Boston 1775: holidays

Showing posts with label holidays. Show all posts

Thursday, December 25, 2025

John Rowe’s Christmas Gift to Himself

On 25 December 1775, 250 years ago today, the Boston merchant John Rowe began a new volume of his daily diary.

The Massachusetts Historical Society has preserved and digitized that document, so that page is available here with a good crowd-sourced transcription.

Rowe wrote:

Monday December 25. 1775 Christmas Day — The Weather A Little Moderated but Cold W W —

I went to Church this morning. Mr. [William] Walter Read prayers & Mr [Samuel] Parker preachd A very Good Sermon from the 2d Chapter of St Lukes Gospell and 14th. Verse Glory to God in the Highest and on Earth Peace Good Will towards Men.

I dind at home with Mrs. Rowe the Revd Mr Parker & Jack Rowe and spent the Evening at home with Richd Greene Mrs. Rowe & Jack Rowe

I Staid & partook of the Sacrament

The Mony gather’d for the Use of the Poor of this church amo to Sixty Dollars —

Rowe was an Anglican, a vestryman at Trinity Church. Unlike the colony’s more numerous Congregationalists, he and his fellow parishioners observed Christmas. But of course Christmas in a besieged town wasn’t a terrifically joyous occasion; “Peace [and] Good Will towards Men” were in short supply.

Rowe’s diary entry for this day is innocuous. This volume raises questions mainly in how the previous volume, covering the days from 1 June to 24 December 1775, is missing. What did Rowe do during the siege? How closely did he cooperate with the royal authorities? What sentiments did he express about the Battle of Bunker Hill and other fatal fights?

The only previous volume of the diary to go missing covered 18 Aug 1765 to 10 Apr 1766, a gap starting shortly before the attack on Thomas Hutchinson’s house. (The lieutenant governor suspected Rowe was somehow behind that attack.) Rowe’s numbering indicates that he filled 138 pages in those eight months.

In contrast, Rowe wrote only 72 pages in the missing volume from late 1775, which would be by far the shortest volume in his journal. Still, those pages would be good to have.

We know John Rowe altered a 1775 diary entry to reverse what he first wrote about the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s fast day. We know his description of his speech during one of the 1773 tea meetings doesn’t match what an observer in the room reported. It’s easy to imagine, therefore, that Rowe at some point looked at what he wrote about the Stamp Act and its opponents, and about the early months of the war, and decided that those pages no longer reflected his views. Or how he wanted people to view him.

Wednesday, November 05, 2025

“The English have a great festival”

Back in July, I discussed how Simeon Potter of Rhode Island had commanded a privateer in 1744 and attacked “Fort d’Oyapoc,” a small French settlement in Guyana.

In Historical Scenes from the Old Jesuit Missions, the Right Rev. William Ingraham Kip included a translation of a long report from Father Elzéar Fauque about that raid.

Writing from the port of Cayenne on 22 Dec 1744, Father Fauque described this exchange with Capt. Potter:

“Monsieur,” he said to me, “do you know that tomorrow, being the fifth of November, according to our method of computation” [for we French people count it to be the fifteenth], “the English have a great festival?”

“And what is the festival?” I asked him.

“We burn the Pope,” he answered, laughing.

“Explain to me,” I said; “what is this ceremony?”

“They dress up in a burlesque style,” he said, “a kind of ridiculous figure, which they call the Pope, and which they afterwards burn, while singing some ballads; and all this is in commemoration of the day when the Court of Rome separated England from its communion. To-morrow,” he continued, “our people who are on shore will perform this ceremony at the fort.”

After a while, he caused his pennon and flag to be hoisted. The sailors manned the yard-arms, the drum was beaten, they fired the cannon, and all shouted, five times, “Long live the King!” This having been done, he called one of the sailors, who, to the great delight of those who understood his language, chanted a very long ballad, which I judged to be the recital of all this unworthy story.

You see in this, my Reverend Father, an instance which fully confirms what all the world knew before, that heresy always pushes to an extreme its animosity against the visible Head of the Church.

This anecdote confirms the popularity of the holiday called Pope Night in New England and Guy Fawkes Day in Britain today. This Rhode Island crew was even exporting the practice into Catholic territory.

It also confirms that the popular knowledge of the history behind commeorating the 5th of November was fuzzy. That holiday was the anniversary of the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, not of England’s break with the Roman Catholic church nor (as a broadside in Boston said) the Spanish Armada.

Saturday, October 25, 2025

“Mr. Bass was conducted into his deviations”

The Rev. Edward Bass of Newburyport was under pressure from both sides during the Revolutionary War.

As a minister in the Church of England, still feeling personal loyalty to the Crown, he tried to avoid complying with the independent governments’ demands.

But that exposed him to attacks from the Patriot populace. On 4 May 1782 the Rev. Jacob Bailey (1731–1808, profile shown here), an Anglican minister who moved around the New England frontier, wrote to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (S.P.G.) in London:

I am very confident, both from the repeated assertions of Mr. Bass himself, and other circumstances, that he refused to read the Declaration of Independency, and he became, on that account, extremely obnoxious to the violent party.

I am certain that he was publicly reported for a Tory, and I was, one evening just upon my arrival at his house, witness to a scene equally ludicrous and indecent, for as he was returning from an entertainment with his wife, he was pursued along the street by near two hundred persons, who pelted him with dirt and stones, and treated him with the most indelicate language.

Meanwhile, Anglican ministers who had fled New England complained that Bass was too compliant toward the Patriot authorities. The Rev. Joshua Wingate Weeks of Marblehead reported that Bass had preached in support of American soldiers—and he said he’d heard that from Bailey.

Bailey wrote his 1782 letter to refute that charge. He recalled:

being compelled to leave my family to avoid confinement on board a guard ship, I wandered through the country, and about the middle of November came to Newburyport, and was at Church on a day of public thanksgiving appointed by the Congress. Mr. Bass desired me to preach, but I refused, assuring him that I would never deliver a charity sermon to collect money for clothing the rebel soldiers.

This I repeated soon after to Mr. Weeks, but, as nearly as I can remember, Mr. Bass gave us a general discourse, without descending to particulars, or even mentioning the occasion of the solemnity. After sermon, the collection was made. Many refused to contribute, and a lady of some distinction declared with a spirited voice, “I will never give a single penny towards the support of rebels.” This bold declaration was perhaps the occasion of my retaining the above in my memory.

On the whole, I am persuaded that Mr. Bass was conducted into his deviations, not from even the least inclination to the cause of the revolters, but from a mistaken zeal for the Church, which, he imagined, in some measure, would justify his compliance.

As noted yesterday, by 1776 Bass had stopped receiving the half of his salary paid by the S.P.G. Later in the war he realized his situation was even worse: the organization had marked the St. Paul’s pulpit as empty, no longer recognizing his existence as a minister.

TOMORROW: Routes to reinstatement?

Wednesday, October 01, 2025

Bell-Ringing on Special Occasions

Yesterday I looked at the daily schedule for ringing the bells of Boston’s meeting-houses in the 1740s.

I presume those bells also rang for their primary purpose, summoning congregants for services on Sunday.

Beyond that weekly routine, church sextons rang (or arranged for someone else to ring) the bells on various special occasions.

Bells were supposed to signal town meetings, for example. In September 1747 many North Enders complained that no bell had sounded in their neighborhood that morning, so the citizens agreed to postpone that day’s meeting until 3 P.M. The selectmen gave orders “that the Bells be rung throughout the Town.”

The selectmen also ordered sextons to ring their bells for celebrations: on imperial holidays, in response to news of military victories against the French, and when a high-ranking dignitary came to town.

Church bells rang in mourning, as when Boston received word that George II had died. And each meetinghouse’s bell was rung for a funeral, though on 12 May 1747 the town government moved to regulate that practice:

That for the Burial of any Person within the Town of Boston there shall not be more than the Bells of two Churches toll’d and that but twice at each Church on Penalty of Twenty shillings for each Bell more that shall be Toled at one and the same Funeral to be paid by him that shall order Procure or Tole the same.——

The second or Passing Bell not to exceed one hour and half after the first on Penalty aforesaid.——

That any Person demanding or Receiving any more than the Selectmen shall allow for twice Tolling said Bell at one Funeral shall forfeit the Sum of Twenty shillings.

Boston’s Whigs made a sonorous point on the second anniversary of the Boston Massacre, as the Boston Gazette reported: “the Bells muffled toll’d ’till Ten.”

Of course, church bells had also played a role in that 1770 event. After Pvt. Hugh White clubbed barber’s apprentice Edward Garrick, some of the boy’s friends got into the Old Brick Meeting-House to ring its bell. An unscheduled ringing was a fire alarm, but could also be useful in bringing out a crowd for a riot.

You can find more sources on public bells in eighteenth-century Boston in this article from the Colonial Society of Massachusetts.

TOMORROW: A new sound in Boston.

Monday, August 11, 2025

“Having loaded a Swivel that had lain buried near 25 Years”

Last month I quoted in passing how “Ensign Jonathan Folsom was shot through the shoulder” in the Battle of Lake George in 1755.

According to some family historians, this Jonathan Folsom (1724–1800?) had also served in the Louisburg campaign ten years earlier.

However, the man of that name was already a lieutenant in 1744, and he was listed as “Decd.” on 20 Jan 1745 in New Hampshire records. So I think that was probably a relative.

By 1758 the former ensign Folsom had recovered from his shoulder wound enough to be serving as a first lieutenant. (His younger brother Nathaniel Folsom rose much higher in provincial military rank.)

The 2 June 1766 Boston Post-Boy ran this article:

We hear from Exeter, that great Rejoicings were made there on Monday last, upon receiving the News of the Repeal of the Stamp-Act, by Ringing of Bells, Firing of Cannon, Illuminations, Fireworks, &c.

The following Accident happened last Monday at Newmarket, to Lieut. Jonathan Falsom of that Town—he having loaded a Swivel that had lain buried near 25 Years, it burst in Pieces, one of which struck him in the Breast and several others in one of his Legs which split the Bone thereof to Pieces, on which the Surgeons thought proper to cut it off above the Knee.

The first paragraph was the summary of an item in the 30 May New-Hampshire Gazette from Portsmouth, the second a word-for-word transcription of a later paragraph from that paper.

The timing strongly suggests that Folsom decided to fire the old swivel gun (a small cannon designed to be mounted on fortification walls or ship rails) to celebrate the Stamp Act repeal. And that turned out to be a poor decision.

That history wasn’t always transmitted accurately, though. One genealogy for this family, Nathaniel Smith Folsom’s Descendants of the First John Folsom (1876), said the accident happened during “rejoicings over the recent capture of Louisburg.” Everything pointed back to Louisburg.

TOMORROW: More Folsom family lore.

Friday, May 30, 2025

“Lucky for the Town that the Fire broke out in the Day Time”?

Just above its report on the Royal Navy store ship that caught fire in Boston harbor on 29 May 1773 (quoted yesterday), Richard Draper’s Boston News-Letter ran this brief item about another event that same day:

Saturday last being the Anniversary of the Restoration of King Charles II. a Feu de Joy was fired on board the Men of War in this Harbour.

Ordinarily, royal anniversaries like the king’s and queen’s birthdays were celebrated by both civil and military authorities in Boston. In this case, there was a conspicuous absence of cannon salutes, bell-ringing, or toasts inside the town.

New England had generally supported the Parliamentary side in the English Civil War and the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell that followed. Its people and elected officials shielded regicides from Charles II’s retribution. Most British people thought the Glorious Revolution of 1688 was a Good Thing, but New Englanders were particularly convinced that deposing the Stuarts was a necessary course correction as the kingdom sank back into papist tyranny.

Therefore, local forts and authorities didn’t join the Royal Navy in celebrating the Stuart Restoration that May day in 1773. But did the descendants of Puritans begrudge the military’s action?

Of course they did. Thomas and John Fleet’s Boston Evening-Post reported the same event this way:

Saturday last being the anniversary of the Nativity and Restoration of King CHARLES II. the Colours, (as usual on Red Letter Days) were displayed on board the Flag Ship here, and at One o’Clock a Feu de Joy from her and the Gibraltar (being the only Ships of War we had then here to protect us) was all the Notice, as we have yet heard, that was taken to honor the Memory of the execrable Race of the STEUART Family.

Even the newspaper’s use of the phrase “Red Letter Days” was fraught with meaning. Those were the saints’ days on the Anglican calendar, shunned by the Puritans. As late as 1758 Roger Sherman had to explain why he acknowledged those dates in the almanacs he published “to serve the Publick” of Connecticut despite being a devout Congregationalist.

As for the radical Boston Gazette, it didn’t mention the anniversary of Charles II’s coronation at all. But Edes and Gill’s report on the ship catching fire was highly political:

Saturday last about 12 o’Clock at Noon a Fire broke out on board the Britannia, Capt. John Walker, a Store Ship for the Fleet station’d here for the Protection of the Trade and Fishery, lying in the Harbour, and within Gunshot of the Town.

It being reported that there was a considerable Quantity of Powder on board, it put the Inhabitants in great Consternation. Thousands of People seeking Refuge from the falling of Chimneys, &c. in Case of an Explosion. However as it turn’d out, there was no Powder on Board; which if it had at first been ascertain’d, would have sav’d said Ship from being burnt almost to the Water’s Edge. Considerable Stores we hear were not consumed.

It is however some what lucky for the Town that the Fire broke out in the Day Time, and when only the People belonging to the Ship were on board, otherwise it might have been Matter of Representation to the Board of Admiralty at Home to have immediately fitted out a Fleet in order to apprehend certain Persons to be sent beyond the Seas to be tried, as in the Case of the Gaspee Schooner at Rhode-Island.

Be it as it may, this Accident may prove very beneficial to some in settling Accounts.

In this one report the Boston Gazette thus managed to suggest that:

The idea that Royal Navy warships were in the harbor to protect locals instead of threatening them was laughable.
Naval administrators were to blame for the slow firefighting response.
Authorities like Thomas Hutchinson would have been happy to add this fire to their list of false accusations about Boston.
The royal government was acting unconstitutionally in the Gaspee inquiry.
Some corrupt officials or contractors would use the fire to cover up embezzling or other crimes.

That was some impressive conspiracy theorizing.

I should note that the fire was seen at noon, the cannon salute to Charles II at 1:00 P.M. So locals couldn’t have set fire to the ship to protest the royalist celebration. On the other hand, navy commanders might have been more eager to salute the Stuart Restoration after seeing their store ship burning out of control in Boston harbor.

Sunday, May 11, 2025

Thomas Newell’s Secret Notes

As discussed yesterday, Thomas Newell wrote several lines in his 1773–74 diary in cipher.

Since one of those lines coincides with Newell joining the effort to keep the East India Company tea from landing, one might hope the secret words would have political significance.

Barring that, they could be juicy personal gossip. Better than the weather reports that comprise the great majority of entries in this diary.

But no, these ciphered lines turn out to be far less juicy than other things Newell wrote about openly: political brouhahas, a duel between British military officers, the suicide of a British sailor.

Of eleven lines in cipher, four were Newell admitting to not going to a meetinghouse on a Sunday. Four times in two years!

Three expressed Newell’s worry for a woman named Hannah, who was suffering ill health:

10 Oct 1773, Sunday: “Staid at home this day upon account of my dear Hannah being unwell with a breaking out on her hands and legs.”
28 December: “My dear Hannah very unwell; out of her head most of this evening.”
13 Mar 1774: “My Hannah [not in cipher:] went to meeting, after many months’ illness.”

This was presumably the Hannah he married and had two daughters with years later. I haven’t found a date for that marriage, but the Newells were members of the Brattle Street congregation, and the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper wasn’t known for scrupulous record-keeping. Hannah Newell died in 1807.

Two entries were about attending social events that would be standard for a young man of his class:

17 July 1773: “I went to Commencement” at Harvard College, an annual public festival.
28 October, after a concert at Faneuil Hall by Josiah Flagg: “For the first time my uncle gave me a ticket.”

And one ciphered entry was about a holiday gift:

2 Jan 1774: “Yesterday being New Year’s Day, my father gave me a new shirt, for which I was greatly obliged to him.”

Thomas Newell’s father had the same name; he was called captain because he had commanded a ship as a younger man, but in this period he was running a wharf.

Why would Thomas Newell feel the need to keep that information from posterity? Well, he probably didn’t care about us. In this period a diary was less private than we now expect, so Newell’s uncle Timothy or his father or his friends might have expected to be able to read it.

I suspect that Thomas Newell kept these little personal notes private because they were about his own personal life and not the weather or public events.

TOMORROW: Cannon.

Saturday, January 04, 2025

Off to a Great Start

Yesterday, after being chosen Speaker of the House by the minimally required 218 members, Rep. Mike Johnson delivered a speech that included these lines about a ceremony earlier in the day:

I was asked to provide a prayer for the nation. I offered one that is quite familiar to historians and probably many of us. It said right here in the program, it says right under my name, ‘it is said each day of his eight years of the presidency, and every day thereafter until his death, President Thomas Jefferson recited this prayer.’

I wanted to share it with you here at the end of my remarks. Not as a prayer per se right now, but really as a reminder of what our third President and the primary author of the Declaration of Independence thought was so important that it should be a daily recitation.

You can no doubt see where this is going.

Monticello’s Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia discusses this prayer among many other spurious quotations attached to the third President’s name with no evidence.

This text is called a “National Prayer for Peace,” and the historic site’s research staff says:

We have no evidence that this prayer was written or delivered by Thomas Jefferson. It appears in the 1928 United States Book of Common Prayer, and was first suggested for inclusion in a report published in 1919.

In other words, this text appears to date from the Woodrow Wilson administration, either the “he kept us out of war” period or the “we need a League of Nations” period, and was then officially adopted by a particular denomination of Protestant Christianity. The primary author of the Declaration of Independence did not know this text, nor make it a “daily recitation.”

Monticello also notes that Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was Episcopalian, used this text in his Thanksgiving Day address in 1930. Johnson could thus have connected his speech with a major U.S. President. But of course Roosevelt was a Democrat who expanded the federal government to help Americans during an economic crisis and then helped lead the global fight against fascism. Johnson is serving an ideology and a President with different goals.

As Monticello points out, folks who know anything about Thomas Jefferson’s ideas on religion should quickly doubt any claim that he composed a public prayer like this. Jefferson considered religion a private matter. He was proud of authoring a Virginia law that ended the establishment of religion and guaranteed freedom of thought. As President he broke from his predecessors’ precedents and declined to issue Thanksgiving proclamations.

Here’s a real Jefferson quote on the latter matter. In 1808 the Rev. Dr. Samuel Miller, a Presbyterian minister then based in New York, wrote asking him “to recommend…a day of Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer.”

The third President replied:

I consider the government of the US. as interdicted by the constitution from intermedling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises. this results not only from the provision that no law shall be made respecting the establishment, or free exercise, of religion, but from that also which reserves to the states the powers not delegated to the US. . . .

I do not believe it is for the interest of religion to invite the civil magistrate to direct it’s exercises, its discipline or its doctrines: nor of the religious societies that the General government should be invested with the power of effecting any uniformity of time or matter among them. fasting & prayer are religious exercises.

It would be hard to find a U.S. President more opposed to a “National Prayer” of any kind than Jefferson.

[ADDENDUM: Sharing a more complete story of the prayer.]

Wednesday, January 01, 2025

“Hardships only make him firmer”

On 1 Jan 1775, 250 years ago today, young Joseph Cree went out into the streets of New York City with copies of the New-York Gazetteer, published by James Rivington, and a handbill asking for tips.

Joseph’s handbill read:

VERSES
Addressed by JOSEPH CREE,
To the
Gentlemen and Ladies,
To whom he carries the
NEW-YORK GAZETTEER.
January 1, 1775.

KIND SIRS, a young and bashful Boy,
Now comes, with Heart brimful of Joy,
To see, if you by some small Favor,
Will please t’encourage such a Shaver---
Though small, he has strove to do his Duty,
And hopes that he did always suit ye;
Through Frost and Snow and scorching Heat,
He has gone with News from Street to Street;
Without a Whimper or a Murmur,
For Hardships only make him firmer.
And now he thinks there’s some Pretence,
T’ obtain of you a few good Pence;
Or something that his Heart will cheer,
And make him merry this NEW-YEAR.

This is a sample of “carrier verses.” It’s unusual in two ways. It makes no mention of current events, possibly because the politics of 1775 meant any comment would offend someone. And it specifies the name of the printer’s boy distributing it; though some other surviving examples did that, most didn’t.

Cree family historian Gary L. Maher has stated that Joseph Cree was born in 1765, which would make him nine years old as he delivered those newspapers. If so, he probably didn’t write or set this verse himself, as some older printing apprentices did. The lines definitely emphasize how little he was.

However, Maher has also found a Joseph Cree enrolled in the New York militia in 1779, and a fourteen-year-old wouldn’t have been enrolled in the militia. So perhaps Joseph was older.

Cree started to work as a printer for Shepard Kollock’s New-Jersey Journal in Elizabeth, New Jersey, about 1783, the same year that Rivington gave up his newspaper in New York. Cree married a woman named Ann Crissey or Creesy, and they had children. City and county records show him living in Elizabeth in the 1790s.

While newspaper owners’ names appeared in their pages regularly, the employees who printed those pages usually remained anonymous. Cree’s name didn’t appear in any newspaper until the 18 Sept 1798 New-Jersey Journal:

DIED.
On Sunday night [16 September], in this town, of the yellow fever, which he caught in New-York, JOSEPH CREE, Printer, for fifteen years a journeyman with the Editor of this paper.—He has left a worthy woman and four small children to deplore his loss.

Cree was buried in the graveyard of Elizabeth’s First Presbyterian Church, twenty-three years after he passed out his greeting for the new year.

Wednesday, December 25, 2024

“This is a great day with the Roman Catholics”

On Saturday, 25 Dec 1779, John Quincy Adams was in the coastal town of La Coruña.

He and his younger brother Charles were accompanying their father on his second diplomatic mission to Europe. Aiming for France, their ship had run into trouble, and the captain had chosen to dock in allied Spain instead.

That provided the occasion for John Quincy to experience another culture. Which his diary shows him doing with characteristic primness:

This is a great day with the Roman Catholics. “Fete de Nouailles” Christmas. However I find they dont mind it much. They dress up and go to mass but after that’s over all is. So if they call this religion I wonder what is not it; after Mass, almost all the Shops in town are open’d.

But stop. I must not say any thing against their religion while I am in their country but must change the subject.

This forenoon Madame Lagoanere [wife of the American consul] sent us some sweetmeats: for my part I was much obliged to her for them, but I shall diminish them but little.

John Quincy’s idea of a proper religious holiday involved closing the shops. That was how people observed fast days in New England, after all. And the gift of sweets seems to have puzzled him. I suspect Charles wasn’t so bothered.

Thursday, November 28, 2024

“For the Continuance of general Peace” in New Hampshire

Gov. Thomas Gage didn’t follow the tradition of his New England-born predecessor, Thomas Hutchinson, by proclaiming a Thanksgiving holiday toward the end of 1774.

Perhaps he didn’t grasp the local significance of that holiday. Perhaps, with barracks to be finished, he couldn’t afford to give people a day off work. Or perhaps he just didn’t feel thankful.

Gov. John Wentworth did declare a Thanksgiving in New Hampshire, issuing this proclamation at the start of the month for a holiday on 24 November.

Back in 2008, I wrote a couple of posts about how the Massachusetts Provincial Congress declared 15 December as a Thanksgiving Day, and how people responded in army-occupied Boston and in Newport.

Tuesday, July 09, 2024

A Dig into the Lives of Pompey and Isaac Hower

Last month Northeastern Global News published an article about an archeological excavation in what is now Saugus and historical research about a past owner of that site.

This project is a collaboration by Meghan Howey, Alyssa Moreau, and Diane Fiske of the University of New Hampshire’s Great Bay Archaeological Survey; Prof. Kabria Baumgartner of the Northeastern University history department; and their students.

That team is digging into the property and the records of a man named Pompey who lived in Lynn in the late 1700s. According to Alonzo Lewis’s 1829 History of Lynn, Pompey hosted the African-born people of the region for a one-day celebration each year. Baumgartner ties this tradition to the “Negro Election” tradition across New England in that period.

Research into real estate and town records provides some facts that both strengthen that tradition by confirming Pompey’s status as a free black property owner and complicate it with questions of dates:

For instance, research confirmed Pompey’s 1745 marriage to a woman named Phyllis or Phebe, and that he was enslaved by a man named Daniel Mansfield II.

Historians believe Pompey was manumitted, or freed, by the 1750s, but apparently not — as legend holds — in Mansfield’s 1757 will.

“It’s not in the will, and we haven’t found any manumission papers,” Baumgartner says. But she notes that manumission papers are rare to find.

Upon securing his freedom, Pompey borrowed money from another Black man named Isaac Hower to purchase two acres along the Saugus River in 1762. The deed was not recorded until 1787, however, at which time Pompey signed the property over to Hower’s widow, Flora.

But many questions remain unanswered. For instance, if not freed in Mansfield’s will, did Pompey free himself?

And then of course there’s the question of Isaac Hower. What was his story, and how did he gain enough money to be able to lend it out?

The vital records of Salem offer some hints. On 23 Jan 1754, Isaac, enslaved by Samuel Gardner, married Jane, enslaved by Richard Derby. According to the first volume of The Pickering Genealogy, in 1757 Isaac owned the covenant and joined Salem’s First Meeting; this book says he had formerly been called Cato, but the marriage record indicates he was already known as Isaac before that religious experience.

An abstract of Samuel Gardner’s will, dated 1766 and probated in 1769, stated:

As my negro slave named Isaac has generally served me with great diligence and integrity, I give to the same Isaac £10 lawful money with his apparel, and his freedom. If he is unable to support himself, my sons George, Weld, and Henry, to support him.

The Northeastern article thus says Pompey borrowed money from Hower to buy property before Hower was freed, which calls out for more research. Perhaps the purchase and mortgage were separate acts.

The vital records of Salem also record that “Isaac Hower, formerly servant to the late Samuel Gardner, Esq.,” married Mary Banister of Boston in March 1774. Later, it appears, he married a woman named Flora.

The 6 Nov 1787 Salem Mercury reported this death:

Isaac Howard (an African) aged 60——formerly a domestick of the late Samuel Gardner, Esq.---A “good and faithful servant.”
“Honour and shame from no complexion rise;
Act well your part, there all the honour lies.”

Those lines are an adaptation of a couplet in Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man, with the word “condition” swapped out for “complexion.” Such a notice indicated that Hower had stature in Salem.

When Daniel Smith advertised to settle the estate the following January, he used the spelling “Hower,” as did the man’s son, so that was the family’s preference. In December 1788, Flora Hower married Reuben Pernam. The vital records don’t help after that.

Saturday, May 18, 2024

“Franklin was no friend of Wilkes…”

Last month the History of Parliament blog shared Dr. Robin Eagles’s review of Benjamin Franklin’s dislike and distrust of John Wilkes, based on his correspondence in Founders Online.

Eagles writes:

Franklin was no friend of Wilkes, who was ejected from his seat in the Commons following the infamous affair of North Briton number 45 and the printing of the scandalous Essay on Woman. They had much in common – both running newspapers and having voracious appetites for knowledge. They may also have coincided at the so-called ‘Hellfire Club’. Yet Franklin was repelled by Wilkes’s excesses.

I wrote about Franklin and the Baron le Despencer’s club a year ago. My conclusion was that those two men didn’t become friends until years after the baron had let the club lapse, in large part because Wilkes was blabbing about it. Some books do point to evidence for a connection between Franklin and the club; however, that evidence was made up by a British author who was a habitual liar.

Back to actual documented history.

After Wilkes had fled overseas in December 1763 leaving his case to be tried by the Commons in absentia, Franklin followed his case closely, satisfied to see Parliament resolved to rid itself of someone he considered unsuitable. On 11 February 1764 Franklin, briefly back in America, responded to his friend, Richard Jackson, MP for Weymouth and Melcombe Regis, that he was ‘pleas’d to find a just Resentment so general in your House against Mr. W.’s seditious Conduct, and to hear that the present Administration is like to continue’.

Franklin’s perspective may have altered somewhat when he became friendly with Wilkes’s brother, Israel. He was even invited to ‘eat his Christmas dinner’ with the Wilkeses at the family house in Red Lyon Square in 1766. [Mr and Mrs Israel Wilkes to Franklin, 23 December 1768] He remained, though, appalled by the disorder prompted by John Wilkes’s actions and recorded in detail the riots and destruction in London and beyond during the chaotic election year of 1768.

Nonetheless, reports of those same disturbances and Parliament’s expulsions convinced the Whigs in faraway Boston that Wilkes would be a good ally in their fight to reform the British administration.

Sunday, April 07, 2024

Heading into Patriot’s Day 2024

With yesterday’s posting, Boston 1775 has entered the Patriot’s Day season for 2024.

It’s hard to find a complete posting of Patriot’s Day events because so many towns and organizations have their own celebrations. But a good place to start is the calendar on the front page of Revolution 250.

Among the new commemorations this year is Tavern Week in Arlington, known as West Cambridge or Menotomy in 1775. The Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s committee on safety and supplies met in the Black Horse Tavern on what’s now Massachusetts Avenue on 18 April. Three members planned to spend the night but bolted out the back door when the redcoat column approached.

The Arlington Historical Society is also offering tours of the Jason Russell House, site of the bloodiest fighting of the day, on Saturday, 13 April, and Monday, 15 April, noon to 4 P.M.

Also on 13 April, Michael Lepage will portray Paul Revere at the Paul Revere House in Boston while the Minute Man National Historical Park hosts its annual big tactical demonstration and reenactment of events along the Battle Road.

Some of the towns planning local Patriot’s Day remembrance events include Billerica, Danvers, Somerville, Hanover, and Lynnfield. Others will send traditional contingents to the event in Minute Man Park.

All outdoor events of course depend on welcoming weather. We had snow last week, and flooding forced the cancellation of an event at James Barrett’s farm in Concord today. So let’s hope for sunshine and cool breezes for the next two weeks!

Saturday, November 25, 2023

“And all servile Labour is forbidden”

Thursday, 25 Nov 1773, 250 years ago today, was a holiday in Massachusetts.

About a month earlier, Thomas Hutchinson had issued this proclamation, printed on broadsides as shown at University Archives auction house:

Massachusetts-Bay. }

By the Governor.

A PROCLAMATION for a Publick Thanksgiving.

Whereas it is our incumbent Duty to make our frequent publick thankful Acknowledgement to Almighty GOD our great Benefactor, as well for the Mercies of his common Providence as for the distinguishing Favours which at any Time he may see meet to confer upon us:

AND WHEREAS among many other Instances of the Favour of Heaven towards us of a publick Nature in the Course of the Year past, it hath pleased God to continue the Life of our Sovereign Lord King GEORGE—of our most Gracious Queen CHARLOTTE and of the rest of the Royal Family—to succeed His Majesty’s Councils and Endeavours for Preserving Peace to the British Dominions—to continue to us a good Measure of Health—to prosper our Husbandry, Merchandize, and Fishery:

I HAVE therefore thought fit to appoint, and I do, with the Advice of His Majesty’s Council, appoint Thursday the Twenty-fifth Day of November next to be a Day of Publick Thanksgiving throughout the Province, exhorting and requiring the several Societies for Religious Worship to assemble on that Day, and to offer up their devout Praises to GOD for the several Mercies aforementioned, and for all other Favours which He hath been graciously pleased to bestow upon us, accompanying their Thanksgivings with fervent Prayers that, after they shall have sang the Praises of God, they may not forget his Works.

And all servile Labour is forbidden on the said Day.

GIVEN at the Council-Chamber in Boston, the Twenty-eighth Day of October, in the Fourteenth Year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord GEORGE the Third, by the Grace of GOD, of Great-Britain, France, and Ireland, KING, Defender of the Faith, &c. Annoq; Domini, 1773.

By His Excellency's Command,
Tho’s Flucker, Secr’y.

T. Hutchinson.

GOD Save the KING.

BOSTON: Printed by RICHARD DRAPER, Printer to His Excellency the Governor, and the Honorable His Majesty’s Council. 1773.

New Englanders expected to observe some autumn Thursday as a Thanksgiving, with sermons in the daytime and a big family dinner. However, the date of that holiday wasn’t set by the governors until the fall.

In 1773, between the governor’s proclamation and Thanksgiving Day there had been two small riots over tea, Hutchinson’s sons and the other consignees were keeping low profiles, and everyone was on tenterhooks waiting for the first East India Company cargo to arrive.

According to merchant John Rowe, that Thanksgiving saw “Dull heavy Raw Weather.”

Wednesday, November 08, 2023

“The party at the North End were victorious”

I started looking into what happened in Boston on 5 Nov 1773 because I was curious about who the designated villains of that year were.

Did the Pope Night processions display effigies of Thomas Hutchinson, Andrew Oliver, and other Loyalists whose letters to Thomas Whately had been leaked earlier that year?

Did the gangs hang dummies of those old stand-bys, the Customs Commissioners? Or the Gaspée Commission?

Or might the young organizers have had the flexibility and speed to turn their wrath on the tea consignees, who had started to attract political attention only a couple of days before the holiday?

I’m sorry to say I didn’t find an answer to that question. I can report that the merchant John Rowe wrote in his diary that the 5th of November was “Very Quiet for A Pope Night.” There were no recorded attacks on the tea agents’ or other officials’ homes.

I suspect the town fathers clamped down on the youths’ celebrations that year as they tried to present a respectable resolve to the world through their official town meeting.

I did find who won that year’s brawl between the North End and South End gangs. On 11 November Isaiah Thomas printed this article in the Massachusetts Spy:

It has long been customary in this town, on the fifth of November, for a number of the lower class of people to carry about pageantries, in derision of the Pope and the Devil and their Powder Plot; and it has likewise been customary for the parties, North End and South, to try their skill at ‘Blows and Knocks,’ and the victory declared to them who should take away the other’s Pope, that being the name given to the pageantry

This year the party at the North End were victorious, which caused the South to give out word, ‘as the saying is,’ that they would on the Monday evening following ‘at them again:’

The consequence of this was, as we are credibly informed, that the Tea Commissioners, fearing the mobility intended paying them a visit, removed most of their valuable effects and their persons, from their respective places of residence, and left their houses guarded, within, by a number of men; but, ‘the wicked flee when none pursue,’—‘a guilty conscience needs no accuser.—

We are well assured, that neither nobility nor mobility had the least intention of disturbing them at that time.

“Mobility” was a somewhat cheeky term for the common people, and the source of the word “mob.”

The South End Gang couldn’t counterattack until the evening of Monday, 8 November (250 years ago today) because the two previous evenings were considered part of the Sabbath. But there’s no sign anyone really tried to renew the fighting that year.

Incidentally, that 5 November entry from John Rowe’s diary also lists “Mr. Wm. Burnet Brown Esq of Virginia” among the people he dined with. Back in 2019 I wrote, “Brown returned to Virginia [after he got sucked into the coffee-house brawl with James Otis, Jr.], and I’ve seen no evidence that he ever visited Massachusetts again.” But now I’ve seen evidence that he did.

Monday, May 01, 2023

Shifting May Day

On 11 Feb 1754, the Boston Evening-Post ran a curious news item from London:

Oct. 19. They write from Kinderton, near Middlewych, Cheshire, that the inhabitants observed the feast of Old St. Michael, and kept their wake on that day notwithstanding the late Alteration of the stile, as they did, in several parts of Oxfordshire, Old May Day, and erected may poles on the occasion; which is the more to be wondered at, considering the undue influence in this last county.

Michaelmas was 29 September, but “the feast of Old St. Michael” was 10 October, or what the date of Michaelmas was under the Julian calendar that Britain had dropped a couple of years before.

Likewise, May Day is the first of May, but “Old May Day” was 12 May.

Back in July, the Gentleman’s Magazine ran a long poem titled “The Tears of Old May-Day,” personifying the old holiday as saying:

Ah me! for now a younger rival claims
My ravish’d honours, and to her belong
My choral dances, and victorious games,
To her my garlands and triumphal song.

That new May Day on the first had been brought on “By Europe’s laws, and senates’ stern command,” this poem said. It sniffed that 1 May was “Pale, immature,” not verdant and warm enough for a true celebration of spring.

However, the fact that the Oxfordshire celebration of Old May Day in 1754 was newsworthy shows how the 1 May date was taking hold, particularly in London.

According to British newspaper reports quoted by Joanne Major at All Things Georgian, in 1772 the village of Quarndon in Leicestershire still held its maypole ceremony on Old May Day, but three years later the Morning Chronicle confirmed that “Jack of the Green” had made his appearance in the capital on 1 May (apparently the first printed mention of that May Day icon).

Typical New Englanders seem to have viewed any May Day tradition as outdated and outlandish, a pagan or papist holdover. Nevertheless, the fact that the Fleet family was able to reprint that first item in the Boston Evening-Post shows they expected their readers to understand what holidays it referred to.

Sunday, January 01, 2023

“Go with the New-Year’s sun, my boy”

Carrying on a Boston 1775 tradition, I present one of the verses carried around (and usually composed) by printers’ apprentices to signal the new year.

This sample appears to have been created by the young printers at the American Mercury of Hartford, Connecticut, for the new year of 1789, reprinted in that newspaper on 5 January, and then reprinted in the Massachusetts Centinel two days later.

I quote the Centinel version:

A VISION of the PRINTER’s BOY.
Presented on the New-Year, by the Carrier of the MERCURY, in Hartford.

As late soft slumber clos’d my eyes,
A lovely form shot from the skies,
Approach’d my bed with aspect meek,
And thus it spake, or seem’d to speak.

“Go with the New-Year’s sun, my boy,
Go, bid your anxious country joy;
This is the year ordain’d by fates,
To rear the glory of the States.”

Raptur’d I gaz’d—The voice and mien,
Methought, I knew: I erst had seen
Columbia’s genius—’Twas the same
Who spake, and thus pursu’d the theme.

“I, who Columbia’s heroes fir’d
To arms, more lately have inspir’d
Th’ assembled Sages with a plan
To finish what those arms began.
Thence thro’ the States I wing’d my way,
To scatter wisdoms sacred ray:
I kindled up the glowing flame
Of zeal, to raise Columbia’s fame.
The fed’ral States to union drew,
And bade, The glorious work pursue.

“One state is doom’d awhile to be
A mark, by which the rest may see
And shun the gulph, which quick embrogues
Blind paper-mongers, cheats and rogues.

“Now wisdom shall the elections guide,
Wisdom in Congress shall preside—
No secret foes or antifeds
Shall once presume to lift their heads;
No object there shall be pursu’d,
But publick peace and common good.
Science and virtue shall revive,
Arts, commerce, manufactures thrive,
Just laws shall private rights maintain,
Slav’re no more shall clank her chain,
No wars again infest the ground,
But peace shall wall the country round.
Plenty shall crown the peasant’s toil,
And Heav’n on all his labours smile,
The desart, cultur’d to a field,
Blessings before unknown shall yield;
Where beasts of prey now stalk and roar,
Tame flocks shall feed and play secure;
Where the tall forests mock the skies,
Cities, with taller spires, shall rise;
And golden harvests wave their heads,
Where the wild thicket boundless spreads.
Here liberty shall stretch her hands
To all th’ oppress’d from distant lands,
’Till tyrants shall no more oppress,
And freedom all the nations bless.”

The genius spake, and from my sight
Shot upwards to the realms of light.
I woke—arose—scarce stay’d to dress—
I ran and put this work to press,
Resolv’d to hand it to the town,
Whose bounty will my labour crown.

This verse was, of course, promoting the new U.S. Constitution against the “antifeds” and the “One state” (Rhode Island) which had so far refused to participate in the process. As I discussed last year, American newspapers printed a lot of verse supporting the Constitution, almost none against it.

Sunday, December 25, 2022

A “Christmas eve” in John Adams’s Imagination

On 23 July 1813, John Adams wrote to his son-in-law, William Stephens Smith, then serving in the U.S. House of Representatives.

That letter was about political affairs, with the war going badly for the U.S. of A., but another big theme was how no one appreciated John Adams.

In making that case, the former President drew up a picture, possibly conjectural, of a Christmastime tradition among certain Boston gentlemen of the mid-1700s:

Remember the fate of Cassandra. The prophet of ill ’tho’ as true as a goose’s bow is always detested. I also have been now and then reckoned among the minor prophets. Not a bone of any Goose ever picked by Jo Green, Nick Boylston, & Master Lovel on a Christmas eve, tho’ they had Nat Gardner for a guest, and exhausted all their wit, Gibes, & Jokes upon it, ever foretold an approaching winter, with more certainty that I have foreseen two or three small events in the course of my Life, such as the American Independence, & the result of the french revolution for example. But I was always execrated for it; & persecuted worse than the hebrew prophets, when they were set in the stocks.

“Jo Green” was Joseph Green (1706–1780), known for his biting literary wit. That seems to have manifest mostly in semi-anonymous verse poking at the Rev. Mather Byles, Sr., and anything new in town, like Freemasons. After a career as a merchant, Green took a post in the Customs service and then had to evacuate town as a Loyalist.

“Nick Boylston” was Nicholas Boylston (1716–1771), Green’s even more wealthy business partner. He and Green, both bachelors, owned houses near each other on School Street. Boylston is best known these days for his portraits by John Singleton Copley (one shown above). For those he posed as a wealthy man of learning, wearing a casual banyan and nightcap and leaning on a book. But I don’t recall any example of Boylston’s own writing or wit.

“Master Lovel” was John Lovell (1710–1778), master of the South Latin School for decades. He, too, was known for writing poetry, in his case serious verse and in various languages. Like Green and Boylston, Lovell’s surviving portrait shows him in a nightcap instead of a formal wig, signalling that he was concerned more with learning than with commerce. He, too, left Boston with the British troops in March 1776.

“Nat Gardner” was Nathaniel Gardner, Jr. (1719–1760), regarded in the 1750s as Boston’s leading poet, particularly in Latin. He was Lovell‘s usher, or assistant master, at the grammar school. Gardner died at forty-one and was soon largely forgotten. In 1989 David S. Shields wrote a study designed to bring him and his work back “from limbo.”

The appearance of Gardner at this Christmas Eve gathering shows that Adams was imagining a scene in the 1750s, when he himself was a university student, country schoolmaster, and legal trainee. He wouldn’t have been invited.

Nonetheless, Adams left a picture of how Boston’s small intellectual crowd spent their Christmas Eves, exchanging witticisms over a roasted goose.

Thursday, November 24, 2022

The Continental Congress’s Thanksgivings

On 1 Nov 1777, the Continental Congress issued a recommendation “to the legislative or executive Powers of these UNITED STATES” to observe a Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday, 18 December.

The proclamation didn’t allude to any particular event, but scholars treat this as an expression of gratitude for the Continental victory at Saratoga.

Certainly the Congress, then meeting in York, Pennsylvania, after being pushed out of Philadelphia, wasn’t feeling thankful about the Battles of Brandywine or Germantown.

The 1777 proclamation was explicitly Christian, referring to “the Merits of JESUS CHRIST,” and culminating in a prayer “to prosper the Means of Religion, for the promotion and enlargement of that Kingdom, which consisteth ‘in Righteousness, Peace and Joy in the Holy Ghost.’”

The Congress continued to issue Thanksgiving proclamations every fall until after the formal end of the war. The 1779 and 1780 resolutions were explicitly Christian, the other four merely theistic (though one mentioned “Louis the Most Christian King our ally”).

At first the Thanksgiving proclamations kept up the pattern of not mentioning specific events. But the long document of 26 Oct 1781, issued just days after the Congress learned of the victory at Yorktown, spelled out multiple blessings:

the goodness of God in the year now drawing to a conclusion:

in which a mutiny in the American Army [the Pennsylvania Line Mutiny, which drove the Congress out of Philadelphia again] was not only happily appeased but became in its issue a pleasing and undeniable proof of the unalterable attachment of the people in general to the cause of liberty since great and real grievances only made them tumultuously seek redress while the abhorred the thoughts of going over to the enemy,

in which the Confederation of the United States has been completed [i.e., Maryland finally ratified the Articles of Confederation] by the accession of all without exception in which there have been so many instances of prowess and success in our armies; particularly in the southern states, where, notwithstanding the difficulties with which they had to struggle, they have recovered the whole country which the enemy had overrun, leaving them only a post or two upon on or near the sea [Charleston, Savannah, and Wilmington, which was soon to be evacuated]:

in which we have been so powerfully and effectually assisted by our allies, while in all the conjunct operations the most perfect union and harmony has subsisted in the allied army:

in which there has been so plentiful a harvest, and so great abundance of the fruits of the earth of every kind, as not only enables us easily to supply the wants of the army, but gives comfort and happiness to the whole people:

and in which, after the success of our allies by sea, a General of the first Rank [Cornwallis], with his whole army, has been captured by the allied forces under the direction of our illustrious Commander in Chief.

For the next three years, the Congress’s Thanksgiving proclamations and recommendations to the states all referred to the slow steps toward a final peace:

1782: “the present happy and promising state of public affairs; and the events of the war in the course of the last year now drawing to a close”
1783: “hostilities have ceased, and we are left in the undisputed possession of our liberties and independence, and of the fruits of our own land, and in the free participation of the treasures of the sea”
1784: “a general pacification hath taken place, and particularly a Definitive Treaty of peace between the said United States of America and his Britannic Majesty, was signed at Paris, on the 3d day of September, in the year of our Lord 1783; the instruments of the final ratifications of which were exchanged at Passy, on the 12th day of May, in the year of our Lord 1784, whereby a finishing hand was put to the great work of peace, and the freedom, sovereignty and independence of these states, fully and completely established”

And then the Continental Congress stopped recommending Thanksgivings. From 1785 to the advent of the new federal government, there were no national Thanksgiving proclamations.

In those years the Congress had difficulty completing normal business, going for long periods without a quorum. The external crisis had passed, and people disagreed about solutions to the internal difficulties. And the Congress delegates might have felt that with independence won Americans had both less to wish for and less to be thankful for.

The image above is one page of the Congress’s Thanksgiving proclamation in 1781, signed for that legislature by Thomas McKean and Charles Thomson and now owned by the Rosenbach museum and library. The texts of all the Congress’s proclamations have been shared by the Pilgrim Hall Museum.holiday

Subscribe thru Follow.it

•••••••••••••••••