Tea Leaves and Traditions

Over the past three days I’ve discussed seven purported samples of tea from the Boston Tea Party. And we’re not done yet!

The Old South Meeting House displays a small corked vial of tea beside a paper label printed with Chinese characters. The panel says:

Tradition has it that these tea leaves, as well as the Chinese tea label, are souvenirs from the Boston Tea Party.

For more information we can go over to this webpage from the Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum:

This 18th century tea chest label was donated to the museum in 1987 by the Wells Family Association. Genealogical researcher, author, and descendant of a Tea Party participant, Charles Chauncey Wells researched the connection of the label to his ancestor Thomas Wells, a blacksmith who lived from 1746 until 1810. Thomas Wells worked on the wharves and, like many other young laborers, was entrenched in Boston’s pre-revolutionary rebellion. Down five generations, Charles Chauncey Wells recalls how his grandfather would take the label out, protected under glass, from its hiding place on special occasions to discuss with pride the history of this infamous ancestor! . . .

When the tea label was donated to the Old South Meeting House, experts from Harvard University, Michigan State University, and The British Museum authenticated and translated the document. The label is block printed on rice paper in Old Chinese writing. The paper is of 18th century origin and comes from Canton.

Thomas Wells’s son was prominent in nineteenth-century Boston, but he wasn’t listed as a Tea Party participant in Francis S. Drake’s 1888 Tea Leaves. The family tradition seems to rest on these artifacts.

A similar corked vial, shown above, is in the collection of the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum (formerly the Museum of Our National Heritage) in Lexington. In this blog post from 2012, the museum said:

In 1973, as the Grand Lodge of Masons in Massachusetts and other organizations in the commonwealth prepared for the American Bicentennial, Paul Fenno Dudley (1894-1974) donated this vial of tea to the Grand Lodge’s Museum. The Grand Lodge's collection is now housed at the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum and Library…

That article doesn’t say how this artifact came to Dudley. Drake did list Samuel Fenno in the Tea Party, “principally from family tradition,” but said nothing about the family preserving a sample of tea. And it’s not clear if this vial came to Paul Dudley Fenno through inheritance.

Up in Exeter, New Hampshire, the American Independence Museum displays a vial of tea that I discussed back in May. That’s not the tea collected by Thomas Melvill, as once thought—the Melvill tea is on display at the Old State House in Boston. Instead, this vial may have been modeled after the Melvill artifact. The museum’s webpage on this artifact suggests its label was written in the late 1800s by William Lithgow Willey of the New Hampshire Sons of the American Revolution.

Also in New Hampshire, the Mont Vernon Historical Society holds a small glass jar of tea leaves. Its website says “a lamplighter by the name of Elias Proctor…joined other colonists in salvaging the broken crates of tea that washed ashore,” keeping the salty leaves to dye cloth.

Over time, Proctor reportedly doled out those leaves to relatives:

When Elias gifted family members with his stash, we are told that he always proclaimed the great cause for which it had been sacrificed.

It was from just such a gift that the Horne Family of Dover, NH received some of Elias’s tea. There is a very good chance that it was Mary Horne Batchelder who put some of it in the small vial we have in the museum today. She thought the 117 year old tea would make a nice wedding gift to her children when they got married. She gave some to her son who went west with it and his bride, settling in Kansas. She also gave some to her daughter Marcia who married Frank Lamson on January 9, 1890. Mr. Lamson would bring his new wife and the old tea back to Mont Vernon to live on the farm that bears the family’s name to this day. It would reside there for another generation or two. In the 1970’s, the couple’s daughter, Ella M. Lamson, gave the now 200 year old tea to the Mont Vernon Historical Society where it has been treasured ever since.

As with the samples coming to us through Thaddeus Mason Harris, this story makes no claim that an ancestor participated in destroying the tea cargo. But there’s also a lot of uncertainty in that recreation of the tea’s provenance. Among other details, Boston had no street lamps until after 1773.

I suspect quite a few Americans grew up being told that a small pile of tea leaves came from the Tea Party, as in this family tradition I discussed in September. After all, by the mid-1800s Boston’s historical repositories were accumulating just such artifacts. Such a sight would have been a way to connect children to their family, to history, and to American patriotism.

Of course, one pile of loose black tea leaves looks much like another. During the Colonial Revival, families were eager to connect themselves to fabled moments of the Revolution. Parents wanted to inculcate their children with respect for their ancestors and their country. Why not turn a spoonful of old tea into a history lesson? Who outside the family would ever hear that tale?

The Ninety-Four Years of Charles Thomson

The second person to sign the Declaration of Independence, after John Hancock, was Charles Thomson.

Thomson wasn’t a delegate to the Continental Congress, and thus didn’t sign the famous handwritten copy of the Declaration.

Rather, he was the Congress’s secretary, chosen unanimously in the first week of meetings and serving fifteen straight years to the launch of the federal government in 1789. He co-signed all the body’s official pronouncements before sending them to the printer.

Last month the American Philosophical Society ran a blog post by Michael Miller about Thomson, inspired by some recently acquired manuscripts from his later years.

Charles Thomson had a remarkable early life—straight out of a melodramatic novel if we believe the details in John Fanning Watson’s Annals of Philadelphia (1830), which I’ll put in brackets. He was born in Londonderry in 1729, and his mother died when he was ten. His father decided to move the family to America but died on the voyage over [within sight of the coast!]. The kids were then split up [after the captain took all their father’s money!], but they remained in touch.

Charles was placed in a blacksmith’s household. [After watching the man make a nail, he pounded out one himself! Overhearing the smith and his wife talk about legally making him an apprentice, Charles ran away! He met a kind anonymous lady who sent him to school!] By 1743, when he was fourteen, Charles was attending Francis Allison’s academy in New London, Pennsylvania, with support from one of his older brothers.

On coming of age in 1750, Thomson moved to Philadelphia. With the recommendation of Benjamin Franklin, he became a tutor in languages at the Academy. He joined some of the city’s intellectual societies, eventually serving as corresponding secretary of the A.P.S., and the Presbyterian Church. He became involved in political matters like the colony’s Indian policy, and after the Stamp Act he allied himself with John Dickinson and other organizers of resistance to Crown taxes.

In September 1774 Thomson married Hannah Harrison, daughter of a wealthy Quaker. This cemented his position in the top echelon of Philadelphia society. That was also when the First Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia and, as I said, the delegates chose Thomson to be the secretary. Anyone who’s seen 1776 can recall how big a presence Thomson was, as played by Ralston Hill—and that was just handling official business.

Since Thomson maintained the Congress’s official records, he exercised influence behind the scenes as well, and he managed a lot of official correspondence, foreign and domestic. When he got fed up with delegates not deciding on the design of an official seal for the U.S. of A., he created the eagle symbol the country still uses. Thomson’s power annoyed some people, and he once got into a physical altercation with delegate James Searle.

The A.P.S. blog post focuses on Thomson’s big post-Congress project:

Upon retiring from politics in 1789, at age 60, Thomson devoted himself to studying the Bible in Greek. He acquired a 1665 copy of the Septuagint edited by the English theologian John Pearson. When New Testament writers quoted Scripture, they used the Septuagint, more often than they used Hebrew sources. In order to better understand the Greek text himself and to share his work with an American audience, Thomson saw the merit in translating the Septuagint into English for the first time.

Thomson completed his translation of the Bible, both Old Testament and New, in 1808. His rendition is titled The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Covenant, Commonly Called the Old and New Testament: Translated from the Greek. Only a thousand copies were printed; most went unsold and ended up as scrap paper.

Undaunted, seven years later Thomson published A Synopsis of the Four Evangelists, a summary of the four canonical gospels into one unified text.

Thomson lived to be ninety-four, dying just a couple of weeks short of the fiftieth anniversary of the First Continental Congress. By that time, Thomas Jefferson had heard, the former secretary had senile dementia and could not recognize family members; “It is at most but the life of a cabbage,” Jefferson wrote. Still, Thomson had outlived all but three of the other men who signed the Declarationa after him.

Who Should Pay for Mr. Molineux’s Cannon?

I’m at last getting to the original purpose of the 3 Feb 1775 petition to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s committee of safety that I’ve been discussing.

All four men who signed the petition were delegates to the provincial congress that started meeting in Cambridge on 1 February. After explaining that their towns had undertaken to mount and equip eight iron cannon obtained by William Molineux inside Boston in the fall of 1774, they wrote:

Since which the late Congress held [in] Cambridge have Agreed to to [sic] provide Warlike Stores, &c, at the Expence of the province

Wherefore the Inhabitants of Said towns think it Reasonable that the Expence of equiping Said Cannon for Service Should be borne in the Same manner as other Supplys and Desire yould Consider the matter & act thereon [as] you Shall think proper

In other words, this petition is rather similar to what sometimes seems like the majority of correspondence among towns and other governmental bodies in colonial New England—trying to get someone else to pay for something.

This example wasn’t about poor people needing relief or roads having to be mended, but about preparation for war. Yet the principle was the same. As long as the provincial congress was going to spend money on weapons, shouldn’t it also cover “the Expence of equiping Said Cannon for Service”?

The committee of safety actually met at Ebenezer Stedman’s tavern in Cambridge that day and came to some decisions about the provincial artillery. However, the only specific actions placed on the committee’s records involve the four brass cannon hidden at Lemuel Robinson’s tavern in Dorchester. (Yes, those are the Four Stolen Cannon at the center of The Road to Concord.)

The men of Watertown were hoping for a positive response to the petition. On 6 February, the town meeting voted “that the Committe appointed to mount ye great Guns do not Compleat the Same till after the Congress Rises.” On 11 February the congress took up the question of how its committees should handle military supplies, but four days later it decided to defer that decision until the next session at Concord in late March. On 20 February, the Watertown voters gave up waiting and decided “that the Committe appointed to mount the Great Guns Compleat the Same as Soon as may be.”

The delay and uncertainty had consequences. As of 21 February, committee of safety member Dr. Benjamin Church secretly reported to Gen. Thomas Gage, “Gun Carriages are making at Water Town by McCurtain—an Irishman, who has fallen out with the Select Men there, as he will not permit them to be taken away untill the Cash is forthcoming.”

It’s not clear to me who came up with the necessary cash. But starting on 23 February, the joint committee of safety and supplies became more involved in managing the nascent artillery force. It appointed officers and divvied out guns.

Among other things, the committee directed “That eight field pieces, with the shot and cartridges, and two brass morters with their bombs, be deposited at Leicester,” just west of Worcester, with militia colonel Joseph Henshaw. Those might be the same eight cannon that the towns of Watertown, Concord, Lexington, and Weston had been working on, or they might be eight other cannon. There were dozens being quietly moved around Massachusetts in those months.

TOMORROW: Ready for war?

“A certain Number to be employed in cleaning the Streets”

My curiosity about how colonial Boston periodically coerced free black men into mending town highways began years ago when I came across an item in the New-England Chronicle and Essex Gazette printed on 24 Aug 1775.

[That issue covered 17-24 August while the next covered 24-31 August, so it’s not the issue now dated 24 August in the Readex newspaper database.]

At that time, printers Samuel and Ebenezer Hall had brought their press down from Salem to Cambridge and were publishing just behind the siege lines for the Continental Army and its supporters. During the siege they reported about what they heard from the besieged capital, as in:

We are informed that the Negroes in Boston were lately summoned to meet at Faneuil-Hall, for the Purpose of chusing out of their Body a certain Number to be employed in cleaning the Streets; in which Meeting Joshua Loring, Esq; presided as Moderator. The well known Cesar Meriam opposed the Measure, for which he was committed to Prison, and confined till the Streets were all cleaned.

One possibility is that this event never happened, or was distorted beyond the facts by the time the news reached Cambridge. I haven’t found mentions of it in any other source. But there aren’t many sources on civilian life in Boston at this point in the siege. I think this event did happen because of the specific names involved, and it reflected an attempt by Loyalists to resume “normal” life in Boston.

Those men convened something approximating a town meeting in Faneuil Hall. Most of Boston’s selectmen had remained in the town to preserve the community, but without town clerk William Cooper they didn’t keep normal records. Selectman Timothy Newell’s surviving diary focused on military developments and didn’t mention this gathering.

The men who came to Faneuil Hall elected Joshua Loring, Sr., as moderator, as a normal town meeting would do. He was no longer an inhabitant of Boston, having moved out to Roxbury in 1752 (his house shown above), but the Whigs had set a precedent for meetings of the Body of the People with everyone welcome.

The gathering then tried to reinstate the custom of drafting free black men to repair the roads, with a little alteration: the white men reportedly summoned all the town’s black men and told them to choose who had to do this work. But that system of forced labor hadn’t really been workable for decades.

The New-England Chronicle credited “The well known Cesar Meriam” with protesting the measure. This was Caesar Marion, a formerly enslaved blacksmith in the North End. He had worked for a white blacksmith named Edward Marion. In 1769 Edward promised to manumit Caesar in his will and leave him all his tools and the use of his shop, assuming he provided for Edward’s widow Mary. In Boston’s 1771 tax list, Caesar Marion was listed as a property-owner.

The New-England Chronicle printers expected their readership of Boston neighbors and refugees to recognize Caesar Marion’s name. Apparently he was prominent in town, possibly a leader in the town’s African community. Certainly at this moment he took the lead in protesting for them.

Joshua Loring’s son Joshua, Jr., was Gov. Thomas Gage’s new sheriff, overseeing the jail. The news item says that the Loyalists locked up Marion to keep him quiet and as a sort of hostage to force other men to clean the roads. Peter Edes, stuck in the Boston jail that summer and keeping a diary, didn’t describe Caesar Marion being “committed to prison.” But perhaps it wasn’t long before “the Streets were all cleaned.”

After the siege ended, Massachusetts revised its militia laws. With a war on, and black men serving in the Continental Army, the government no longer saw value in excluding blacks from militia service. That erased the justification for making them work for free on the highways, and this legal custom disappeared for good.

“As plenty in King-street as the paving stones”

On 14 March 1770, 250 years ago today, Josiah Collings went to magistrate Edmund Quincy to swear to this deposition, which he then had published in the 26 March Boston Gazette:

To the Inhabitants of the Town of BOSTON,

WHEREAS by some evil minded person or persons, it has been diverse times since the public massacre in King-street on the evening of the 5th day of March current, reported, That a blacksmith who works near the foot of Beacon-hill, did swear that some of the Inhabitants of the said town of Boston did say at the time of the said massacre, that the dollars which should be taken out of the Custom-house would be as plenty in King-street as the paving stones:——

And whereas it as been surmis’d of me the subscriber, who have for some time past work’d as a blacksmith near the said place, that I had spoken as above.——

I do now hereby declare, That I have never heard any of the inhabitants of this town say any thing touching a design upon the Custom, or any money, or other thing thereto belonging; and that a thought of that nature was never in my mind.

JOSIAH COLLINGS.

Just as the Boston Whigs had their conspiracy theories about royal appointees, those bureaucrats had conspiracy theories about the Whigs and the crowd. They theorized that a mob had attacked Pvt. Hugh White on King Street not because he’d clubbed apprentice Edward Garrick for speaking disrespectfully of Capt. John Goldfinch but because they really wanted to attack the Customs House and loot it.

The Whigs and other defenders of Boston’s reputation of course sought to squelch any idea of nefarious purposes—on their side, at least. When some people said Collings was spreading the story around, he felt enough pressure from his neighbors to issue this public denial. In sum, the blacksmith was denying a rumor about spreading a rumor.

I don’t have much more information about Joseph Collings. He married Mary Wallace in 1763 and Elizabeth Granger ten years later. He may have been the Joseph Collins appointed as a town watchman in December 1774, or maybe not.

The Riot against the Neck Guard

I have still more to share about the Otis-Robinson brawl, but sestercentennial anniversaries are catching up, so I’ll have to get back to that story. That fight was just the start of an uptick of violence in the fall of 1769.

The next confrontation started on the night of 23 October, when a housewright and Whig activist named Robert Pierpont (also spelled “Peirpoint”) went to the British army guardhouse on Boston Neck. Pierpont owned land nearby, and he had already complained about soldiers stealing his firewood.

Under the Quartering Act of 1765, when the British government stationed soldiers in a town, the local government was supposed to supply housing and firewood. Boston had already balked at the housing back in 1768, and I don’t doubt they resisted supplying firewood as well. As the nights grew cooler, soldiers might not have worried about the such legalities.

The officers of the Neck guard sent Peirpoint away. Sgt. James Hickman and four men of the 14th Regiment later testified that the local man warned “he would go home where he had a brace of Pistols, would Load them and Fire at the first Soldier that came in his way belonging to the Guard.”

The next morning, a little before 10:00 A.M., a constable came to the guardhouse and asked for the officer in charge, Ens. John Ness. He brought a warrant from justice of the peace Richard Dana for “Stealing wood, assaulting, and knocking down one Robt Peirpoint,” in the ensign’s words.

Ens. Ness refused to leave his post until his shift was done. In other words, he placed the authority of the army over the authority of the local legal system. Instead, the young officer promised to obey the summons after he went off duty. The constable was satisfied with that. And really he didn’t have the force to make an army officer protected by armed soldiers do anything.

But there was force in numbers. Ness recalled: “Some minutes after, Peirpoint with a Number of People, came to the Front of the Guard room abusing, and pressing in upon the Centinels.” Ness assembled his whole guard with their bayonets fixed. For fifteen minutes there was a stand-off, during which “the Mob increased, keeping a little distance from us, throwing dirt, and Giveing a great deal of abuse.”

Then another squad of soldiers arrived to take over the post on the Neck. Ness formed his troops into lines to march them back to their barracks. The crowd, seeing no sign of the officer obeying the legal summons, grew angry. They started “Throwing Stones” at the soldiers. One man was hit “in the Face which made the Blood flow from his mouth and nose,” comrades recalled.

Ens. Ness declared:

In forming the Guard again, which by the Crowding in of the People had been divided, a Firelock, which had been loaded unknown to me went off, on hearing the report I turned about to the Guard, and gave positive orders for no Soldier to Load or Strike any of the Mob.

But that shot had hit the doorway of a forge where a young blacksmith named Obadiah Whiston was working. This was, as far as I can tell, the first gunshot in Boston’s Revolutionary history.

Enraged, Whiston ran after the squad to attack the soldier who had fired, Pvt. William Fowler. Ness said the blacksmith caught up opposite “the Officers Barracks of the 14th Regiment,” coming up on the right side of the troops. Fowler said Whiston “Struck him with a piece of a brick, which Cutt his head in a desperate manner, and for some time deprived him of his Sences.”

Whiston charged up a second time. Sgt. Hickman testified that he “placed the Butt end of my Halbred before him to hinder him from passing, but without striking or doing the said Whiston the least Violence.” Ens. Ness kept his soldiers moving, Fowler now staggering. He got the men “into the Barrack yard” and reported to the regimental commander, Col. William Dalrymple. Despite the crowd throwing rocks, despite Fowler’s musket firing, despite Whiston’s counterattacks, no one had been killed.

The conflict then moved to the courts. Ens. Ness reported to Justice Dana to answer Pierpont’s warrant. Meanwhile, Whiston hurried to a magistrate to swear out a complaint against Sgt. Hickman for assaulting him. The next day, Pvt. Fowler tried to start an action against Whiston, and Ness received a second summons, issued by Dana, John Ruddock, and Samuel Pemberton, for having his men fire on the people.

The proceedings that followed over the next few days showed how biased those Whig magistrates were against the soldiers. They tried to put off Fowler’s complaint. They ignored Pierpont shaking his fist and threatening Ness during the proceedings. They refused to hear testimony from soldiers. They declined to accept bail from a British officer and a Customs solicitor. When Sgt. Hickman was finally released, the crowd yelled, “Bail him with a Rope!” Soldiers said the hatter Thomas Handysyd Peck was particularly abusive. After officers complained about that behavior, Justice Dana declared “that he was deaf and could not hear…any abuse.”

Eventually all those court cases fizzled out. But the Neck guard riot raised tensions in Boston in late October 1769, 250 years ago.

(The map above shows the British fortifications on the Neck during the siege of 1775-76. Back in 1769, there was just a gate and a guardhouse. And a pile of firewood.)

“Battle of Daniels Farm” in Blackstone, 5-6 Oct.

This weekend, 5-6 October, there will be a Revolutionary War encampment and battle reenactment at the Daniels Farmstead in Blackstone (originally part of Mendon), Massachusetts.

This event won’t recreate an actual battle. In fact, the scenario is based on an imaginary contingency: the British army holding Newport has driven the New England forces out of Rhode Island. The redcoats are trying to inflict further damage on American and French units in the Blackstone River Valley to relieve pressure on the port back in Crown hands.

This event also includes demonstrations of such crafts as blacksmithing, joinery, tinsmithing, spinning, and gunsmithing. There will be fencing demonstrations and artillery units showing how men worked together to fire their cannon. Battle re-enactments are scheduled for both Saturday and Sunday, quite possibly with different outcomes.

There’s also an educational component of this reenactment, which is partly sponsored by a grant through the Blackstone Valley Regional Vocational Technical High School. On Friday students will view the crafts demonstrations after I brief them about how apprenticeships worked in the eighteenth century.

On Saturday, 5 October, I’ll speak in the high school on the topic “Beyond Battle Road: The Massachusetts Militia’s Other Marches in 1774 and 1775.” That session will be first and foremost for the reenactors themselves, but anyone can attend as long as seats are available. Blackstone Valley Tech High is at 65 Pleasant Street in Upton, and that talk is scheduled to start at 7:00 P.M.

But of course the primary attraction of this weekend is the battle reenactment out at the farmstead. The camp will be open from 10:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. on both days. Food will be sold on the site. Vendors will have period wares. Admission to the reenactment will be $8.00 per day or $10.00 for a two-day pass, with children under twelve admitted free. There will be free parking at the J.F.K. Elementary School at 200 Lincoln Street in Blackstone and buses shuttling visitors to the farmstead continuously while the camp is open.

The weather report for this weekend predicts that both Saturday and Sunday will be dry and 60°F or above, so fine weather for fall in New England.

Looking at “Leslie’s Retreat”

Today Salem commemorates “Leslie’s Retreat” on 26 Feb 1775, so I’m highlighting Donna Seger’s Streets of Salem posting about that event. She explores three points, to which I’ll add my thoughts.

“How many damn cannon(s) were there in Salem?”

Seger concludes that the most reliable number comes from Samuel Gray, as I quoted it here. Now I adore this account for preserving the forthright experience of a nine-year-old boy, but I don’t trust all the details. Young Samuel may not have been told accurate information, and he may not have remembered it exactly decades later.

I think the best source for the number of cannon involved in the incident at Salem is a small green notebook deposited at the Massachusetts Historical Society. David Mason used that notebook as he was gathering cannon for the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. Mason arranged for blacksmith Robert Foster to build carriages for the cannon tubes he collected from town fortifications, the Derby family, and other sources.

On one page of the notebook Mason totaled his own charges for the congress, including for “paint’g 17 Carridges Limbers &c.” On another page he wrote, “fosters acct. 17 field Pieces” [though that figure could also be read as 19]. So I think the most likely number of cannon in Foster’s smithy on the morning of 26 Feb 1775 was seventeen.

But the cannon Mason had collected in north Salem were only one part of what the Provincial Congress amassed in late 1774 and early 1775. That rebel government had artillery pieces in Worcester, Concord, and perhaps other towns. What’s more, some towns acquired cannon of their own. I wrote a whole book about Massachusetts’s effort to arm itself for war, and I still can’t say exactly how many damn cannon there were.

“Major Pedrick was a Tory!”

Quite definitely. According to many Salem historians, John Pedrick fooled Lt. Col. Alexander Leslie into letting him carry a warning about the redcoats marching in from Marblehead. But all contemporaneous sources show Pedrick favored the Crown.

Pedrick’s daughter Mehitable told stories about her family’s brave feats in the Revolution. Even some of her descendants didn’t believe those tales, but her daughter Elizabeth did, and she spread them to local historians. I discussed those family legends in the last chapter of The Road to Concord.

“‘Anniversary History’ was alive and well in 1775.”

Seger notes how newspaper reports of Leslie’s expedition appeared in New England newspapers alongside remarks about the anniversary of the Boston Massacre. With redcoats marching on the streets of Boston and Marshfield, and popping up on a Sunday in Marblehead and Salem, the threat of another confrontation ending in death was very real.

A year later, the date of the Massacre determined when the Continental Army moved soldiers and cannon onto Dorchester Heights. In the cannonade that provided cover for that operation, just a year and a few days after “Leslie’s Retreat,” David Mason was wounded by a bursting mortar.

Ross Wyman, Chairman of the Blacksmiths’ Convention

Since I’ll be speaking in Shrewsbury tomorrow evening, I’m sharing some material from Andrew H. Ward’s 1847 History of the Town of Shrewsbury.

September 1774 was crucial to the transition away from royal rule in Massachusetts. That was the month of the “Powder Alarm,” the disappearance of cannon from several spots around Boston harbor, and the last of the county conventions before the Massachusetts Provincial Congress formed.

And there was another, more specialized meeting:

On the 21st of September, 1774, a Convention of the Blacksmiths of the County was held at Worcester, and their patriotic proceedings, signed by forty three members, were printed, and distributed through the County. Ross Wyman of Shrewsbury, Chairman.

They resolved, that they would not, not either of them do any blacksmith work for the tories, nor for any one in their employ, nor for any one, who had not signed the non-consumption agreement agreed upon, and signed by the Congress at Philadelphia; and requested all denominations of artificers to call meetings of their craftsmen, and adopt like measures. The proceedings of the several conventions were communicated to, and read in the Provincial Congress, which gave free utterance to the combined will of the people, so consonant to their own.

Their recommendations and resolves were received as laws duly enacted, and were enforced with a promptitude and zeal, that nothing could withstand.

The clerk of that convention, who probably organized the event and drafted the convention’s resolves, was Worcester’s Timothy Bigelow.

As for Ross Wyman (1717-1808), Ward wrote:

He was a stout, athletic man, and, previous to the Revolution, while in Boston, and in his wagon, came near being seized and carried off by a press-gang from a British man-of-war. He resolutely defended himself, and, at length, snatching up a cod fish with both hands in the gills, beat them off by slapping them in the face with its slimy tail!

He was a blacksmith by trade, a warm friend to his country, and ever refused to do blacksmithing, or other work for a tory. At the commencement of the Revolution, Gen. [Artemas] Ward requested him to make him a gun and bayonet of sufficient strength for him to pitch a man over his head. He made it to order, and, of horse nail stubs; it was a real king’s arm, as a certain kind of musket was called at that day; a valuable piece, and did the country some service.

How it had done before, and in other hands, is not so well known, but some time after the Revolution, it was, when in the writer’s hands, many times known to do execution, at one and the same time, both in front and rear.

Ward the local historian was Ward the general’s grandson. He evidently got a chance to shoot Wyman’s musket and discovered it flashed back in his face in a big way.

The picture above shows a mill that Wyman and his family built in Shrewsbury the early 1800s, courtesy of the Digital Commonwealth.

How Peter Slater Snuck Out to the Tea Party

Here’s another early insider’s account of the Boston Tea Party—made public only fifty-eight years after the event.

This account appeared in the obituary for Peter Slater, who died in Worcester in 1831. It was first published in the Newburyport Herald on 18 October and Slater’s home-town newspaper, the Massachusetts Spy, on 19 October, and then reprinted with small changes in the November issue of the New-England Magazine:

Captain Slater was one of those persons who disguised themselves and threw the Tea overboard in Boston harbor, in December, 1773. He was then but a boy—an apprentice to a Rope maker, in Boston.

He attended the meeting of the citizens of Boston at the Old South Church, in the afternoon, where the question was agitated relative to the landing of the tea, and some communications were made to [Francis] Rotch, the consignee of the cargoes. His master, apprehensive that something would take place relative to the tea then in the harbor, took Peter home and shut him up in his chamber.

He escaped from the window, went to a Blacksmith’s shop, where he found a man disguised, who told Peter to tie a handkerchief round his frock, to black his face with charcoal and to follow him—the company soon increased to about twenty persons.

Captain Slater went on board the Brig [the Beaver] with five others—two of them brought the tea upon deck—two broke open the chests and threw them overboard—and Captain Slater with one other, stood with poles to push them under water. Not a word was exchanged between the parties from the time they left Griffin’s wharf till the cargo was emptied into the harbor, and they returned to the wharf and dispersed. This is the account of that memorable event as given by Capt. Slater.

He afterwards served five years as a soldier in the Revolution. He was a firm patriot, a brave soldier, a valuable citizen and an honest man.

Slater was born in 1760, thus thirteen years old at the time of the Tea Party and (contrary to the claim on his gravestone, above) seventy-one when he died. Though he was one of the youngest people who helped to destroy the tea, that wasn’t his first participation in political violence: he’d already been involved in the brawls that led up to the Boston Massacre.

Like Joshua Wyeth and Benjamin Simpson, who spoke for attribution about their experiences at the Tea Party in the late 1820s, Slater had moved out of Boston, and thus away from the ethos that kept such stories private. And of course by the time his account made it into print, he was dead.

Wheels and What They’re Worth

Elisabeth Meier of the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture just wrote on learning about the art and mystery of the wheelwright at Colonial Williamsburg:

I’d already been passed by several carriages in Williamsburg, and each time, I’d had no idea how much specialized knowledge was rolling by under the bright coats of paint—which, incidentally, the wheelwrights also mix. Underneath that paint, the wood is specially chosen for the task it serves. The hubs are elm, because the tight, twisted grain resists splitting even when the spokes are driven in. Colonial wheelwrights also used oak and black gum. The spokes themselves are oak, a hard, durable wood that rives well and, therefore, can be shaped quickly. The fellies, which make up the wooden rim of the wheel, can be oak, ash, or elm. These are protected from the stress of passing over rough roads by iron rims that can be replaced relatively easily, thus prolonging the life of the wheel and the minimizing the expense of maintaining a vehicle.

…eighteenth-century wheels were beautifully engineered so that use would strengthen rather than weaken them. To start with, the mortises that the spokes in the hub are cut on an angle, so that the joint gets progressively tighter as the spokes are driven in. But this alone wouldn’t save a wheel from loosening under the constant jostling from horses and uneven roads. To avoid that, wheels have a concave shape, or ‘dish,’ built into them. The dish helps focus the forces on the wheel inwards, so that the joints would be driven together over time rather than being shaken apart. However, this only works if the wheel touches the ground at a right angle, meaning that the hubs also have to be angled. The result gives carts and carriages something of a flamboyant look—something I will no longer interpret as artistic license!

Wheelwrights were essential craftsmen in any community, and their craft supported much of the mobility that enabled the consolidation of England, and later America, in the eighteenth century. As a result the huge demand for wheels, wheelwrights on both sides of the Atlantic could count on purchasing timber that had been pre-processed into rough hubs, spokes, and fellies, considerably cutting down on the labor needed to shape a wheel. However, processes that were efficient for wheelwrights were often at odds with the needs of newly empowered governments and the infrastructure they were beginning to build. Public roads were a case in point. For wheelwrights, it was cheapest and easiest to nail on an iron rim in pieces, or strakes, using large bolts, but these bolts were tough on road surfaces. Continuous iron rims, or tire irons, were easier on pavement, but it took considerably more fuel and space to heat them evenly enough to fit around a wheel.

I gained a new respect for wheels in researching The Road to Concord. In 1774, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s Committee of Safety and Supplies set out to build an artillery force. Between politically supportive merchants, shore batteries, and the Boston’s militia gunhouses, they gathered dozens of cannon by early the next year. But those guns needed field carriages to roll across the countryside and maneuver around battlefields. And field carriages needed good, strong wheels.

As Meier’s essay shows, wheels were complex artifacts requiring skilled labor. Gun carriages were specialized vehicles, assembled by blacksmiths from iron and wood. What’s more, many of the cannon were damaged and needed special mounting. All that work was expensive. As a result, putting guns on carriages proved to be a chokepoint for Massachusetts’s Patriot committees, both at the provincial level and for towns that had decided to form their own artillery companies.

And that made the effort vulnerable. When Dr. Benjamin Church first sent intelligence to Gen. Thomas Gage, his information was mostly about blacksmiths making gun carriages—which blacksmiths and where. Days later, Lt. Col. Alexander Leslie nearly intercepted a bunch of cannon at Robert Foster’s smithy in Salem, where they were being mounted. When fighting finally broke out on 19 Apr 1775, the provincials didn’t take any cannon into battle—perhaps because none was fully ready.

Making the “Salem Connection,” 7 Apr.

On Friday, 7 April, I’ll speak at the Salem Athenaeum about “The Salem Connection: A Crucial Part of Massachusetts’s Secret Drive to Collect Artillery Before the Revolutionary War.”

This event is part of Salem’s commemoration of “Leslie’s Retreat,” the confrontation on 26 Feb 1775 when a Patriot crowd prevented Lt. Col. Alexander Leslie from searching a smithy near the North River for weapons.

As I describe in The Road to Concord, there actually were weapons in that forge—at least when Leslie and his soldiers arrived in town. But blacksmith Robert Foster had hastily moved them away while David Mason, the man who had collected those guns, blocked Leslie’s approach at a drawbridge. Those cannon were part of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s drive to build an army.

Salem was also the site of other significant actions resisting the royal government in the preceding year:

• the Massachusetts General Court’s vote on 17 June 1774 to send delegates to the First Continental Congress, which prompted Gen. Thomas Gage to dissolve that legislature.
• the Salem town meeting’s vote on 24 August 1774 to send delegates to an Essex County convention, which Gage tried to stop by detaining local activists and summoning troops; that didn’t work, so he gave up on Essex County and moved back to Boston.
• the first meeting of the Provincial Congress on 7 October 1774.

I’ll speak about how all those events tie together as part of a province-wide resistance to the Crown.

My talk is scheduled to start at 7:00 P.M. Admission is $10 for Salem Athenaeum members, $15 for others, free for students with identification, with the proceeds benefiting the host institution.

A Whitehouse Briefing

Last week I wrote about Pvt. Joseph Whitehouse and his bride Jane Crothers, who each testified to events on the night of the Boston Massacre. (She more reliably than he, I believe.)

Don Hagist, author of British Soldiers, American War and The Revolution’s Last Men, wrote with more information about Pvt. Whitehouse and the experiences of wives attached to the 14th Regiment of Foot, so I’m gratefully sharing that information as a “guest blogger” posting.

Joseph Whitehouse was thirty years old when he married Jane Crothers in March 1770. He was born in Birmingham, England, and had pursued a trade fairly typical for that industrial city; he was a smith. By the age of twenty-five he’d tired of that profession, and he enlisted in the army.

This was a common path for a British soldier; most of the men who served in British infantry regiments during the American Revolution enlisted in their early twenties, after having pursued one or more other lines of work. The army offered steady employment, the opportunity to travel, and a pension after long service—perquisites not offered by any other profession of the era.

After their marriage, and their testimonies about the troubles in Boston in 1770, Joseph and Jane Whitehouse probably stayed with the regiment at Castle William in Boston Harbor, but they may have had opportunities to visit the mainland. Some soldiers’ wives did, and the Boston Post-Boy of 25 February 1771 reported that two of them fell into misfortune:

On Friday last as two Women belonging to the 14th Regiment were crossing the Ice at the South End of Town, they both fell through, and altho’ they were soon taken out by the Assistance of the Town’s People, yet one of them, Susannah Mills, was so chil’d with the cold, that she expir’d immediately; the other is like to do well.

Conditions on Castle Island were crowded and brought challenges different that those posed by the hostile townspeople. Late in 1771, engineering officer John Montresor wrote:

There is a deficiency [of water] from the latter end of July unto the latter end of November. . . . the 14th is now 400 men – 70 women & 90 children. Obliged to employ a large Boat every other day – sent to Boston to Peck’s wharf & bought there at one shilling per Hogshead – One hhd serves one Company of the 14th Regt Two days.

The 14th Regiment didn’t have to endure these conditions much longer, but their next station was even more difficult. In 1772 they left Boston harbor for the island of St. Vincent in the West Indies, part of a force sent to quell a rebellion by island natives. There, disease took a toll on the regiment in addition to casualties from fighting. By 1774, the regiment was due to be sent back to Great Britain after eight years in North America, but rising tensions in the colonies forced those plans to be changed. The regiment was divided up among posts in Florida, Virginia, and the Bahamas. Their grenadier company suffered severely in the Battle of Great Bridge in December of 1775.

As the British war effort turned sour in the south, the 14th Regiment was sent to join the British army in New York that was enjoying great success in the waning months of 1776. The regiment was quite worn out by this time, so the decision was made to send them home, but first the able-bodied soldiers were transferred to other regiments campaigning in America. The officers, and the soldiers no longer fit for service, were sent home, the former to recuit and the latter to be discharged.

Among the soldiers of the 14th Regiment of Foot who were discharged in England in early 1777 was Joseph Whitehouse. On 29 April, he went before the out-pension examining board at Chelsea Hospital; their examination book recorded his age, place of birth, trade and length of service, as well as the malady that prevented him from remaining a soldier. During his twelve years in the army, he had contracted a hernia, called a “rupture” in the parlance of the day, and was deemed no longer fit for service. He was granted a pension, paid semi-annually at a rate of five-eighths of a soldier‘s regular pay, a modest sum but enough to subsist on. He was still living in 1808.

What became of his wife, Jane, is not known. She was entitled to follow him with the regiment, and to accompany him to Great Britain when he was discharged from the army, but at this writing we have no information about her fate.

Thanks, Don!

“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.

“St. A Claus, was celebrated at Protestant-Hall”

In the 20 Dec 1773 New-York Gazette, alongside the first reports of the destruction of the tea in Boston harbor, printer Hugh Gaine ran this little item about a local event:

Last Monday [i.e., 13 December] the Anniversary of St. Nicholas, otherwise called St. A Claus, was celebrated at Protestant-Hall, at Mr. Waldron’s, where a great Number of the Sons of that ancient Saint celebrated the Day with great Joy and Festivity.

(Three days later, James Rivington put the same item in Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer, which sometimes gets him credit for the first American mention of “St. A Claus.” But Gaine’s paper was earlier.)

According to James Riker’s Annals of Newtown (1852), Samuel Waldron (1738-1799) was a blacksmith who lived in Newtown on Long Island, which is now part of Queens. In March 1771 Waldron hosted what looks like a similar gathering in honor of St. Patrick. I haven’t found any mention of his house or tavern being called “Protestant-Hall” except in connection with those banquets.

The photo above, from the collections of the New-York Historical Society, shows Waldron’s house in 1923. If he hosted the Sons of St. Nicholas in that building in 1773, then it was a significant location in the development of the American legend of Santa Claus.

Thomas Apthorp’s Whizzer

Speaking of Boston archeology and Joseph M. Bagley (who’ll be speaking at Old South on 13 September), I recently enjoyed looking through his A History of Boston in 50 Objects.

That book highlights fifty artifacts found during digs in greater Boston, ranging from pre-Columbian stone tools to twentieth-century household items.

My favorite object is shown above: a metal “whizzer” inscribed with the name of Thomas Apthorp, found near Faneuil Hall.

This is a child’s toy. A loop of string goes through the holes. By twisting the loop and then pulling it taut, a child can cause the metal disk to spin around and make noise. (Simpler times.)

The archeologists surmised that this whizzer was made by hammering a lead musket ball flat and then clipping its edge all around. I’m intrigued by the question of why it was made so elaborately. Why did someone go to the trouble of customizing this toy, stamping Thomas Apthorp’s name on the metal letter by letter? This is not a silversmith stamping his mark on the bottom of an expensive teapot. Thomas Apthorp wasn’t a toymaker advertising his craft, and he almost certainly didn’t make this whizzer. Rather, it was made for him.

Bagley links this whizzer to Thomas Apthorp, born in 1741 to the wealthy merchant Charles Apthorp (1698-1758). Charles’s wife Grizzell inherited Caribbean sugar plantations, and he had a major transatlantic trading business (including slaves), but his real fortune came from military contracts during the mid-century wars.

Apthorp was a commissary, supplying goods for the British army. Later he handled the money to pay the king’s soldiers in North America, keeping a share of all the specie he transported from Europe. That wasn’t actually coining money, but in terms of steady income it came close.

Apthorp’s status as an important contractor may explain this elaborate whizzer: a smith might have made it for young Thomas as a way to curry favor with his father, or show off his craftsmanship.

Another possible reason for the name-stamping: Charles and Grizzell Apthorp had a large, healthy family. Thomas was their twelfth child and eighth son. There might have been a lot of arguing over toys in the Apthorp home. If a smith stamped each boy’s name on a whizzer, that might have cut down the quarrels about which one belonged to whom, and who had lost his near Faneuil Hall.

An “infernal Scheme” in Natick?

British officers and royal officials weren’t the only folks fearing a treacherous plot by their enemies as the Revolutionary War began. The provincials outside of Boston had plenty of suspicions as well.

The 3 Mar 1775 Connecticut Gazette, published in New London, reported:

On Thursday the 23d Instant [i.e., of this month], one Thomas Nichols, a Molatto, was taken at Natick (in the County of Middlesex) and brought under Examination, before a Justice, for being concerned in enticing divers Servants to desert the Service of their Masters—causing the Minds of the said Servants to be inimical towards their Masters Persons and Property—Endeavouring to form an unlawful Combination against their Masters, and other Injuries contrary to Law & the Peace—and for want of Sureties for good Behaviour was commited.

In other words, Nichols was locked up since he couldn’t make bail.

This item appeared two down from a breathless statement that “We are told that some Blacksmiths in Town [Boston] are employed in making a great Number of Iron SHACKLES, but for whom design’d we know not, certainly not for Boston Folks!” I’m not convinced that there was such ironwork, but there was certainly irony.

Six days later another Connecticut newspaper, the Norwich Packet, printed more rumors from Natick:

By a Gentleman arrived here from Boston, we are informed, that last Week a free Negro was apprehended at Natick, in Massachusetts-Bay Government, and, after Examination, committed to Concord Goal. It appeared that said Fellow has for some Time past been employed in forming a Plot to destroy the white People; for that Purpose he had enlisted Numbers of his own Complexion, as Associates, and they only waited until some Disturbance should happen that might occasion the Militia to turn out, and in their Absence it was proposed to Murder the defenceless Inhabitants.

The same Gentleman also informs us, that, last Monday Evening, another African, in the Vicinity of Natick, was discovered to have been deeply concerned in the above-mentioned infernal Scheme; and that his Master had delivered him up to Justice.

This supposed plot was thus the mirror image of the British officers’ worry that Bostonians were conspiring to murder them after a military alarm or a party.

TOMORROW: What was behind that fear?

[Eighteenth-century shackles above courtesy of the excellent website London Lives.]

“Hoping he will still continue Honestly, faithfully & obediently to serve”

To find out more about Caesar Marion, also called “the well-known Caesar Merriam,” I looked into the life of the man who once owned him.

Edward Marion was born in Boston in 1692. He served in some town offices in the 1720s and ’30s, joined the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, and donated blacksmithing work for the town’s new workhouse.

Marion didn’t advertise his services (blacksmiths rarely had to), but he placed a couple of advertisements in the Boston Gazette in 1758 when he administered the estate of turner John Underwood.

Marion married Mary Reynolds in 1715. I’ve found no evidence that they had children, which would explain why the blacksmith didn’t feel a need to preserve his property for a son. It also left the Marions without the traditional source of support in their old age.

Both Edward and Mary Marion turned seventy years old in the early 1760s. Presumably journeymen and slaves like Caesar were already doing most of the physical work in Edward’s smithy.

On 9 May 1769, Marion made out an unusual written promise:

of my own meer motion & in consideration of the Faithfullness & honesty wherewith my Negro Servant Caeser has Served me for divers years past, & hoping he will still continue Honestly, faithfully & obediently to serve me & his mistress Mary my Wife I do hereby order & declare that it is my Will & pleasure that at & immediately after the Decease of me and my said Wife & the Survivor of us that my said Negro Caeser shall be manumitted & freed from his Servitude.

And I do also hereby give & order unto my said Negro at the time of his freedom all my working Tools belonging to the Black smiths Business now in my Shop & also the sum of six Pounds lawfull money and I do hereby also order my Ex’ors or Adm’ors In Case of his Living to be Aged or Infirm & unable to Support himself, that they be Aiding & Ajusting to him out of my Estate to prevent his becomeing a Charge to the Town—

provided always & these presents are granted upon this Condition that my said Negro shall honestly Soberly obediently & faithfully [missing word—behave?] himself towards me & my said Wife during our & each of our Lives otherwise I do hereby reserve in my own Power to revoke & invalidate this my bequest in case my said Negro shall not so faithfully & honestly bare & behave himself towards me & his said Mistress as I hope & expect he will.

I or his said Mistress may invalidate the same either by Destroying this Instrument or Expressing the same by Writing

Marion added to that promise on 30 Jan 1770:

I the within named Edward Marion do further give and order unto my said Negro at the time of his Freedom All his Cloaths Bed & Bedding, & also the Use & Improvement of my Blacksmiths Shop for him to Work in during his Life upon the Condition of his future faithfull Service to me & my said Wife as within mentioned.

As discussed yesterday, notary Ezekiel Price recorded the document on 2 February.

Jared Hardesty interprets the legal recording of that document as evidence of Caesar Marion looking out for his economic interest, exercising agency in his own life. I’m struck by how it shows the reversal of a concern I’ve seen in anecdotes about enslaved people resisting emancipation in old age, when they feared their owners simply didn’t want to support them any longer after having squeezed the labor out of them.

In this case, Edward Marion was concerned for his and his wife’s support. And he was willing to make their slave into their heir to ensure it. Of course, the blacksmith also added clauses demanding that Caesar keep up his end of the bargain at the risk of losing everything (and added a clause to keep him from becoming a burden on the town). Of course, Edward Marion may also have been motivated by feelings of duty and genuine fondness toward Caesar—we can’t read that in the legal record.

COMING UP: How did this arrangement work out?

(Thanks to professional genealogist Liz Loveland for sharing images from the Ezekiel Price notarial records at the Boston Athenaeum, the source of the above quotations.)

A New Clue to Caesar Marion

Back in 2006, I wrote about a black man named Caesar Marion who protested a town meeting measure in August 1775, during the siege of Boston. The Essex Gazette referred to him as “the well-known Caesar Merriam.”

I’d found the name of Caesar Marion on the 1771 provincial tax list, indicating that he owned property. Being a free black with real estate might have been rare enough on its own to make him “well-known.” Marion’s willingness to speak out against the authorities, even to the length of being put in jail, suggests he might also have been a recognized community leader.

But I didn’t know anything more about Marion until last month Jared Hardesty shared “Finding Agency in Unexpected Places” on the African American Intellectual History Society’s website.

Hardesty examined the records of Ezekiel Price, a well-connected notary, court clerk, and insurance agent in eighteenth-century Boston, at the Boston Athenaeum. He found transcripts of documents that Price had been asked to notarize by African-American townspeople:

Upon obtaining their freedom, many blacks turned to Price to help them record and lay claim to property. In this sense, freedom was only the first step. Property would allow freed men and women to enjoy that liberty and, more importantly, secure independence within white society. There are two instances of free blacks looking to secure property in Price’s books. The first involved a man named Charles whose former master gifted him a small Hopkinton, Massachusetts farm in his will. Charles had Price record three different testimonials from white neighbors acknowledging his inheritance. The other document belonged to a freedman named Caesar Marion, whose master, retired blacksmith Edward Marion, not only manumitted his slave in 1769, but also gave Caesar all of his tools and use of his shop. Caesar then used this property to go into business for himself, becoming one of the few black property owners in Boston listed in the 1771 Massachusetts tax assessment.

This document thus helps to fill in a crucial part of Caesar Marion’s story.

TOMORROW: Edward Marion’s grant.

A Heavy Three-Pounder in Sturbridge

Among the cannon to be fired at this weekend’s “Redcoats and Rebels” encampment at Old Sturbridge Village, I expect, will be the iron three-pounder that the museum village put back into service for Independence Day.

That gun, called a “heavy 3-pounder” because it’s about the size and weight of a light six-pounder, was made in the 1970s by the LaPans Foundry in Hudson Falls, New York. Old Sturbridge Village bought it for a negligible price a few years ago but has invested lots of resources into refurbishing the barrel and building a carriage. That matches what I found for the Massachusetts Provincial Congress in 1774-75: it had to budget much more for new cannon carriages than for the used cannon themselves.

As the Worcester Telegram & Gazette reported, the museum craftsmen modeled their field carriage after those shown in John Muller’s A Treatise of Artillery (London, 1768). Blacksmith Derek Heidemann told the newspaper, “We were able to find an artillery manual that was printed in Massachusetts in 1817. It shows the same exact style of carriage and says the style of carriage that is devised by John Muller is still the one used by the Commonwealth. Now that’s 1817, but given that the U.S. government itself is having issues putting together carriages for the regular army, we think this is still the kind of carriage that is being used by the state militia in Massachusetts in the 1830s.”

The newspaper also prepared a video about the Old Sturbridge Village cannon project.