“The pistols were not heard by a single person”

Yesterday I left Edward Rand dead on Dorchester Point. The man who had just killed him in a duel, Charles Miller, Jr., could have been arrested for murder, and their seconds were also open to criminal charges.

After a bare-bones report on the duel, the 16 June Columbian Minerva of Dedham reported:

Miller passed thro this town to the southward, on the morning of the same day, in a coach, attended only by his second.

That second was Lewis Warrington (shown here), a nineteen-year-old midshipman in the U.S. Navy. Warrington was the natural son of Donatien-Marie-Joseph de Vimeur, vicomte de Rochambeau, son and aide of the commander of French troops during the war.

Back in Dorchester, other people began to arrive on the scene. According to duel chronicler Lorenzo Sabine:

A gentleman who was at Fort Independence at the moment of the duel, and who, with three or four others, immediately after it jumped into a boat and rowed to the Point, informs me, that when he arrived Rand lay dead upon the beach, alone, with an empty pistol near him; that he was gayly dressed; and that he saw Mr. [Ebenezer] Withington of Dorchester (who, as coroner, came with a jury) take Miller’s acceptance of his challenge from his pocket.

This gentleman remarks, that a fishing-vessel was at anchor off the Point, and that some three or four hundred workmen, officers, and soldiers were at the Fort, but that, as far as he was ever able to ascertain, the reports of the pistols were not heard by a single person among them all.

Which should lead us to wonder why a handful of men had jumped into a rowboat immediately after Rand fell dead. I suspect no one wanted to testify to the authorities.

Massachusetts law allowed for those authorities to confiscate Rand’s body and turn it over to a surgeon for dissection. Instead, this profile of Charles P. Phelps, Rand’s business partner, cites his 1857 manuscript autobiography to state that he “was called upon to retrieve his partner’s body and helped to bury him in the Granary burying Ground late that night.”

Sabine (who’s best known for writing the first biographical guide to American Loyalists) went on:

Miller departed Massachusetts on the very day his antagonist fell. He was indicted for murder in the county of Norfolk, but was never tried or arrested. The indictment against him was missing from the files of the court as early as the year 1808 or 1809.

His home, ever after the deed, was in New York, where his life was secluded, though in the possession of an ample fortune. He lived a bachelor. He died in 1829, leaving an only brother.

The New York newspapers said this Charles Miller, formerly of Boston, died “suddenly” at age sixty.

The mercantile firm Charles Miller & Son continued to advertise in Boston newspapers for a couple of years after the younger man’s move. Eventually Charles Miller, Sr., retired to Quincy, where he had been born. In 1815 former President John Adams noted that foxglove (digitalis) had “lately wrought an almost miraculous cure upon our Neighbour Mr Charles Miller.” But the man died two years later, age seventy-five.

“He fell lifeless on the ground!”

As I quoted yesterday, the Constitutional Telegraphe of 17 June 1801 was the only Boston newspaper to report on the duel between Edward Rand and Charles Miller, Jr., three days earlier.

I slyly broke off before the end of that passage: “…in which the latter was shot dead on the spot.”

Not that the duelists’ names necessarily appeared in the newspaper in the same order as the first paragraph of this posting.

So I’m still keeping the outcome of the duel from you.

The Federal Galaxy of Brattleboro, Vermont, went into more detail on 29 June:

Having agreed on seconds, they repaired to Dorchester Point early on Sunday morning last;—they then paced out the ground, and the lot was Rand’s to make the first fire; his fire, however, did no execution; Miller then discharged his pistol, the contents of which lodged in his antagonist’s heart, and he fell lifeless on the ground!

Decades later, in the 1859 edition of Notes on Duels and Duelling, Alphabetically Arranged (but not in the 1855 first edition), Lorenzo Sabine set down the story as he’d gathered it:

The late Governor [William] Eustis of Massachusetts (at that time a physician in practice) was on the ground as surgeon. Rand was accompanied by a brother; Miller, by Lieutenant [actually Midshipman] Lewis Warrington, who was subsequently a post-captain in the United States navy, and was distinguished in the war of 1812.

Rand was the challenger. Two shots were exchanged. Miller discharged his first pistol in the air, and then asked his antagonist “if he was satisfied.” The reply of Rand’s second was in the negative.

Miller—who had frequently amused himself with the pistol with the officers stationed at Fort Independence, and who had acquired a great reputation as a marksman—then said: “If I fire again, Mr. Rand will surely fall.”

The parties resumed their position, and at the word fired. Rand was shot through the right breast, and died upon the spot.

Under a 1784 Massachusetts law (follow the link here at HUB History), issuing or accepting a challenge to a duel was illegal, even if you never actually dueled. Anyone helping to arrange a duel was liable for up to £300 fine and six months in jail.

If you killed someone in a duel, you could be arrested and tried for murder. If you ended up convicted and hanged, your body could be dissected and/or buried without a coffin and with a stake through the heart. And the same went for the body of the person killed in the duel.

The picture above shows Dr. William Eustis, reportedly “on the ground as surgeon” during the exchange of shots. He would seem to have been at least arguably liable for abetting the duel. That’s especially striking for two reasons. First, in 1801 Eustis had just been elected to Congress. And second, his brother had died in a duel during the war.

TOMORROW: The aftermath.

“Terminated in a Duel…at Dorchester Point”

While looking for more ties between Charles Miller and the Boston Patriots, I came across this story from the next generation.

Boston’s Constitutional Telegraphe newspaper reported on 17 June 1801:

We hear, and are concerned to state, as we conceive it a painful task, which we consider to be our duty to perform, to announce to the public an unfortunate dispute between Mr. Charles Miller, jun. and Mr. Edward Rand, both of this town, which terminated in a Duel, early on Sunday morning last, at Dorchester Point…

Charles Miller, Jr., was baptized in King’s Chapel on 18 Nov 1770. So far as I can tell, he was the first and only child of Charles Miller, a younger son of Braintree’s Anglican minister, and his first wife, Elizabeth Cary of Charlestown.

Charles, Jr., followed his father into the mercantile business. Around the turn of the century there are lots of advertisements in Boston papers for goods offered by the firm of “Charles Miller & Son.”

Edward Rand was baptized in Boston’s New North Meetinghouse on 22 Aug 1773. He was the fourth child of Dr. Isaac Rand, Jr., a physician suspected of being a Tory but mostly tolerated because of his medical skills. (Dr. Isaac Rand, Sr., was an active Patriot, caring for soldiers with smallpox during the siege of Boston.) By the end of the 1700s the younger Dr. Rand’s reputation was solid enough that he was elected president of the Massachusetts Medical Society.

In April 1800, Charles P. Phelps (1772–1857) and Edward Rand announced that together they had rented a large store on Codman’s Wharf to sell imported fabric, hardware, and spermaceti candles. They offered to advance cash on consignments and sought “a Lad about 14 years of age” to work for them.

A duel between rising young men from such prominent families was bound to cause talk. In a letter to her youngest, Abigail Adams said: “it is reported that the Quarrel arose about a Female— this is the first instance of the Kind in our State.” Massachusetts had seen some duels before, but not that many involving locals.

The item in the Green Mountain Patriot of Peacham, Vermont, on 2 July avoided using the term “duel,” saying instead that the two men had met “for the purpose of honorably settling an honorable dispute.”

The Federal Galaxy of Brattleboro broke the full story on 29 June:

FATAL DUEL.

A report of a late duel in Boston has been current in town for ten days past—A letter dated Boston, June 17, received by the Editor, from his friend residing there, gives the following recital of the event:

“Some misunderstanding having taken place between Messr. Charles Miller, jun. and Isaac [sic] Rand, (respectable merchants in Boston) which originated respecting a certain young lady, to whom Miller had paid his addresses; after giving each other some hard words, Rand sent Miller a challenge, which was accepted. Having agreed on seconds, they repaired to Dorchester Point early on Sunday morning last;…”

Decades later, Rand’s business partner Phelps wrote in an unpublished memoir that the lady was “from Rhode Island,” but I located no source identifying her.

After describing the action, the letter in the Federal Galaxy stated:

“You will find no mention made of this affair in the Boston papers, as the several printers have been requested by the parents of Miller and Rand, not to notice it.”

And indeed the Constitutional Telegraphe’s article appears to be the only report printed inside Boston. It was, however, reprinted outside the town from Maine to Virginia.

TOMORROW: Who lived, who died, who told the story.

Leafing through the “Davenport Letters”

The Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia has just unveiled a webpage displaying seventeen letters written by Continental soldiers Isaac How Davenport (1754–1778) and James Davenport (1759–1824) of Dorchester.

The original letters don’t survive, but a nephew copied them into a ledger book, which remains in the family.

The museum is sharing scans of those transcripts as well as P.D.F. files of their text in the raw and with modernized punctuation for easier reading.

I presume the older brother was the “Isaac Davenport” listed among the Dorchester men who responded to the militia alarm on 19 Apr 1775.

Middle names were rarely used in New England at this time. It looks like Isaac How Davenport received his father’s mother’s maiden name, sometimes spelled Howe, as his middle name. In nineteenth-century histories of Dorchester, that man’s name was misprinted as “Isaac Shaw Davenport.”

Isaac became a member of the commander in chief’s guard and then the dragoons under Col. George Baylor. He spent several months of 1777–78 at Valley Forge, where he wrote two of the letters in this collection. Isaac Davenport was among the Continental dragoons killed in a nighttime raid on their billets on 27 Sept 1778.

The younger brother, James, enlisted in the Continental Army in February 1777, when he was seventeen years old, leaving behind an apprenticeship to a shoemaker. He served for the rest of the war, rising to the rank of sergeant in 1780. In 1777–78 he was also at Valley Forge, but his surviving letters start in 1780, getting more numerous late in the war when there was less to do besides write home.

After the war James Davenport returned from New York to Dorchester and used his earnings to build a house, marry, and start a family. He lived long enough to apply for a pension in 1818, sending in copies of his promotion to sergeant and his discharge signed by Gen. George Washington. Many veterans didn’t have such documentation.

The U.S. government initially awarded Davenport a pension, but then rescinded it. I suspect the problem was that Davenport wasn’t poor enough; the pensions of that decade required applicants to show need, and he owned a farm, a house, and cash.

Davenport tried to present himself as in need: “my health is much impaired by my services in the Army,” “My House was built more than 30 years ago,” his wife Esther was prone to illness.

In the end, though, James Davenport’s best claim to public support was his service. He described himself as “engaged at the Capture of Burgoyne, Cornwallis, at Monmouth & always with my Regiment.” (His regiment wasn’t actually at Yorktown.) A later law would have let him keep his pension because it wasn’t need-based, but by then there were fewer veterans to pay for.

After James Davenport died in 1824, Dorchester’s minister, the Rev. Thaddeus Mason Harris, preached at his interment. The published sermon reportedly “included excerpts from a journal of his wartime experiences.”

The Davenport family had not only preserved that journal until then and the texts of the letters, but also some mementos of James’s military service: a sword, epaulettes (shown above), and a pair of red wool baby booties reportedly made from a British coat. Those are now part of the Museum of the American Revolution’s collection, and can be viewed through the “Davenport Letters” webpage.

Ending the Year by Burning Tea

In my write-up of the Charlestown tea burning, I mixed up the date of the town meeting when everyone agreed to stop selling tea (28 Dec 1773) with the date the townspeople burned their stocks of tea (31 December, or 250 years ago today).

That in turn led to misdating when a crowd from Boston confiscated Ebenezer Withington’s tea in Dorchester.

I’ve corrected those postings.

To my chagrin, I found that I’d actually flagged a source to discuss on this date, but while traveling during this holiday season I overlooked that draft.

So here is a timely account of the events of 31 Dec 1773 from our old friend, merchant John Rowe:

The People of Charlestown collected what Tea they could find in The Town & burnt it in the View of a thousand Spectators.

There was found in the House of One Withington of Dorchester About half a Chest of Tea

the People gathered together & took the Tea Brought it into the Common of Boston & Burnt it this Night about Eleven of Clock—

This is Supposed to be part of the Tea that was taken out of the Ships and floated over to Dorchester—

Rowe’s recounting (probably second-hand) adds a couple of details to the newspaper report: the large crowd in Charlestown and a more precise timing of the tea-burning on Boston Common.

Overall, these incidents show that, despite fears of how the London government would react to the destruction of East India Company property, Bostonians were closing out the year by getting more strict about enforcing their tea boycott on everyone.

“A Number of the Cape or Narragansett-Indians” in Dorchester

On 31 Dec 1773, as recounted yesterday, Charlestown burned its tea at high noon. Everyone could see that happen, but of course bonfires are even more visible at night.

As that action took place across the Charles River north of Boston, another drama was playing out to the south in Dorchester.

Last year I quoted sources about the search for tea that survived destruction in the harbor, floated across to the Dorchester shore, and was reportedly being sold by a man named Withington.

After searching two houses (with the assent of two homeowners named Withington), a crowd said by local Samuel Pierce to be “from Boston” found the rumored tea at the home of Ebenezer Withington.

Leaving Dorchester to deal with the man through its town meeting, the Bostonians carried that tea back to Boston and used it to fuel their own bonfire after dark on Boston Common.

When the Boston Gazette reported on this event on 3 Jan 1774, it said the search had been carried about by “a Number of the Cape or Narragansett-Indians.” This was, I believe, the first time the press had referred to the men destroying tea not merely as dressed like Indians but actually as Indians (wink, wink).

When Edes & Gill first reported on the destruction of the East India Company tea, their 20 December Boston Gazette printed two accounts which described the actors quite differently.

The story on Page 3 said the raiders were “A number of brave & resolute men, determined to do all in their power to save their country from the ruin which their enemies had plotted.” That account treated those men as respectable members of Massachusetts society, taking collective civic action.

However, “An Impartial Observer” on page 2 described “a number of persons, supposed to be the Aboriginal Natives from their complexion,” and later referred to those people as “Savages.” These destroyers came from outside civilized society, so Boston couldn’t be held responsible for their action. That approach prevailed in the following months.

The Boston Gazette’s account of events on 31 December showed that dichotomy. North of Boston, the people of Charlestown acted through their town meeting, through collective boycotts, and at high noon. South of Boston, “the Cape or Narragansett-Indians” carried out intimidating actions, destroyed imperial property, and acted in the dark.

Exploring the Boston Slavery Database

Speaking of the city of Boston’s Archaeology Program, its staff took the lead in developing the “Slavery in Boston” exhibit in Faneuil Hall that I discussed back in June.

Its webpages host the online complement of that exhibit.

Those webpages include the Boston Slavery Database, a spreadsheet listing (as of 12 October) “2,357 Black and Indigenous people enslaved in Boston between 1641 and 1783.”

It looks like that listing was compiled mainly by compiling the enslaved people named in “the probate records for Boston proper and Dorchester,” along with research by historians Aabid Allibhai, Jared Ross Hardesty, and Wayne Tucker. The agency acknowledges that it’s incomplete.

Indeed, I ran some test searches for people like Onesimus Mather, Caesar Marion, Surry (Adams), Nero Faneuil, and Sharp Gardner, and didn’t find them.

Printers Pompey and Caesar Fleet appear, but not their father, Peter Fleet. Oliver Wendell appears twice as a slaveholder, but his servant Andrew, documented as testifying about the Boston Massacre, doesn’t show up.

The Boston Globe said one goal of this effort was to inform the public about colonial Bostonians in bondage “beyond the better known names of Phillis Wheatley and Prince Hall.” Ironically, neither of those names appears in the database.

All those missing names show how much larger the institution of slavery was over its fourteen decades in Boston. They also show the limits of one type of historic record. Enslaved people don’t appear in probate records if they died or were freed before their owner died, or if the vagaries of an owner’s estate mean that they weren’t specifically bequeathed or valued. Or if those documents simply disappeared.

The website says: “If you have done research and found evidence of an enslaved Bostonian who is not yet on this list, please email us with your data so that we can add them, with credit.” So this database is like Wikipedia, in that spotting an error or omission also confers some opportunity and responsibility to do something about it. Unfortunately, it’s easier to poke holes than to fix them. But I’ll add figuring out this database to my list of tasks.

Where Have You Gone, Colonel Robinson?

After Boston’s first anti-Stamp Act protest in 1765, Lemuel Robinson changed the sign outside the tavern he owned in Dorchester (shown above) to show Liberty Tree.

The Sign of the Liberty Tree hosted the big banquet of the Boston Sons of Liberty in August 1769.

Robinson was captain of a Suffolk County artillery company under Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, then a colonel after the Massachusetts Provincial Congress called on Patriots to reorganize their militia structure.

By January 1775 Robinson was hiding two of the Boston train’s small cannon on his property under dung heaps. Two more cannon, plus two mortars, were moved out there soon after. Committee of safety records hint that it took some prodding before Robinson turned those weapons over to provincial agents to be moved further out to Concord.

During the Battle of Lexington and Concord, Robinson made his tavern a center for feeding militiamen arriving outside Boston from the southwest. He became an officer in the New England army, but also stepped on other officers’ toes with his aggressive recruiting tactics.

Robinson then shifted to representing Dorchester in the Massachusetts General Court.

The British military wasn’t the only danger that year. Smallpox was spreading as well. After the king’s troops sailed away, there was a major effort to inoculate people.

On 3 Aug 1776 Elbridge Gerry wrote to his colleagues in Philadelphia about how a number of people they knew had come through that treatment:

Generals [James] Warren, [Benjamin] Lincoln Mrs. [Elizabeth] Bodwoin and a Number of our other Friends are recovered. Mrs. [Mercy] Warren in a good Way, poor Colo. Lem. Robinson dyed by imprudently pumping Cold Water on his Arm after getting well of the Distemper.

So how should we classify Lemuel Robinson’s death? As a result of smallpox? During the smallpox epidemic? Or that more obscure cause, “imprudently pumping Cold Water on his Arm”?

In Memory of Jonathan Hale

On the night of 4 Mar 1776, the Continental Army moved onto the Dorchester peninsula and started to fortify a position on the heights.

On 5 March, the British military inside Boston started a countermove, then aborted it when the weather made an already difficult mission impossible.

On 6 March, Gen. William Howe ordered the king’s forces and Loyalists to prepare to evacuate the town.

On on 7 March, militia captain Jonathan Hale of Glastonbury, Connecticut, died in Roxbury.

Hale’s death wasn’t mentioned in any account of fighting, which leads to the conclusion that he died of illness, possibly a form of “camp fever.” He had turned fifty-five the previous month.

Capt. Hale’s body was buried in a local burying-ground later named for nearby Walter Street. The original headstone read:

Here lyes Buried ye. Body of Capt Jonathan Hale of Glastonbury in Connecticut who dyed March 7 1776, in ye. 56 year of his age.

Back in Glastonbury, this line was entered into the church records:

Capt. Jonathan Hale, died in the army at Jamaica plains, Roxbury, Massachusetts bay.

In the late nineteenth century the remains of other Revolutionary War casualties, unknown soldiers who had died at the Loring-Greenough House and other army hospitals, were moved to the same cemetery, and a single memorial installed for them.

The Hale grave marker disappeared by the end of that century, and the Sons of the American Revolution installed a new stone, shown above, courtesy of photographer BSN and Find a Grave.

I suspect there’s another stone memorializing Capt. Hale, in a curious way.

In the fall of 1776 the late captain’s son, also named Jonathan, did some service in the American military. I think he mobilized with a militia unit to defend either the Connecticut coast (Col. Erastus Wolcott’s regiment had that mission in late 1776) or New York City.

In September, this Jonathan Hale came back to Glastonbury. The church records record his death:

Oct. 1, Jonathan Hale, died a few days after he returned sick from the army.

A Hale genealogy also reports that the man’s teen-aged sister Jerusha died on 26 September. While the records don’t state what he died of, that’s consistent with him catching dysentery in camp and bringing it home.

The younger Jonathan Hale’s original grave marker survives, and it says:

In Memory of Mr. Jonathan Son of Capt. Jonathan & Mrs. Elizabeth Hale who died Oct. ye. 1st. AD. 1776, in ye. 31st. Year of his Age.

Nearby is another Sons of the American Revolution marker that says:

Revolutionary War Capt.
Jonathan Hale 2d
Col. Wolcott’s Regt.
Died Oct. 1776
AE. 30.

I suspect that latter stone mixes together the two Jonathan Hales, father and son. The father served in Wolcott’s regiment as a captain, but I see no contemporaneous record of the son being an officer. Yet that’s definitely the son’s death data. This stone thus serves as a memorial to the son’s military service, not mentioned on his own marker, and a cenotaph for the father, buried one hundred miles away.

Capt. Jonathan Hale at the Siege of Boston

Jonathan Hale was born in Glastonbury, Connecticut, on 1 Feb 1721, the eldest surviving child of Jonathan and Sarah (Talcott) Hale. As Jonathan grew up, his father held many public offices—town clerk, deputy to the Connecticut legislature, justice of the peace, and militia colonel among them.

The younger Jonathan Hale married Elizabeth Welles of Glastonbury in January 1744. Her father was likewise a legislator and militia colonel, so this marriage joined two of the town’s leading families. The groom’s father provided the couple with their own farmland.

Jonathan, Jr., and Elizabeth started having children the following December. Their first three were named, of course, Elizabeth, Jonathan, and Elizabeth—the first baby having died young. By 1770, Elizabeth had given birth to twelve children, eleven of them still alive.

Meanwhile, Jonathan’s younger brother Elizur went to Yale College and came back to Glastonbury to practice medicine. According to the 1885 guide to Yale graduates, “He is said to have been of dignified though rough exterior, witty and sarcastic, but benevolent and very useful.”

In 1772, Jonathan’s father died. He inherited more land and an enslaved man named Newport, and he got to drop the “Junior” after his name. By then he had become an officer in the Connecticut militia himself.

War broke out to the north in 1775. At the end of that year, the enlistments of New Englanders who had joined the army besieging Boston expired. In some desperation, Gen. George Washington asked the nearby colonies to send militia regiments for a few weeks to keep the British army bottled up.

Erastus Wolcott of East Windsor, son of a former governor, was commissioned colonel of one of Connecticut’s militia regiments. Among his captains was Jonathan Hale of Glastonbury—now a fifty-four-year-old grandfather. The regiment appears to have set out in early January 1776. It was assigned to the southern wing of the American forces in Roxbury under Gen. Joseph Spencer.

The Rev. Joseph Perry, a chaplain with those militia forces, wrote in his diary for 27 February:

About one P.M. when almost ready to dine came an alarm by General Spencers’ Sergeant brought it. The account was that the Regulars had landed on Dorchester point. Coll. Wolcott was ordered forth with to turn out with his Regiment. The Coll. sent the alarm to his Captins in every quarter to parade before his house immediately for an attack. . . .

Every face looked serious but determined and the thing was real to us. In a few moments the whole Regiment would have been moving to the expected scene of blood, but were countermanded by order from Genrl Spencer informing it was a false alarm. The men got out of the rain and mud as fast as they could and all was peace again.

Continental commanders were preparing to move onto the Dorchester heights and antsy about anything disrupting that plan. Washington wrote to Gen. Artemas Ward suggesting that he put “Six or Eight trusty men by way of Lookouts or Patrols” on that peninsula, “For should the Enemy get Possession of those Hills before us they would render it a difficult task to dispossess them.”

TOMORROW: March.

“We Perceived A Battery Erected On the Hill on Dorchester Neck”

As I continue to recount merchant John Rowe’s experience of the end of the siege of Boston, I’ll skip his diary notes on the weather, socializing, and sermons unless they offer some unusual or pertinent detail.

Rowe had apparently gotten comfortable with life inside the besieged town, but that changed on Sunday, 3 Mar 1776:

This night The People from the Battery at Phipps Farm thro many Shells into Town which put the Inhabitants into great Fear—and they have done Damage to Many Houses Particularly [Joseph] Sherburne [shown here] [Samuel?] Fitchs Geo Ervings & [Thomas] Courtney the Taylor— . . .

afternoon I went to Church Mr. [Samuel] Parker Read prayers & Mr. [William] Walter preached . . . this was a serious Sensible Sermon & Well adapted to the Situation of our Present Disturbed Situation . . .

This Evening Capt. Johnson was burried.

Rowe’s habit of referring to “the People” outside town and “the Inhabitants” within avoided political labels. Writing “the Inhabitants” also distanced himself from the danger and emotion of the siege.

I haven’t been able to identify “Capt. Johnson of the Minerva” who had killed himself on 2 March. Rowe had an interest in the Minerva since he mentioned that ship multiple times in his diary, but how big a financial interest I can’t tell.

4 March:

All the Preceding Night The Town has been fir’d at by the People witho. from Every Quarter. I dont hear of Much Damage being done

The Guns from Cobles Hill on Charlestown Side have thrown there shot the farthest into Town one of them Struck [John] Wheatleys in Kings Street

5 March:

Southerly Wind & Warm—

This Morning We Perceived A Battery Erected On the Hill on Dorchester Neck—this has alarmd us very Much—

abo. 12 the Generall sent off Six Regiments—perhaps this day or to morrow determines The Fate of this truly distressed Place

All night Both Sides kept a Continuall Fire

Six Men of the 22d. Are Wounded in A house at the So. End—one Boy Lost his Leg— . . .

A Very Severe Storm WSo.So.E—it Blew down My Rail Fences Both Sides the Front of the House

It’s remarkable that Rowe’s fences had survived this long with firewood being a precious commodity in town.

Rowe’s bald line “abo. 12 the Generall sent off Six Regiments” referred to how Gen. William Howe ordered an amphibious attack on the Dorchester peninsula. But once he saw the stormy weather was making that mission even more impossible than it already was, Howe called it off and sped up his original plan.

TOMORROW: Plan A.

“I hear that General How said…”

For decades authors have quoted Gen. William Howe seeing the Continental fortifications on Dorchester heights and remarking: “These fellows have done more work in one night than I could have made my army do in three months.”

Few if any of those authors cited a primary source for that remark. Many presented the quotation with variations on the phrase “It is said…,” admitting they have no direct source and/or acknowledging some doubt.

Indeed, when seeing pre-20th-century American authors report what a British commander said privately within a besieged town, we should be skeptical. How did they know? Americans had access to only a few sources from the British side in those years. 

In this case, however, I traced the quotation back to March 1776, with a provenance pointing to Gen. Howe. On 10 March, Massachusetts Council member James Bowdoin wrote:

Mr. [John] Murray, a clergyman, din’d with the General [George Washington] yesterday, and was present at the examination of a deserter, who upon oath says that 5 or 600 [British] troops embarked the night before without any order or regularity; the baggage was hurried on board without an inventory; that he himself helped the General’s [Howe’s] baggage on board, and that two hospital ships were filled with sick soldiers, and the utmost horror and confusion amongst them all.

The General [Washington] recd. a l[ette]r. from the selectmen informing him that in the midst of their confusion they apply’d to Mr. Howe, who told them that if Mr. Washington woud order a cessation of arms and engage not to molest him in his embarkation, he woud leave the town without injuring it; otherwise he would set it on fire. To which the General replyed that there was nothing in the application binding on Mr. Howe. He therefore could not take any notice of it.

The deserter further says that Mr. Howe went upon a hill in Boston the morning after our people took possession of Dorchester Neck, when he made this exclamation: “Good God! These fellows have done more work in one night than I could have made my army do in 3 months. What shall I do?”

Abigail Adams told the same story in a letter to her husband on 17 March:

I hear that General How said upon going upon some Eminence in Town to view our Troops who had taken Dorchester Hill unperceived by them till sun rise, “My God these fellows have done more work in one night than I could make my Army do in three months” and he might well say so for in one night two forts and long Breast Works were sprung up besides several Barracks. 300 & 70 teems were imployed most of which went 3 load in the night, beside 4000 men who worked with good Hearts.

The Adams letters were widely reprinted in the 1800s. That put the quotation into circulation among American authors, with “My God” quoted more often than Bowdoin’s “Good God!” 

Of course, the reliability of the Howe quotation still rests on believing the Rev. John Murray and that unidentified “deserter.” But as far as Revolutionary traditions go, tracing this story back to within five days of when it reportedly took place is about as good as we get.

TOMORROW: Digging for that “deserter.”

“Two Redoubts on the Heights of Dorchester”

On 5 Mar 1776, the British military and their supporters inside Boston got their first look at the brand-new Continental fortification on Dorchester heights.

We have remarks on this sight from several British army officers. Capt. John Barker of the 4th Regiment wrote: “This Morning Works were perceived to be thrown up on Dorchester Heights, very strong ones tho’ only the labour of one night”.

Lt. Col. Stephen Kemble recorded:

Discovered the Rebels had raised two Redoubts on the Heights of Dorchester, at which they were at Work very hard, and had raised to the height of a Man’s head, and had as many Men as could be employed on them.

The 15 May Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser quoted a letter from “an Officer of Distinction at Boston” writing more hyperbolically:

This is, I believe, likely to prove as important a day to the British Empire as any in our annals. . . .

This morning at day-break we discovered two redoubts on the hills on Dorchester Point, and two smaller works on their flanks. They were all raised during the night, with an expedition equal to that of the Genii belonging to Aladin’s wonderful lamp. From these hills they commanded the whole town, so that we must drive them from their post, or desert the place.

Probably the most perceptive observations came from Capt.-Lt. Archibald Robertson (1745–1813, shown above), who focused an engineer’s eyes on the works:

About 10 o’clock at night [on 4 March] Lieutenant Colonel [John] Campbell reported to Brigadier [Francis] Smith that the Rebels were at work on Dorchester heights, and by day break we discovered that they had taken possession of the two highest hills, the Tableland between the necks, and run a Parapet across the two necks, besides a kind of Redout at the Bottom of Centry Box hill near the neck. The Materials for the whole Works must all have been carried, Chandeleers, fascines, Gabions, Trusses of hay pressed and Barrels, a most astonshing nights work must have Employ’d from 15 to 20,000 men.

The Continental force was large but not that large. Nonetheless, Robertson was right that fortifying the high points of the Dorchester peninsula was the most impressive logistical feat the New England army had carried off so far.

TOMORROW: Gen. William Howe’s response.

“Ebenezer Withington hath declared that he hath sold a Part of the Tea”

Yesterday I quoted the proceedings of the Dorchester town meeting as printed in the Massachusetts Spy on 13 Jan 1774.

They included:

• Ebenezer Withington’s public admission that he had picked up some tea left over from the Boston Tea Party and sold it, but was sorry.
• The town’s long declaration that selling tea like that was very wrong, for the most important political reasons, but Withington hadn’t meant any harm.

Now for some close reading of the details.

First, this one contemporaneous report is not evidence for locals finding Tea Party detritus along the Dorchester shore on the morning after.

Bostonians destroyed that tea on the evening of Thursday, 16 December. The next morning was Friday. Withington was clear he “found said Tea on Saturday, on going round upon the Marshes.” So it may have taken longer than a day for that half-chest to float across Boston harbor.

Not a big deal, but it does hint at how we like to compact details to make better stories. “The next morning” works better than “a day and a half later.”

Second, I wish I knew all the implications of the phrase “some Gentlemen belonging to the Castle,” the description in Withington’s statement of men who asked him about the tea he’d found. During the Tea Party, Castle William (shown above) was the home base of Lt. Col. Alexander Leslie’s 64th Regiment. It also served as a refuge for Boston’s top Customs officials and the tea consignees. And at least a few civilians worked on that island.

Whoever talked to Withington obviously knew that most of his “Neighbors” supported the strict tea boycott. What might they have said about a man salvaging tea for himself? Especially if they were friends of the royal government! No wonder Dorchester leaders expressed concern that people might insinuate “that the whole of the Tea said to have been destroyed was plundered.”

Finally, I was struck by the elevated language of these Dorchester documents. The statement Withington signed begins, “I found said Tea…” There’s nothing about tea before that in the printed proceedings, but the statement may have been written in response to a reference in the warrant for the town meeting, or in a letter from the selectmen. In any event, that “said” was the legal language of depositions.

Likewise, the four town resolutions that follow are in the most formal style. The first even uses “hath” instead of “has,” despite being about a poor man pulling a soggy chest of tea out of a swamp. Dorchester clerk Noah Clap clearly knew he was writing for public consumption and depicted his town at its most upright and proper.

TOMORROW: Inspectors.

“He hath been discovered selling said Tea”

On Monday, 3 Jan 1774, as I quoted yesterday, the Boston Gazette reported on men confiscating a supply of tea from a poor Dorchester man named Ebenezer Withington.

The same day, Dorchester had a town meeting about the matter. The community might have thought that would resolve everything.

But on Thursday, 6 January, the Boston News-Letter and Massachusetts Spy repeated the Gazette story. The next day, it appears, Dorchester’s clerk copied out the proceedings of the town meeting and sent them to Spy printer Isaiah Thomas.

It took a week for Thomas to put out his next issue. The proceedings appeared on 13 January, but with a 7 January dateline; with a decorative first initial, but without any introductory explanation.

At a Meeting of the Freeholders and other Inhabitants of the Town of DORCHESTER, January 3d, 1774, by Adjournment from December 28th, 1773.

EBENEZER WITHINGTON of this Town, Labourer, personally appeared and acknowledged in this Meeting and subscribed the following with his own Hand:
“I found said Tea on Saturday, on going round upon the Marshes; brought off the same thinking no Harm; returning I met some Gentlemen belonging to the Castle, who asked me if I had been picking up the Ruins? I asked them if there was any Harm? they said no except from my Neighbours.—Accordingly, I brought Home the same, part of which I disposed of, and the Remainder took from me since.
EBENEZER WITHINGTON”.

RESOLVED, That his Conduct therein proceeded from inadvertency, and it gives the greatest Satisfaction to this Town that he hath been discovered selling said Tea, otherwise the Conspirators against our Rights and Liberties might have taken Occasion to have insinuated, as their Manner is, that the whole of the Tea said to have been destroyed was plundered and privately sold contrary to the most notorious Facts:

And whereas the said Ebenezer Withington hath declared that he hath sold a Part of the Tea which he had taken up as before said to divers Persons,

RESOLVED, That the said Persons be and are hereby desired to deliver to the Committee of Correspondence for this Town the Tea thus purchased by them of the said Withington, to the intent that the same may be totally destroyed; and if said Persons or either of them shall refuse so to do, they shall be deemed as Enemies who have joined with the Ten Consignees and other Conspirators, to promote the use of the detested Article, and their Names shall be publicly posted accordingly, . . .

RESOLVED, That this Town, will by all Means in their Power, discountenance the use of Tea, while it is subject to a Duty, imposed on it by the British Parliament for the Purpose of raising a Revenue in America without our Consent, . . .

RESOLVED, That this Town on the most mature Deliberation highly approve of the Proceedings of the People who assembled in the Old South Meeting House in Boston on the 29th of November last and since. . . . it is the Opinion of this Town that the Destruction of the Tea proceeded entirely from the Obstinacy of the Consignees, and the Collector of the Customs [Richard Harrison] in refusing to grant a Clearance, and of the Governor [Thomas Hutchinson] in refusing to grant a Pass for Mr. [Francis] Rotch’s Ship.

A true Copy from Dorchester Records.
Attest. NOAH CLAP, Town-Clerk.

And that publicly put to rest the issue of the half-chest of tea that had floated away from the Boston Tea Party and ended up on Dorchester. The town got to present itself as committed to the tea boycott for all the right reasons. Withington got to declare he meant no harm. As for the people who had bought tea from Withington, they could keep their names quiet by giving up their stashes.

So does Ebenezer Withington’s story prove that people really did collect detritus of the Tea Party on the morning after the event, as much lore claims? Actually not.

TOMORROW: Reading the details.

“They found part of a half chest which had floated”

A natural question after hearing the stories of chests from the Boston Tea Party floating across the bay to the Dorchester shore is whether that was even possible.

The men and boys of the Tea Party worked hard to break open all the chests, pour out the tea leaves, and even then make sure those leaves got submerged in the salt water. Could a container of tea have escaped their attention?

In fact, there’s good evidence from 1773 for a small chest making it across the water with some drinkable tea inside.

Samuel Pierce of Dorchester wrote in his diary for 30 December:

There was a number of men came from Boston in disguise, about 40; they came to Mr Eben Withington’s down in town, and demanded his Tee from him which he had taken up, and carried it off and burnt it at Boston.

The merchant John Rowe recorded the same event from his Bostonian perspective the next day:

There was found in the House of One Withington of Dorchester about half a Chest of Tea—the People gathered together & took the Tea, Brought it into the Common of Boston & Burnt it this night about eleven of Clock

This is supposed to be part of the Tea that was taken out of the Ships & floated over to Dorchester.

On 3 Jan 1774, Edes and Gill’s Boston Gazette laid out the story that the town’s Whig leaders wanted people to know:

Whereas it was reported that one Withington, of Dorchester, had taken up and partly disposed of a Chest of the East-India Company’s Tea: a Number of the Cape or Narragansett-Indians, went to the Houses of Capt. Ebenezer Withington, and his Brother Philip Withington, (both living upon the lower Road from Boston to Milton) last Friday Evening, and with their consent thoroughly searched their Houses, without offering the least offence to any one.

But finding no Tea they proceeded to the House of old Ebenezer Withington, at a place called Sodom, below Dorchester Meeting House, where they found part of a half chest which had floated and was cast up on Dorchester point. This they seized and brought to Boston Common where they committed it to the flames.

Pierce identified the men enforcing the tea boycott as “from Boston,” but the Gazette referred to them as “Cape or Narragansett-Indians.” This is an early example of the Whigs realizing that referring to the men who destroyed the tea as unrecognizable Natives let everyone maintain deniability.

There were many Withingtons in Dorchester, obviously. The Gazette emphasized how two Withingtons of the higher class—the militia captain and his brother—had done nothing wrong and were eager to cooperate with the searchers.

“Old Ebenezer Withington” didn’t come off as well. This is the only reference I’ve found to a place in eighteenth-century Dorchester being called “Sodom.”

On the same day that issue of the Boston Gazette appeared, old Ebenezer Withington had to answer to the Dorchester town meeting.

TOMORROW: The town takes a stand.

Taking the Measure of Tea Chests

In addition to the various samples of tea leaves I’ve discussed, relics of the Boston Tea Party include supposed remnants of the chests that tea came in.

One highly visible example is a lacquered tea chest donated by the Foster family to the Massachusetts Daughters of the American Revolution in 1902. Tradition said it was collected by Hopestill Foster on the Dorchester shore in 1773.

The state chapter loaned that box to the national organization’s museum in Washington, D.C. In 2006, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette reported that this tea chest was the most famous item in the museum’s Massachusetts Room, itself a replica of the Hancock-Clarke House in Lexington.

In Treasure Chests: The Legacy of Extraordinary Boxes (2003), Lon Schleining reported that the Foster chest was “quite small, about a foot high and wide by about a foot and a half long, made of 1/2-in.-thick wood and painted with red and black Oriental scenes.” He added, “Even full of tea, one of these chests would have weighed only a few pounds.”

In fact, the East India Company’s list of lost inventory, reproduced back here and analyzed by Charles Bahne, shows that full chests of Bohea tea “contained an average of 353 pounds per chest.” They were lined with lead and built to survive long sea voyages.

Bahne noted that the cargo also included four higher-priced grades of tea shipped in “quarter chests,” and those averaged between 68 and 86 pounds of tea.

Dan Du’s doctoral thesis, “This World in a Teacup: Chinese-American Tea Trade in the Nineteenth Century,” quotes another period source:

During the adventure to Canton in 1791, Jonathan Donnison, Captain of American ship General Washington, detailed the measuring of the tea chests for Hyson, Hyson [Skin], Bohea, and Souchong teas in his account book.

That account book is now in the collection of the Peabody Essex Museum. It shows a half chest of Bohea tea was nearly three feet long, two feet wide, and over a foot tall. Chests of more expensive Hyson and Souchong teas were closer to the dimensions of the Foster family chest, but still larger.

Most important, the chests that the East India Company shipped to America were utilitarian containers meant to go to tea wholesalers. They were not decorative household objects like the Foster family chest. Which, incidentally, shows no signs of having been hatcheted or left soaking in saltwater for hours.

Interestingly, a 2013 issue of South Boston Today reports a completely different story of Hopestill Foster’s family and the tea destruction:

the Widow Foster became famous during the Boston Tea Party. While it seems far away today, in 1770 it was ocean from First Street to the British tea ships at anchor. When the “Indians” dumped the tea, at least one chest floated to the area around F Street. A workman on the Foster estate dragged the chest to a barn, lit a fire and tried to dry it. Widow Foster discovered him and made him burn the tea, chest and all.

(The Tea Party was, of course, in 1773.)

[ADDENDUM: As the comment from Patrick Sheary below reports, the museum has concluded that this chest dates from after the Boston Tea Party, and it’s no longer on display in the Massachusetts Room. Older sources still mention it as a Tea Party relic, but the latest study is more exact.]

“Governor, you might as well take half a dozen grains”

Here’s another sample of what’s reported to be tea from the Boston Tea Party on display in a museum.

Jonathan Lane of Revolution 250 clued me into this little vial of tea leaves last week.

It’s at the Seward House Museum in Auburn, New York. This was the home of William H. Seward, U.S. senator and secretary of state under Abraham Lincoln.

In 1841, when Seward was the governor of New York, he made a visit to Boston. Among the notable places he visited was the Massachusetts Historical Society, then located in the Provident Institution for Savings building on Tremont Street beside the King’s Chapel Burying-Ground.

Seward’s Memoir of His Life and Selections from His Letters, 1831-1846, edited by his son Frederick, described that visit:

…a morning passed in the State-House, and an afternoon at the Athenæum and Historical Society, with their Revolutionary relics, swords, and flags, letters of the colonial patriots, and a sealed bottle of tea.

The old gentleman who was pointing out the curiosities said: “Here is some of the tea which was thrown overboard in the harbor. A broken chest floated ashore near the residence of an old lady, who, though a patriot, thought it a great pity that so much good tea should be wasted, and so locked the ‘treasure-trove’ in her closet. She was forced to use it sparingly and privately, however, to avoid the observation of her neighbors. So it was not all gone before the event became historic and the tea a precious relic. This is some of it.”

That was most likely the tea that the Rev. Thaddeus Mason Harris donated to the M.H.S. before he died in 1842. However, the story the Sewards recorded is different. The label on Harris’s tea now says those leaves were “gathered up on the Shore of Dorchester Neck,” suggesting they were loose instead of in a chest, and thus probably undrinkable. No mention of an old lady or a broken chest.

The Seward account continues with the “old gentleman” at the M.H.S.:

Just as he was saying this, the bottle slipped from his hand and broke; the tea was scattered on the floor. Hastily gathering it up, and putting the parcel back upon the shelf, he remarked: “There is none lost, and it won’t be hurt by it, but since the bottle is broken, Governor, you might as well take half a dozen grains as mementos of Boston.”

The precious leaves were put into a diminutive vial and taken to Albany.

That seems like a gracious gift for a visiting dignitary, but hardly a good testament to how the M.H.S. of 1841 preserved its historical artifacts.

Thaddeus Mason Harris Passing Out Tea

In 1793, a young Harvard graduate named Thaddeus Mason Harris became the minister of the new Unitarian meeting in Dorchester.

Harris had previously been a schoolteacher and a librarian at Harvard College.

He also claimed to have been offered the position of secretary to George Washington, but there’s no evidence of that and the job wasn’t open at the time.

That’s not the only story in Harris’s biography which I find a little suspect, so I’m more skeptical than usual about historical anecdotes or artifacts that come through him.

However, Harris was a co-founder of and longtime volunteer for the American Antiquarian Society, and active in other historical organizations, so he’s hard to avoid. (Joshua R. Greenberg alerted me to Christen Mucher’s article about Harris’s work on Commonplace last month.)

In particular, Harris spread around samples of tea said to have been collected from the Dorchester shore after the Boston Tea Party. He doesn’t appear to have preserved the name of the person who gave him this tea.

Harris’s own name did remain attached to these relics, however, so often people assume he collected the tea himself. He would have been five years old at the time, living with his family in Charlestown, on the other side of Boston from Dorchester. It seems far more likely that one of the minister’s neighbors or parishioners after he settled in Dorchester gave him this tea.

Harris donated some of that tea to the Massachusetts Historical Society. It rests in a glass jar with paper labels that say:

Tea
that was gathered up on the Shore of Dorchester Neck on the morning after the destruction of the three Cargos at Boston
December 17, 1773

Presented by Rev. Dr. Harris

You can play with a curious digital image of that artifact here.

The Dorchester minister gave another sample to the American Antiquarian Society in 1840, two years before he died. That organization describes its treasure as:

Less than five inches high, the mold-blown, pale aqua bottle filled with tea leaves is wrapped at its mouth with twill tape and sealed with red sealing wax. Its attached paper label reads: “Tea Thrown into Boston Harbor Dec. 16, 1773.”

A second label survives in the handwriting of the A.A.S. secretary in the 1860s with text very similar to the M.H.S. bottle and Harris’s name on it.

This past June, Heritage Auctions sold a third small bottle of tea with a paper label. This one says:

“Tea gathered on the shore at Dorchester Neck the morning after the destruction of the three cargoes December 17” 1773. From
Thaddeus Mason Harris, D.D.

Rec’d from the American Antiquarian Society, March 1895
F. W. Putnam
Part of a lot in a stone jar found at Ant. Soc. among other things

Frederic Ward Putnam (1839–1915) was an anthropologist, first director of the Peabody Museum in his home town of Salem, and curator at the other Peabody Museum at Harvard University.

That sample of tea, deaccessioned in some way from the A.A.S., was passed down in private hands in the twentieth century. When it was sold in June, it fetched $87,500.

TOMORROW: More tea samples.

Dorchester Heights ceremony, 17 Mar.

On Thursday, 17 March, the National Parks of Boston will observe Evacuation Day with a ceremony at the Dorchester Heights site in what is now termed South Boston.

Co-hosted by the South Boston Citizens’ Association, this year’s celebration will take place in the hilltop park where the Dorchester Heights Monument stands. On the program are:

• Mayor Michelle Wu
• Rep. Stephen Lynch
• Other political figures to be named later
• National Park Service Regional Director Gay Vietzke
• Boston Poet Laureate Porsha Olayiwola
• Student awards of some sort
• The Lexington Minutemen
• The Boston University Band

Most notable might be “an announcement of a substantial multimillion-dollar federal investment to restore Dorchester Heights Monument as a local and national landmark.” Since 2012 the observation tower at that site has been closed due to “water infiltration and structural deterioration.” This building was just one item in the National Park Service’s long list of deferred maintenance projects.

With the national Sestercentennial coming up, and Congress eager to stimulate the economy as the pandemic began in an election year, the federal government found the funds for that tower. In a press release last week the park said:

a multi-million-dollar appropriation from the Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA) [will] restore the iconic 1902 Dorchester Heights Monument tower and landscape. When the project is completed, visitors will be able to enjoy the improved public green space and spectacular 115-foot landmark on Telegraph Hill that commemorates a pivotal event of the Revolutionary War.

The 17 March ceremony is free and open to the public, but space is limited and nearby parking even more so. People who want to attend are asked to register through this webpage. There will be a heated tent in the park and refreshments after the ceremony. Attendees may wish to wear masks for safety in the crowd. A video record of the event will be streamed on Boston National Historical Park’s Facebook and YouTube pages.