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Shattuck and The Devil Try To Stop Quaker Persecution in New England

Quaker persecution began in Massachusetts in July 1656 as soon as the first two Quakers sailed into Boston Harbor. Mary Fisher and Ann Austin arrived on the Swallow, a ship from Barbados, with a trunk full of Quaker writings.

Puritan magistrates had them strip searched in public for signs of witchcraft, jailed them, deprived them of food, confiscated their belongings and put them back on the Swallow when it sailed away eight weeks later.

To the Puritans’ horror, eight more Quakers arrived in Boston shortly after Fisher and Austin. The General Court passed an edict that imposed a heavy fine on any ship’s captain who brought Quakers into Boston. The eight Quakers were beaten and jailed, and the captain who brought them had to take them back to England.

The Massachusetts Bay Colony then banned Quakers — in 1656, 1657, 1658, 1659 and 1660 — and sent letters to the other New England colonies suggesting they do the same. Connecticut followed suit in 1656; Rhode Island refused.

The colonies got away with Quaker persecution until the restoration of the English monarchy. Then, Charles II tried to stop the Puritans from persecuting Quakers – or other heretics such as Catholics or Lutherans. And at that point Quaker persecution was more than an exercise in religious intolerance; it was about maintaining political independence from the Crown.

New England Way

Samuel Sewall

The Puritans had endured much to establish the New England Way, a system based on the power and independence of the congregation. The church was sovereign; the state subordinate to the church.

To create their moral community – their ‘city on a hill’ – the Puritans had left their homes, sailed across the Atlantic and confronted the terrors of the wilderness.

The Quakers who continued to arrive in the mid-1600s were anything but gentle peaceniks. They deliberately disrupted the Puritan community. When the self-righteous Quakers came to town they yelled in the streets, banged pots and pans, shouted during church services and stripped off their clothes.

Samuel Sewall in his diary recorded one such disturbance:

In Sermon time there came in a female Quaker, in a Canvas Frock, her face as black as ink, led by two other Quakers, and two others followed. It occasioned the greatest and most amazing uproar that I ever saw.

Burning Quakers

The Puritans responded by cruelly punishing Quakers. They whipped them, branded them, cut off their ears, bored holes through their tongues and hanged them.

Rev. John Norton, a leading Boston minister, cried, “I would carry fire in one hand and faggots in the other, to burn all the Quakers in the world.”

That didn’t stop the Quakers.

The punishment for a Quaker to set foot in Massachusetts in 1660 was death by hanging. Quaker Mary Dyer chose to die to expose the cruelty of the Puritan theocracy

The Quakers even exasperated Roger Williams, that paragon of tolerance. Though the other colonies threatened Providence Plantation with a trade embargo because it tolerated Quakers, the Quakers treated Williams disrespectfully. Wrote one historian,

Williams was taken aback by his Quaker opponents’ boisterous behavior and abandonment of common courtesy during the debates. He vehemently objected to their habit of interrupting his arguments, shouting him down, attempting to humiliate him personally with name-calling and ridicule, misrepresenting his convictions, and displaying a noted lack of truthfulness in their own arguments.

Stopping the Quaker Persecution

Charles II ordered an end to Quaker persecution.

In 1660, the English monarchy was restored. Quakers went for help to King Charles II, a Catholic sympathizer. He had no liking for the Puritans, who had executed his father and taken refuge in New England.

A Quaker named Burroughs was said to have told the monarch, “There is a vein of blood opened in your dominions which, if not stopped, will overcome all.

”I will stop that vein,” Charles supposedly replied.

Then in 1662, the king sent a letter to Massachusetts ordering him to stop the Quaker persecution.

According to the king’s missive, the colony should send Quakers accused of crimes – unharmed – to England for trial. A Quaker named Shattuck, who the Puritans had sent back to England, then brought the letter to Gov. John Endicott. Word spread that “Shattuck and the devil had come.”

Endicott said he would obey the king’s command. But only gradually did Massachusetts Puritans lessen their persecution of Quakers.

This story about Quaker persecution was updated in 2022.

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Italians in New England Declared Enemy Aliens in WWII

Angela Puleo was one of thousands of Italian immigrants stigmatized as enemy aliens by the government during World War II .

Two months after Mussolini declared war on the United States, the 51-year-old mother living in Boston’s North End was questioned, fingerprinted and photographed. Officials took her camera and made her carry a little pink ID booklet at all times.

Angela Puleo went through all that despite having three sons — Charlie, Tony and Jack — on active duty in the military. Many Italian mothers like Angela pasted blue stars in their windows to show they had two, three or four sons fighting the war.

Charles Ruggiero, clerk in a grocery store in New York’s Italian section, wishes the handful of spaghetti he is breaking were Mussolini’s neck. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Enemy Aliens

As many as 500,000 Italian sons of immigrants served in the armed forces during World War II. But 600,000 Italian immigrants had not become U.S. citizens. The U.S. government therefore declared them enemy aliens. About 2,000 Italians were arrested and sent to internment camps in a little-known chapter of the Second World War.

The government treated Italians on the West Coast more harshly than their counterparts in the East. Many had to move inland. East Coast Italians had it a little better because their dense neighborhoods gave them political clout. Italians, after all, helped elect Fiorella LaGuardia mayor of New York City.

But still, Italians throughout the country carried the stigma of their classification as enemy aliens. They lost jobs because of curfews. The government shut down their Italian-language newspapers, and the U.S. Navy requisitioned their fishing yawls. They had to give up cameras and short-wave radios for military reasons.

Opera Singers?

The day after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government began to impound the assets, bank accounts and homes of Japanese people on the West Coast.

Four days later, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini declared war on the United States. LaGuardia warned President Franklin Roosevelt he’d better not try it with Italians, threatening revolution. “You’re not going to do what you did to the Japanese. The Italians of the East Coast will form into a revolutionary army and we will march on Washington,” he said.

Attorney General Francis Biddle, in his book In Brief Authority, described how he told Roosevelt about plans to intern enemy aliens.

“And you’re going to intern all of them?” said the President in a tone that suggested he approved of the idea.

“Well, not quite,” replied Biddle.

“I don’t care about the Italians,” continued Roosevelt. “They are a lot of opera singers, but the Germans are different; they may be dangerous.”

Joining Up

Italian-Americans, in fact, were some of the bravest fighters in the war. Thirteen Italian-Americans won the Congressional Medal of Honor. Lt. Col. Henry Mucci of Bridgeport, Conn., won the Distinguished Service Medal for leading the daring rescue of American prisoners who had survived the Bataan Death March.

In Italian neighborhoods, young men rushed from street corners and taverns to enlist. Others got drafted. Italian families displayed satin flags in their windows, with blue stars for each son serving in the U.S. military. They replaced the blue star with a gold one when the son or brother died in the war. Italian mothers, like all American mothers, learned to dread the very sight of a telegram delivery boy.

Popular athletes like Rocky Marciano, Dom DiMaggio and his brother Joe enlisted in the military. The DiMaggios’ parents weren’t U.S. citizens, but the government didn’t intern them as enemy aliens. Doing so would probably have created a public outcry.

In February of 1942, Biddle issued the regulations for enemy aliens. Italians who were not U.S. citizens above the age of 14 had to go to the nearest post office to register.

Me Boom-Boom

Josie Patania, then living in Boston’s North End, remembered how her parents were classified as Italian enemy aliens.

I remember filling up an alien card every year for my mother and father. We were witnesses. Then we made my mother go for citizenship. We taught her how to write her name and to say George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. If she saw Mussolini, we said to shoot him. They actually asked her that question. She said, “Me boom-boom.”

Italian-Americans bent over backwards to prove their loyalty to the United States. In Milford, Mass., the Sons of Italy banned the Italian flag and the Italian language.

Hanoer Street in Boston’s North End.

That didn’t stop the government from deporting or interning certain classes of Italians. According to some estimates, about 2,000 Italians were interned by the War Relocation Authority; others place the number closer to 10,000. The unlucky enemy aliens included those who ran pro-Fascist Italian-language newspapers, members of the diplomatic corps, businessmen and students from Italy.

Pasquale DeCicco

Pasquale DeCicco, a prominent Italian-American resident of New Haven, had served as acting vice consul of the city’s Italian consulate. In May 1909, six years after his arrival in the United States, he became an American citizen. But during World War I, he enlisted in the Italian Army. The U.S. government held that against him in the Second World War, though Italy sided with America during the First.

Forty-two members of his family who had immigrated to the United States were all American citizens.

On April 24, 1942, the FBI came to the New Haven home where Pasquale DeCicco lived with his wife and daughter and arrested him. He was 63 years old. He sent letter after letter pleading his loyalty to his adopted country. The government confined him as an enemy alien in Hartford, in East Boston and then in Ft. McAlester in Oklahoma, where he lost 32 pounds. Unable to pay his mortgage, he lost his home.

Pasquale DeCicco didn’t go home until Dec. 10, 1943, after Italy surrendered.

The Italian fishing fleet in Boston. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

The Italian Fishing Fleet

Fisherman in Boston and Gloucester, Mass., bore the brunt of the war as well.

The U.S. government requisitioned fishing yawls from the fishing fleet in those two cities to use as minesweepers and patrol boats. At least 200 fishermen were grounded as enemy aliens during the war. The government either bought the vessels outright or chartered them.

Josie Patania remembered,

During the war, they took my father off the fishing boat. So he went to work in the spinach plant, washing the spinach. My brothers Carmelo, Angelo, and Vincent were all in the service at this time. Carmelo and Vincent weren’t even citizens. They swore them in before they went, Vincent to Normandy and Carmelo to the Philippines.

Some fishermen could keep their boats, but they had to jump through hoops to go fishing. Frank Firicano, a Boston fisherman and secretary of his union, remembered:

They had a sub net in Boston harbor too. Because there’s the Boston Navy Yard, and there were convoys leaving night and day from Boston. Eventually, they let us go fishing. We had to have a password each day, go to the Customs House to get clearance, a pass, and then on the way out, stop at a barge off Deer Island manned by the Coast Guard, and they would check out the boat to see we weren’t taking provisions to the Germans. We were allowed provisions for seven, which was our crew. There was the steel gate–it opened, but no one could get out after 5 pm. We had radio silence too; we had locks on the radios. Only in an emergency could you use it.

Columbus Day

On Columbus Day 1942, Attorney General Francis Biddle announced Italians living as long-term residents in the United States were removed from the list of enemy aliens. He had political reasons to do it. Italian immigrants made up an enormous voting bloc and congressional elections were coming up.

The United States was also about to invade Italy.

So the government lifted many restrictions on Italian enemy aliens. Angela Puleo could travel freely again, own a camera and throw away her little pink booklet.

She was one of the lucky ones. All three of her sons – Jack, Tony and Charlie – came home safely from the war.

***

Click here to order your copy today.

This story about Italian enemy aliens was updated in 2024. Hanover Street image by By Bundesarchiv, Bild 137-047635 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5418684. With thanks to The Italian American Experience in New Haven by Anthony V. Riccio and Una Storia Segreta: The Secret History of Italian American Evacuation and Internment During World War II by Lawrence Distasi.

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New England Colonists Thunderstruck by the Lightning Storms of 1768

Terrific lightning storms unsettled New England colonists during the summer of 1768, when rising tensions with Great Britain led to conflict and violence. But unlike the Puritans of a century before, the colonists didn’t view the lightning as a message from God.

Benjamin Franklin

The Age of Enlightenment had arrived, and reason and analysis won over superstition and traditional authority. Or at least began to.

So even as Sam Adams was proselytizing for rebellion against the King, inquiring minds tried to analyze the severe lightning that struck that summer. They were continuing the scientific analysis that Ben Franklin had started. He’d conducted his famous kite experiment 14 years before then.

The 1768 Lightning Storms

The tremendous lightning storms in the summer of 1768 came as the Townshend Acts passed in 1767, took effect and colonists in British North America resisted them.

In February 1768, Sam Adams circulated a letter among the colonies opposing the Acts, calling them taxation without representation.

Agitators in Boston harassed customs inspectors, and in May a British warship with 50 guns sailed into Boston Harbor. In July, Gov. Francis Bernard dissolved the General Court.

Harvard’s second Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, John Winthrop. Courtesy Harvard Art Museums.

On July 2, lightning struck Hollis Hall at Harvard College. In a letter to the editors of the Boston Chronicle, John Winthrop wrote that what happened supported the view that lightning was electricity. He described how the violent thunderstorm beat down a chimney top, shattered woodwork and windows and tore several feet of brickwork. Several students felt a blow, which they compared to an electric shock. One students was thrown from his chair, perceiving neither the flash nor the thunder.

And then Winthrop described the lightning rod, which Franklin had invented in 1749:

In my house, that has such an apparatus fitted with bells to give notice of the passage of the lightening along the rods, the bells began to ring as soon as the first thunder was heard at a distance.

The bells continued ringing briskly for about an hour, he wrote. The lightning “frequently flashed from one bell to the other, and with cracks loud enough to be heard in the farther part of the house.”

Boycott

In August, Boston merchants agreed to boycott British goods until the repeal of the Townshend Acts. Tremendous thunderstorms struck from Salem, Mass., to Norwalk, Conn., on the afternoon of August 1. In Roxbury, Mass., lightning shattered a window. In Boston, it knocked a clock case into fragments on a Winter Street home. It also threw clothes around a room in a Water Street home and melted a pewter plate on a mantel in Temple Street. It stunned two children, who recovered.

That storm extended to Connecticut, where lightning knocked over a tree in Hartford, killing two cows, and set a barn in Norwalk on fire.

The fierce lightning flashes inspired a citizen in Salem, Mass., to send a poem to the Essex Gazette:

What grumbling Noise comes thro’ the yielding Air!
Is it the Cannon’s Roar! The Din of War?
No! — ‘Tis the Voice of God; he Thunder rolls,
And flashes Lightnings to the distant Polls.

British warships arrive in Boston Harbor.

Sulfur and British Soldiers

In September, 4,000 British soldiers arrived to keep order and set up permanent residence in Boston. A few weeks before the British began their military occupation, lightning tore a large oak tree to pieces in Wrentham, Mass.

But the next evening, September 8, brought the weirdest lightning strike of all.

It struck Daniel Mann’s tavern, where ladies and gentlemen sat around a tea table. A flash of lightning came into the room, followed by an explosion, apparently as loud as the discharge of a cannon. Large sparks were seen, and the air in the room smelled like sulfur, which gave one person an intense headache. A windowpane broke, a clock injured, the ceiling and floors damaged. One man felt a violent shock on top of his head, another felt pain in his shoulder and found his coat scorched.

“All the inmates were filled with terror,” reported Essex historian Sidney Perley in Historic Storms of New England.

In Rehoboth, Mass., lightning killed a 10-year-old boy. A barn in Mendon, Mass., burned to the ground when struck. In Uxbridge, lightning tore up the heart and floor of a house and stunned several family members.

“This shower was not as local as thunder showers generally are,” Perley wrote, “but it extended over a large territory, and the lightning was sharper and more frequent and disastrous than it was remembered to have been before in many parts of the region.”

This story was updated in 2022.

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Henry David Thoreau and the Coldest Winter Ever in New England

To Henry David Thoreau, the Cold Friday of 1810 was a well-known phenomenon that came to mind in January 1857, the coldest winter of the 19th century. That New England winter featured heavy snow, brutal cold and violent winds from mid-December until late April.

Winter in the Country by Currier and Ives

Thoreau was 39 years old, and his mother, Cynthia Dunbar Thoreau, remembered the Cold Friday of Jan. 19, 1810. The weather had been warm on the preceding day, but then a snow squall came up and the temperature fell as much as 55 degrees in 24 hours. The piercing wind made the cold unbearable.

Coldest Winter

About a month into the coldest winter, on Jan. 11, 1857, Henry David Thoreau wrote in his journal:

Began snowing yesterday afternoon–& it is still snowing this forenoon–

Mother remembers the Cold Friday–very well–She lived in the house where I was born–The people in the kitchen Jack Garrison–Ester–& a Hardy girl drew up close to the fire–but the dishes which the Hardy girl was washing froze as fast as she washed them close to the fire. They managed to keep warm in the parlor by their great fires.

Henry David Thoreau had as good an eye for the telling weather detail as his mother. He described the coldest 10 days in January in his journal.

32 Snowstorms

Henry David Thoreau described New England’s coldest winter in detail.

The weather in New England remained mild until mid-December, though plenty of snow had fallen. Then on December 17 the temperature plummeted to 12 below zero in Massachusetts and 16 below in Maine. For the rest of the winter, violent wind and 32 snowstorms buffeted New England. Railroad tracks were blocked, ships were wrecked and poor people suffered because food and fuel were so expensive.

January 17 and 18 were the two coldest days recorded in New England, and the period from the 17^th to the 26^th was the coldest week ever. On the night of Jan. 17, the temperature plunged to 20° below zero in Salem, Mass., with a cutting northeast wind. The cold didn’t let up much, and the next day, a Sunday, snow began to fall.

On Jan. 18, Thoreau wrote in his journal:

A very cold day– Thermometer at 7 1/2 Am 14° (Smith’s hanging on same nail 20°) at 1 1/4 Pm 3° 2 1/4 Pm 4° 3 3/4 Pm 0°. It is cloudy & no sun all day–& considerable wind also. There was no sabbath school on account of the cold–could not warm the room… 3 little pigs were frozen to death in an Irishmans pen last night at the Green Store–

Began to snow in the evening–the thermometer at 0°.

On Jan. 19, he called the snow intolerable:

A snow storm with very high wind all last night & today– Though not much snow (perhaps 7 or 8 inches) falls it is exceedingly drifted–so that the first train gets down about noon & none gets up till about 6 Pm! There is no vehicle passing the house before 2 Pm– A fine dry snow–intolerable to face.

Boston Harbor Freezes

The next day, Jan. 20, he wrote the snow blocked the roads and the cold froze Boston Harbor.

There probably is not more than 12 to 18 inches of snow on a level–yet the drifts are very large– Neither milkman nor butcher got here yesterday–& to-day the milkman came with oxen partly through the fields. Though the snow is nowhere deep in the middle of the main street–the drifts are very large especially on the N side–so that as you look down the street it appears as uneven as a rolling prairie…I hear that Boston harbor froze over on the 18th down to Fort Independence–

The river has been frozen everywhere except at the very few swiftest places since about Dec 18–& everywhere since about 29 Jan 1^st….

On Jan. 21^st:

The river is now so concealed that a common eye would not suspect its existence– It is drifted on it exactly as on the meadow–i.e. successive low drifts with a bluff head toward the wind.

It is remarkable how many tracks of foxes you will see quite near the village–where they have been in the night– & yet a regular walker will not glimpse one oftener than once in 8 or 10 years. The overflow, under the snow, is generally at the bends, where the river is narrower–& swifter—

More Snow

It snowed the next day, Jan. 22

Snows all day–clearing up at night—a remarkably fine & dry snow, which looking out you might suspect to be blowing snow merely–yet thus it snows all day—driving almost horizontally—but it does not amount to much…

I asked M. about the cold Friday– he said “It was plaguey cold–it stung like a wasp”– He remembers seeing them toss up water in a shoemaker’s 3 shop–usually a very warm place–& when it struck the floor, it was frozen & rattled like so many shot…

Jan. 23 was the coldest day Thoreau could remember as he checked the temperature on his neighbors’ thermometers:

Ink froze–had to break the ice in my pail with a hammer

The coldest day that I remember recording–clear & bright–but very high wind–blowing the snow– Thermometer at 6 3/4 Am 18°…Walking this Pm I notice that the face inclines to stiffen–& the hands & feet get cold soon– On first coming out in very cold weather I find that I breathe fast, though without walking faster or exerting myself any more than usual.

Jan. 25

Still another very cold morning– Smith’s thermometer over ours at 29°- ours in bulb–but about 7 ours was at 18°- & Smith’s at 24- ours therefore at first about 23°–

Jan. 26

Another cold morning– None looked early–but about 8 it was 14°

Saw Boston Harbor frozen over (for some time). Reminded me of, I think, Parry’s Winter Harbor–with vessels frozen in. Saw thousands on the ice–a stream of men reaching down to Fort Independence where they were cutting a channel toward the city– Ice said to reach 14 miles. Snow untracked on many decks. Snow At 10 Pm 14 plus. Ice did not finally go out till about Feb 15th

Finally, on Jan. 27, the coldest winter started to warm up. On that day, Thoreau wrote:

Thawing a little at last Thermometer 35 degrees plus.

With thanks to Historic Storms of New England: Its Gales, Hurricanes, Tornadoes, Showers with Thunder and Lightning… by Sidney Perley.

This story about the coldest winter was updated in 2022.

Image: Currier & Ives. (ca. 1863) Winter in the Country: A Cold Morning. , ca. 1863. New York: Published by Currier & Ives. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2002698836/.

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John Andrews Informs Philadelphia of the Trouble with Tea in 1773

John Andrews regularly wrote to his brother-in-law in Philadelphia with the latest news, gossip and scandal in Boston in 1773. For the month of November and December there was no hotter topic than tea.

The trouble with tea, of course, culminated in the Boston Tea Party on Dec. 16, 1773.

It first crops up in a November 29 letter, when Andrews worries that tea arriving in port will spell trouble:

John Andrews wrote to his brother-in-law about the dramatic events of the Boston Tea Party

“[Captains] Hall and Bruce arriv’d Saturday evening with each an hundred and odd chests of the detested Tea,” he wrote. “What will be done with it, can’t say : but I tremble for ye consequences should ye consignees still persist in their obstinacy and not consent to reship it.”

The people had softened a bit, he wrote, and seemed willing to offer the tea to local authorities for safekeeping. But, he believed, “from the present dispositions of ye people,” that the only alternative was to send it back to London.

“Ye Bells are ringing for a general muster, and a third vessel is now arrived in Nantasket road,” he wrote. “Handbills are stuck up, calling upon Friends! Citizens! and Countrymen!”

The People Arm Themselves

A few days later, on December 1, he notes that opinions about the tea are hardening. People are also arming themselves. The consignees had all moved to the fort at Castle Island, because they still refused to take the tea back.

The fort at Castle Island in 1776

“Its not only ye town, but the country are unanimous against the landing it, and at the Monday and Tuesday Meetings, they attended to the number of some hundreds from all the neighboring towns within a dozen miles,” he wrote. “[It] would puzzle any person to purchase a pair of pistols in in town, as they are all bought up, with a full determination to repel force by force.”

John Andrews Spreads the News

Finally, two days after the Tea Party, John Andrews spread the word to his brother-in-law in Philadelphia. Discoverers of the letter many years later noted that it must have carried hot news when it arrived. The tattered letter showed the wear and tear of having passed through many hands.

“However precarious our situation may be, yet such is the present calm composure of the people that a stranger would hardly think that ten thousand pounds sterling of the East India Company’s tea was destroy’d,” Andrews wrote. And yet he called it “a serious truth” that Boston will feel “the whole weight of ministerial vengeance.”

But, he pointed out, most people think Boston stands an equal chance of receiving troops whether they threw the tea in the harbor or not. “Had it been stored,” wrote Andrews, “we should inevitably have had ’em, to enforce the sale of it.”

He characterized the Tea Party as “transacted with the greatest regularity and despatch.”

The General Muster

Andrews then described the dilemma in which William Rotch (the owner of two ships transporting the tea) found himself. Under British law, he had to unload the tea within 20 days and pay customs duties. But if he didn’t, Gov. Thomas Hutchinson wouldn’t let him leave the harbor.

[He] “exposed himself not only to the loss of his ship but for ye value of the tea in case he sent her back with it, without a clearance from the custom house.” Andrews explained “ye admiral” kept a ship in readiness. He would “make a seizure of it whenever it should sail under those circumstances.”

Rotch therefore “declin’d complying with his former promises, and absolutely declar’d his vessel should not carry it, without a proper clearance could be procur’d or he to be indemnified for the value of her.”

Interior of Old South Meeting House

Then, wrote Andrews, ‘when a general muster was assembled, from this and all ye neighbouring towns, to the number of five or six thousand, at 10 o’clock Thursday morning in the Old South Meeting house. There, “they pass’d a unanimous vote that the Tea should go out of the harbour that afternoon, and sent a committee with Mr. Rotch to ye custom house to demand a clearance.”

The customs collector told them he had no power to give them a clearance unless they paid duties. “They then sent Mr. Rotch to Milton, to ask a pass from ye Governor, who sent for answer. Hutchinson told them that “consistent with the rules of government and his duty to the King he could not grant one without they produc’d ‘a previous clearance from the office’.”

Thomas Hutchinson in 1750.

Prodigious Shouts

“By the time he return’d with this message the candles were light in [the meeting] house, and upon reading it, such prodigious shouts were made, that induc’d me, while drinking tea at home, to go out and know the cause of it,” wrote Andrews. “The house was so crowded I could get no farther than ye porch, when I found the moderator was just declaring the meeting to be dissolved.”

That caused another general shout, outdoors and in, and three cheers, wrote Andrews. “What with that, and the consequent noise of breaking up the meeting, you’d thought that the inhabitants of the infernal regions had broke loose.

“For my part, I went contentedly home and finish’d my tea,” wrote Andrews. Soon he learned what went on. But, “still not crediting it without ocular demonstration, I went and was satisfied.”

The Destruction of the Tea at Boston Harbor, Nathaniel Currier.

Griffin’s Wharf

“They muster’d, I’m told, upon Fort Hill, to the number of about two hundred,” he wrote. They then “proceeded, two by two, to Griffin’s wharf.” There, Capts. Hall, Bruce, and Coffin lay, “each with 114 chests of the ill fated article on board.”

Hall and Bruce only had tea, but Coffin had arrived only the day before. That vessel carried a large quantity of other goods. “They took the greatest care not to injure[the goods] in the least,” he wrote.

[Before] “nine o’clock in ye evening, every chest from on board the three vessels was knock’d to pieces and flung over ye sides. They say the actors were Indians from Narragansett. Whether they were or not, to a transient observer they appear’d as such, being cloath’d in Blankets with the heads muffled, and copper color’d countenances, being each arm’d with a hatchet or axe, and pair pistols, nor was their dialect different from what I conceive these geniusses to speak, as their jargon was unintelligible to all but themselves.”

The Unpopular Conner

“Not the least insult was offer’d to any person, save one Captain Conner,” wrote Andrews. Conner rented out horses, and was “not many years since remov’d from dear Ireland.” He “had ript up the lining of his coat and waistcoat under the arms.” Watching his opportunity, he “had nearly fill’d ’em with tea.”

Someone detected the theft, however, and the tea partyers handled Conner pretty roughly. “They not only stripp’d him of his cloaths, but gave him a coat of mud, with a severe bruising into the bargain,” wrote Andrews. [And] “nothing but their utter aversion to make any disturbance prevented his being tar’d and feather’d.”

“Should not have troubled you with this, by this Post, hadn’t I thought you would be glad of a more particular account of so important a transaction, than you could have obtain’d by common report,” wrote Andrews. “If it affords my brother but a temporary amusement, I shall be more than repaid for the trouble of writing it.”

The Cape Cod Tea Party

Finally, the next evening, John Andrews lets his brother-in-law know of the fourth and final ship carrying tea. It wrecked on Cape Cod. The patriots destroyed as much of its cargo as they could find.

Andrews wrote that he forgot to write about Captain Loring, in a brig belonging to Clark, “one of ye consignees.” He had come ashore at “ye back of Cape Cod.” A storm drove the vessel. It had “the last quota of tea for this place, being 58 chests, which completes the 400.”

Andrews added “some Indians were met on ye road to Plimouth, which is almost fifty miles this side of Cape Cod.”

He ended with a note that the ship carried lamps meant for Boston streets. He was sorry about it because, “We shall be deprived of their benefit in winter,” he wrote.

From: Letters of John Andrews esq., of Boston, 1772-1776.

Image of Old South: By Daderot – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=76947597.

This story last updated in 2021.

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British Press Gangs Cause The Boston Riot of 1747

A British naval squadron commander in November 1747 incited the worst Boston riot until violence broke out against the Stamp Act of 1765.

Commodore Charles Knowles anchored his vessel in Boston Harbor in the fall of that year, refitting and replenishing his ships en route to the West Indies. Many of his sailors deserted to escape the harshness and danger of the British Navy. Knowles desperately needed seamen for the rest of his voyage.

On the evening of Nov. 16, Knowles ordered his men to round up innocent civilians along Boston’s waterfront to replace the deserters.

Caricature of a British press gang like the one that incited the Boston riot.

Press Gangs

The British Navy notoriously kidnapped seafaring men to crew warships during the 17th and 18th centuries. The press gangs generally targeted simple tradesmen, sailors and laborers unlucky enough to be taken by force. They did it throughout the British Empire — including British North America.

Bostonians were especially vulnerable to impressment during the 1730s and 1740s, as Boston was the closest seaport to Europe and Canada and a good place to launch expeditions against the French.

Impressment didn’t just affect the men taken by the press gangs; it depressed commerce throughout the town. Merchant ships avoided Boston when they perceived a threat their crews would be impressed by the British Navy. Working-class Bostonians stayed out of the streets and sailors fled for other ports.

In 1746, Parliament banned impressment in the West Indies because it had created food shortages and depressed the sugar trade.

By tradition and law, citizens of the Province of Massachusetts believed they were exempt from impressment. Knowles didn’t care. His press gangs rounded up 46 shocked sailors, carpenters and laborers from the streets and ships of Boston’s waterfront on the night of November 16 and the morning of the 17th.

One of the kidnapped citizens, Jonathan Tarbox, later testified,that he and ‘two or three persons all inhabitants of Boston going in a Boat to Mistick (having their Tools with them) to Caulk a Vessel there–they were chafed by three Boats belonging to Commodore Knowles Squadron.’

Tarbox told the press gang they were Boston residents, but the press officer ‘in a very rough manner answered they did not care for that, for the Commodore had ordered them to Impress all they could meet without distinction.’

The Boston Riot Starts

The Boston riot began the morning of November 17. Working-class Bostonians rampaged through town, seizing British officers and seamen as hostages. For three days, the rioters controlled Boston and paralyzed the provincial government.

The Old State House, Boston

A crowd of about 300 captured the lieutenant of one of Knowles’ ships. British officials managed to free him, but the sheriff arrested two rioters. The mob turned on the sheriff, forced him to deliver up his prisoners and took a deputy as hostage.

Gov. William Shirley, hearing of the outrage, ordered out the militia to quell the Boston riot and ‘to fire upon ’em with Ball’ if need be. The militia stayed put.

His order backfired. A large crowd appeared outside his house with British hostages in tow. Shirley confronted the crowd, rescued the hostages and took them inside. That further inflamed the mob. They had with them the sheriff’s deputy they’d taken, and beat him in Shirley’s courtyard before putting him in the stocks.

Shirley called for two regiments from Castle William, the fort on Castle Island, to guard his house and the hostages he rescued. Then he went to the Old State House (then called the Town House) to win the General Court’s cooperation in suppressing the Boston riot.

As Shirley tried to persuade the lawmakers to support him, a large armed crowd, numbering in the thousands by one estimate, appeared outside the State House. They smashed the windows with rocks and brickbats, then stormed the building. The militiamen on the first floor were forced up the narrow staircase, but then defended it as a chokepoint.

Barge Burning

Gov. William Shirley

Negotiations began between the angry crowd and the governor. Shirley said the impressment angered him and he would do his best to free the victims. He asked the crowd to disband.

That they would not do. Instead, they found a barge and decided to burn it in front of Shirley’s house. Once there, they realized they risked setting the town on fire, so they took the barge to a safer place and burned it there.

Shirley woke on the morning of November 18th to find the militia refused to appear. Horrified, he fled to Castle William, where he learned he had bigger problems. Commodore Knowles, infuriated by the Boston riot, threatened to bombard the town. He ordered his men to load his 24 guns.

Shirley. through an exchange of letters, calmed Knowles down. He persuaded him to trade the impressed men for the rioters’ hostages. And he finally persuaded the General Court to order a strong military watch to protect the town.

Knowles released all the men who proved they were residents of Boston. To the great joy and relief of the town, he sailed out of Boston Harbor on Nov. 20, 1747.

The British officials tried to blame the Boston riot on seamen, African Americans, servants and foreigners. A young Sam Adams argued otherwise. In his newspaper, The Independent Advertiser, Adams portrayed the rioters as an assembly of people defending their natural right to life and liberty.

With thanks to Boston Riots: Three Centuries of Social Violence by Jack Tager. This story about the Boston riot was updated in 2022.

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