A Lady’s View of the Boston Massacre Trials

Today is International Women’s Day, and I’m still exploring the Boston Massacre. So this posting is about how that event looked through women’s eyes.

As Katie Turner Getty wrote this weekend at Emerging Revolutionary War, only three women were invited to testify in court about what they saw on King Street on 5 March 1770. And only two of those women’s testimonies were recorded in detail.

Jane Crothers, soon to become Jane Whitehouse, was on the street near the soldiers; she testified at the trial of Capt. Thomas Preston. Elizabeth Avery was upstairs in the Customs office, looking down on the crowd. With Avery was Ann Green, who corroborated her account during the trial of Customs officers—including Ann’s brother—for supposedly shooting down at the crowd from that same room.

Boston’s report on the confrontation, A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre, quoted many other women about how they interacted with soldiers in their houses. But it appears few had come out to King Street to help fight the fire or watch the confrontation between locals and soldiers, as many men did.

That reflects how eighteenth-century society saw women as outside the public political sphere, or at least that part of the political sphere that involved the use of force.

Nevertheless, the culture recognized that women were interested in political events. The February 1771 issue of a new British periodical called The Lady’s Magazine; Or, Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex included this report:

AMERICAN NEWS.

Boston, New England, Dec. 10. At the Superior Court of Judicature, now holding at Boston, came on the trial of eight soldiers belonging to the 29th regiment, who stood indicted for the murder of the several persons on the 5th of March last, by firing their guns in King-street. The examination of witnesses took up five days; the Counsel for the Crown and the Counsel for the prisoners held about two days: On Wednesday the honourable Court summed up the case, when the jury brought in their verdict, two of the soldiers guilty of manslaughter, the other six not guilty. The two former were recommitted to gaol, imd the six were discharged.

The two soldiers convicted as above, have since been branded in the hand in open Court, and discharged.

Boston, Dec. 17. At the Superior Court held in this town last Wednesday, came on the trial of Edward Manwaring, Esq; an Officer of the Customs, Mr. John Munro, Notary Public, Hammond Green and Thomas Greenwood, who had been charged with firing guns out of the Custom-House on the 5th of March, and indicted by the Grand-Jury for the murder of those persons that were killed at that time, and for which Manwaring, &c. were imprisoned. After a few hours trial, they were acquitted.

That was the same text that appeared in many other British newspapers and magazines of the same month because printers thought that news would interest all their readers.

Watchman Langford “in King-street that evening the 5th March”

Yesterday we saw rookie town watchman Edward G. Langford dealing with the influx of British soldiers—and, more troublesome, British army officers—into Boston in 1768.

On 5 Mar 1770, Langford saw the conflict between the local population and the army come to a head in front of the Customs house on King Street, a short walk from the watch-house that was the base for his nightly patrols.

Langford was called to testify at the trials of Capt. Thomas Preston and the enlisted men. Here’s the record of his testimony from the latter trial, as taken down by John Hodgson:

Q. Was you in King-street that evening the 5th March?

A. Yes. The bells began to ring, and the people cryed fire: I run with the rest, and went into King-street; I asked where the fire was; I was told there was no fire, but that the soldiers at [James] Murray’s barracks had got out, and had been fighting with the inhabitants, but that they had drove them back again. I went to the barracks, and found the affair was over there.

I came back, and just as I got to the Town pump, I saw twenty or five and twenty boys going into King-street. I went into King-street myself, and saw several boys and young men about the Sentry box at the Custom-house. I asked them what was the matter. They said the Sentry [Pvt. Hugh White] had knocked down a boy [Edward Garrick]. They crowded in over the gutter; I told them to let the Sentry alone. He went up the steps of the Custom-house, and knocked at the door, but could not get in. I told him not to be afraid, they were only boys, and would not hurt him. . . . The boys were swearing and speaking bad words, but they threw nothing.

Q. Were they pressing on him?

A. They were as far as the gutter, and he went up the steps and called out, but what he said I do not remember.

Q. Did he call loud?

A. Yes, pretty loud.

Q. To whom did he call?

A. I do not know; when he went up the steps he levelled his piece with his bayonet fixed. As I was talking with the Sentry, and telling him not to be afraid, the soldiers came down, and when they came, I drew back from the Sentry towards Royal-exchange lane, and there I stood. I did not see them load, but somebody said, are you loaded; and Samuel Gray…came and struck me on the shoulder, and said, Langford, what’s here to pay.

Q. What said you to Gray then?

A. I said I did not know what was to pay, but I believed something would come of it by and bye. He made no reply. Immediately a gun went off. I was within reach of their guns and bayonets; one of them thrust at me with his bayonet, and run it through my jacket and great coat.

Q. Where was you then?

A. Within three or four feet of the gutter, on the outside. . . .

Q. How many people were there before the soldiers at that time?

A. About forty or fifty, but there were numbers in the lane.

Q. Were they nigh the soldiers?

A. They were not in the inside of the gutter.

Q. Had any of the inhabitants sticks or clubs?

A. I do not know. I had one myself, because I was going to the watch, for I belong to the watch.

Q. How many soldiers were there?

A. I did not count the number of them, about seven or eight I think.

Q. Who was it fired the first gun?

A. I do not know.

Q. Where about did he stand that fired?

A. He stood on my right, as I stood facing them: I stood about half way betwixt the box and Royal-exchange lane. I looked this man (pointing to [Pvt. Mathew] Killroy) in the face, and bid him not fire; but he immediately fired, and Samuel Gray fell at my feet. Killroy thrust his bayonet immediately through my coat and jacket; I ran towards the watch-house, and stood there.

Q. Where did Killroy stand?

A. He stood on the right of the party.

Q. Was he the right hand man?

A. I cannot tell: I believe there were two or three on his right, but I do not know. . . .

Q. Did you see any thing hit the soldiers?

A. No, I saw nothing thrown. I heard the rattling of their guns, and took it to be one gun against another. This rattling was at the time Killroy fired, and at my right, I had a fair view of them; I saw nobody strike a blow nor offer a blow.

Q. Have you any doubt in your own mind, that it was that gun of Killroy’s that killed Gray?

A. No manner of doubt; it must have been it, for there was no other gun discharged at that time.

Q. Did you know the Indian that was killed?

A. No.

Q. Did you see any body press on the soldiers with a large cord wood stick?

A. No.

Q. After Gray fell, did he (Killroy) thrust at him with his bayonet?

A. No, it was at me he pushed.

Q. Did Gray say any thing to Killroy, or Killroy to him?

A. No, not to my knowledge, and I stood close by him.

Q. Did you perceive Killroy take aim at Gray?

A. I did not: he was as liable to kill me as him.

Langford’s testimony was important in positively identifying Pvt. Mathew Kilroy as the soldier who had fatally shot ropemaker Samuel Gray. Kilroy was one of the only two defendants convicted of manslaughter and branded as a felon.

Edward G. Langford remained on the town watch payroll until November 1772. The last record I found of him showed that he died on 26 Mar 1777, aged thirty-eight. He was buried out of Trinity Church. Five years later a Mary Langford, perhaps his widow or his sister, was licensed to retail alcohol to support herself.

“Returning to our Watch House meeting with three Officers”

As I described yesterday, in the summer of 1768 Edward G. Langford started to work under Benjamin Burdick, constable of the Town House Watch.

As town employees, their assignment was to patrol the streets of central Boston at night. They called out the time and “All’s well” if all was indeed well, and raised the alarm if there were fires or other problems.

Neither Burdick nor Langford had roots in the town’s old Puritan establishment. Burdick was a Presbyterian, Langford an Anglican. Burdick was a barber by trade; I don’t know Langford’s profession, but he didn’t own much property or engage in trade. They were working-class men, doing a important but undesirable job when most of their neighbors were asleep.

And that job got harder in October 1768 when the first of four British army regiments arrived in town, sent to tamp down riots against the Customs department. For the watchmen, the problem wasn’t the soldiers—it was their officers.

In my paper about Boston’s pre-Revolutionary town watch published in the Dublin Seminar volume on Life on the Streets and Commons, I quoted a complaint that Burdick, Langford, and another watchman named John McFarland filed on 14 Nov 1768. They said two “Officers with their Swords under their Arms” had yelled at them for doing their jobs, threatened them with a “drubbing” from the soldiers, and said “they had Orders from his Majesty, and they were above the Selectmen.” (The whole complaint appears here.)

It turns out that wasn’t the first time Burdick and Langford had clashed with army officers. I recently found this deposition published in the Magazine of History in 1910:

Boston, November ye 5, 1768.

At two o’clock in the Morning Benjamin Burdick Constable of the Watch & Edward Langford a proper Watch Man being upon our rounds returning to our Watch House meeting with three Officers as we gave the Time of Night they gave the Time of Night in answer to us with a great noise in the streets and we hailed them & they came up to us & call’d us damd Scoundrels & swore by God they would put the Constable in Irons

then we retired to our Watch House

Then he went to the Guard gave the command not to suffer the Watch to hail any Body in the street

we told them our orders were to hail every Body that walked the streets & we should obey Our Order

then they replied God damne you you scoundrels I will pull you out of the House & put you in Irons & all the answer I gave them was as thus. Gentlemen I am sorry to see you behave in such a Manner in the Street & they still kept cursing and daming of us & we never receiv’d so much abuse in our lives.

Justice of the peace John Ruddock, who would have his own physical run-ins with the army, collected this testimony on 10 November, and both Burdick and Langford signed it. (I broke up the one big paragraph to make it slightly easier to follow, but I couldn’t do anything about the shifts between first person singular and first person plural.)

In those encounters the watchmen thought they, as “proper” employees of the town, had authority to hail all pedestrians at night. Army officers thought they, as officers and as gentlemen, shouldn’t have to answer to working-class civilians. Likewise, at checkpoints, army sentries were under orders to halt people and vehicles; Bostonians, especially those of higher social rank and Whig consciousness, resented having to answer to a standing army.

Those conflicts flared into violence many times during the regiments’ first months in Boston. On 18 Jan 1769, “several officers of the army” even attacked the watch-house on King Street, where Burdick and Langford worked. The violence became less frequent for most of 1769 but came roaring back at the end of that year and in early 1770.

Thus, when Langford and later Burdick arrived on King Street on 5 Mar 1770, they weren’t surprised to see a fight between locals and soldiers. They had been in the middle of that conflict for months.

TOMORROW: What Langford witnessed.

Edward G. Langford, Town Watchman

One of the Bostonians caught up in the Boston Massacre was Edward Langford, who identified himself during the subsequent trials as a member of the town watch. What background brought him to patrolling Boston at night?

Notes taken at the trials identify that man as “Edd. Gambleton Langford” (Robert Treat Paine), “Edward Gambett Langford” (John Adams), and “Edward G. Langford” (shorthand transcriber John Hodgson). Later church records state that Edward Langford died on 26 Mar 1777, aged thirty-eight—meaning he was born in 1738 or 1739.

All that appears to connect the watchman with Thomas and Judith Langford, shown in the records of King’s Chapel (shown here) as having two sons baptized there: Edward Mortimore Langford on 24 Dec 1737 and John Gamberto [sic] Langford in 1740. Perhaps the first Edward died young and the parents gave the future watchman the same first name, plus a middle name he’d share with his brother. (The family was unusual for the time for using middle names at all.) Thomas and Judith Langford also appear to have also had sons Nicholas, born in 1724, and Arthur, and perhaps a daughter named Mary around 1725.

Judith Langford died before Edward turned nine, and on 14 Aug 1746 Thomas Langford married Mary Beatel. They had more children, most of whom died young:

• Frances born in 1747.
• Sarah born and died in 1749.
• Nicholas born in 1750, baptized privately (often a hint of poor health), and died in 1751.
• A second Sarah born in 1752.
• A second Nicholas, born and died in 1754.

In 1757, close to his twentieth birthday, Edward Langford served as sponsor for the baptism of a baby named Ann Stone in King’s Chapel. That shows he continued to have ties to the Church of England. However, on 9 June 1761 the Rev. Samuel Checkley, Congregational minister of the New South Meetinghouse, married Edward Langford and Mary Gyles, several months after they first announced their intention to marry.

Edward and Mary Langford, along with a senior Mary Langford, sponsored the baptism of Arthur and Elizabeth Langford’s daughter Judith at King’s Chapel in 1765. (That’s why I suspect the senior Mary, Arthur, and Edward were all siblings, children of the late Judith Langford.) I haven’t found records of Edward and Mary having children of their own.

Nor have I found records indicating what profession Langford took up in the late 1750s and early 1760s. He appears to have been too poor to show up in real estate and town government records, too rich to be on the poor rolls. But on 27 June 1768, Boston selectmen’s records say:

Mr. [Benjamin] Burdick the Constable of the Watch presented Edward Langford as a suitable Person for a Watchman in the room of John Hyman who has left the Watch, and he was approved of by the Selectmen accordingly

Langford was thus hired to help Burdick patrol the middle part of the town at night, watching for fires or disturbances and calling out the time.

Three months later, British troop ships arrived in Boston harbor, bringing the first of four regiments of soldiers to patrol the town.

TOMORROW: So how did that go?

When I Paint My Massacre

This week the history painter Don Troiani unveiled his depiction of the Boston Massacre. Troiani is known for his careful research, which includes collecting period artifacts and clothing. He was also assisted by some of the New England reenactors who depict this event outside the Old State House museum [in years when it’s not going to be 10°F].

Note the soldiers’ headgear. Cpl. William Wemys (in the dark surtout or overcoat at the left) and Pvt. Hugh White (next to him) were from the 29th Regiment’s regular infantry companies while the other men were from the grenadier company. Often they’ve all been lumped together as grenadiers.

In recent years researchers have speculated, based on the Henry Pelham engraving and on British army paperwork, that the grenadiers of the 29th wore cocked hats like regular infantrymen since their distinctive tall caps didn’t arrive before they sailed for Boston. However, new research suggests the grenadiers of the 29th did receive their caps in time, so Troiani depicted those men wearing period caps.

Troiani also made an artistic choice to depict the scene from behind the soldiers, putting the viewer literally on their side of the confrontation. We don’t see the men and boys—some aggressive, some not—being shot off the side of the canvas.

The press release announcing this painting seems to lean even further to the side of the soldiers. It says of Pvt. White, “Having witnessed Edward Garrick verbally assault Lieutenant – Captain [sic] John Goldfinch, he reprimanded the youth with a strike to his head with his firelock.” Thus, Garrick’s rude words become an “assault” while White’s actual violence is a “reprimand.”

The same paragraph goes on to quote John Adams’s description of the crowd that gathered in response to the violence: a “motley rabble of saucy boys, negroes and molattoes, Irish teagues and outlandish jack tarrs.” But it doesn’t cite Adams by name or note that he was speaking as the soldiers’ defense attorney—i.e., that description was one side of a courtroom argument. What, we might ask, would this same event look like from the other side?

Troiani usually makes his paintings available as prints through W. Britain, and I assume this one will appear there soon. Meanwhile, the research behind this painting will also be on display tonight at this year’s reenactment. [ADDENDUM: Alas, canceled because of the frigid forecast.]

Thomas on Louisa Catherine Adams in Quincy, 8 March

I’m breaking into the wall-to-wall Boston Massacre coverage for an extra posting about an event coming up in Quincy.

On Wednesday, 8 March, the Adams National Historical Park will host Louisa Thomas, author of Louisa: The Extraordinary Life of Mrs. Adams, the first full biography of Louisa Catherine Adams, the sixth U.S. First Lady.

The event description:

Born in London to an American father and a British mother on the eve of the Revolutionary War, Louisa Catherine Johnson was raised in circumstances very different from the New England upbringing of the future president. She was taught to consider herself an American and, more important, to marry one. John Quincy’s life had been dedicated to public service from the earliest age. They had a tempestuous courting yet fell in love despite their differences.

No longer residing in gilded England, she was on the road–a diplomat’s wife on a diplomat’s small stipend. Louisa and John Quincy lived in Prussia where they were viewed suspiciously as upstart rebels and in Tsarist Russia where Louisa was favored at the royal court by Alexander I. They experienced the height of the Napoleonic Wars, and Louisa famously traveled with her young son from wintry Russia to France, encountering hostile troops on the voyage. This lifestyle of traveling back and forth from America and country to country was difficult to bear; she suffered miscarriages, the death of her infant daughter, separation from her two eldest sons, and many illnesses.

Later, when permanently back in the United States, she began to form her own public persona by paying close attention to politics and the actions of former first ladies while keeping in mind John Quincy’s presidential aspirations. She supported his crusade and focused her own efforts on what she called “my campaigne”–hosting parties to promote her husband’s popularity. His presidency was a trying time for them yet it strengthened their already deeply close marriage, which would last half a century.

In her unpublished diaries and memoirs, Louisa writes not only the details of her days but also of, more significantly, her rich inner life, her thoughts and feelings, and her thirst for knowledge. Throughout her life Louisa often felt isolated. This was deepened by her views on gender equality, which were formed early and ripened over time. “I cannot believe that there is any inferiority in the sexes, as far as mind and intellect are concerned,” she wrote.

This program will start at 12:00 noon at the park visitor center, and a book signing will follow. Validated parking is available in the garage at Presidents Place Galleria on Hancock Street. The program itself is free and open to the public.

Pvt. Joseph Whitehouse’s Story about Capt. Goldfinch

Yesterday I described how Jane Crothers, an eyewitness to the Boston Massacre, married Pvt. Joseph Whitehouse of the 14th Regiment later in March 1770.

Whitehouse also went to Christ Church (Old North) that month for the baptism of a child of another 14th Regiment soldier, George Simpson, on 14 March. Christ Church was one of Boston’s three Anglican churches, preferred by the soldiers from Britain and Ireland.

By the end of that month, the 14th Regiment had moved to Castle Island in Boston harbor, thus no longer inside the town of Boston and in daily contact with its civilians. They were still there in August, and Pvt. Whitehouse was one of the soldiers who lined up to give testimony to justice of the peace James Murray (shown here) about how badly the locals had treated them.

On 25 August, Whitehouse stated:

That about the latter end of February 1769, he was assaulted in the Streets of Boston by a mob of the townsmen, throwing pieces of Ice and snow-balls at him, calling him Scoundrel, Lobster, bloody back’d dog and much more abusive language, to all which he made no reply.

And further deposeth, that on the 5th. March last in the Evening as he was going to the barracks, he saw a number of the inhabitants striking Capt. Goldfinch who was lying on the ground, his sword taken away, and his face very much bruised, on his attempting to assist him, the mob immediately fell on him, and beat him in such a manner, that it was with much difficulty he reached the barracks.

Capt.-Lt. John Goldfinch of the 14th also played a major role in the events that led up to the Massacre. According to George R. T. Hewes, an apprentice at John Piemont’s shop dressed the officer’s hair in December, and the barber promised that apprentice that he could have the payment for that job. But then Goldfinch didn’t pay immediately, nor, it seems, as soon as the bill came due in three months.

So as Capt. Goldfinch passed by the Customs house on King Street on the evening of 5 March, apprentice Edward Garrick heckled him about the bill. He “owed my fellow Prentice,” Edward called. In fact, by that evening Goldfinch had paid the bill—so recently he still had the receipt in his pocket. But he disdained haggling on the street with an apprentice, leaving Pvt. Hugh White to put an end to the topic by clonking Edward on the head.

Goldfinch was one of the many people who testified about what happened that night. He gave a deposition for A Fair Account of the Late Unhappy Disturbance at Boston, published in London. He testified at the soldiers’ trial. He had every reason to describe the Boston crowd as violent.

Yet Goldfinch never described being personally assaulted, knocked to the ground, “his face very much bruised.” He never described his sword being taken away. Instead, his story was about finding a brawl going on outside the barracks rented from Justice Murray, reestablishing order there, and then hearing the shots from King Street.

Was Pvt. Whitehouse mistaken about which British officer he saw “lying on the ground” and tried to help? That seems unlikely. And if that were so, we would expect to see Goldfinch or another officer complain about that assault on a colleague. The whole point of the Fair Account pamphlet and the depositions collected at Castle William was to paint the townspeople as violent. But there’s no complaint about such an incident on 5 March.

I suspect Pvt. Whitehouse correctly suspected what his superiors wanted to hear about the locals, and knew that Goldfinch was somehow involved in the King Street incident. So he came up with this story of the captain under attack. Whitehouse’s tale is one reason I’m as skeptical about the soldiers’ depositions as I am about the Bostonians’ testimony to their own friendly magistrates.

COMING UP: Don Hagist traces Pvt. Whitehouse’s military career.

Jane Crothers, Witness to a Massacre

In early 1770, Jane Crothers lived near the head of Royal Exchange Lane, thus near the Boston Customs House. On the night of 5 March she heard noise outside. She went out to ask the army sentry guarding that building, Pvt. Hugh White, what was the matter.

White said he didn’t know—not mentioning that earlier in the evening he’d clubbed a teen-aged barber’s apprentice, Edward Garrick, on the head.

Then Crothers saw people coming from the direction of the Town House (now the Old State House). She heard them say, “There’s the Centinel, the bloody back Rascall, let’s go kill him!” Those people had been riled up by Garrick and his friends, hoping for justice.

Crothers would later testify in court about what happened next. There are two sets of notes about what she said, mostly in agreement. An anonymous notetaker recorded:

They kept gathering throwing Snow balls, Oyster Shells and chunks of Wood at the Centinel. Beat him from out of his Box to the steps.

A space after saw a party coming from the Main Guard, an Officer which proved to be Capt. [Thomas] Preston with them. He desired his Men to halt and the Centinel to recover his Arm, fall into his Rank and march up to the Main Guard. The Centinel fell in and the men wanted to move forward to the Guard house but could not for the Riot.

The people called out fire, damn you why dont you fire, you cant kill us [all]. I steppd to the Party. Heard a Gentleman ask the Capt. if he was going to order his men to fire. He said no Sir by no means, by no means. A Man—the Centinel—then pushed me back. I step’d back to the corner. He bid me go away for I should be killed.

A Man came behind the Soldiers walkd backwards and forwards, encouraging them to fire. The Captain stood on the left about three yards. The man touched one of the Soldiers upon the back and said fire, by God I’ll stand by you. He was dressed in dark coloured Cloaths. I don’t remember he had a Surtout or any lace about him. He did not look like an Officer. The man fired directly on the word and clap on the Shoulder.

This testimony, from one of the very few women on the scene that night, helped to exonerate Capt. Preston of having ordered the soldiers to fire.

By the time of Preston’s trial, Jane Crothers was no longer Jane Crothers. On 27 March, three weeks and a day after the Massacre, she married Pvt. Joseph Whitehouse of the 14th Regiment at Christ Church (Old North). She was thus attached to the army, though not identified as such in the trial records.

Instead, those notes record another unusual aspect of Jane Whitehouse’s testimony. Under Massachusetts law, witnesses could swear to tell the truth simply by holding up their hand and reciting or assenting to an oath. But someone “said that Jane Whitehouse thought there was no obligation from Oaths administred by holding up the hand.” She was therefore “Sworn upon the Bible.” I’ve tried to find a discussion of that distinction from the period in hopes that it would say something about the woman’s religion, and I haven’t.

TOMORROW: What Pvt. Whitehouse had to say.

This Year’s Saturday Night Massacre

This Saturday, 4 March, the Bostonian Society will host a full day of events in honor of the 247th anniversary of the Boston Massacre. Here are the scheduled events, the first three inside the Old State House and included with admission to the museum.

10:30 A.M. and 12:00 noon
Blood on the Snow
Discover the truth behind acting governor Thomas Hutchinson’s challenging decision in the aftermath of the Massacre. Actors will present a scene from this summer’s production of Blood on the Snow, an original drama by Boston playwright Patrick Gabridge. [For more about this show, which will return for another run this summer, see my article in Humanities magazine.]

11:00 A.M. and 2:00 P.M.
Trial of the Century
Space is limited; tickets available at 9:00 A.M. at the front desk of the museum.
Join patriot lawyers John Adams and Robert Treat Paine in the trial of the soldiers accused of murdering five Bostonians at the Massacre. Young visitors participate as the witnesses and jurors who decide the verdict in this celebrated case.

1:00 P.M. and 3:00 P.M.
Talk of the Town
Immerse yourself in Boston’s colonial past by meeting citizens who lived through the tumultuous period of British occupation. Visitors gain insight and perspective on real events by asking questions and hearing accounts from historic interpreters.

7:00 P.M.
Reenactment of the Boston Massacre
[ADDENDUM: Because of the forecast of frigid temperatures and bone-chilling winds, the 2017 Massacre reenactment has been canceled. All the indoor daytime activities listed above will go on as scheduled.]
Witness this infamous event, authentically recreated in front of the Old State House by living historians. Before the action unfolds, hear patriots, loyalists, and moderates talk about the events and attitudes that led to that fateful night.

The last event will take place in front of the Old State House and is free to the public. I’ll be there, once again providing the narration.

In addition, the dedicated reenactors who will portray the confrontation on King Street are also preparing other vignettes to be acted out on the streets of Boston during the day. So keep your eyes open for drama!

(The photo above was taken in 2013 by Matt Conti for NorthEndWaterfront.com. Here are his images from last year. Details may look different this year as the reenactors are constantly striving to improve the accuracy of their kit.)

After Trumbull—Not After Copley After All

Back in January, I saw this painting on Twitter, identified as a portrait of Gen. George Washington by John Singleton Copley.

I replied that Copley never painted Washington.

The person who posted the image reported that the Art U.K. site actually identified the portrait as after Copley, meaning another artist had copied Copley’s original.

I replied that there’s no Copley painting of Washington to copy from.

But that’s indeed what the official information about the painting says. It’s hanging in Washington Old Hall, a manor in Britain now owned by the National Trust. The Washington family had roots there. And obtaining this painting seems to have been a tribute to the first President of the U.S. of A.

Presumably, the painting was acquired at a time when every second painting from Revolutionary-era America was hopefully identified as a Copley. But now we know better.

That canvas is clearly based on John Trumbull’s painting of Washington before the Battle of Trenton. Here’s a version of that image from the Metropolitan Museum of New York. (Trumbull may have painted other copies as well.)

Art U.K. has an online forum called Art Detective, which invites the public to crowdsource questions about artwork in the national collections. I posted a comment to that site with a link to the Met’s Trumbull, and a moderator invited Washington Old Hall to join in the exchange.

And that’s where the story stands, five weeks later. The discussion doesn’t appear in the public forum. The attribution still points to Copley “(after).” The Art Detective approach is intriguing, but in this case its potential hasn’t panned out.

Dunbar on Ona Judge in Portsmouth, 5 March

On Sunday, 5 March, Erica Armstrong Dunbar will speak in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, about her new book Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge.

I wrote about the first President using resources of the federal government to chase Judge (also called Oney Judge) here. There’s much more to her story. Shana L. Haines’s review of this book at the Junto states:

Judge’s story has long been an interesting footnote, paragraph, or article. Unlike many references to Judge, Dunbar’s comprehensive treatment presents Judge as a fully fleshed out human being grappling with the dehumanization of slavery and the complexities of freedom. For both scholars of Early American slavery and the general public, Judge is being reintroduced as an important figure in our understanding of Early American slavery and resistance. Through Dunbar’s empathetic and well-researched biography, the woman whose safety and freedom in eighteenth-century America depended upon remaining hidden, is finally given prominence in her own story rather than as aside to the Washingtons. . . .

Dunbar uses runaway slave notices, Washington’s own diaries and letters, and archival information about slave laws, politics, and abolitionist practices to weave a tense and suspenseful tale of Judge’s game of cat and mouse. Within this fugitive slave narrative is also embedded the emotional toll of separation from family and the physical and economic realities of day-to-day living for black women in the early republic. As America was wrestling with how to implement its Constitutional principles, Judge was forging marriage, motherhood, and community through resilience and courage.

Judge settled in Portsmouth, making her story local as well as national. The Portsmouth Historical Society is hosting Prof. Dunbar’s talk as part of a two-hour program:

• 2:00 P.M.: Gwendolyn Quezaire-Presutti portrays Ona Judge in a living-history performance.
• 2:30: Author presentation.
• 3:15: Q. & A.

This event will take place at the Temple Israel Social Hall at 200 State Street from 2:00 to 4:00 P.M. It is free and open to the public.

Winiarski on the New Lights in Boston, 1 March

On Wednesday, 1 March, the New England Historic Genealogical Society will host a talk by Prof. Douglas L. Winiarski of the University of Richmond based on his new book, Darkness Falls on the Land of Light: Experiencing Religious Awakenings in Eighteenth-Century New England.

The publisher’s description says:

The 1740s and 1750s were the dark night of the New England soul, as men and women groped toward a restructured religious order. Conflict transformed inclusive parishes into exclusive networks of combative spiritual seekers. Then as now, evangelicalism emboldened ordinary people to question traditional authorities. Their challenge shattered whole communities.

This sweeping history of popular religion in eighteenth-century New England examines the experiences of ordinary people living through extraordinary times. Drawing on an unprecedented quantity of letters, diaries, and testimonies, Douglas Winiarski recovers the pervasive and vigorous lay piety of the early eighteenth century.

George Whitefield’s preaching tour of 1740 called into question the fundamental assumptions of this thriving religious culture. Incited by Whitefield and fascinated by miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit—visions, bodily fits, and sudden conversions—countless New Englanders broke ranks with family, neighbors, and ministers who dismissed their religious experiences as delusive enthusiasm. These new converts, the progenitors of today’s evangelical movement, bitterly assaulted the Congregational establishment.

This conflict was known at the time as the argument between “New Light” and “Old Light” ministers.

In 1842, the Rev. Joseph Tracy dubbed it “the Great Awakening.” That phrase first appeared in Moravian Christian literature of the early 1700s before it became part of the New Lights’ vocabulary. The Rev. John Wesley used it in an extract of his diary he published in 1740. Two years later, Whitefield included the phrase in a letter as a term for a local revival. In 1741, the Rev. John Webb (1687-1750) of Boston’s New North Meeting titled a sermon Christ’s Suit to the Sinner, while He Stands and Knocks at the Door: A Sermon Preach’d in a Time of Great Awakening, at the Tuesday-Evening Lecture in Brattle-Street, Boston.

Prof. Winiarski’s talk is scheduled to start at 6:00 P.M. at the society’s headquarters on Newbury Street. It is free, and attendees can register here.

In Our Time, If You’ve Got the Time

I’ve mentioned before that one of my favorite podcasts is the B.B.C. Radio 4 discussion show In Our Time. In each episode, novelist and television host Melvyn Bragg discusses a particular topic with three experts drawn from Britain’s universities.

For the podcast, the forty-five minutes of discussion recorded live is augmented with the few extra minutes of “what did we miss?” chat.

Here are some episodes over the past year that have improved my understanding of the British Empire of the 1700s:

• Fanny Burney
• Frederick the Great
• Emma
• Salem Witch Trials
• Voyages of James Cook
• Thomas Paine’s Common Sense
• Titus Oates and the “Popish Plot”
• Songs of Innocence and Experience
• The Gin Craze

As I recall, the Emma discussion eventually came down to the academics reading out their favorite bits. And who can blame them?

Vincent Carretta on John Peters

One of the many notable achievements of Vincent Carretta’s Phillis Wheatley: Biography of a Genius in Bondage is its picture of the man Wheatley married, John Peters.

As Carretta writes in a recent blog post at the Oxford University Press website:

Until very recently, all we’ve had to go on were two very brief nineteenth-century accounts of John Peters (1746?–1801). The first depicts him as a failed grocer with an aspiration to gentility, who married Phillis in April 1778, and who abandoned her as she lay dying in desperate poverty 6 years later. He was also said to have been something of a handsome ne’er-do-well con man, who fraudulently posed as a lawyer or physician. We’re left with the image of a Dickensian villain in a tale of the decline and death of a duped sentimental heroine. But how reliable are those accounts?

Carretta found much more about Peters in local records that previous authors didn’t dig out because the early picture seemed so clear and unappealing. Carretta writes about John Peters and Phillis Wheatley:

Their marriage was initially prosperous and promising, according to tax and court records. Phillis and John Peters lived in a relatively upscale section of Boston. Peters and his white business partner sold rye, wheat, tea, nails, sugar, and other goods in the counties of western Massachusetts during the spring and summer of 1779. At a time when creditors often had to take debtors to court to collect what was owed them, Peters won one lawsuit against a debtor. But he simultaneously lost a much larger lawsuit by one of his own creditors in 1780. . . .

Phillis and John were definitely back in Boston by June 1784, when John Peters, “Labourer,” won another lawsuit against the debtor he had first sued in 1776. Winning, however, gained him nothing because his debtor had fled to England.

The post-war economy hurt lots of people that year. For John and Phillis Peters, the color line made that the situation more dire. John was jailed in September. Phillis died in December.

However, as the economy stabilized, widower Peters began to rise in society once more. In 1791 the town tax records identified him as “Lawyer Physician Gent pintlesmith.” A prosecution for barratry shut down Peters’s practice of taking people to court, but when he died in 1801 the newspaper still referred to him as “Dr John Peters.”

As for “pintlesmith,” Carretta defines that as a skilled craftsman making “the pins or bolts on which other parts, such as rudders or hinges, turn.” However, Francis Grose’s 1785 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue says it was a slang term for a surgeon. More particularly, other references make clear, it meant a surgeon specializing in the effects of venereal diseases on the male member. So that tax identification might have been a way of acknowledging that Peters practiced medicine while giving him low status.

“Retreat and Resistance” in Salem, 26 Feb.

On Sunday, 26 February, Salem will have a “fun and informal reenactment” of the confrontation between Patriots and redcoats across the town’s North River on that date in 1775.

Lt. Col. Alexander Leslie had orders to lead his men from the 64th Regiment of Foot across the river and search Robert Foster’s smithy. But locals, led by David Mason, had raised the drawbridge over the river, blocking the redcoats.

A crowd gathered around the soldiers. Militia units mustered in nearby towns. There was some tussling, some swinging of hatchets, some poking with bayonets. A soldier pricked Joseph Whicher’s chest—enough that Salem historians have claimed the first blood of the Revolutionary War was spilled that day.

Eventually the town’s civilian leaders and Lt. Col. Leslie found a compromise, brokered by Anglican [nearby meetinghouse] minister Thomas Barnard. Mason lowered the drawbridge. Leslie marched his men across it, far enough that he could say he had fulfilled his orders, and then they turned around and went back to the ship awaiting them in Marblehead.

During the stalemate at the bridge, Mason’s confederates had moved all the cannon he had collected for the Massachusetts Provincial Congress out of Foster’s workshop and into a nearby woods. Those cannon were being mounted on carriages for battlefield use. Within a week, they were moved on to Concord, where a larger British force came looking for them in April.

The commemoration on Sunday starts with two gatherings:

• 10:30 A.M.: The First Church of Salem Unitarian-Universalist welcomes everyone for a service that will end with a warning that the redcoats are coming, just as happened in 1775. That will be about 11:30, when folks can also arrive at the church yard to join the congregants in heading to the bridge.
• 11:00 A.M.: Folks representing the British army will meet at Hamilton Hall with fifes, recorders, and slide whistles. They will walk up to a mile (weather depending) to recreate the soldiers’ approach from Marblehead.
• 11:45 A.M.: At the corner of Federal and North Streets (Murphy’s Funeral Home), Lt. Col. Leslie and militia captain John Felt will dispute whether the bridge must come down and what the soldiers must do. People are invited to observe and shout surly comments.
• 12:00 noon: At the end of the reenactment, everyone will be invited into the First Church for an hour of warmth and refreshment.

The 26 Feb 1775 confrontation was part of the larger competition for artillery pieces described in The Road to Concord. On Friday, 7 April, I’ll speak at the Salem Athenaeum about that town’s many crucial connections to the Massachusetts arms race. General admission will be $15, for members $10, and for students with ID free.

Folks in the region are organizing other talks and events in the coming weeks about Leslie’s Retreat and the surrounding conflict. I’ll share more news of those as they come near.

The Chevalier and the Chavelière

Yesterday I described the busy, accomplished life of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a champion swordsman and celebrated musician in pre-Revolutionary France.

In the late 1780s he spent a couple of years in London. And there he encountered an old acquaintance, the Chevalier d’Eon. Reportedly D’Eon had seen Saint-Georges fence as a teenager in Paris.

D’Eon had had an eventful military and diplomatic career before going into exile in Britain in 1760s. Starting in 1777, D’Eon had lived in France full-time as a woman. In 1785 the chevalier returned to London, where people still remembered him as a skilled swordsman.

On 9 Apr 1787, Saint-Georges and D’Eon performed a fencing exhibition in front of George, the Prince of Wales, and his entourage. Charles Jean Robineau painted the scene, and by 1789 it was turned into a print for the popular market. The print’s caption referred to D’Eon as “Mademoiselle La chevalière.”

I’d seen this image in connection with D’Eon, who certainly stands out in dress and bonnet. But Saint-Georges was also a celebrity and, as a man of African ancestry, a curiosity. His dark tan skin is not evident in the print, at least not in some hand-colored examples, but it’s clear in the painting.

The Celebrated Saint-Georges

A concert in Seattle got me intrigued about the life of Joseph Bologne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges.

He was born on Guadeloupe in 1745, son of a wealthy planter and his black slave. At around age seven, he traveled to France to go to school. His parents joined him in Paris a couple of years later, his father receiving a noble title.

At age thirteen, Joseph went to a school of military arts. By his late teens, he was known as one of the finest swordsmen in France. The king granted him the title of chevalier.

That would be impressive enough, but in his twenties Joseph Bologne de Saint-Georges became one of Paris’s most celebrated musicians, concertmaster of the Concert des Amateurs. He wrote an opera with Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, later author of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. He also crossed paths with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, though no music seems to have come of that.

Then the American War started to affect Saint-Georges’s life. Because his orchestra’s patrons had put all their money into supplying the French army in America, the Concert des Amateurs had to shut down in 1781. He bounced back with a new patron in Philippe D’Orléans, duc de Chartres, and his lodge of Freemasons. With their support, Saint-Georges commissioned the Paris symphonies from Joseph Haydn.

In 1785, Philippe succeeded to his father’s title as duc d’Orléans. A cousin of King Louis XVI, the duke favored a constitutional monarchy along British lines, particularly if he could be in charge as regent. He sent Saint-Georges to London to strengthen contacts with the Prince of Wales, early anti-slavery activists, and other potential allies.

The portrait above comes from Saint-Georges’s time in London. It was painted by Boston-born Loyalist Mather Brown at the request of the Prince of Wales.

Saint-Georges was in the audience at the opening of the Estates General of France in 1789. That limited attempt at political change soon brought on the larger French Revolution. At first Saint-Georges continued work as a musician and courtier, but in 1792 he accepted a commission as colonel of a cavalry legion of free men of color from Haiti.

For the next several years, Saint-Georges was part of the army of Revolutionary France, caught up in its politics. That meant he spent some of his time at the front, some in Paris, some in jail. There’s evidence he went to Haiti in 1796 as part of the central government’s unsuccessful campaign to suppress Toussaint Louverture. Finally he returned to music, frustrated by government service and suffering from illness. Saint-Georges died in Paris in 1799.

TOMORROW: Another picture of Saint-Georges.

Reading about Rick Beyer’s Rivals unto Death

Rivals Unto Death: Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr is a retelling of the political rivalry that led to the most famous fatal duel in U.S. history. It comes from Rick Beyer, an author and filmmaker from Lexington.

Rick’s behind the “First Shot” film, the “In Their Own Words” pageant, the annual Lexington tea burning, and more to come. I invited him to answer a few questions about his new book.

What was the genesis of Rivals Unto Death? How did you come to write it?

I have Lin Manuel Miranda to thank for that! With the musical Hamilton getting hotter and hotter, the editor who shepherded my first book into print invited me to write about the rivalry. The idea was to squeeze the whole story into a compact and accessible volume. I’ve long been fascinated by this tale, and I jumped at the chance. The publisher had a hurry-up deadline, but I had an ace up my sleeve. A dozen years ago I researched the duel for a History Channel documentary I was supposed to produce. At the last minute Richard Dreyfuss decided he wanted to produce that show, and for some strange reason they went with him instead of me! That research stood me in good stead for this project.

What were the biggest surprises for you as you researched and wrote the book?

To start with, Burr saved Hamilton from capture during the Revolution, and may well have saved his life later on when he extricated Hamilton from what was shaping up as a duel with future President James Monroe. You won’t find that in most history books—or the musical! And there are many more fascinating and little known connections. The two men switched back and forth from allies to adversaries multiple times…so tracing their relationship makes for a fascinating journey.

I was also surprised by the degree to which I revised my opinion of Aaron Burr. He’s not quite the cardboard cutout villain history has portrayed. He was a war hero, a feminist, an abolitionist, a supporter of immigrant rights (far more so than immigrant Alexander Hamilton), a patron of the arts, a loving husband and father, and a brilliant innovator in political campaigning. All and all a fascinating character.

The bulk of Rivals Unto Death is about the tangled legal, commercial, and political world of New York in the early republic. How did you get a handle on that topic?

Important as it was, NYC was tiny by modern standards. When Burr and Hamilton started practicing law there in 1783, there only about two dozen lawyers in the entire city. Today you can find that many in a Wall Street Starbucks! A great source on the crowded cockpit that was early 19th-century New York is the Pulitzer Prize-winning history Gotham by ‎Mike Wallace‎ and Edwin G. Burrows.

One of the things that history tends to paper over is the passion and partisanship of the time. The founders weren’t marble statues; they were flesh and blood men who were often at each other’s throats. So many events and controversies of the late 18th and early 19th centuries seem remarkably familiar today. Street protests ending in violence, hysterical predictions about presidential candidates, accusations of vote fraud, anger over immigration and deficits—it was all there in the time of Hamilton and Burr, and it forms the context for their rivalry. A great source of insights on that score is the website founders.archives.gov, a searchable archive with more than 175,000 pieces of correspondence and other writings from the first five presidents and Alexander Hamilton. Thank you, National Archives!

How did you structure your narrative for readers?

This is a murder mystery in which there is no doubt about who pulled the trigger, but the why is endlessly fascinating. The book opens one week before the duel, at New York’s Fraunces Tavern, where Hamilton and Burr sat side by side at a convivial July 4th dinner. No one else there knew that they already set in motion their duel, and they gave no hint of it that night. How could they share an enjoyable evening when they were dead set on shooting it out? What in the world was going on? That’s what I wanted to explore, and the book goes back to the time of the revolution in a search for clues.

I structured the book as a countdown to the duel. The chapters literally count down from ten to one, and at the beginning of each chapter I note how much time is left until the duel. Burr and Hamilton are on a slow-motion collision course, and as the years tick down, the causes of their ultimate confrontation become clear.

You write that the roots of the rivalry between Hamilton and Burr lay in the two men’s relationships to George Washington. Tell us more about those relationships and how they steered the men.

Hamilton and Burr were each offered a chance to serve on Washington’s staff during the Revolution, Burr when he was twenty, Hamilton when he was twenty-two. Burr lasted ten days and left with a bitter taste in his mouth, harboring a lifelong enmity toward Washington. Hamilton stayed four years, becoming Washington’s most important aide and his lifelong protégé. Over the years, this fundamental divide over Washington shaped their politics and soured their relationship.

Burr challenged Hamilton to their duel after reading a reference to “a still more despicable opinion which General Hamilton had expressed.” Do you have any suspicions about what that opinion was?

Gore Vidal posited that Hamilton accused Burr of having an incestuous relationship with his daughter, but I think that is just a novelist’s invention. Hamilton had written privately to people about his fear that Burr might be secretly scheming to create a new country out of New England and New York, largely for the sake of his own personal aggrandizement. I suspect his “more despicable opinion” involved some variation on that theme. As an immigrant who had adopted America as his own nation, Hamilton was unalterably opposed to breaking apart the nation he had worked so hard to create. “I view the suggestion of such a project with horror,” he once wrote. It seems like just the kind of thing he would expound on at a political dinner not knowing it would eventually bring about about his own demise.

Thanks, Rick! If you have your own questions about Hamilton and Burr, you can ask Rick at these upcoming appearances:

• Thursday, 23 February, 7:00 P.M. at Brookline Booksmith
• Sunday, 26 February, 2:00 P.M., at Lexington Depot for the Lexington Historical Society
• Wednesday, 15 March, 7:00 P.M., at Beverly Historical Society
• Thursday, 6 April, 7:00 P.M. at Porter Square Books

Noel on Exercise for Scholars, 22 Feb.

On Wednesday, 22 February, Rebecca Noel will speak on the topic “Beware the Chair: The Medieval Roots of School Exercise…and Your Standing Desk” at the historical society in Plymouth, New Hampshire.

So what should we be worried about?

This talk explores the sometimes alarming, sometimes hilarious history of the idea that the scholarly life makes people sick. It’s a problem that came to afflict more people as education expanded during the Enlightenment and became nearly universal in the 1800s. Whether the culprit was lack of movement, seated posture, blood rushing to the head, tuberculosis, or digestive woes, physicians have fretted over the health of scholars since at least Plato’s day. Tracing this idea from Europe to the United States, from scholars to children, and from boys’ to girls’ education, the presentation shows how durable the fear has remained—and how relevant it is to the more sedentary world in which we now live.

Noel is Associate Professor of History at Plymouth State University. She is working on a book titled Save Our Scholars: The Mandate for Health in Early American Education. Rebecca and I overlapped at college, but she was already studying American history and I wasn’t, so I didn’t meet her until several years ago at a Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife. This posting was inspired by the paper she presented then.

The program in Plymouth starts at 7:00 P.M. It is free and open to the public, and there will be refreshments to work off.

And now here are some remarks from Josiah Quincy (1772-1864) about his days at an academy in Andover starting at age six, in the middle of the Revolutionary War:

The truth was, I was an incorrigible lover of sports of every kind. My heart was in ball and marbles. I needed and loved perpetual activity of the body, and with these dispositions I was compelled to sit with four other boys on the same hard bench, daily, four hours in the morning and four in the afternoon, and study lessons which I could not understand. Severe as was my fate, the elasticity of my mind cast off all recollection of it as soon as school hours were over, and I do not recollect, or believe, that I ever made any complaint to my mother or any one else. . . .

One recollection of my boyhood is characteristic of the spirit of the times. The boys had established it as a principle that every hoop and sled should have thirteen marks as evidence of the political character of the owner,—if which were wanting, the articles became fair prize, and were condemned and forfeited without judge, jury or decree of admiralty.

“Exhibition at the Dwelling-House of Mr. PAUL REVERE”

Yesterday I passed on the news of activities next week at the Paul Revere House, which is now a historic museum.

But well before that building became a museum in the early 1900s, Paul Revere himself made it into a spectacle. That was on 5 March 1771, the first anniversary of the Boston Massacre. Less than a year after his family moved into that house, Revere used its windows to help his political movement.

In an unusually typset front page, Edes and Gill’s Boston Gazette described how the town observed that day. The Congregational meetinghouses (but not, by implication, the Anglican churches) tolled their bells for an hour starting at noon. And then:

In the Evening there was a very striking Exhibition at the Dwelling-House of Mr. PAUL REVERE, fronting the Old-North Square.—At one of the Chamber-Windows was the appearance of the Ghost of the unfortunate young [Christopher] Seider, with one of his Fingers in the Wound, endeavouring to stop the Blood issuing therefrom: Near him his Friends weeping: And at a small distance a monumental Obelisk, with his Bust in Front:—On the Front of the Pedestal, were the Names of those killed on the 5th of March: Underneath the following Lines,

Seider’s pale Ghost fresh-bleeding stands,
And Vengeance for his Death demands.

In the next Window were represented the Soldiers drawn up, firing at the People assembled before them—the Dead on the Ground—and the Wounded falling, with the Blood running in Streams from their Wounds: Over which was wrote FOUL PLAY.

In the third Window was the Figure of a Woman, representing AMERICA, sitting on the Stump of a Tree, with a Staff in her Hand, and the Cap of Liberty on the Top thereof,—one Foot on the Head of a Grenadier lying prostrate grasping a Serpent.—Her Finger pointing to the Tragedy.

The whole was so well executed, that the Spectators, which amounted to many Thousands, were struck with solemn Silence, and their Countenances covered with a melancholy Gloom. At Nine o’Clock the Bells tolled a doleful Peal, until Ten; when the Exhibition was withdrawn, and the People retired to their respective Habitations.

I’ve seen no report of a similar exhibition in Boston. It’s notable that it took place at Revere’s house in the North End rather than somewhere close to the center of town.

Perhaps Revere’s sideline of making and selling historical engravings was behind this event. The picture of the Massacre in his window could certainly have been based on the famous design he copied from Henry Pelham, and he could have had prints for sale. I suspect there were likewise models, perhaps British, of the other two scenes the newspaper described. Either that, or artist Christian Remick made them for Revere.

All that news from 1771 is a reminder that we’re coming up on the anniversary of the Massacre again. This year the reenactment will take place on the evening of Saturday, 4 March, outside the Old State House Museum. All that day there will be very striking activities.