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Thompson Maxwell, the Forrest Gump of the American Revolution

In 1820 at the age of 78, Thompson Maxwell rode his horse more than 1,600 miles from Detroit to New England and back. He did it to revisit some of the most important sites of the American Revolution. After all, he’d fought at most of them.

He was there when patriots dumped tea into Boston Harbor (though whether he dumped it himself is a question for historians to resolve). He fought in the Battle of Concord and then at Bunker Hill.

And that’s only part of Thompson Maxwell’s story. He also fought in the French and Indian War as a teenager, helped suppress both Shay’s and Pontiac’s rebellions as a young man and fought in the War of 1812 as a septuagenarian. All told, he saw action in 22 battles.

He may have embellished his tales a bit, but his life follows the arc of American history from the colonial wars to the settling of the west.

The Boston Tea Party

Thompson Maxwell

He was born in Bedford, Mass., in 1742 to an Irish immigrant couple, the youngest of seven children. His mother was 50 when he was born, and may have had a hard time disciplining her youngest son.

At the age of 15, Thompson ran away from home to fight in the French and Indian War. He followed his older brother Hugh, known as a “brave and useful soldier.” Brother Hugh escaped from the French after they captured Fort William Henry on Lake George.

Thompson fought under two Revolutionary heroes, John Stark and Israel Putnam, and for a time he fought Indians with the celebrated Rogers’ Rangers. He recalled the fall of Montreal, with, “colors flying, drums beating, drills and camp display in martial splendor.”

The surrender at Montreal

He couldn’t get enough of marching, hardship and danger. In 1762 he went to Detroit to quell Pontiac’s rebellion. When he came home he married Sybil Wyman, and they moved to Amherst, N.H. Eventually, the couple had five children.

Boston Tea Party

Thompson Maxwell farmed and teamed – that is, hauled goods in a wagon. A trip to Boston in 1773 brought him to the Boston Tea Party. As an old and revered Revolutionary War veteran, Thompson Maxwell dictated his memoirs several times.

He gave several accounts of how the tea was thrown overboard.

“Seventy-three spirited citizen volunteers, in the costume of Indians, in defiance of royal authority, accomplished the daring exploit, John Hancock was then a merchant,” he said. “My team was loaded at his store for Amherst, N.H., and put up, to meet in consultation at his house at 2 p.m. The business was soon planned and executed. The patriots triumphed.”

In another memoir, he claimed he had joined the Indians and dumped the tea along with them.

Historian J.L. Bell believes he was in Boston on Dec. 16, 1773, but only watched the party and picked up some gossip. He had some inside information that participants likely knew: that shipowner Francis Rotch planned to take his tea back to England, that John Hancock organized the raid and that George Robert Twelve Hewes was one of the leaders. On the other hand, he got some details wrong, claiming the “Indians” dumped the tea at Long Wharf, when it happened at Griffin’s Wharf.

American Revolution

Then on April 18, 1775, Thompson Maxwell drove to Boston with his team of horses, and went on to Bedford to stay with his sister and brother-in-law. That’s how he ended up at the Battle of Concord, said to be the only New Hampshire soldier there.

thompson-maxwell-british-entering-concord

The British Entering Concord, by Amos Doolittle

Afterward, he probably went back to Amherst to join his company as a second lieutenant. The company then marched to Boston to fight the Battle of Bunker Hill. Thompson described how he drove stakes to reinforce the hill and stuffed hay between fence rails. During the battle, the British shot his brother Hugh in the right arm, but Thompson got through it unscathed.

Thompson Maxwell remembered Washington arriving to take command of the Continental Army. He fought with John Sullivan at the Battle of Trenton on the day after Christmas, and he marched on to capture Princeton. He saw action at the Battle of Bennington, which defeated Gen. John Burgoyne’s forces. “Grand military display,” he said. “Resigned and went home.”

You’d think he’d had enough of fighting by then, but no, he and his brother Hugh fought to put down Shay’s Rebellion.

Finally he did have enough, and spent 20 years farming in Buckland, Mass. But he still served his country, representing Buckland at the Massachusetts constitutional convention.

Thompson Maxwell, Old Soldier

Thompson Maxwell moved to Ohio in 1800, and his wife died two years later. He saw action against Indians at the Battle of Tippecanoe, when he had reached his late 50s. In 1807, he married a widow, who died six years later, and then he married again.

During the War of 1812, he raised troops and served in the army as a major. But he got no military glory this time. He guided Gen. William Hull to Detroit, but Hull later surrendered the fort to the British. The British captured Maxwell along with the others, but paroled him because of his age — 67.

The surrender at Detroit

He received a nasty welcome at home. He later described what happened:

“A mob, irritated by Hull’s pusillanimity, misjudging my patriotic efforts, and denouncing all parties concerned in the late disasters at Detroit, rally and gather about my habitation, burn my house, destroy my property, and, barely clothed, I escape for my life through a corn-field by night. . . .”

He ignored his friends’ advice against rejoining the army, and got captured again as well as wounded. Finally he ended his military career as barracks master in Detroit.

Perhaps he kept rejoining the army for money. Indigent veterans didn’t receive pensions until 1818. His brother Hugh, for example, was broke, and tried to restore his finances by selling horses to the West Indies. Hugh died on the voyage.

Thompson Maxwell died in 1832 at the age of 90 near Detroit.

This story was updated in 2022.

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What They Say in New England About Local Characters and Customs

Henry Wheeler Shaw, the 19^th-century humorist known as Josh Billings, said genuine proverbs are like good cambric needles: short, sharp and shiny. In New England, there are plenty of them, about the weather, about holidays and about each other.

In Bath, N.H., someone who makes a strong but odd statement was said to be ‘equal to Priest Sutherland,’ a minister in the town for 50 years who made strong but odd statements.

Also in New Hampshire, ‘leaning toward Sawyers’ was an expression used when someone left the house surreptitiously for a drink. The Sawyer family kept a store where drinks could be purchased in Sugar Hill.

Maine loggers blamed annoyances and misfortune on the mythical character Sock Saunders. If a logger slipped on a log but caught himself in time, he said, “Foxed you that time, Sock Saunders.” If he cut himself, he said, “Got me that time, Sock Saunders.’

A Connecticut toast goes, “Here’s to the Nutmeg State—who has a grater?”

In Massachusetts, they say a rib was taken off Billerica to make Bedford. And for someone who finally realizes something obvious, they say, ‘Dawn breaks over Marblehead.’ When Marbleheaders ran into each other they’d say, “Down bucket,” or “To hell I pitch it.” No one seems to know why.

Travelers used to say that Cape Codders called a house a house, but a house with a shed was a village. (That no longer applies.) Cape Codders were called ‘Chowderheads’ and ‘Mooncussers.’ Cape Codders called people who lived off the Cape ‘Off-Capers.’

Nantucketers called Martha’s Vineyard residents ‘Old Town Turkeys,’ while a Nantucketer was a ‘Scrap Islander’ to a denizen of Martha’s Vineyard. Nantucketers liked to say something was ‘as handy as Caleb’s cheese,’ referring to Caleb Macy, who liked cheese so much he kept one hanging from a string in his sitting room.

Northampton, Mass., was called ‘Pudding Town’ and its people ‘Puddingers,’ after the residents’ custom of eating hasty pudding and milk for Saturday evening supper.

All Boston residents were ‘beaneaters,’ and Boston folk were ‘full of notions.’ ‘Brahmins’ were the clannish, aloof, old New England families. Of them it was said,

And this is good old Boston,
The home of the bean and the cod,
Where the Lowells talk only to the Cabots,
And the Cabots talk only to God.

‘Cold roast Boston’ referred to Brahmins because they ate roast beef on Sunday and cold leftovers on Monday. The Codfish Aristocracy was a class of nouveau riche who had acquired wealth from the codfishing industry.

Poor Irish were ‘shanty Irish,’ while shanty Irish with notions of respectability were ‘lace-curtain Irish.’ Above the ‘lace-curtain Irish’ were the ‘two-bathroom Irish,’ then the ‘wall-to-wall Irish,’ then at the pinnacle of Irish society were ‘Irish who had fruit in the house when no one was sick.’

‘Black Irish’ were Irish people with dark hair and eyes, said to be descendants of shipwrecked sailors of the Spanish Armada.

Harvard’s battle cry of ‘Oh, Rinehart,’ started on June 11, 1900, when an undergraduate called up to the dormitory window for John Bryce Gordon Rinehart (Class of 1900). His cry was picked up across the Yard by hundreds of students, and was repeated during any campus ruckus.

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Boston Raises a Liberty Pole, and Half the Town Gets Drunk

On January 24, 1793, Bostonians raised a liberty pole at the intersection of Kilby, Water and Battersea streets near Faneuil Hall.

“Raising the liberty pole,” 1776, painted by F.A. Chapman; engraved by John C. McRae, N.Y. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

But the American Revolution had ended. Why a liberty pole in 1793? And didn’t Boston already have a Liberty Tree?

The liberty pole celebrated the news that the French were about to topple the monarchy and win their own liberte, egalite and fraternite. Boston held a Civic Feast in honor of the event.

The Bostonians named that spot Liberty Square during the celebration, according to Samuel Adams Drake. Back in 1765, the government put up a building on the site, which people believed was intended as a stamp office. They tore down the building.

Liberty Pole Party

And how they celebrated! Bostonians paraded through town to the homes of Gov. John Hancock and Lt. Gov. Sam Adams, then called “citizens.” They raised a toast at each house. The celebrants also roasted an ox and brought it to the square, its horns mounted atop the 60-foot liberty pole hoisted to honor the French.

John Singleton Copley painted this portrait of John Hancock around 1771. Courtesy Massachusetts Historical Society.

Then they laid tables from the Old State House nearly to Kilby Street. A wagon brought 800 loaves of bread. Then came another loaded with hogsheads of strong punch. They finished off the ox and then gathered at Faneuil Hall for “an entertainment,” Lt. Gov. Samuel Adams presiding.

An estimated half the adult population of Boston got drunk that night.

However, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette had lost their heads to the guillotine three days earlier, something not known in Boston at the time.

“[B]ut as the bloody character of the French Revolution became manifest in the execution of Louis XVI, which had occurred three days before, the Civic Feast was not repeated,” wrote Drake.

Patriotic Bostonians ran hot and cold about the French. They were not only Papists but sworn enemies during the French and Indian wars, which lasted from 1688 to 1763. Then, of course, the French bailed out the rebellious colonists during the American Revolution and much was forgiven. But then in 1798, just a few years after the fall of the French monarchy, the Quasi-War between France and the U.S. broke out.

About Liberty Poles…

Romans erected the first liberty pole after the assassination of Julius Caesar. The murder plot’s leaders met a crowd of Romans at the Roman Forum, where someone placed a Phrygian cap from a freed slave on top of a pole to show the Romans were free from Caesar’s tyranny. (A Phrygian cap is a soft, pointed cap with the tip bent forward.)

Centuries later, dozens of colonial American towns erected liberty poles as a symbol of dissent against England. When they capped the pole with an ensign, usually a red cap or a flag, it meant the townspeople should assemble and vent their anger with the British government.

The poles often started trouble between patriots and loyalists. In Sandwich, Mass., for example, loyalists took down the liberty pole when leading patriots left town. The patriots then arrested them upon their return.

Illustration of The Liberty Tree in Boston, 1825. From A History of Boston, the metropolis of Massachusetts, from its origin to the present period, by Caleb H. Snow.

Liberty Trees

Patriots erected liberty trees instead in other towns, including Boston, Providence and Acton, Mass. A tall elm at the corner of Essex and Washington streets in Boston, for example, started as a rallying point against the Stamp Act for the Sons of Liberty.

Boston did have a liberty pole, though, during the Revolution. Patriots put it up on Prospect Hill during the Siege of Boston. They used a 76-foot ship’s mast taken from the British warship HMS Diana after the Battle of Chelsea Creek.

Many 19th century silver coins show a seated Liberty holding a pole with a Phrygian cap on top of it. They’re known as United States Seated Liberty coinage.

The Town of Bedford, Mass., re-enacts the raising and capping of its liberty pole in an annual ceremony. Rochester, N.Y., lights its pole at the beginning of every Christmas season.

And today, Boston holds an annual Bastille Day celebration every July 14.

All that’s left of Boston’s Liberty Tree. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

This story was updated in 2022.

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