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Anna Green Winslow

Boston Celebrates the Birth of a Prince – and Lots of Other Royal Milestones

In provincial Boston, the birth of a prince of England caused a big, big celebration. When news of the birth of Prince George William reached the colonists in March 1718, gunners discharged cannons, people partied at the Old State House and crowds gathered to cheer “huzzah.”

King George III

Bostonians didn’t just celebrate royal births. They celebrated royal birthdays, accessions, coronations and anniversaries of coronations. They did it with pageantry and ceremony. Richard Bushman, in King and People in Provincial Massachusetts, refers to “incessant round of ceremonies exalting the king.”

Old State House 1793

Bushman argued the demonstrative allegiance to the monarchy had to do with the belief that the king had a reciprocal obligation: to protect his people. When the king showed he no longer intended to provide that protection, the people no longer had an obligation of loyalty to him.

Though the colonists didn’t always agree with their monarch, they demonstrated their loyalty to him up until the eve of the Boston Tea Party.

Any Royal Reason for a Party

King William

Puritan Bostonians sympathized with the Parliamentarians during the English civil wars. So they didn’t get too excited with the accession of the Roman Catholic James II to the throne in 1685. But when ordered to proclaim him king, thousands assembled in High Street to cheer with “huzzahs.” They also listened the drums beat, the trumpets sound and the volleys fired.

When the Protestant King William was proclaimed king in Boston on May 29, 1689, the colony threw the biggest, happiest celebration ever. People came from all over to view the procession of provincial leaders and gentlemen, followed by a militia regiment and companies of horse and foot from all over the countryside. Dinner was served to the upper classes at the Old State House, and wine was served to the crowds in the street. Cheering filled the air until 9 p.m., when the bells rang and people went home.

Birthday celebrations for William were well attended until his death in 1702. Diarist Samuel Sewall reported many people mourned him. As the years went by, the celebrations for the English monarch grew more elaborate.

In 1716, the Boston News-Letter described King George’s accession to the throne. The artillery of the fort at Castle William was discharged, and the Town House was “finely illuminated” with toasts given to the royal family, the royal governor and others.

Celebrating the Birth of a Prince

Prince George William

On March 17, 1718, the Boston News-Letter reported on the celebration of the birth of a prince: George William. A “handsome entertainment” was held at the Old State House for the governor, his council, civil and military officers, gentlemen and merchants.” Great demonstrations of joy followed the firing of artillery.

News traveled so slowly in those days. So the colonists hadn’t yet learned the infant prince, born in November, had already died on February 17.

On May 30, 1720, Samuel Sewall noted in his diary “Colours are out, and Guns fire for K. Charles 2d Birth, Return.” King Charles II had returned to England to claim the throne on his 30^th birthday – in 1660, 60 years earlier.

Loyal Zeal

When King George II acceded to the throne in 1727, Boston celebrated. The town demonstrated “loyal zeal and affection, and with much more state solemnity and magnificence than was ever before seen among us,” according to the New-England Weekly Journal.

Three militia regiments and five troops of horse formed in front of the Old State House and people covered the roofs. Bells rang all day, and at night the people lit bonfires and set off fireworks. And on Boston’s main streets, three and four rows of candles illuminated the windows of houses.

King George II

Birth of a Prince, Again

The Boston News-Letter reported the birth of another royal baby on May 14, 1738. The new prince, the grandson of King George II, would become King George III.

In late 1760, the news of George II’s death reached Boston. Royal Gov. Francis Bernard led a procession under military escort from the Old State House to Council chambers. Outside stood a militia regiment and a vast crowd of people. They listened to the proclamation of George as king from the balcony.

We…do now, with full Voice and Consent of Tongue and Heart, Publish and Proclaim, That the High and Mighty Prince George, Prince of Wales, is now … become our only Lawful and Rightful Liege Lord George the Third … To Whom we acknowledge all Faith and constant Obedience, with all hearty and humble affection: Beseeching God … to bless the Royal King George the Third, with long and happy Years to Reign over us.

Huzzahs

He concluded with “God save the king” and the crowd gave three huzzahs. The militia fired three volleys, and gunners discharged 63 cannon at Castle William. That night candles illuminated the town and Faneuil Hall hosted an entertainment.

Boston would celebrate the anniversary of King George III’s coronation every year thereafter. On Dec. 22, 1772, 13-year-old Anna Green Winslow wrote in her diary:

The king’s coronation day. In the evening I went with mamma to Col. Marshal’s in King Street to see the fireworks.

That marked the last official celebration of an English monarch’s coronation in Boston. The next year, the events leading up to the Boston Tea Party would overshadow George’s coronation.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Anna Green Winslow Reports Aunt Sukey is Pregnant and the Groaning Cake Is Made

Anna Green Winslow was a lively 12-year-old schoolgirl in pre-Revolutionary Boston who wrote to her mother about much of what she did. That included eating the groaning cake when visiting her aunt.

When Anna was 10 years old, her parents sent her from Nova Scotia to Boston to live with her father’s older sister, Sarah Deming, to be “finished.” While in Boston she learned the skills required of a well-brought-up young lady. She went to school for sewing, dancing and handwriting.

Groaning cake was a traditional dish served after childbirth.

Illustration from Anna Green Winslow’s diaries.

Her diary and letters, published by historian Alice Morse Earle, provide an interesting account of the customs of the day, including the groaning cake for new mothers.

On December 24, 1771 Anna wrote to her mother. “Last Saturday was seven-night my aunt Suky was delivered of a pretty little son.” Dr. Cooper baptized him by the name of “Charles.”

“I knew nothing of it till noonday, when I went there a visiting,” she wrote.

Groaning Cake

Later on January 11, 1772, she recorded a visit to her aunt Suky (Susanna Green).

“I have attended my schools every day this week except Wednesday afternoon,” she wrote. “When I made a setting up visit to aunt Suky, & was dress’d just as I was to go to the ball. It cost me a pistoreen (Spanish currency of about 17 cents in value) to nurse Eaton for two cakes.” Anna noted she had taken care to taste the cakes before paying for them.

The editor of Anna’s diary and letters suggests the cakes were probably “groaning cake.” In a tradition brought from the British Isles, the groaning cake is a sweet, spicy cake made from various recipes. Cooks started making it when a mother-to-be went into labor.

Miniature of Anna Green Winslow

When that happened, many of the women from the community would attend to help her through the process. And among their duties: making the groaning cake. Some traditions held that the mother could shorten her labor by breaking the eggs for the cake. Other superstitions say the father must give the cake away to ensure the baby will prosper.

This use of “groaning” originated in Scotland. It meant ‘lying-in,’ the period lasting from days to months when a new mother stayed home with the baby. In addition to the groaning cake, the Scots had groaning malt – a beer served while the mother went into labor. They also had groaning cheese and a groaning chair, where a new mother sat to nurse her child.

In America, at least, the mother did not nurse for several days because she was thought to be impure. A friend would give the new baby his or her first meal.

Anna probably bought her cakes from the nurse who attended to her aunt. People customarily brought gifts or money for midwives and nurses when visiting a new baby as payment for their services.

Groaning Cake Recipe

Ami McKay includes her (modern) recipe for a groaning cake in her novel, The Birth House.

2-½ cups flour
3 eggs
2 tsp. baking powder
½ cup oil
1 tsp. baking soda
½ cup orange juice
2 tsp. cinnamon
¼ cup molasses
½ tsp. ground cloves
1-1/3 cups sugar
1-½ cups apple (grated, no skin)
1 tsp. almond extract

Sift dry ingredients together. Add apple. Beat eggs. Add oil, orange juice, molasses and sugar. Add to dry ingredients. Mix well. Add almond extract. Bake at 350 F. for 35-40 minutes. Makes two 9 X 5 loaves or about 18 muffins.

Additions: raisins, dates, dried fruits, or nuts.

This story was updated in 2023.

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300 Years of New England Christmas

The New England Christmas started out as an ordinary work day for Puritans who frowned on the papist revelry of their Anglican neighbors. Over the years it evolved, with the help of Charles Dickens, into a celebration of charity and goodwill.

Of course, Anglicans and Catholics did celebrate Christmas in New England — only they had to do it quietly if Puritans were around.

A holiday greeting from Currier & Ives, who created so much New England Christmas imagery.

The 1st New England Christmas

In 1604, French Catholics and Huguenots celebrated the first New England Christmas ever — in Maine, with no Puritans in sight.

The previous June they had arrived on St. Croix Island, now on the border between New Brunswick and Maine. They built a small settlement, and during the wintry Christmas that year they attended services in a new chapel. Then they gathered inside next to a roaring fire, told stories, joked and reminisced about France. They had a feast — perhaps roast venison or rabbit stew.

They moved the colony to Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, because so many of them died during the winter.

No New England Christmas in Plimoth, 1621

Gov. William Bradford famously put down the Christmas celebration at Plimoth Plantation in 1621. He called out his non-Puritan colonists to work, but they told him they couldn’t as a matter of conscience. Bradford let them off the hook, but they had the effrontery to play at sports. At noon he found them, and tells what happens in his diary:

…he found them in ye streete at play, openly; some pitching ye barr, & some at stoole-ball, and shuch like sports. So he went to them, and tooke away their implements, and tould them that was against his conscience, that they should play & others worke. If they made ye keeping of it mater of devotion, let them kepe their houses, but ther should be no gameing or revelling in ye streets. Since which time nothing hath been atempted that way, at least openly.

Illustration of Gov. William Bradford ruining New England Christmas.

Business As Usual in MA and CT

Samuel Sewall

A century later, Salem witch trial judge Samuel Sewall tried to visit an old friend on Christmas. Unfortunately, the friend was ‘goon to h[eaven].’ The old Puritan was no doubt pleased to see business as usual in the streets of Boston that day. He wrote in his diary on Tuesday Dec. 25.

The Shops were open, and Carts came to Town with Wood, Hoop-poles, Hay &c. as at other Times; Being a pleasant day, the street was fill’d with Carts and Horses — visited Mr. Cooper, who is much better.

But even a Puritan like Joshua Hempstead in New London, Conn., couldn’t ignore the significance of Christmas. In 1730 on Christmas Day, a cloudy and windy Friday, Hempstead reported in his diary that he conducted business as usual. A ‘Capt. Douglass’ paid him interest and gave him and other selectmen a supper. Then:

…a Great Concourse of of people at the Church to hear Mr Seabury preach a Christmas Sermon & to See fashions. it being New many went. he hath preachy but 2 Sabath days (Since he Recd orders) here.

The Puritan Hold Loosens

Forty miles north in Newburyport, Mass., Sarah Smith Emery noted the young people weren’t quite as good at following the Puritan strictures on Christmas. The weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas brought plenty of food, a time for feasting and hope before the long, cold winter. It would have been hard for Sarah to ignore the non-Puritan celebration of Christmas. As an old lady she remembered New England Christmas in the late 18th century:

Thanksgiving brought a social season. There was much visiting and distribution of good cheer for a week or two after that holiday. Towards Christmas the fat hogs were killed, the pork salted, the hams hung in the wide chimney to cure, and the sausages made. The women began to comb flax and spin linen thread; the men went daily to cut and haul the year’s firewood. We were too good Puritans to make much account of Christmas, though sometimes the young people at the main road got up a ball on Christmas eve, but at New Year, there was a general interchange of good wishes, with gifts and festivity.

Christmas in Maine, 1791

On the Maine frontier in 1786, Martha Ballard may not have had much choice but to work on Christmas. On Dec. 25, 1791, the midwife made famous by historian Laurel Thacher Ulrich had to help her neighbor deliver a child. In her diary, she wrote:

Snowd & was Cold. mrs Lithgow was very unwell all Day. her women were Calld in towards Evn^g & Shee was Safe Delivrd of a fine Son a^t 10 h Evn, and is Cleverly. mrs Pettee, Stackpool, Thomas & Collar taried all night.

In 1807, Congress Works on Christmas!

John Quincy Adams

Christmas still wasn’t much of a holiday after the turn of the century. Congress worked in Washington, D.C. , on Dec. 25, 1807. It didn’t bother Sen. John Quincy Adams, who came from old Puritan stock:

25th. Christmas day; but the committee of enquiry met at ten this morning. Mr. James Taylor attended, and made his statements in the presence of Mr. Smith, who wished until tomorrow morning to put his questions; which was agreed to. The committee sat until near three o’clock, still discussing the principles of my report. Part of what was yesterday struck out was this day reinserted.

A Merry Christmas at Sea, 1828

Times were changing, though, and the non-Puritan and the non-pious strove for a festive holiday. Capt. Solomon H. Davis, a 24-year-old Gloucester, Mass., sea captain, recorded in his diary in 1828.

Christmas Day — merry one. Rainy weather. Mr F— drinking Merry Christmas and trying to murder the time, conversing on various subjects — very interesting to females, if they could hear it. At meridian, a small stir. passed us with American colors flying. Who knows, says I, but that she will have letters for me?

A Poky Christmas, 1869

Sarah Orne Jewett didn’t get the New England Christmas promised by Charles Dickens.

Charles Dickens left his stamp on Christmas with his 1867-68 U.S. tour reading A Christmas Carol. Another writer, Sarah Orne Jewett, recorded in her diary that Christmas that year didn’t live up to the ideal holiday as envisioned by her British counterpart:

Saturday 25.A very poky Christmas. All my presents except a cushion for Carrie either came before or are to come after today. & that I dont like. Read and was at Grandma’s in the afternoon & also in the evening. Walked with Sara[h] Lord most all the evening.

A Charitable Christmas, 1875

Louisa May Alcott embraced the Dickensian notion of Christmas as a time of charity and gift giving by spending Christmas in 1875 visiting the poor and sick in New York City with Quaker activist Abby Hopper Gibbons. In a letter to her family in Concord, Mass., she wrote:

Louisa May Alcott

Dear Family,– …we drove to the hospital, and there the heart-ache began, for me at least, so sad it was to see these poor babies, born of want and sin, suffering every sort of deformity, disease, and pain. Cripples half blind, scarred with scrofula, burns, and abuse,–it was simply awful and indescribable!

…One poor mite, so eaten up with sores that its whole face was painted with some white salve,–its head covered with an oilskin cap; one eye gone, and the other half filmed over; hands bandaged, and ears bleeding,–could only moan and move its feet till I put a gay red dolly in one hand and a pink candy in the other; then the dim eye brightened, the hoarse voice said feebly, “Tanky, lady!” and I left it contentedly sucking the sweetie, and trying to see its dear new toy. It can’t see another Christmas, and I like to think I helped make this one happy, even for a minute…

A New England Christmas, 1911

By 1911, Christmas in Maine had changed considerably since the days of Martha Ballard. Mrs. A.H. Bowden was a 68-year-old widow living on the farm her husband left her in Cape Neddick. He had extensive land holdings in York. She spent the days leading up to Christmas dressing poultry, doing laundry and redecorating her setting room. On Christmas Day she wrote in her diary (with thanks to Cape Neddick, Maine):

A nice day Wind SW nice day for Chris (Christmas) Moderate And had quite A lot of Presents Went to see my sister found her very low Frank Main Chapman Called this Evening So tired I Can’t Write mailed A letter to A L Whittle And Wife and Also Adeline Gillchrist

Robert Frost Nails It, 1915

New England Christmas trees?

By 1915, Robert Frost captured the nostalgia that was becoming part of Christmas, a yearning for a simpler time. From Franconia, N.H., Frost wrote a letter to a friend that included an early version of the poem Christmas Trees. He wrote,

The city had withdrawn into itself
And left at last the country to the country,
When between whirls of snow not come to lie
And whirls of faded foliage not yet laid
There drove one day a stranger to my door
Who did in country-fashion in that there
He sat and waited till he drew us out,
A-buttoning coats, to ask him who he was.
He proed to be the town come back to look
For something in the country it had left
And could not do without and keep its Christmas.
He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees.

With thanks to the Public Domain Review. This story about the evolution of New England Christmas was updated in 2022.

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Anna Green Winslow Dines with King Hooper

Anna Green Winslow led quite a busy social life as an 11-year-old schoolgirl in pre-Revolutionary Boston. She socialized with the town’s elite, including the daughters of Connecticut Gov. Matthew Griswold, Revolutionary War leader Col. Josiah Quincy and Martha “Patty” Waldo, who married a future U.S. attorney general. On Sept. 22, she went to see the fireworks celebrating the coronation of King George III. The next day, Anna Green Winslow wrote in her diary that she dined with another king — Robert ‘King’ Hooper and his wife.

King Hooper by John Singleton Copley

She was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Nov. 29, 1759 a member of the prominent Winslow family. Her father, Joshua Winslow, would win an appointment as a common pleas judge. Her mother was a daughter of a wealthy merchant. Both parents had ancestors among the early Puritan settlers of New England.

King Hooper

Anna Green Winslow was sent to Boston to live with her father’s older sister, Sarah Deming. She then learned the skills required of a well-brought-up young lady: sewing, dancing and handwriting. She also learned how to behave in the polite society of King Hooper and his wife.

King Hooper made his fortune in the salted cod trade. He was one of the wealthiest men in New England before the Revolution. But, like Anna Winslow Green’s father, he was a Loyalist.

His ships called at all the ports in Europe and the West Indies.

The King Hooper mansion

He was well-liked for his fairness in dealing with fishermen, for his benevolence to the poor and for provisioning his ships with plenty of water and high-quality food. He lived in princely style in his Marblehead mansion, where he frequently entertained.

But people didn’t like him enough for him to survive the outbreak of the American Revolution, and he and his family left for the Canadian Maritimes in 1775. He returned to Marblehead after the war, but never regained his fortune. He died insolvent in 1790.

Anna Green Winslow casually noted her visit with the wealthy merchant:

I din’d at aunt Suky’s with Mr & Mrs Hooper of Marblehead. In the afternoon I went over to see Miss Betsy Winslow. When I came back I had the pleasure to meet papa. I came home in the evening to see aunt Deming. Unkle Winslow sup’d here.

King Hooper’s house on 8 Hooper St. in Marblehead belongs to the National Register of Historic Places. Currently the Marblehead Arts Association uses it as its headquarters.

With thanks to Diary of Anna Green Winslow, A Boston School Girl of 1771, edited by Alice Morse Earle. Images: King Hooper mansion By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9928890.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Anna Green Winslow Listens to the Patriot Preacher

Anna Green Winslow was a 10-year-old schoolgirl whose observations of pre-Revolutionary Boston have stayed in print since 1894.

Anna Green Winslow

She was born Nov. 29, 1759 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, a member of the prominent Winslow family. Her father Joshua Winslow would be named a common pleas judge. Her mother was a daughter of a wealthy merchant. She was a descendant on her father’s side of Puritan Edward Winslow’s older brother and, on her mother ‘s side, of another Puritan, Percival Green.

When Anna Green Winslow was 10 years old, her parents sent her to Boston to live with her father’s older sister, Sarah Deming, to be ‘finished.’ While in Boston she learned the skills required of a well-brought-up young lady. She went to school for sewing, dancing and handwriting.

Anna copied her letters to her mother into a book, starting on Nov. 18, 1771. The historian Alice Morse Earle published her book with extensive footnotes in 1894. Called Diary of Anna Green Winslow, A Boston School Girl of 1771.

Patriot Preacher

Anna Green Winslow‘s father was a confirmed Loyalists, but she went anyway to hear the Rev. Samual Stillman, the ‘Patriot Preacher,’ at the First Baptist Church in Boston.

Samuel Stillman was born in Philadelphia in 1737, but moved to South Carolina with his family at a young age. In 1762 he moved to Boston as assistant pastor of the Second Baptist Church. In 1765 he was made pastor of the First Baptist Church, a post he would hold until his death in 1807.

The Rev. Samuel Stillman

Over those 52 years he took the First Baptist Church from one of the smallest congregations in Boston to one of the largest. “Crowds thronged his obscure little church at the North End, and he took an active part in Revolutionary politics,” wrote Alice Morse Earle. “Many were pleased with his patriotism who did not agree with him in doctrine.”

So pleased were they that they elected him to the convention for the formation of the state constitution in 1779. Nine years later, he was elected to the convention for the adoption of the U.S. Constitution and he delivered an eloquent speech in support of it. Stillman persuaded so many undecided people that he was credited with contributing much toward the adoption of the Constitution.

That would be much later, though. In September 1772, Anna Green Winslow recorded her impressions of him in her diary:

20.—Sabbath Day. I went to hear Mr. Stillman all day, I like him very much. I don’t wonder so many go to hear him.

This story last updated in 2022.

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