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American Revolution

The Story of the Boston Tea Party in Myth and Reality

Every young student of the American Revolution knows the story of the Boston Tea Party. The dastardly British imposed yet another tax on the colonists, this one on the importation of tea. Enraged by this affront to their liberty, the colonists rose up in rebellion. On Dec. 16, 1773, a large group of patriots, most from the Sons of Liberty, dressed themselves as Indians. They boarded British ships carrying government tea in Boston Harbor. Then they threw chests of tea overboard in violent protest.

The action instantly became a cause celebre that led directly to the events at Lexington and Concord two years later.

American history is rife with such myths as well as outright fiction. Much of that “knowledge” originated in the 19^th century. Then it got carried forward into the 20^th and 21^st centuries. The culprits: poor historical research, sensational dime novels and acceptance as fact by the public without question. Plymouth Rock, the first Thanksgiving, and Paul Revere’s Ride are but three of countless skewed histories that have become “fact” through bad historical writing.

The Story of the Boston Tea Party

It is a wonderful, rabble-rousing story, and as with much popular history, it even has a grain of truth. The problem is that the real truth was much more complicated, and the history as most Americans know it was more myth than reality. Historical myths usually arise because the truth is either less glamourous, or less flattering. Like movie directors, 19^th and 20^th century historians never let truth get in the way of telling a good story.

Let’s start with something simple –- the event name. Of course, Bostonians immediately began to call it the “Boston Tea Party” and the name spread throughout the colonies. Except that they didn’t, and it didn’t. For 50 years after the event, it was known as “the destruction of the tea in Boston Harbor,” or variations. Not exactly a rallying cry for rebellion.

It wasn’t until 1825 that a newspaper reported that W. P. Hawes, at a dinner celebrating the landing of the Pilgrims, raised a toast to “The Boston Tea-party.” By the time the name became popular, and into modern times, most people assume that “party” means a “blast,” a “bash” or some type of celebratory event. “Party” served as a play on words to heighten the insult to the Crown.

In fact, even when Hawes coined the phrase, “party” referred to the group of men involved, not the event. When Nicholas Campbell died in 1829, his obituary referred to him as “…one of the ever memorable Boston Tea Party.” Careless use of a phrase created out of thin air has been repeated by historians who failed to do due diligence. That poor history then found its way, among other places, into school history books.

Those Disguises

Regardless of the name, a pillar of the story is that colonists dressed as Indians. That must be true, right? Well…sort of, but not exactly! Some dressed as Indians, with a few histories claiming they dressed as Mohawks. But New Englanders didn’t know much about Mohawks, located mostly in the New York area. More likely, many men did dress as Indians, but probably more in a generic form than tribe specific. Many others simply took on any convenient disguise.

Remember, this was a highly illegal action. If caught, the perpetrators were destined for jail and hefty fines. The underlying text of the myth makes much of the Indian disguise. But it conveniently glosses over the essential fact that it was a disguise, including blackened faces, much as a robber wears a mask to hide his identity. The actions taken that day were criminal. As with most criminals, they went to great lengths to ensure they were not recognized. Of the hundreds of male participants in the act, only 116 have been identified by name. Most did not want their name associated with the action, even after the end of the Revolution.

Those Boxes of Tea

At least the image of men throwing chest of tea overboard is accurate. Boston Tea Party tours have often portrayed people throwing small boxes overboard (tied to ropes for recovery!) to reenact the event. But the real boxes filled with loose tea weighed 400 pounds! While we like to think of our ancestors as big and bold, they were not big enough to lift 400-pound boxes. Remember, this was an illegal act, and time was not on their side. They did dump tea into the harbor, however. They took the simple expedient of breaking open the crates and throwing the loose tea overboard. Unfortunately, many of the later popular illustrations of the event depict men throwing over boxes of tea intact.

The brig Beaver at the Boston Tea Party Museum. From the Peter H. Dreyer slide collection

What about the fact that they were attacking a King’s ship transporting the King’s tea? Surely that part of the story is true. Unfortunately, none of that is true. The three ships bringing tea into Boston Harbor, the Dartmouth, Eleanor and Beaver, were privately owned, colonial-built, colonial captained and crewed ships. They were transporting tea belonging to the East India Company, not the British government. The British government lost nothing monetarily. The government’s loss was solely to their honor. The monetary loss fell to the ships’ colonial owners and East India Company.

Losses

Throughout history, the loss of the tea to the owners comes as an afterthought. After all, how much could it have cost them? In fact, the loss was substantial. The colonists destroyed 340 chests of tea. The private owners of the tea, the East India Company, suffered a loss in today’s value of from $1.5 million to $2 million! They never recovered from the loss.

The ships’ owners would have also suffered a substantial loss since they were stuck with the remnants of a cargo they could not deliver. Therefore, they could not get paid for the trip. The act went well beyond simple vandalism. Mob mentality ruled the day, and among the losers at the time were their own colonial brothers.

Sam Adams

The meeting that led to the destruction of the tea was chaired by Samuel Adams at the Old South Meeting House. It was largely in response to Massachusetts Gov. Thomas Hutchinson’s refusal to let the tea ships leave without paying the duty. That is, Hutchinson wouldn’t let them leave without unloading but still paying the duty as though they had unloaded their cargo.

Sam Adams

Almost half the population of Boston, 6,000 to 7,000 people, attended the meeting. It is difficult to know if Adams meant specifically for a mob to form and attack the tea ships. But his speech that day led just to that outcome.

The actions of the mob were, as most mob actions, not planned. But certainly, some of the Sons of Liberty must have been planning some action since people don’t normally have quick availability to disguises. In fact, of the thousands at the meeting, only a few hundred took part in any way in the actual dumping of the tea. While Adams may or may not have planned the destruction of the cargo, he had no problem immediately defending the actions of the mob. Proving that recreating history is not a modern invention, he claimed the act was not lawlessness. Instead, he argued, citizens legally protested the infringement of their rights.

Story of the Boston Tea Party Rallying Cry

Regardless of all the inaccuracies, surely the action was lauded by all the colonists and used as a rallying cry for eventual Revolution. That is a modern retelling rife with untruth. At the time, most condemned the action, and other similar, less violent ones that took place at New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston. Men such as George Washington did not support the action at Boston, and Benjamin Franklin even suggested that Massachusetts repay the East India Company. The fact that the participants hid their identities from everyone speaks volumes for their unpopularity.

East India Co. coat of arms

Of course, the mainstay of the story of the Boston Tea Party is that this was yet another tax burden for the colonists, who were now saddled with higher prices for a necessary commodity. No wonder they rose in opposition. Sorry, completely false. There was no tax imposed or increased.

What the Tea Act did was to refund the East India Company’s 25 percent duty on importing tea into Britain. It also allowed them to export tea directly to the North American colonies through their own colonial merchants, cutting out the cost of the middleman. The Tea Act amounted to a buyout for the East India Company, which suffered losses on the tea they imported from India. It gave then a practical monopoly on tea because they could always undersell their competitors.

This effectively allowed the East India Company to undercut colonial importers and smugglers. It hurt the legal importers of tea who still had to pay the tax but had no recourse to a refund as did the East India Company. Therefore, they had to charge higher prices. But it especially hurt men such as Samuel Adams, John Hancock and others who had a thriving business smuggling Dutch East Indian tea. They could still smuggle the tea, but the prices they could charge were now higher, or at best equal to, the price the East India Company could charge.

Taxation Without Representation

Adams, Hancock and numerous others were the same merchants who coincidently belonged to the Sons of Liberty who staged the whole affair. They had a vested monetary interest in opposing the tax break given to the East India Company. Somehow, the merchant base of the Sons of Liberty, whose pockets were the most affected by the new Tea Act, managed to change the reality of cheaper tea for the consumer into an affront on their liberty.

John Singleton Copley painted this portrait of John Hancock around 1771. Copley’s father-in-law lost heavily because of the destruction of the tea. Courtesy Massachusetts Historical Society.

The protest essentially became one of taxation without representation, always a hot-button issue in the colonies. In the past, this cause had a lot of merit, particularly when tied to the Parliamentary acts that taxed the colonies for multiple items, essentially to raise money for colonial governance. The Townsend Revenue Act of 1767 imposed yet another tax on tea and other commodities in the colonies, and it sparked widespread protest. By 1770, however, Parliament repealed the Act, except for the tax on tea. But the repeal of the act was enough to quell colonial protests.

Thus, it was not a tax hike, but a tax break to a competitor, that led to the dumping of the tea. The unrest due to taxation without representation still lay simmering below the surface. Some colonial leaders could easily stoke the fire with a little skewed propaganda. In reality, the 1773 protest against the importation of tea had little to do with this issue. It was not a colonial cause celebre.

An Alternate Story of the Boston Tea Party?

It is hard to “what-if” history. But it is interesting to speculate what would have happened if the British did not overdramatize an event that, at the time, did not have widespread support. That support came only after the British government overreacted by instituting the Coercive Acts of 1774. Only then did the dumping of the tea in Boston Harbor begin to gain popular appeal as a rallying cry against real and perceived wrongs.

Images: Brig Beaver at Boston Tea Party Museum By City of Boston Archives from West Roxbury, United States – Brig Beaver and Boston Tea Party Museum, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37036640. East India coat of arms By This W3C-unspecified vector image was created with Inkscape . – Own work, based upon [1], CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15648243.

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Major John Pitcairn, The Redcoat Who Partied With Paul Revere

If you visit Christ Church (Old North Church) in Boston’s North End and peruse the many plaques lining its walls, you may notice one that seems out of place in this icon of American independence. It commemorates Maj. John Pitcairn, a British officer.

Old North Church

The plaque reads:

Major John Pitcairn
Fatally Wounded

While Rallying the Royal Marines

at the Battle of Bunker Hill

was carried from the field to the boats

on the back of his son

who kissed him and returned to duty

He died June 17. 1775 and his body

was interred beneath this church

Maj. John Pitcairn

John Pitcairn had not planned, of course, to take up permanent residence in the New World. He was born on Dec. 28, 1722, on Scotland’s southeast coast to the Rev. David Pitcairn and Katherine Hamilton Pitcairn. His father, a minister in Dysart for 50 years, also served as chaplain of the Cameronian Regiment during the War of Spanish Succession. In 1770, David Pitcairn won election as a Fellow of the Royal Society for his contributions to botany. The family was well known in the 18^th century, making its mark in the fields of botany, medicine and the military. Sadly, however, that fame has passed into the dust of history.

Maj. John Pitcairn

John grew up next to the sea. Perhaps the nearness of the sea was in his blood, or possibly due to his father’s familiarity with the military, he was commissioned a lieutenant in Cornwall’s 7^th Marines at age 24. It wasn’t until 1755 that the marines became permanent as the Royal Marines, and John retained his lieutenancy. In 1756, John was promoted to captain.

The year 1757 saw him on board HMS Lancaster, eventually landing in Canada during the Seven Years War (known in America as the French and Indian War). How long he stayed in Canada is not clear. In 1771, he won promotion to major, He must have returned home at least once, since his son Alexander was born in Kent in 1768.

Then in 1774, he was posted to Boston, Province of Massachusetts Bay, in command of a 600-man marine contingent. The posting was in response to the growing unrest in the colonies, especially in Boston. It would be his final post.

Boston

By all accounts, Major Pitcairn was well received in Boston, not a minor feat in a city that was rife with intrigue and a growing distrust of the British military. Boston citizens, however, were not his first problem upon landing. His greatest problem was his own command.

Pitcairn’s new command came from Plymouth, and by his own account, were “troublesome” animals. With a lack of adequate officers, and constantly in trouble, the marines took to selling their kit to buy rum, a practice that killed several. Their lack of discipline and unruly behavior would have only reinforced Bostonian feelings against the military.

Uncharacteristic for an officer of his time, Pitcairn moved into the men’s barracks to keep order and end the drunkenness. Harsh enforced discipline that included, to his regret, flogging, and constant drilling turned the unit back into a military force.

Once Pitcairn moved out of the barracks, he was billeted with Francis Shaw, who favored the growing rebel movement. The billeting of soldiers in private homes was one of the pillars of that rebellious attitude. This home was in the very center of that coming rebellion.

Paul Revere house

Francis Shaw, a wealthy Boston merchant, owned a three-story brick house next to Paul Revere’s still-extant house. Shaw owned Pew #16 at Christ Church, where he had been a junior and senior warden. Christ Church stood only a few minutes’ walk from Shaw’s house, and Pitcairn joined the parish.

A Popular Guy

By all accounts, Pitcairn’s respectful attitude, open and honest personality and even temperament gained him acceptance in the Shaw household. He often held social gatherings there involving British officers and locals including Revere. In spite of political differences, the events were held in a civilized and convivial atmosphere. Pitcairn was more fortunate than most since his sons William and Robert served in Boston at the time, as was his son-in-law Capt. Charles Cochrane, married to Pitcairn’s daughter Katherine. All three regularly participated in Pitcairn’s social gatherings.

There was one troubling incident in the household, however. Also billeted with the Shaws was a Lieutenant Wragg. Wragg’s personality appears to have been the opposite of Pitcairn’s, to the extent that he deliberately insulted colonists in Francis’s son Samuel’s presence. Samuel took offense and threw a glass of wine in Wragg’s face, an action that could easily have led to a deadly duel. Major Pitcairn immediately intervened and defused the situation, much to the gratitude of Francis Shaw. It can only be imagined what conversation Major Pitcairn had with the lieutenant afterward. However, the incident was not repeated.

Major Pitcairn regularly attended services at Christ Church, but he was also a military man. As pious as he may have been on the Sabbath, his language while on duty was colorful enough to have been remarkable in its profanity! In this he joins the company of many military men in all armies from the past to the present.

The Shot Heard ‘Round the World

British authorities in Boston were well-aware of the brewing tensions. On April 18, 1775, Major Pitcairn’s next-door neighbor awaited word of the movement of British forces. The British, under Lt. Col. Francis Smith, assembled a force of regulars and marines to march on Lexington and Concord. They intended to locate and destroy rebel stores of guns, ammunition and gunpowder. Pitcairn, second in command, led the advance guard.

The Battle of Lexington, by William Barnes Wollen.

On April 19, 1775, at about 5:00 a.m., Major Pitcairn’s advance force reached Lexington and encountered a 70-man militia company commanded by Captain John Parker. Pitcairn ordered his men to hold fire. He then ordered Parker’s command to lay down their arms and disperse. Parker, in turn, ordered his men to disperse. But in the excitement and confusion of the moment, some unknown individual fired a shot, and a one-sided fight began. The British volley killed seven and mortally wounded one. They then marched on to Concord, reaching there at 8:00 a.m.

At Concord, the situation was different. Now forewarned and with three hours notice, over 400 armed militia had gathered. Major Pitcairn moved to secure the North Bridge. Seeing smoke from Lexington, and mistakenly believing the British fired the town, a large rebel force began an advance. The outnumbered advance British retreated across the bridge.

Account of John Pitcairn

What happened next is best described by John Pitcairn:

“Six companies of Light infantry were detached by Lt Colo Smith to take possession of two bridges on the other side of Concord…when we were advanced about two miles of Lexington, intelligence was received that about 500 men in arms were assembled, determined to oppose the Kings troops, and retard them in their march. On this intelligence, I mounted my horse and galloped up to the six Light Companies.

When I arrived at the head of the advance Company, two officers came and informed me, that a man of the rebels attempted to shoot them, but the piece flashed in the pan. On this I gave directions to the troops to move forward, but on no account to fire, or even attempt it without orders; when I arrived at the end of the Village, I observed drawn up upon a Green near 200 rebels; when I came within 100 yards of them, they began to file off towards some stone walls on our right flank.

And then…

The Light Infantry, observing this, ran after them. I instantly called to the soldiers not to fire, but surround them and disarm them, and after several repetitions of those positive orders to the man, not to fire, etc. some of the rebels who had jumped over the wall fired four or five shots at the soldiers, which wounded a man of the Tenth and my horse was wounded in two places, from some quarter or other, and at the same time, several shots were fired from a meeting house on our left. Upon this, without any order or regularity, the Light Infantry began a scattered fire, and continued in that situation for some little time, contrary to the repeated orders continued orders both of me and the officers that were present…”

The Retreat

With the “Shot heard ’round the world,” the Revolutionary War began. The British began a long and costly retreat back to Boston. During the retreat, Major Pitcairn had his horse shot out from under him. One version claimed the horse carried a brace of highly decorated Scottish pistols that the rebels captured. Then Israel Putnam carried them throughout the war, including at Bunker Hill. Another version has it that they were captured in the British baggage train, but there would have been no baggage train for a day expedition that expected to return to Boston. However, while the pistols do in fact exist and are displayed in Lexington, the crest on them is not that of Pitcairn, and there was more than one horse lost that day.

British forces were now ensconced in Boston, completely surrounded by rebel forces that cut off all avenues of advance. While they still controlled the seas and could be supplied by boat, they could not move freely outside Boston by land.

Bunker Hill

On June 17, 1775, the British moved against rebel entrenchments on Breed’s Hill (mistakenly called Bunker Hill, even at the time). The American forces held fast against two British attacks. At this point, both sides had fallen into disarray. Large numbers of colonists deserted as they ran out of ammunition. The British in turn had suffered devastating casualties. British Commander in Chief Sir Henry Clinton had sent over 400 regulars and additional marines from Boston to bolster a third assault. The bayonet was the focus of the third assault.

The Battle of Bunker Hill by John Trumbull

Major Pitcairn, commanding the Marines, including his 21-year-old son William, landed at the South End of the Charlestown peninsula and made his way to the battlefield. In blistering and debilitating summer heat, they pushed through a line of infantry falling back under fire. He ordered them to “Break and let the Marines through.” According to one story, probably apocryphal, he threatened to “Bayonet the buggers” if they did not move.

The Fog of War

The narration at this point becomes a bit cloudy. Tradition states that he was shot by Peter Salem, one of several black soldiers who fought in the battle, mortally wounding him with a shot in the chest as he topped the crest of the redoubt. However, the British version claims he was shot at the bottom of the hill. But in any event, it is certain that Pitcairn was seriously wounded multiple times, one being a shot to his breast. While it is entirely possible that Salem did fire the fatal shot, in the confusion and smoke of the battle, it could easily have been fired by anyone. Pitcairn would have been a target for numerous riflemen.

John Trumbull depicted the scene in his famous painting of the Battle of Bunker Hill, portraying both Pitcairn and Salem. Unfortunately, Trumbull took serious artistic license with the setting. He tried to lump the entire battle and its personalities into one tiny space and moment of time. No extant image of John Pitcairn exists, and his son David modeled for the painting.

In spite of his numerous wounds, Pitcairn did not immediately die. His son William carried him off the field and then returned to the battle, saying “I have lost my father.” Showing the fondness that his Marines felt for him, some replied “We have all lost a father!” Transported by boat back to Boston, he was taken to a house on Prince Street, in the North End. Amazingly, given his injuries, he was fully conscious. A realist, he knew he would not likely survive.

Death of John Pitcairn

General Gage sent Dr. Kart, a personal physician. Major Pitcairn refused treatment until he put his affairs in order. Once done, Dr. Kast examined him, and pulled off his waistcoat, a fatal mistake. Apparently, the waistcoat had stopped up the chest wound, and when pulled away, he immediately began to hemorrhage. In spite of this he survived long enough to have the bullet removed, keeping in mind that there were no anesthetics in the 18^th century. Two hours later, however, he died.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Family, friends and enemies alike mourned Maj. John Pitcairn. His remains were interred in the crypt of Christ Church where he remains to this day. One story has it that in 1791, someone shipped his coffin to London for burial in a vault belonging to a brother and son, but Boston tradition denies this.

John Pitcairn Descendants

In the early 1740s, John Pitcairn married Elizabeth “Betty” Dalrymple. John and Elizabeth had several sons and four daughters. His son William, as noted, joined the Royal Marines and was with him when he was killed. Sometime between 1775 and 1779, William won promotion to captain. He died in London in November 1779 of an unknown cause.

His son David became a noted physician at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, and his son Alexander entered the British legal profession. His son Thomas retired as a lieutenant colonel in the British Army. All four of his daughters, Annie, Katherine, Johanna and Janet married army or naval officers.

Another son, Robert Pitcairn, served as a midshipman in the Royal Navy. On July 3, 1767, while on board the sloop HMS Swallow, Robert, then 15, stood watch. He spotted an unknown island in the South Pacific. The captain magnanimously named the island Pitcairn Island in his honor. Pitcairn Island would later become famous as the scene of the Bounty mutiny. In January 1770, Robert served on board an East India Company ship when it vanished, lost with all hands.

Shaw Descendants

Samuel Shaw, the youth whose life Major Pitcairn almost certainly saved from a one-sided duel, served as a colonial officer throughout the Revolutionary War. In 1784 he sailed to China as George Washington’s Consul to China. His father, Francis, died on Oct. 18, 1784 and laid to rest in Copp’s Hill Burial Ground. His third great grandson, Col. Robert Gould Shaw, commanded the 54^th Massachusetts Colored Volunteer Infantry Regiment in the Civil War.

The Robert Gould Shaw Memorial, on Boston Common.

Peter Salem was born a slave in Worcester, Massachusetts Bay Colony, on Oct. 1, 1750. In 1775 he was sold to Lawson Buckminster, who when appointed a Major in the Continental Army, emancipated Peter so he could serve in the army. He fought in several early battles of the Revolution and received an honorable discharged in 1779. Salem served another three-month term in 1780. He settled down in Salem, married in 1783, moved to Leicester and struggled financially. He died in a poorhouse in Framingham in 1816.

Peter Salem

Time has not been kind to Major Pitcairn in his own country of Scotland. All vestiges of the Pitcairn family in Dysart, Scotland have disappeared, along with the memory of his name. In a curious twist of history, his former enemies better remember Maj. John Pitcairn in a country he never planned to call his own.

Major John Pitcairn is a distant cousin of the author (14^th Cousin, 8 times removed). Somewhat ironically Major Pitcairn fought against 7 of the author’s relatives at Concord Bridge, 5 on Battle Road, and 12 on Breed’s Hill.

The author and his wife Anne were married in Christ Church (Old North Church).

Images: Revere House By Beyond My Ken – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=77978509.

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John Trumbull Ray, The Man in the Miniature Portrait

The Yale University Art Gallery holds a striking portrait miniature, just 3 1/8 x 2 1⁄2 inches, of a British Army officer dressed in an elegant red uniform. Painted in 1814, it depicts a young Peninsular War veteran with curling dark hair and blue-gray eyes. His name was John Trumbull Ray.

Andrew Robertson’s 1814 portrait miniature of Lt. John Trumbull Ray

The Gallery also contains the tombs of two other people named “Trumbull”: John Trumbull and his wife, Sarah. John Trumbull was the youngest son of one of Connecticut’s first families. He was lauded as a “patriot, artist and friend of Washington—the father of American historical painting.”[1] Some of the most enduringly recognizable images of the Revolution and Founders come from Trumbull’s talented hand.

John Trumbull Ray, the soldier in the portrait, is John Trumbull’s illegitimate son. Commissioning the miniature may have been the closest he ever came to acknowledging it.

Housed within an institution his father helped establish, the miniature portrait of Lt. John Trumbull Ray sheds light on the two men’s lives and relationship. It also reveals larger issues of family, sex, status and class in late eighteenth–and early nineteenth-century New England.

John Trumbull, Patriot

Born in 1756 in Lebanon, Conn., John Trumbull was the youngest of Jonathan and Faith Trumbull’s six children. Jonathan Trumbull, Sr., served as colonial America’s only patriot governor. His merchant connections allowed him to provide badly needed supplies to the Continental Army during the American Revolution. Being “surrounded by patriots, to whose ardent conversations [he] listened daily,” John had big shoes to fill. [2]

John’s 1783 portrait of his parents, Governor Jonathan Trumbull, Sr. and his wife, Faith
Robinson Trumbull

John’s family connections eventually helped him rise to the rank of Washington’s aide-de-camp. He showed valor and intelligence as an officer. But his pride occasionally caused him to act rashly, especially when pricked. For example, in 1777, he furiously resigned his commission as deputy adjutant general. He did it because of a dispute over the date on which Congress had issued it. John’s hyper-sensitivity to honor and optics persisted throughout his life.

George Washington Before the Battle of Trenton (1792) by John Trumbull

John Trumbull, Artist

His resignation ensured he would never make his mark on American military history, but he became a powerful creative fixture of the Founding Era. John’s earliest memories included mimicking his older sisters’ sketches, paintings and embroidery, which their mother proudly displayed in the family parlor. “[F]or several years,” he later remembered, “the nicely sanded floors… were constantly scrawled with my rude attempts at drawing.”[3] John refined his skills despite a childhood accident that left him blind in one eye. Rather than take his father’s advice to study law, John pursued a career as a professional artist.

Governor Jonathan Trumbull, Sr. house, John Trumbull’s birthplace. Photo is the author’s.

John bloomed in the postwar years. Under Benjamin West’s tutelage in England, he declared that “the great object of my wishes…is to take up the History of Our Country, and paint the principal Events particularly of the late War.”[4] Embarking on a grand rendering of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, John spent four years traveling New England to paint thirty-six of the Founders from life. Between trips, he stayed with his brother, Jonathan, Jr., in Lebanon. There, as he later confessed to a friend, “an accident befel [sic] me, to which young Men are often exposed.”[5]

Trumbull’s Declaration of Independence, first begun in 1786 and completed in 1820

“Having committed the Folly, and acquired the name of Father…”

Temperance Ray was born in Haddam, Conn., on April 16, 1766 to Jeremiah and Mehitable Ray.[6] When and under what circumstances Temperance began working as a servant in the Trumbull household is unknown. But she and John began a sexual relationship in 1791. She was 24; he was 10 years older.

John’s older brother, Jonathan Trumbull, Jr. alongside his wife, Eunice Backus Trumbull, and
daughter, Faith Trumbull. John painted this portrait in roughly 1777.

Temperance gave birth to a son in 1792. From the start, Trumbull shirked parental responsibility. He protested that “the number of Fellow labourers rendered it a little difficult to ascertain precisely who was the Father.” [7] Temperance named her son John Trumbull Ray, a namesake—John insisted—meant to pressure the rich, powerful Trumbull family to support the child.

By the 1790s, fornication cases like Temperance’s were quite rare. Decades earlier, they had comprised the largest category of criminal cases in Connecticut.[8] This sharp decline stemmed from a shift away from Puritan legal and cultural standards across New England.

The Jonathan Trumbull, Jr. House in Lebanon, Conn., today. This is where John and
Temperance’s affair presumably took place. Photo is the author’s.

Gone were the days where the virtue of humility demanded men and women share equal blame in fornication cases. As author Cornelia Hughes Dayton argues, the turn of the nineteenth century saw the rise of a double standard. It cast women’s testimonies as dubious evidence, allowing men to employ legal tactics to sidestep accountability.[9] Temperance braved the sting of public scrutiny when she brought a paternity suit against Trumbull. The child’s out-of-wedlock birth was no longer punishable by branding or whipping, but she had a roughly one in four chance of successfully suing for child support.[10] Despite the odds, she won.

After submitting to court-ordered child support payments, Trumbull returned to England in 1794 to paint. He also began a foray as a diplomat with the Jay Commission. He did not breathe a word about his child to a soul—until Sarah.

Sarah Hope Harvey, Mystery and Muse

Trumbull’s choice of bride is one of the most enduring mysteries of his life. Though he painted the beautiful Sarah Hope Harvey 12 times, little survives about her, and historians have not been kind. Rumors and gossip abounded that she was the illegitimate daughter of a nobleman and prone to drunken outbursts. None of her letters survive to help solve the puzzle. Trumbull’s cryptic remark to a friend that he “had married… to atone for a sin” is enough to keep the mystery swirling.[11]

Sarah Trumbull with a Spaniel (1802) by John Trumbull

When he proposed marriage in 1799, Trumbull confessed the truth about Temperance and John Trumbull Ray. Sarah countered that she would accept if Trumbull took responsibility for his son’s education.

Trumbull acted right away, dashing off a full confession to his old friend, James Wadsworth, and asking him to locate Temperance and the boy. “It is bad enough to be called the Father of a Child whose Mother is little worth,” Trumbull wrote caustically, “but, to be called the Father of a worthless[,] illiterate[,] profligate wretch (as He may prove, if left uneducated) is a disgrace… when it may be avoided with a little Care and Expense.”[12]

John Trumbull Ray

Wadsworth’s search lasted two years. He finally drafted a report in February 1801, explaining how Temperance had left Lebanon, married a sailor, and borne several more children. Her son—called Jack—was indentured to a farmer named David Smith in upstate New York.[13] The boy was bright, curious and energetic. With his dark hair, narrow nose and sharp chin, Wadsworth was struck by how distinctly he resembled his namesake.

Self Portrait (1802) by John Trumbull

John and Sarah Trumbull were married in 1800, evidently without the blessing of the Trumbull family. They briefly returned to the States and were mortified by the Trumbulls’ chilly reception. Worse, a polarizing political climate made Trumbull’s historical paintings unpopular in America, and tenuous relations with Great Britain under the Jefferson administration forecasted war. Seeking refuge from these familial and diplomatic tensions, the couple again crossed the Atlantic on a British packet ship called the Chesterfield in December 1808. This time, 17-year-old Jack Ray accompanied them.

John and Sarah first met Ray in 1804, when he was living with a Reverend Mitchell in Canaan, Conn. They introduced themselves as his uncle and aunt. From the start, the issue of Jack’s future caused friction between father and son. Trumbull packed Ray off to the tiny hamlet of Northampton, 300 miles from London, first to “acquire a knowledge of farming.” Then, when Ray balked at that prospect, he sent him to learn cheesemaking.[14] Neither profession stuck. As Theodore Sizer explains, “Young Ray, like his father, had martial blood in his veins.”[15] He craved adventure, freedom, and to see more of the world. A career in the military seemed to be the perfect outlet.

Surrender of Lord Cornwallis (1820) by John Trumbull

Hardship and War

Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Portugal, Great Britain’s centuries-old ally, sparked the Peninsular War in 1808. With the British economy pinched by French and American embargoes and the political climate tenuous at best, Trumbull’s commissions shriveled to a few sparce portraits. He wrote, “I was thus placed under the necessity of borrowing, and was constantly drifting upon the fatal lee-shore of debt.”[16]

Ray chose this inopportune moment to announce his desire to join the British Army. Trumbull fired back with ferocity. Not only was an officer’s commission expensive and his wages meager, but Ray had “cho[sen], of all times, to enter the British Army at the moment when a war with America is almost inevitable: and… may be regarded, & perhaps justly as an Act of Treason.”[17] Emphasizing themes of good citizenship of patriotism, Trumbull reminded his son, “America, for all her follies & vices, is still my country & yours.”[18]

Ray ignored his father’s advice, joined the Army, and departed for Portugal and Spain. He fought under Lt. Gen. Sir Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, and was wounded first during the Siege of Badajoz and, later, at the Battle of Salamanca. He rose through the ranks quickly, and not only because of his own accomplishments. Though embittered by his son’s defiance, Trumbull used his social and political connections to secretly assist Ray where he could.

Richard Caton Woodville, Jr.’s illustration (1927) of the Battle of Salamanca, where
John Trumbull Ray was wounded.

In 1814, Ray earned the rank of lieutenant, which stirred Trumbull’s paternal pride. He commissioned a portrait miniature from British artist Andrew Robertson. Miniatures were incredibly popular at the turn of the nineteenth century. Their “intimate” size allowed the wearer to keep the image of a loved one “close at heart.”[19] Moreover, as author and curator Robin Jaffe Frank explains, “An exchange of miniatures between generations in essence legitimized their family relationships through art.”[20] The portrait commission was perhaps the most significant, intentional gesture ever shared between father and son.

Time and Distance

Socially isolated and in debt, John and Sarah Trumbull scrambled to escape England as the Peninsular War and War of 1812 raged. Departure for New York was impossible until peace was brokered in 1815. During these challenging years, they had periodically lent Ray money to supplement his military wages. He persisted in requesting more, which Trumbull resented. He took Ray’s portrait miniature when he and Sarah left England, deciding to withhold it “until [we have] reason to believe that you know how to value it.”[21] Ray, meanwhile, remained in England.

“The Wholesome Severity of a Real Friend”

Spotty letters punctuated Trumbull and Ray’s stalemate. Two years after the Trumbulls returned to New York, Congress commissioned four of John’s Revolutionary War paintings for the U.S. Capitol, including a 12 x 18 ft. enlarged copy of Declaration of Independence. John had been working on the original when his son was born.

The U.S. Capitol Rotunda today; two of Trumbull’s four total portraits within the space are
visible at center and on the right.

His letter was a landmark piece of correspondence for two reasons: He announced that he had married, and he addressed Trumbull, for the first time, as Father.

The tone of Trumbull’s letters to Ray were often harsh, but one dated October 20, 1817 is particularly stinging. Always one to wear his heart on his sleeve, Trumbull did not temper his critical (and hypocritical) opinions on Ray’s marriage and the subsequent birth of his first child six months later.

Emphasizing themes of money, responsibility, and codependency, Trumbull criticized Ray for his inability to provide for a wife and child on his military half-pay. Then, Trumbull addressed Ray’s parentage. After being stuck with the paternity suit, Trumbull explained, he had financially supported Ray in many ways:

Your Aunt & I took care of your early years and gave you a useful education: You possess Youth, Health, Strength, & a considerable knowledge of Farming, and of Military & Naval affairs; — these are precious advantages, Ray… [I]t cost me[,] to take you to England, & to give you the agricultural education which you have utterly neglected & thrown away, more than Five hundred guineas: —you have despised my advice, and you now feel the consequences…[22]

“It Is With Shame For My Long Silence That I Attempt to Address You Again”

Given the tone of Trumbull’s letter, one might understand the five-year silence that followed. Meanwhile, Trumbull became president of New York’s Academy of Fine Arts. Under his nearly 20-year tenure, John put the cultural institution on the map, but his old stubbornness and pride enflamed a growing sense of acrimony between the Academy’s conservative leaders, who favored classical styles of art, and a new generation of students who gravitated to romantic styles.

Alexander Hamilton (1806) by John Trumbull

Trumbull still worried over his son’s welfare. When negotiating the sale of several of his paintings to the Academy—a deal that eventually backfired—he proposed that an annual sum of $700 be paid “for the lifetime of himself, Sarah, and John Ray.”[23]

The estrangement weighed equally heavily on Ray’s mind. When he finally wrote to Trumbull in 1823, it was with the “hope [that] the difference which has existed between us… you will compute as folly & heat of youth; I now see my folly; … I sincearly [sic] wish that all animosity between us were buried in oblivion.”[24] Despite his contrite heart, Ray never rekindled a regular correspondence with his father.

An Inheritance for John Trumbull Ray

Ray’s final letter, dated 1829, did not contain good news. His wife was sick, his military career had stalled and he struggled to find work. Ray refused to leave England and likely died there, though his death date is difficult to determine.

He was still living when Trumbull amended his will in January 1842. An 1808 draft of Trumbull’s will suggests his intent to leave Ray 150 acres of land. But mention of his son is relegated to a single sentence in the final version.[25] Trumbull did bequeath him the portrait miniature—and only the portrait miniature. Ray never claimed it.[26]

After years of turmoil and conflict, was this gift a snub or an olive branch? On one hand, Trumbull withheld land that might have given his son a fresh start in America. On another, while Ray did not receive a legitimate son’s inheritance, the gesture may find greater meaning within the cultural significance of portrait miniature exchanges. The socially conscious, insecure and ever-proud John Trumbull could not have stomached the shame of publicly acknowledging his son. Was the portrait meant as a final, albeit private, gesture of pride and affection?

The Yale Art Gallery

Housed within the Yale Art Gallery’s archives, the portrait survives as a testament to a tumultuous relationship between a father, whose artistic career defined a decisive era of American history, and his only son, whose life remains largely shrouded.

Emily Parrow grew up four miles from John Trumbull’s birthplace in Lebanon, Conn. She earned her M.A. in History from Liberty University in 2021 and wrote her thesis on nineteenth century Newport, Rhode Island. She currently serves as the Development and Membership Manager at The Mount, Edith Wharton’s home, in Lenox, Mass.

Images: Lt. John Trumbull Ray Yale University Art Gallery: https://artgallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/35108

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Deborah Sampson, Revolutionary War Heroine in Disguise

In the early part of 1782, Timothy Thayer joined a Continental Army unit in Middleborough, Mass., receiving a bonus for enlisting. One of thousands to enlist during the Revolution, there was nothing unusual or noteworthy about Timothy at first glance. But when he failed to show up for muster, an inquiry revealed that someone had recognized him. That ended the deception. Timothy was really Deborah Sampson (Samson).

One can only imagine the commotion this caused, and of course, being a woman, she was instantly dismissed. She surrendered the bonus. As a Baptist she then faced the wrath of the church, which withdrew its fellowship, essentially ostracizing her. A woman belonged solely in the home in the 18^th century.

Deborah Sampson

Deborah Sampson was born on Dec. 17, 1760, in Plympton, Province of Massachusetts Bay, British America. She was the oldest of seven children, and a descendant of Governor William Bradford, a Mayflower passenger and the first governor of the Plymouth Colony. Her family was abandoned by her father when Deborah was five. Her impoverished mother sent the children away to various homes. At age eight, she ended up indentured to Jeremiah Thompson and his family of 10 sons in Middleborough, Province of Massachusetts Bay.

Initially she self-schooled, learning by studying with the Thompson boys each night. They always did it after a day of hard farm labor. In the winter, when the farm work lessened, she could attend school. Almost a foot taller than women of her time, and taller than most men, she would have been an undeniable presence, even when indentured.

At 18, her indenture ended. Pushed to find a husband, normal for her age and time, she refused. She took up a position as a schoolteacher, supplementing her income with spinning and weaving. During her time spent in a local tavern, again not normal for a single woman, that she came across men engaged in and supporting the then-ongoing Revolutionary War.

Robert Shurtliff Enlists

In May 1782, Robert Shurtliff enlisted at Uxbridge, Mass., for three years. He served as a private in Capt. George Webb’s Light Company, Col. William Shepard’s 4^th Massachusetts Regiment of the Continental Line. The Light Company, a unit of elite troops, had reconnaissance and flank security duties.

Tall for his time at 5 feet 9 inches and muscular from hard farm work, he fit right in. Again, not an unusual instance, except this time, Deborah Sampson got away with it. This time she had the smarts to go farther from home to avoid recognition.

Continental Army foot soldiers.

Disguised as a man, she must have had more than a little difficulty sustaining the deception, especially in the conditions of the 18^th century and surrounded by rough and tumble men. But she somehow managed. By this time, the major battles of the Revolution had ended, the last at Yorktown in October 1781. But the war itself had not ended, and numerous small actions continued to flare. Most conflicts involved meeting engagements and guerilla actions as both sides tried to locate the other and gauge their intentions.

First Action

On July 3, 1782, Robert Shurtliff/Deborah Sampson saw her first action near Tarrytown, N.Y. In short, sharp, close-in hand-to-hand fighting, she took two musket balls in her thigh and a saber cut to her head. She was taken to a doctor in spite of her protestations where her cut was treated first. The doctor, called away, left briefly. Deborah took the opportunity to leave before he could treat her bullet wounds, as that would have inevitably led to the discovery of her sex.

Self Treatment

Two bullets in the thigh would incapacitate most people, especially considering that these were soft lead balls that tended to spread and create large wounds. Making good her “escape” she treated her own wounds, removing one ball with a pen knife, then sewing up the wound with a needle and thread. She left the other ball in her leg as it was too deep to reach. All of this had to be done in private, and it was an age when there was no anesthetic or wound hygiene. The pain must have been incredible, hygiene non-existent, and it was a miracle that the wound never turned septic.

Her leg never fully healed but she remained in service. To avoid discovery, she immediately rejoined her unit, and probably was on some type of light duty for a short period before continuing with the normal scouting duties. Then on April 1, 1783, she was assigned as a waiter to Gen. John Paterson. It was a promotion, and such an assignment would only be given to a soldier who was well-respected and thought of as having good character.

Continental Army Gen. John Paterson

Deception Revealed

With the war drawing to a close, unrest was brewing in Philadelphia among soldiers who hadn’t been paid. Washington sent General Paterson with a contingent of soldiers to quell the unrest, and Deborah traveled with the general, still in his direct service. While in Philadelphia, she became ill with a serious fever, more dead than alive, and at this point she had to be taken to Dr. Barnabas Binney. To treat her, he had to remove her clothes and it was at this point that her deception was revealed. Rather than immediately turn her in however, he kept her secret and took her to his home to recover, where she was treated by his wife, daughters, and a nurse.

Dr. Barnabas Binney

The Treaty of Paris was signed in September 1783 ending the war. With no more need for a standing army, November 3 was set the date for mustering out of the American forces. Deborah Sampson, still officially enrolled as Robert Shurtliff, had sufficiently recovered to return to duty. Dr. Binney sent her back to General Paterson with a note. Deborah knew what the note said, and when she presented it to General Paterson, her deception was finally officially revealed.

Honorable Discharge

Under the rules of the time, General Paterson would have been justified in reprimanding her and summarily dismissing her on the spot. However, he gave her regular discharge papers, a lecture, and money to return home. On October 25, 1783, Deborah Sampson aka Robert Shurtliff was honorably discharged by General Henry Knox at West Point, New York. She had served for a year and a half. Though she was honorably discharged, the pay due her was withheld due to her sex.

Henry Knox by Gilbert Stuart 1806

Deborah Sampson After the War

Returning home, she met and married Benjamin Gannet on April 7, 1785, in Stoughton, Massachusetts. Gannet was a farmer from Sharon, Massachusetts, and Deborah assumed the quiet life of a farmer’s wife, giving him a son, Earl, and two daughters, Mary and Patience.

It was a very small farm, and money was constantly an issue. To help alleviate their financial situation, Deborah petitioned the Massachusetts Legislature in 1792 for pay denied her when she was discharged. This time the legislature granted her petition, and she was awarded 34 pounds ($6472 in 2023) with interest from the time of her discharge, along with praise for her service. It was a significant sum at the time.

In 1796, Deborah and Benjamin adopted a baby, Susannah Baker Shepherd, whose mother died in childbirth and whose father disappeared. The reason for the adoption is not clear, but they must have been close to the mother to essentially take in another mouth to feed, their financial situation still a serious problem.

Financial Struggles

In 1797, the family was still struggling financially when Deborah was approached by a writer and editor named Herman Mann, who suggested they cooperate with publishing a story of her service in the Revolution. Deborah saw this as an opportunity to help with finances and it led to the publishing of “The Female Review: Life of Deborah Sampson, the Female Soldier in the War of the Revolution”. The book sold well, but it was a really a poor history since Mann took a great deal of literary license. But it did serve to make Deborah more of a New England household name.

Deborah Sampson

By 1802, the family still faced financial stress. Deborah began appearing around Massachusetts and parts of New England in a lecture/demonstration event. Designed around her, she called her appearance “The American Heroine.” For about a year, she appeared on stage speaking about her experiences. She lectured on the virtue of womanhood, then changed into a military uniform, showing the audience how to clean, load and fire a musket. All these roles, while married and trying to enhance the family finances, would have been unique for a woman of the time. An unseen, unheard role as the woman of the house was the expected norm.

Friendship with Paul Revere

At some point, Deborah became friends with Paul Revere. In 1801 he had established a copper rolling mill, the Revere Copper Company (now the Paul Revere Heritage Site Park), in Canton, Mass., a town next to hers. At the time, Revere was not the Revolutionary War icon that Longfellow’s poem later made him. He was simply a well-known local entrepreneur, and his revolutionary war role was not remarkable or generally known at the time. It’s not clear how they became acquainted, but the friendship was close enough that in 1804, Revere, moved by her financial situation, wrote a long letter to Congress petitioning for them to grant her a pension. The letter, dated Feb. 20, 1804, stated in part:

“Her husband is a good sort of man, though of small force in business. They have a few acres of poor land, which they cultivate, but they are really poor. I have been induced to enquire her situation, and character, since she quit the male habit and soldier’s uniform for the most decent apparel of her own sex,; and obliges me to say that every person with whom I have conversed about her, and it is not a few, speak of her as a woman with handsome talents, good morals, a dutiful wife, and an affectionate parent.”

Paul Revere in 1813, by Gilbert Stuart

On March 11, 1805, Congress granted her an invalid pension on the Massachusetts Invalid Pension rolls. Effective on that date, it amounted to four dollars a month (about $102 in 2023). She was the first female to be granted a military pension. The money certainly helped. But in 1809, Deborah again petitioned Congress to make the pension retroactive to 1783. Congress refused. In 1816, she renewed the petition, and this time Congress approved it. She received $6.40 a month (about $135 in 2023).

Deborah Sampson Remembered

Some histories claim she was present at Yorktown when Cornwallis surrendered in 1781. She did claim this as an afterthought in an 1818 petition, but made no such claim in her original 1792 petition. Deborah then listed her period of service as starting in 1782. She most certainly would have claimed it in her original petition if it had been true. It appears to have been an ill-conceived effort to enhance her later petition. Furthermore, no records exist of anyone at Yorktown serving under either of her known aliases. Nor does any proof exist that she had previously served under another name.

The effects of the musket ball still lodged in her thigh began to catch up to her. She suffered chronic ill health. Although she lived for several more years, she contracted yellow fever, a common illness at the time. She died at age 67 in Sharon, Mass., on April 29, 1827.

Gravestone of Deborah Sampson

Her story didn’t end with her death, however. In 1983, Massachusetts declared her the Official State Heroine. The commonwealth celebrates Deborah Samson Gannett Day each year on May 23. Also, the Town of Sharon raised a statue to her in front of the town library.

Women played various roles in the American Revolution, including some who took up arms to protect their homes. At least three others tried to enlist, two for the bounty alone, and one to fight. Anne Bailey enlisted under the name of Samuel Gay. Anne was quickly discovered, fined, discharged and jailed for two weeks.

Statue of Deborah Sampson in front of the Sharon Public Library

Deborah Sampson, however, was the first, and only woman known to have fought as a soldier during the American Revolution.

Deborah Sampson is the author’s 4^th Cousin, 8 times removed.

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Christopher Hawkins, Against All Odds, Escapes a Revolutionary Prison

Christopher Hawkins went to sea on a privateer like many young teenagers during the American Revolution. He did it for the cause of liberty, for adventure and for a share of captured prize money. He got adventure, but instead of bounty he got imprisonment, hunger and pain..

The colonies had quite a fleet of privateers — 1,697 ships, with 55,000 seaman serving aboard them. The so-called “pirate navy” had 26 times as many vessels as the continental navy’s 64. Privateering amounted to armed robbery at sea during wartime. Governments issued letters of marque, which gave permission to the holder to attack enemy vessels and to capture them as prizes. They also captured crews and exchanged them for prisoners of war.

The 12-gun privateer brig Independence, on the left and commanded by Thomas Truxton, captures a larger and better armed British merchant ship sailing from the Caribbean, in 1777. Watercolor by Irwin Bevan (1852-1940). (Naval History and Heritage Command).

Privateering was lucrative, but it was also dangerous. The British Royal Navy captured or sunk 78 percent of privateer ships were captured or sunk by the Royal Navy.

Christopher Hawkins signed on to privateers that was not one in five of the lucky ones.

Christopher Hawkins

He was born June 8, 1764, the son of Hesabiah Hawkins. As a boy he worked on the family farm in North Providence. When he turned 12, he was bound out to a tanner, Aaron Mason, and he worked in that trade for 12 months. Then he ran away to New Bedford to join a privateer.

Christopher Hawkins later in life

Skinny, dark-haired and fair-complexioned, he had a sarcastic tongue and the gift of gab. He signed onto the schooner Eagle, an American privateer. As a cabin boy, Hawkins helped the cook, brought food to the crew and officers, carried messages, climbed aloft to stow sails, stood watch and learned how to steer the ship.

The Eagle sailed across the Atlantic and back without capturing a prize. Then she encountered the larger British sloop-of-war Sphynx, which captured the Eagle. Hawkins, taken prisoner with the rest of the officers and crew, was confined in an old transport ship. Then the British took him off to serve the officers of the frigate Maidstone.

HMS Maidstone

He did that for a year, gaining the trust of the ship’s officers. They sent him ashore with a message. Instead, he encountered another boy from the vessel, John Sawyer, and together they escaped. With help from Sawyer’s family on Long Island, Hawkins returned home to Providence.

Hawkins related in his memoir how he went privateering again in 1781 under Capt. Christopher Whipple in a 16-gun brig. They sailed a mere five days before encountering two British frigates, the Amphetrite and Madea. The Madea captured them.

Christopher Hawkins Goes to Sea Again

The war was not going well for the British. Cornwallis would surrender just a few weeks after Hawkins’ capture. The British cause was undermined by the well-known cruelty and arrogance of its officers and enlisted men toward prisoners of war. The mistreatment of prisoners infuriated the colonists and hardened their determination to win at any cost. Christopher Hawkins would see it firsthand on the Jersey.

Nothing symbolized British cruelty more than the floating hell called the Jersey, a prison ship anchored off Long Island. Jersey had deteriorated from a 74-gun frigate to a decommissioned shell, her sails and rigging dismantled.

Privateer Capt. Thomas Dring, imprisoned in the leaky old hulk, called it unfit for anything other than prisoners destined for speedy annihilation.

The Jersey

“I doubt whether you could find such another set of demons as the officers and men who had charge of the Old Jersey Prison-ship,” wrote Alexander Coffin, a captain who survived his ordeal. The prisoners endured “Foul Air, Tainted Provisions, Bad Water, and Personal Filthiness,” he wrote. Disease was rampant, and men who caught the bloody flux evacuated their bowels while sleeping, adding to the fetid atmosphere.

The British overcrowded the Jersey, sometimes with 1,100 men, many of them homesick teenagers from privateers. They were walking skeletons, overrun with lice, their nakedness barely covered.

Slumber offered little relief. Dring described the groans of the sick and the dying; the exhausted prisoners’ curses aimed at the inhumane guards; the restlessness caused by the suffocating heat, and the poisonous air, mingled with the sounds of wild and delirious ranting.

If the prisoners could sleep, they sometimes woke to find themselves lying next to a corpse. 11,000 prisoners died on board the Jersey. from 1776 to 1783.

More revolutionaries died in British prisons than on the battlefield.

Christopher Hawkins, Prisoner

The British sent Hawkins to the Jersey aboard a transport ship, so crowded they couldn’t sit down for several days. The British hoped their abuse would convince their prisoners to go over to their side, but they didn’t. On the first day, the prisoners defiantly sang a patriotic song which ended every stanza with, “For America and all her sons forever will shine.”

The transport ship took Hawkins to the Jersey, anchored in Wallabout Bay, Brooklyn. A guard ship anchored near them, along with a hospital ship, and a line of sentinels guarded the shore.

Wallabout Bay today

The first night Hawkins had to sleep 20 feet from the gangway, and prisoners walked over him to get on the upper deck. Men with the bloody flux spattered him with excrement.

Within an hour of their arrival, Hawkins and his friend William Waterman decided to escape, though they knew the guards would murder them if caught.

Dring recalled the cruelty of the British guards.

“One Sam Talman (an Indian fellow belonging to the 17th Regiment) was Stripped and set up as a mark for them to Shoot at for Diversion or Practice, by which he Received two severe wounds, in the neck and arm…[A]fterwards they destroyed him with many hundreds others by starvation in the prisons of New York.

Plotting the Escape

Hawkins and Waterman managed to steal an old axe from the cook’s room and a crowbar from the upper deck. They hid them until an early-autumn thunderstorm broke out in the afternoon.

They believed their best chance of escape lay in breaking through the lower-deck gunports, barred with iron and bolts.

“When a peal of thunder roared we worked with all our might with the axe and crow-bar against the bars and bolts,” Hawkins wrote later in life. “When the peals subsided we ceased, without our blows being heard by the British, until another peal commenced. We then went to work again, and so on, until our work was completed.”

They replaced the bars and bolts and hung a garment over the shattered gun port.

Freedom

They told their fellow prisoner, Capt. Whipple, of their plan to swim to a point beyond the sentinels on Long Island. “Give it up,” Whipple said.” It is only throwing your lives away, for there is not a man on earth who can swim from this ship to that point as cold as the water is now”. He asked how far they thought it was. Hawkins said a mile and a half.

’It’s all of two and a half miles,” Whipple said.

On the third day of their confinement, the weather was as good as could be expected for an escape attempt: mild and hazy, the night extremely dark.

Belowdecks on the Jersey

With a rope he found, Hawkins tied his clothes, silver dollars, rum in knapsacks on his back.

They gave the rope to several fellow prisoners who agreed to hold onto one end. They tossed the other end out of the gunport and Waterman shimmied down it. Hawkins waited a minute and then followed.

In the Water

Hawkins swam slowly along the side of the ship until he reached the stern. Then he sank himself deep in the water and swam quietly away from the ship. After he’d gotten far enough away, he hailed Waterman three times. Waterman did not answer.

He took his course from the ships’ lights in the harbor and from the sentinels who cried “All’s well”every half hour.

After he swam for about two hours his knapsack broke loose. He put it under one arm, but that slowed him down and put him off course. By then he was benumbed from cold, but could swim tolerably well. He decided to let the knapsack go, parting with it forever. Twenty-five minutes later he swam within 12 feet of the shore, where he could touch bottom, “I found I could not stand, I was so cold,” he wrote. “But I moved around in shoal water until I found I could stand, then stepped on shore.”

He was completely naked except for a small hat on his head.

“What a situation was this” he wrote, “without covering to hide my naked body, in an enemy’s country, without food or means to obtain any, and among Tories more unrelenting than the devil,—more perils to encounter and nothing to aid me but the interposition of heaven!”

Christopher Hawkins In the Raw

In the darkness, he searched for the barn where he and Waterman agreed to meet. On the way he tripped over a rock, badly bruising himself. Hawkins found the barn, but Waterman wasn’t there. Hawkins slept in the barn until dawn, when a young woman came to milk the cows. He hid himself from her, then stayed in the barn all day. He tried to milk the cows but failed. When night fell, he set out again.

Famished, he tried to eat some watermelons he found in a field, but they were too unripe to eat. It started to rain, and he wandered until he came to another barn and slept in it soundly until late the next day. He set out again and found some old pears in an orchard — rotten, but he ate them anyway. Then he spied a potato patch nearby, so he went toward it hoping to get some. A young woman stooping to pick potatoes stood up. She saw his naked body, screamed and ran toward the house. Hawkins ran in the other direction and hid in the woods.

Encounters

Weak with hunger, he found another barn and slept in it on a pile of flax that night. At dawn the next day he set out and saw farmers in their field. He determined to ask them for help. He approached two young men who draw away from him. Hawkins said, “Don’t be afraid of me. I am a human being.” They asked him if he was scared. No, he said. “How came you here naked?” they asked. He sat down and told them what happened.

One young man told him to hide, and said he would talk to his mother. He soon returned with two big pieces of buttered bread and a pair of trousers. He told him to hide in the barn and wait for his mother. She soon brought him a shirt and told him her husband had died in prison. She and her sons were Dutch; their house was nine miles from the Brooklyn ferry. That meant he’d left the Jersey 60 hours ago and no farther from her than when he started out.

The old woman told him Hessian soldiers infested the area. She told him to go back into the barn and throw the trousers out. She would then put them and a shirt on a fence, and he should take them. That way, they could both truthfully say if questioned that he’d stolen the clothing hung out to dry.

Hessian soldiers

She advised him to steal a canoe, paddle across the cove to a road that would take him to a house in Oyster Bay. There he’d find a man who could help him.

Christopher Hawkins, Captured Again

He encountered sentinels on the road near the village of Jamaica and hid in some bushes. Then a man driving cattle approached, so he found a stick and helped him drive the cattle. He passed the sentinels without incident.

As night fell he came to a tavern, and decided to sleep in the stable. It had no straw, so he lay down in a manger. But a carriage pulled up, and two men brought horses into the barn. By the light of their lanterns they discovered him pretending to be asleep. They roused him, and he convinced them he was drunk. The men thought he might steal their horses. So they tried to march him into the tavern, but he bolted and ran away.

Hawkins crossed a plain, and the rain began to bucket down in torrents. He found another barn, made a bed of straw and slept soundly. The next day he found the house the old woman had told him about. But a woman answered the door and said her husband was away. She declared herself loyal to the king and threatened to give him up.

So he ran away from her, only to be captured by a British patrol. They were staying in a house in Oyster Bay and locked him in a room. He was told to lie down on some straw to sleep but the fleas made him toss and turn. A sentinel heard him thrashing and shouted, “Lie still, God Damn you,” and stabbed him with his bayonet. He then had to lie still as the fleas tormented him and his wounds stiffened.

Another Escape, and Some Luck

At dawn he was sent to a Tory colonel a mile away. The colonel questioned him and said he must go back to the Jersey. Then he left Hawkins with a guard in an unlocked room on the ground floor. The guard left him to eat his breakfast in an adjoining pantry. So Hawkins stood up, sneaked out the back door and hid himself in a wood lot. He stayed quiet for several hours. Finally when no one was around he began walking. After about six miles he found still another barn at nightfall and slept in it.

The next morning a woman who lived in a small house gave him some bread and milk. Then, shortly after he set out again, he had a stroke of luck. He recognized a man on horseback coming toward him: Capt. Daniel Havens. He was uncle to John Sawyer, Hawkins partner in his escape from the Maidstone.

Havens didn’t recognize Hawkins, but stopped when he hailed him. Hawkins told him his story, and Havens told him to stay at his house while he traveled west and he would get him home when he returned.

Howard’s Tavern on Long Island, 1776

The house was 20 miles away. Hawkins walked seven miles and stopped at a tavern where Havens said a Mr. Snow would feed him. He did, and Snow gave him dinner.

He then reached Havens’ house. No men were present, and the women seemed suspicious of him. He left, and on the street he recognized John Sawyer’s sister. She told him his friend had died at sea three weeks earlier. She suggested he get a berth aboard a sloop that smuggled goods to Connecticut.

He walked down to the sloop and checked with the captain, who welcomed him aboard. Hawkins slept on the boat. The next night they left, landing in Stonington, Conn., where a tavernkeeper gave him a bed and a meal. Neither the captain nor the tavernkeeper charged him. He then set out the 40 miles to Providence, reaching it in two days.

The Rest of the Story

After the war, Hawkins went to work for a farmer, Obadiah Olney of Smithfield. At the age of about 20 he married Dorcas Whipple of Smithfield, a farmer’s daughter. He then went to work for William Whipple of Fairfield, N.Y.. In 1786 he and his family moved to Norway, N.Y., then Fairfield, then Newport. He worked as a farmer and a carpenter. In his spare time he educated himself, having had little opportunity as a boy. He prospered and served as Commissioner of Roads and the first Supervisor of Newport.

In religion, he was a Methodist, in politics, a Federalist. Described as an affectionate husband and kind parent, he had six daughters and a son.

At the age of 70, he wrote his war experiences in a journal. Thirty years later, it was published as The Adventures of Christopher Hawkins.

He died on Feb. 25, 1837.

A descendant discovered the manuscript in a Kansas City linen closet. Her son donated it to the Museum of the American Revolution.

The Prison Ship Martyrs Monument in Brooklyn

Another Discovery

When the new U.S. Navy occupied Wallabout Bay and began expanding the Brooklyn Navy Yard on the mud flats near the shore, they found the remains of thousands who had perished aboard the British prison ships.

In 1808, the remains of more than 11,000 prisoners of war were interred in a tomb on Hudson Avenue. Later they were moved to their current site in Fort Greene Park. In 1908, President-elect William Howard Taft attended the dedication of the monument to the prison ship martyrs.

Historians now recognize that the privateers, so many of whom died in prison, gave America a real naval advantage over the British. “The battles of the American Revolution were fought on land, and independence was won at sea,” noted John Lehman, former secretary of the navy.

The historian Edward G. Burrows reminds us to acknowledge the sacrifice of those who died. The United States wasn’t just made by “those gentlemen in powdered wigs and knee britches we have heard so much about in recent years,” he wrote. The country was also made by “thousands upon thousands of mostly ordinary people who believed in something they considered worth dying for.”

Images: Prison Ship Martyrs Monument By Adolph Alexander Weinman – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21825033. American flag By DevinCook – https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Betsy_Ross_flag.svg#mw-jump-to-license, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=128445800

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The Midnight-ish Rides of William Dawes, Samuel Prescott and Paul Revere

“Listen, my children, and you shall hear, of the midnight ride of”……William Dawes. No, that doesn’t work. “Of the midnight ride of …Samuel Prescott. No, that doesn’t work either; Oh, I have it: “Listen my children and you shall hear, of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.” Thus, Paul Revere became a legend and an icon in American history, and William Dawes and Samuel Prescott were left in the dust from Paul Revere’s horse, a footnote at best, if remembered at all.

Sadly, much of the history Americans know is founded on myths and legends. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1860 poem “Paul Revere’s Ride” did much to create a history rife with deliberate inaccuracies and gives all the glory to Revere. The truth, however, is almost completely different from the “history” of the poem, learned by countless generations of Americans in school, and carried through to adulthood.

Paul Revere holds his then-claim to fame.

In fact, until Longfellow wrote the poem, Revere, was known for his metalwork but not for Revolutionary War heroics anywhere in New England, let alone the rest of the country. He was locally well-known as an artisan and entrepreneur. When he died in 1818, his obituary made no mention of the “famous” ride. Just as Hollywood creates heroes, Longfellow created a heroic persona for Revere far beyond what he actually did.

Some Truth to the Story

While the events described in the poem all took place on the night of April 18, 1775, they were set in motion long before that. The possibility of a confrontation between British forces and colonists had been brewing for months. The colonist had prepared for just such an eventuality.

The most critical part of the preparation was prior warning. Paul Revere did play a part in these events, and he did arrange for the famous signal from the steeple of Christ Church (Old North Church) – one if by land and two if by sea. And it is true that he did participate in part of the ride that night to warn of British movements.

But beyond that, the majority of Longfellow’s poem amounts to fictional propaganda. He wrote it just before the start of the Civil War. Longfellow, an ardent abolitionist, designed the poem to stir up patriotic fervor, not to record history.

Straying From the Truth

“And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm…“ It didn’t take long for Longfellow to stray from the truth. Revere was not on the opposite shore in Charlestown. He was in Boston, on the shore near the Old North Church, and when he, “…with muffled oar Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore…” — he did it as a passenger. Two very brave and anonymous men did the rowing past the British guard boats.

“Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride, Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride, On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere…And lo! As he looks on the belfry’s height, a Glimmer, and then a gleam of light! He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns, But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight A second lamp in the belfry burns!” If he was impatient at all, it was on the Boston shore where he would have seen the signal, since he only crossed the water once the signal had been given. With a horse waiting for him on the “opposite shore,” he would have quickly mounted and gone on his way with little ceremony.

William Dawes, Too

It beggars belief to think the colonial leaders would assign such a critical task to just one man as Longfellow’s poem infers. Of course they didn’t. Revere was only one of at least two men specifically assigned to carry the message of the British movements to critical personnel and start the add-on affect of riders spreading out throughout the countryside.

William Dawes rode too.

They did it this way for a couple of reasons. First, one man could not possibly cover the area needed to reach all the important personnel. Secondly, they had to assume capture, so they needed redundant messengers. If one got caught, then another carried the same messages. In fact, Paul Revere and William Dawes just started a chain of riders that got bigger as the night progressed.

The idea that Revere, or any single rider, rode to warn every village and farm is staggering. In the first place, they didn’t have enough time to stop at every house to issue a warning. And that assumes they even knew how to find each house. Although Longfellow never claimed Revere rode along shouting “the British are coming, the British are coming,” this somehow got added to the legend.

Three Reasons

It doesn’t make sense for three reasons. First, not every house held patriots. Many held loyalists, and British patrols were out everywhere. Riding by shouting their presence would have amounted to a very risky proposition.

Secondly, many homes were farmhouses, and not located on any main route. Going to every one would have taken days for one or two men.

Thirdly, anyone riding around in the dead of night, when everyone slept, shouting “the British are coming” would have been thought a crackpot. Since they were all British, the warning would have seemed nonsensical. And that assumes sleeping people would even hear them at that time of night.

The Real Reason They Rode

The riders did not blindly go from place to place hoping to find everyone to pass on the news. They all had specific targets – personnel they were tasked with warning. Those personnel would then get the message out to everyone who mattered. Most of the time, the riders knocked on doors to wake the residents up. Then they’d quickly convey the message that the Regulars (or Redcoats) were out, and then ride on to the next target. The messages were brief and to the point. By Revere’s own account, his message was, “The Regulars are coming out.”

In fact, two men, Paul Revere and William Dawes, Jr., set out at about same time, along different routes that eventually converged in Lexington. Alerting specific men, those men, in turn, rode out to warn others, and so on and so on. While Revere took the water route to Charlestown, Dawes took the longer land route out of Boston. He barely cleared the city before the Regulars shut it down. Dawes would have started sooner since it took time for Revere’s slow and silent rowboat ride across to Charlestown.

“It was one by the village clock, When he galloped into Lexington…It was two by the village clock, When he came to the bridge at Concord town…” Revere did make it to Lexington, joined a half hour later by Dawes. It was about midnight, not one as in the poem. That meant both Revere and Dawes set out somewhere near 11 p.m. They had as their ultimate mission at Lexington to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock, spending the night in the town. Other riders then took over to spread the alarm around Lexington and the surrounding countryside. Here that they were fortuitously joined by Dr. Samuel Prescott, who just happened to be in town returning from an evening with a female friend at around 1 a.m. The three men now set off together toward Concord.

William Dawes and Samuel Prescott Escape

They never made it farther than Lincoln, 4.4 modern miles from Concord. Neither Revere nor Dawes saw Concord Bridge because a British patrol stopped them. The British captured Revere, but Dawes and Prescott managed to escape. Undoubtedly riding at breakneck speed, through unfamiliar fields and along farm roads, Dawes’ horse threw him. Apparently the horse continued on since Dawes, probably more than a little sore, had to walk back to Lexington. His night ride had ended.

Prescott, however, continued to Concord, and he, not Revere, passed the warning to Concord. Through all this, countless other nameless riders actually spread “…the alarm Through every Middlesex village and farm…”

Prescott made it to Old North Bridge in Concord.

Revere and the Regulars

When questioned by the patrol, Revere seems to have had no problem bragging to the British that he knew of the army’s movement from Boston. He also knew the militia were gathering at Lexington to meet them. Revere wasn’t the only one being held by the patrol, and they all set off back toward Lexington. As the British patrol and its prisoners neared Lexington, they could hear sporadic shots and the ringing of bells. Revere told the major commanding the patrol that these were the alarms to warn the countryside of the coming of the Regulars. At this point, discretion became the better part of valor for the British. They released their prisoners and set off to warn their coming compatriots, but not before confiscating Revere’s horse.

On foot now, Revere walked back to the Rev. Jonas Clarke’s house, where Hancock and Adams stayed. The whole area was abuzz, and Clarke’s house must have been in disarray. Hancock and Adams needed to leave. They may have heard the firing on Lexington Green as they fled the area, assisted by Revere.

The Forgotten Man

Mostly forgotten in all of this: Dr. Prescott. He didn’t belong to the original plan to spread the warning. Rather than run after escaping the British patrol, he continued on to Concord,. With great courage, since he had almost been captured at the edge of town, stopped at several houses in Lincoln to raise the alarm. Other nameless riders set off from there. Reaching the sentry at Concord, Prescott further spread the word. The Concord First Parish Church bell then began the general alarm.

The memorial to the Paul Revere capture site

Prescott then rode to his brother Abel’s house and told him to ride to Sudbury with the alarm. He continued on to Acton and Stowe, continuing to spread the warning.

After the Ride

After the Lexington and Concord battles, Revere couldn’t return to Boston, now under siege. He tried to get a commission in the army but was refused. He continued to offer his services, however, and was initially used as a courier and in an effort to produce more gunpower. Nine months after Bunker Hill, Revere was involved, with others, in a successful effort to find and recover his friend Joseph Warren’s body from the battlefield. In April 1776 he was commissioned an infantry major in the Massachusetts Militia and transferred to the artillery a month later.

In November 1776 he won promotion to lieutenant colonel and stationed at Castle William, defending Boston Harbor. He spent the next two years quietly, broken only by the occasional prisoner escort and two brief deployments to Rhode Island. In the summer of 1779, he commanded an artillery detachment during the disastrous Penobscot Expedition. As one of the senior leaders of the campaign, his enemies later tried to lay blame on him. Although the hearings reached no conclusion, Revere was asked to resign. Rather than resign, however, he demanded a court-martial, which cleared him in February 1782.

After the war, already a renowned silversmith, he invested in an iron-working foundry. With its success, he expanded further into bronze casting and rolled copper. In 1801 he founded the Revere Copper Co., now called Revere Copper Products, and headquartered in Rome, N.Y.

Revere died on May 10, 1818 in his home on Charter Street, Boston. He is buried at the Granary Burying Ground on Tremont Street.

Paul Revere went into manufacturing after the Revolution.

Paul Revere’s home in Boston’s North End, a stone’s throw from Old North Church, is preserved as a museum. A statue of him astride his horse stands in the park in back of the church.

William Dawes, Jr.

It is not clear what William Dawes, Jr. did in the aftermath of the ride. His story picks up again on 9 Sept. 9,1776, with his commission as a major in a Boston militia regiment. He saw no action during the war, serving mostly as a quartermaster in central Massachusetts. He also served as a prisoner escort for British prisoners from the battles at Saratoga.

Dawes must have still served in the militia in some capacity after the war because he refused to join a punitive expedition against Indians. On Feb. 25, 1799, Dawes died in Marlborough, Mass. Believed to have been buried at the King’s Chapel Burying Ground where he has a tomb marker, there is some speculation that he is buried in his wife’s plot at Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain.

William Dawes has a plaque at King’s Chapel Burying Ground.

A traffic island in Cambridge, Mass., has a bronze plaque denoting the route of his ride, along with bronze horseshoes set in the pavement.

His family name did not fade from history, however. Among other notable Dawes relations, his great-grandson, William Dawes, served as a Union officer in the Civil War. One of William’s sons, Charles Gates Dawes, served as the 30th vice president of the United States under Calvin Coolidge. He also won a Nobel Prize in 1925 for his work on the Dawes Plan for World War I reparations.

Dr. Samuel Prescott

Little is known about Dr. Samuel Prescott after his ride. A man of that name is recorded at Fort Ticonderoga, and another in a British prison in Halifax. There is no evidence beyond the name to indicate that either of these men is the Dr. Samuel Prescott that rode to Concord. One account claims he died in prison in 1777 but evidence is lacking. While most have forgotten Prescott’s ride, Concord remembers it yearly at midnight on April 18 and Acton on Patriot’s Day.

Unquestionably, Paul Revere, William Dawes and Dr. Samuel Prescott performed an extremely valuable service that night. Without their timely warning, events at Lexington and Concord may have been very different. But during their lifetime, they were never iconic Revolutionary War heroes. Without Longfellow’s assistance, Revere undoubtedly would have been remembered solely for his superb silver work and for his entrepreneurship with iron and copper. In a sense, Longfellow may have done Revere, Dawes and Prescott a favor by calling attention to the ride, which probably would have been nothing more than a minor footnote without the poem.

Charles Gates Dawes is the author’s 9th Cousin, 2 times removed. However, he did not realize his relationship to William Dawes until he researched this article. William Dawes is not a relative of his.

Images: Paul Revere Capture Site, photo taken by By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11394644.

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