, 1855, ix. 268; Essex Institute Historical Collections, 1891, xxviii. 179–180. At the last reference Dr. Samuel A. Green suggested that the passage was written by the Rev. Thomas Prince. This may have been the case, but it is to be noted that the passage is dated Salem, August 12.
There has always been some uncertainty as to exactly what occurred at Salem in 1629. The statement quoted in the text asserts that the First Church was “compleatly form’d and Organized” on August 6th, and that on the same day Francis Higginson and Samuel Skelton were ordained; and the mention in the “N.B.” of Nathaniel Morton and Edward Johnson indicates that the writer of the passage relied on those authorities. But Johnson, writing about 1651, gives no precise date, merely saying that “they Elected and Ordained one Mr. Higginson to be Teacher of the first Church of Christ, set up in those Parts,” and that they “also called to the Office of an Exhorting Elder Mr. Skelton” (Wonder-working Providence, 1654, pp. 21, 22). Morton is more specific, saying: “When the sixth of August came, it was kept as a day of Fasting and Prayer, in which after the Sermons and Prayers of the two Ministers, in the end of the day, the aforesaid Confession of Faith and Covenant being solemnly read, the forenamed persons did solemnly profess their Consent thereunto: and then proceeded to the Ordaining of Mr. Skelton Pastor, and Mr. Higginson Teacher of the Church there” (New Englands Memoriall, 1669, p. 75). William Hubbard, writing about 1680, gave “the 9th day of August” (2 Massachusetts Historical Collections, v. 117, 120) as the date of foundation, but that was obviously an error for the 6th. Two decades later, Cotton Mather stated in one place that “the Sixth Day of August” was set apart “for Fasting and Prayer, for the Settling of a Church-State among them, and for their making of a Confession of their Faith, and entering into an Holy Covenant, whereby that Church-State was formed. Mr. Higginson then became the Teacher, and Mr. Skelton the Pastor, of the Church thus constituted at Salem,” and in another place that the events occurred on “a Day in … August” (Magnolia, 1702, bk. i. ch. iv, § 6, p. 18; bk. iii. pt. ii. ch. i, § 13, p. 74).
All these accounts, which apparently were the only ones known to the people of Salem in 1729, dwell on the events of August 6, 1629, but completely ignore an event that had previously occurred on July 20. The only known contemporary account of what took place on that day is found in a letter written by Charles Gott, dated Salem, July 30, 1629. In July, 1793, was reported the receipt by the Massachusetts Historical Society of a “Fragment of a MS. Letter-book of Governor Bradford, of Plymouth, from 1624 to 1630, found in a grocer’s shop in Halifax, Nova Scotia” (1 Proceedings, i. 52). Unfortunately this fragment has, as Mr. Tuttle informs me, either disappeared or cannot now be found; but it was printed in 1794 in 1 Massachusetts Historical Collections, iii. 27–76. Gott wrote:
The 20th of July, it pleased God to move the heart of our governour [John Endecott], to set it apart for a solemn day of humiliation for the choice of a pastor and teacher; the former part of the day being spent in praise and teaching; the latter part was spent about the election, which was after this manner; the persons thought on (who had been ministers in England) were demanded concerning their callings; … so these two servants of God clearing all things by their answers (and being thus fitted) we saw no reason but that we might freely give our voices for their election after this trial: Their choice was after this manner, every fit member wrote, in a note, his name whom the Lord moved him to think was fit for a pastor, and so likewise, whom they would have for teacher; so the most voice was for Mr. Skelton to be pastor, and Mr. Higginson to be teacher; and they accepting the choice, Mr. Higginson, with three or four more of the gravest members of the church, laid their hands on Mr. Skelton, using prayers therewith. This being done, then there was imposition of hands on Mr. Higginson: Then there was proceeding in election of elders and deacons, but they were only named, and laying on of hands deferred, to see if it pleased God to send us more able men over; but since Thursday, (being, I take it, the 5th of August) is appointed for another solemn day of humiliation, for the full choice of elders and deacons and ordaining them. (1 Massachusetts Historical Collections, iii. 67–68.)
This letter, but much abbreviated, was copied by Bradford into his History of Plymouth Plantation (ed. W. C. Ford, ii. 93–96), and by Morton himself, apparently from his uncle’s manuscript History, into the Plymouth Church Records (our Publications, xxii. 66–67). It will be observed that Gott spoke of the Thursday after July 30 as “being, I take it, the 5th of August.” The disappearance of Bradford’s Letter-book makes it impossible to verify this date, but, as a matter of fact, Thursday was August 6th. Bradford, in quoting Gott, makes him say “the 6 of August,” while Morton makes him say “the 5th of August.”
Perhaps the best comment on the events of July 20 and August 6, 1629, is furnished by two footnotes in the Rev. Thomas Prince’s Chronological History of New England, published in 1736. The first, appended to July 20, reads: “This Article is no where found, but in a letter from Mr. Charles Gott, Dated, Salem, July 30. 1629, and preserved in Gov. Bradford: and it being wrote between July 20 and Aug. 6, must be an undoubted Record of past Matter of Fact on July 20” (p. 189). The second, appended to August 6, reads: “As Mr. Skelton and Higginson had been Ministers Ordained by Bishops in the Church of England; this Ordination was only to the Care of this Particular Flock, founded on their free Election. But as there seems to be a repeated Imposition of Hands; the Former on July 20, may only signify their previous Separation for their solemn Change; and this Latter of Aug. 6, their actual Investiture therein” (p. 191).
The bicentennial in 1829 was celebrated on the wrong day: see p. 420 note, below.
884 The People of New-England Put in mind of the Righteous Acts of the Lord to Them and their Fathers, and Reasoned with concerning them. A Sermon Delivered at Cambridge Before the Great and General Assembly Of the Province of the Massachusetts May 27th mdccxxx.… Boston in New-England: … 1730, pp. 21–22.
885 The Characters of the Candidates for Civil Government, especially for the Council. As it was drawn in a Sermon, Deliver’d at Boston, Before His Excellency Jonathan Belcher, Esq; … On May 26. MDCCXXXI.… Boston, N.E.… 1731, pp. 41, 49–50.
886 This is often cited as “Callender’s Century Sermon;” but I have found no copy with a half-title, and the title on p. 1 and the running headline read “An Historical Discourse, &c.”
887 The half-title reads: “Mr. Dexter’s Century Sermon, on the Publick Thanksgiving November 23. 1738.”
888 The title on p. 5 is “A Century Sermon.”
889 “THIS DAY will be celebrated by the Historical Society, in Boston, as the completion of the third century since Columbus discovered this Western World: … The twelfth inst, has been already celebrated at Newyork, Providence, &c. as the day of that great event — The difference of style occasions the observance of different days” (Salem Gazette, October 23, 1792, p. 2/2). The same paper of October 9 called attention to the fact that “Next Friday, the 12th instant, will complete the third Century since the immortal COLUMBUS discovered America,” and asserted that “THIS DAY demands of us to celebrate the exertions of an individual, who, by his success, began a revolution in the condition of human nature.… Let then every man of Science, and of Commerce, and every Marine Association, transmit with the blessings of life the history of their births; and by general joy let them write the history upon the grateful hearts of posterity” (p. 2/2–3).
890 Belknap Papers, iii. 491.
891 This word, though not in the dictionaries, I have found elsewhere, and is obviously an adjectival form of “century.”
892 “Brother John B. Johnson, agreeable to appointment, addressed the Society with an animated Eulogy on this nautical hero and astonishing adventurer, with great applause” (Columbian Centinel, October 20, 1792, p. 2/4, quoting a New York newspaper). John Barent Johnson (1768–1803) graduated from Columbia College in 1792. His address on this occasion was not printed, but in 1794 he published “An Oration on Union, Delivered in the New Dutch Church in the City of New-York, on the Twelfth of May, 1794. The Anniversary of the Tammany Society, or Columbian Order.” Cf. E. P. Kilroe, Saint Tammany and the Origin of the Society of Tammany or Columbian Order in the City of New York (1913), pp. 136–137, 184–188, 215, 216.
893 New York Magazine, October, 1792, iii. 640.
894 1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, i. 28–29, 31.
895 With regard to Old Style and New Style, two remarks are pertinent. First, as to the difference between them. The Gregorian calendar was introduced in 1582, when ten days were dropped, and the day after October 4 was reckoned as October 15. The year 1600 was a leap-year in both the Julian and the Gregorian calendars. “The difference between the old and new calendars continued to be 10 days till 1700 (the first disputed leap-year), when it became 11 days; in 1800 it became 12 days, and in 1900 13 days, from which there will be no further increase till 2100” (Oxford English Dictionary, under “style,” 27). In Old Style the year began with March 25; in New Style, with January 1. The legal change in England and the American colonies took place in September, 1752, when the day after September 2 was reckoned September 14. To convert Old Style into New Style by adding ten days to events that occurred in the years 1582–1699, and eleven days to events that occurred in the years 1700–1751, would seem not to be difficult; yet surprising and innumerable blunders have been made, in some cases by the most learned scholars. A dozen years ago I called attention to the curious history of what was perhaps the first blunder of the sort to be committed in this country — namely, the celebration of Forefathers’ Day at Plymouth on December 22, 1769, instead of the correct date, December 21. (See our Publications, xvii. 297 note 4.) A still more striking example is afforded by the celebration recorded in the text. The Independent Chronicle of October 25, 1792, began its account with these words: “Tuesday last, the 23d instant, being the 12th of the month, old style, and the day on which the third century after the discovery of America by Columbus was completed, that event was celebrated … in the following manner” (p. 2/5). Whether Belknap himself was responsible for the date I have been unable to ascertain, but certainly that date could not have been selected without his approval. In 1879 Charles Deane and Charles C. Smith declared: “The selection of the 23d of October for the day of celebration, as corresponding in new style to the 12th in old style, was an error, as only nine days were required to represent the difference, the true day falling on the 21st” (1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, i. 45 note).
Secondly, as to the exact day of a centennial celebration. Should it be held on the precise date of the event commemorated, or should that date be converted into New Style? So far as the year is concerned, obviously the date should be converted into New Style. For instance, Washington was born on February 11, 1731, as the legal date then was. It is unnecessary to point out that the centennial of his birthday was properly held in 1832. But so far as the day of the month is concerned, the case is not so clear; and, as a matter of fact, there have been and are curious discrepancies in this respect. A few illustrations may be given.
The Gunpowder Plot was detected November 5, 1605, Charles I was executed January 30, 1648–9, and Charles II was restored May 29, 1660. Those three events have usually, if not always, been celebrated on November 5, January 30, and May 29, respectively — that is, the Old Style dates have been adhered to. On the other hand, in and ever since 1769 Forefathers’ Day has been celebrated on December 21 (or sometimes, through error in calculation, on December 22) — that is, according to New Style. The history of the observance of Washington’s birthday is curious. In Boston or vicinity the day celebrated was February 11 in the years 1779–1792; February 22 in 1793; both February 11 and February 22 in 1794; and February 22 in 1796. In Philadelphia it was February 22 in 1797. In Alexandria, Virginia, it was February 12 (because the 11th fell on Sunday) in 1797, and February 11 in 1799. (See our Publications, x. 253–258, xi. 195, xii. 254, xiii. 96–99, 126, xiv. 199; Diaries of George Washington, 1925, iv. 252, 271, 298.) The day now everywhere observed is February 22 — that is, the original date has been corrected to New Style. Finally, there is Columbus Day. The original date was October 12, 1492; and, as is shown in the text, the tercentenary was held on October 12 in New York and on October 23 (by error for October 21) in Boston. There was a similar discrepancy a century later. In 1892 New York had a celebration of its own from October 8 to October 13, both included, the “anniversary proper” being held on the 12th, which was a legal holiday. But October 21 was by presidential proclamation made a national holiday and was observed throughout the country. (See the Boston Evening Transcript, October 8, 1892, p. 11/4; October 10, pp. 1/5, 6/1; October 11, pp. 1/5, 4/4; October 12, pp. 1/5, 2/4, 4/5; October 13, pp. 1/4, 6/1; October 14, pp. 5/2, 6/1; October 20, pp. 1/6, 3/1, 3/4, 4/1; October 22, pp. 3/1, 8/3.) In later years the national precedent set in 1892 was departed from, the original date was restored, and now Columbus Day is everywhere October 12. (The Massachusetts act making Columbus Day a legal holiday on October 12 was approved March 13, 1911.)
Thus there is ample precedent for either retaining the Old Style date or turning it into New Style. Obviously, however, if the original date is converted into New Style, the conversion should be correctly made.
896 1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, i. 45.
897 Notices of the celebration appeared in the Columbian Centinel of October 24 (p. 3/4) and in the Independent Chronicle of October 25 (p. 2/5). An “Ode, for the 23d of October, 1792,” but by whom written I do not know, will be found on pp. 56–58 of Belknap’s Discourse, but had previously been printed, at the request of “A Columbian,” in the Columbian Centinel of October 17 (p. 4/1).
898 Our Publications, vol. xxii, p. lvii.
899 See the writer’s paper on “A Dorchester Religious Society of Young Men” in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register for January, 1906, lx. 30–40.
900 Report, pp. 3–6.
901 Report, p. 6. A footnote reads: “It was not forgotten that this landing was effected May 13th 1607, old stile, and consequently that, to avoid an anachronism, the 24th May, new stile, should have been fixed upon: but particular and impressive considerations have decided in favor of the 13th” (p. 6). The proper date New Style was not May 24 but May 23: see p. 412 note 4, above.
902 Report, p. 42.
903 Report, pp. 45–46. “The 14th was announced as usual, by a cannon. About 11 o’clock, preparations commenced for the Interment and Funeral of one of the pilgrims, a brave and benevolent young man, who fell a victim to a too free use of Ice in Cyder, having been violently heated” (p. 44).
904 Report, pp. 46–47.
905 The Church, wrote Mr. Eaton (p. 7), was “first opened for publick worship on the 29th day of December,” 1723.
906 “There is yet among us One, who brings their revered forms before us with peculiar dignity, and is at once the representative of their age and our own. Generation after generation has passed away, and yet he survives, the model, and the monument of a century.… We have seen this centennial patriarch; and we count it among the triumphs of this day, that he yet lives, the delight of his friends, the crown of his profession, and the ornament of human nature” (pp. 13–14). No doubt the reference was to Dr. Edward Augustus Holyoke, who was born August 1, 1728, graduated at Harvard College in 1746, received the honorary degree of M.D. in 1783 (the first on whom it was bestowed), and died March 31, 1829.
907 Not to be confused with Mr. Upham’s “Principles of the Reformation. A Sermon preached November 16, 1826, at the Dedication of the House of Public Worship of the First Congregational Society in Salem. … Salem: … 1826.” A second edition, with a slightly different title-page, was published at Salem in 1827.
Curiously enough, the date of Mr. Upham’s Century Lecture in 1829 is not given in his Principles of Congregationalism, though it is to be inferred that it was August 17. This is confirmed by the Salem Gazette of August 18: “The services at the First Church yesterday afternoon, were remarkably appropriate and interesting, … The discourse, by Mr. Upham, was historical in its nature, …” (p. 3/3). A longer account appeared in the same paper of August 21 (p. 2/5).
A striking illustration of what was said in a previous note (p. 412, above) is furnished by Mr. Upham’s lecture. “As there is some misapprehension,” he says in the appendix, “and diversity of opinion respecting the right mode of conforming dates in Old Style to dates in New Style,” he devoted three pages to an elaborate discussion of the problem, reaching the conclusion: “The 17th of August, N.S. 1829, was therefore the Centennial day corresponding to the 6th of August, O.S. 1729” (pp. 63–65). Though this conclusion is of course correct, nevertheless the wrong day was selected in 1829. For Mr. Upham overlooked the fact that the event commemorated took place not in 1729 but in 1629, and that therefore the difference between Old Style and New Style was not eleven days but ten days. Hence the celebration in 1829 should have been held not on August 17 but on August 16. It is to be hoped that when the tercentenary is celebrated in 1929, the correct date will be chosen.
908 “This day completes the second century since Governor Winthrop explored the banks of the Mystic River” (p. 3). Under date of June 17, 1630, Winthrop wrote: “We went to Mattachusetts, to find out a place for our sitting down. We went up Mistick River about six miles” (Journal, 1908, i. 50).
909 “Another thus expresses himself,” wrote Mr. Frothingham, and then went on to quote from what in a footnote he called “President Oakes’s Century Sermon, 1673” (p. 14). Obviously, no “Century Sermon” could have been preached here in 1673, and the title was probably used by inadvertence for “Election Sermon,” as the words quoted (with some inaccuracy) are taken from pp. 53–54 of Urian Oakes’s “New-England Pleaded with, And pressed to consider the things which concern her Peace, at least in this her Day: … Delivered in a Sermon Preached at Boston in New-England, May. 7. 1673. being the Day of Election there.… Cambridge, … 1673.”
910 On September 7, 1630, it was “ordered, that Trimountaine shalbe called Boston” (Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 75).
The chief marshal in 1830 was William Sullivan, who enclosed the “truncheon” borne by him, together with a letter, in a parchment roll directed: “The Chief Marshall of the Centennial Celebration 17th September, 1830 to the Chief Marshall of 17th September 1930.” A few months ago this roll was found “down in the dim corners of the dusty vaults in the City Hall. No one knew it was there and apparently no one cared. It had lain there for nearly a hundred years, gathering dust and waiting for the day when it should be brought out again and shown the sunlight. Now that it has been discovered it will not be forgotten, and when the right day comes it will be brought forth once more and placed in the proper hands.” See an interesting account, with documents, in the Boston Evening Transcript of January 23, 1926 (part iii, p. 3/6).
911 See our Publications, x. 288 and note.
912 See p. 413 note.
913 The centenary of the first Masonic lodge in Boston was celebrated on April 30, 1833: see Harvey N. Shepard, History of Saint John’s Lodge of Boston (1917), pp. 91–95. For this reference I am indebted to Mr. George P. Anderson.
914 See J. Quincy, History of Harvard University (1840), i. 1–6, ii. 442, 639–708.
915 Niles’ Register, May 9, 1840, lviii. 146. For pageants in this country, see our Publications, xvii. 313–315 and notes.
916 Niles’ Register, July 11, 1840, lviii. 292.
917 It is hardly necessary to add that celebrations are frequently held on the 5th, 10th, 15th, 25th, 50th, 75th, 125th, 150th, 175th, 225th, etc., anniversaries — not to mention anniversaries in between.
918 In 1845 was published at Albany a volume filling 244 pages entitled, “The Berkshire Jubilee, celebrated at Pittsfield, Mass. August 22 and 23, 1844;” and also “A Sermon, delivered at Pittsfield, August 22, 1844, on the occasion of the Berkshire Jubilee. By Mark Hopkins, D.D.” This Berkshire Jubilee may perhaps be regarded as a forerunner of Old Home Week.
In 1850 was published at Boston “The Bi-Centennial Book of Malden. Containing the Oration and Poem delivered on the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Incorporation of the Town, May 23, 1849.” The earliest example of “bi-centennial” given in the Oxford English Dictionary is dated 1883, and of “bicentenary” 1862.
919 The title on the cover reads: “Mr. Jackson’s Historical Discourse, delivered at the Forty-Sixth Anniversary of the Oldest Missionary Society in Rhode Island, and the Two Hundredth and Fifteenth Anniversary of the First Baptist Church in America, March 5th, 1854.” On p. 2 is printed the request of the secretary of “The Female Missionary Mite Society” for the publication of the sermon. “We are convened this evening,” says Mr. Jackson, “to perform religious services in commemoration of the Forty-Sixth Anniversary of the Mite Society,’ it having been organized on Tuesday, November 11th, 1806, forty-seven years since, in November” (p. 3).
920 This is a volume of 368 pages.
“The First Colonization of New-England. An Address, delivered at the erection of a Monumental Stone … August 29th, 1862, … By John A. Poor. New-York: … 1863.” The address on pp. 5–46 and the appendix on pp. 47–98 are identical with pp. 57–98 and 353–362 of the Memorial Volume. In the same year was printed at Boston, “Colonial Schemes of Popham and Gorges. Speech of John Wingate Thornton, Esq., at the Fort Popham Celebration, August 29, 1862, under the auspices of the Maine Historical Society.”
Other celebrations were held in 1864 and 1865:
An Address on the Character of the Colony founded by George Popham, at the Mouth of the Kennebec River August 19th, [O.S.] 1607. Delivered in Bath on the Two Hundred and Fifty-Seventh Anniversary of that Event. By Hon. Edward E. Bourne, of Kennebunk. … Portland: … 1864.
Responsibilities of the Founders of Republics: An Address on the Peninsula of Sabino, On the Two-Hundred and Fifty-eighth Anniversary of the Planting of the Popham Colony, Aug. 29, 1865. By Hon. James W. Patterson.… Boston: … 1865.
921 On September 2, 1635, “The name of Wessaguscus is also changed, & hereafter to be called Waymothe” (Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 156).
922 Also printed in Essex Institute Historical Collections, xii. 1–52.
923 “Discourse delivered to the First Parish in Hingham on the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Opening of its Meeting-House for Public Worship. Sunday, January 8, 1882. By Rev. Edward Augustus Horton.… Hingham: … 1882.” “The Celebration of the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of Hingham, Massachusetts, September 15, 1885. Hingham: … 1885.” Thus in five years Hingham rejoiced in no less than three celebrations.
924 The title on the cover is not quite so tautological: “Bi-Centennial of Printing in New York.”
925 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xlii. 48–67.
926 “The Annals A Supplement to Volume CXI January, 1924.” The title on the cover reads: “Supplement to The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science Philadelphia, January, 1924.”
927 The Massachusetts Historical Society has two copies of Nelson’s Observations. One is a separate manuscript, with no indication as to its source; the other is in the Gay Transcripts, Miscellaneous, i. 99, from Stowe Mss. 163, folio 172. There are no essential differences in the two texts. The appended copy is taken from the manuscript.
928 Quoted by Parkman, Half Century of Conflict, i. 111.
929 Documentary proof that as early as 1677 Nelson was engaged in trade to the eastward is to be found in Massachusetts Archives, lxi. 159. His estate in 1687 was rated at £40. See the First Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston (1876), p. 102.
930 History of Massachusetts Bay (1765), i. 378 note.
931 Massachusetts Archives, ii. 520. A copy of this letter is appended.
932 Collection de Manuscrits contenant Lettres, Mémoires, et autres Documents Historiques relatifs à la Nouvelle-France, i. 215. In citing this work the binder’s title will henceforth be used, Documents relatifs à la Nouvelle-France.
933 A list of goods desired by St. Castin and Marson is to be found in Massachusetts Archives, lxi. 157. Weeden, in his Economic and Social History of New England (i. 263 note 6) prints part of this document.
934 Documents relatifs à la Nouvelle-France, i. 388.
935 Id., i. 199, 203; New York Colonial Documents, iv. 476.
936 Documents relatifs à la Nouvelle-France, i. 203, 207, 209, 212, 217.
937 Id., i. 227.
938 Id., i. 236, 263, 266, 268.
939 Talon’s Memoir on Acadia (1676), in Documents relatifs à la Nouvelle-France, i. 240, is a good description of the state of affairs in Acadia at this time.
940 Massachusetts Archives, ii. 514.
941 This episode is described in detail by C. W. Tuttle in his Historical Papers (1889).
942 R. N. Toppan, Edward Randolph, ii. 241, and Hutchinson Papers (Prince Society), ii. 224.
943 3 Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, vii. 334, 338; Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1677–1680, No. 1360, i.
944 Documents relatifs à la Nouvelle-France, i. 281, 283, 285; New York Colonial Documents, ix. 148, 165, 917.
945 Massachusetts Archives, ii. 518.
946 R. N. Toppan, Edward Randolph, iii. 168.
947 Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay, v. 373.
948 Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1681–1685, No. 1863, v.; Gay Transcripts, State Papers, iii. 47.
949 Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1681–1685, No. 1863, i.; Gay Transcripts, State Papers, iii. 39.
950 Records of Massachusetts Bay, v. 333 ff.; Palfrey, History of New England, iii. 350 ff.
951 R. N. Toppan, iii. 95.
952 Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1681–1685, No. 1863; Gay Transcripts, State Papers, iii. 43.
953 This early episode in the relations of New England and the French is narrated at length by S. Roy Weaver in the Journal of Political Economy, xix. 411–415.
954 Documents relatifs à la Nouvelle-France, i. 304, 329, 332; Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1681–1685, Nos. 1863, 1985; id., 1685–1688, No. 545.
955 This is printed from Massachusetts Archives, ii. 520.
956 Josceline Bagot, George Canning and his Friends (1909), ii. 5. There is much on Washington social life of the times in this book, and in Stanley Lane-Poole’s Life of Stratford Canning (1888), vol. i.
957 Public Record Office, F. O. 5. 120, November 10, 1817.
958 Memoirs of J. Q. Adams, iv. 338.
959 Vaughan’s Viaticum of 1826 is printed in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, lix. 377–414.
960 The previous tenant of this house (now number 2017 I Street, N. W., home of the Arts Club of Washington) was Luis de Onis, minister of Spain. During Madison’s administrations it was occupied by James Monroe. After Onis’s departure in 1819 the house was taken by Bagot, and served as British Legation from 1819 to 1833, when Vaughan moved to the Decatur house on the northwest corner of Lafayette square. Information furnished by Dr. J. Franklin Jameson, and booklet of the Arts Club of Washington, 1923–24.
961 Harrison Gray Otis was much impressed by a ball and supper that he attended at the British legation in 1818. S. E. Morison, Life of H. G. Otis, ii. 212–13.
962 Sir Charles Vaughan did induce the Captain of the Phaeton frigate, in which he sailed for America, to put in at Madeira, where according to his journal of the voyage, “having laid in 2 pipes of Madeira wine & a small cask of Malmsey & the wind being fair on June 30th Thursday, we reimbarked.” The wine cost him £106, and he gave $180 in tips on leaving the Phaeton.
963 Stanley Lane-Poole, Stratford Canning, i, 296–322.