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Ebenezer Hancock – John’s Hapless Brother

Thomas Hancock had two nephews. John Hancock was the one with the outsized signature on the Declaration of Independence. Ebenezer Hancock was John’s younger brother.

While they were just boys in Braintree, John and Ebenezer’s father died. Uncle Thomas adopted John, four years Ebenezer’s senior, to ease the financial burden on their mother.

Ebenezer Hancock

Thomas Hancock was, of course, the money in the family. An experienced trader and wholesaler with connections around the world, he took John under his wing. Uncle Thomas sent him to Harvard and trained him for business.

John Hancock

Once he launched John into business, Thomas turned some attention toward Ebenezer. The young man planned to enter the ministry. But Thomas invited 18-year-old Ebenezer to Boston and gave him a taste of working in his firm.

Older brother John liked the fact that Uncle Thomas steered his brother toward business.

“I am glad to find that my brother’s conduct is so pleasing to my Uncle,” wrote John Hancock in a letter. “[C]lergymen have not the deference paid to them nor are they supported as they deserve, which is but poor encouragement to a young fellow.” He well knew the fortunes of ministers. His father had been one and his mother married another.

Ebenezer did please Thomas Hancock, but that didn’t help him all that much. According to legal tradition in 1760, the bulk of a family estate went to the firstborn son of each generation.

The practice would soon end in the United States after the American Revolution. But Thomas Hancock, who died in 1764, willed John the bulk of his fortune–his warehouses and properties in Massachusetts as well as his cash. Nevertheless, he staked Ebenezer to a start in business with a small amount of cash and several thousand acres of land in Maine. The results were less than stellar.

A Less-Than-Successful Career

London School of Economics Professor W.T. Baxter took a dive into Hancock’s papers to explore the less-than-successful career of Ebenezer Hancock in his 1951 research paper, A Colonial Bankrupt: Ebenezer Hancock, 1741-1819.

Ebenezer Hancock

Ebenezer soon launched himself on his own, leaving the firm that now belonged to his brother. He attempted to set himself up as an importer and wholesaler to smaller stores around New England – essentially, John’s business. John supported his brother, sending letters to his suppliers urging them to do business with him and his new partner Edward Blanchard.

The new firm of Blanchard and Hancock also decided to underwrite a shipping venture. Thomas Hancock made a good deal of his fortune by launching ships abroad carrying New England wares. They would make their way north to Canada, unload goods there and then proceed to Europe or the Caribbean, buying and selling to bring back the most profit.

Blanchard and Hancock bought a half-share of the ship Neptune and sent it on its way, laden with New England livestock, meat and farm goods. In Newfoundland it offloaded its contents in return for cod, then crossed to England and sold off the cod. The Neptune then went on to Portugal to take on a load of salt and returned to Boston.

This first voyage produced a modest profit and the Neptune launched on the ocean once more. This journey proved disastrous. The market in Canada had weakened and the ports were full of competing New England vessels. Blanchard and Hancock sold the cargo for a slim profit.

Ill Winds

Ill winds, storms and poor prospects kept the vessel at sea far longer than planned. At one point in February of 1768 the captain nearly abandoned ship when it got locked in ice. Finally the Neptune headed to the Caribbean, stuffed with cod from Canada.

For weeks the poor captain tried to unload his cargo. In one instance he thought he had it sold only to find the harbor suddenly swollen with ships offering better cod at lower prices. In the end, he unloaded the cod at a loss.

Three years after launch, English creditors were sending dunning letters to Blanchard and Hancock. Soon some of Ebenezer’s trading partners were shipping his orders of goods to John Hancock’s warehouses. The wholesalers thought that if John Hancock accepted delivery, he would have to pay for the goods if his brother Ebenezer would not.

Boston Harbor ca. 1765

By 1768 John Hancock was warning his suppliers not to send Ebenezer’s orders to his warehouse; he would not pay for them. Meanwhile, John had his own problems. British officials had accused him of smuggling wine into Boston without paying duties.

With the British pressing John Hancock, Ebenezer’s firm folded. While John paid some of his debts (those to suppliers that John relied on), many of Ebenezer’s creditors lost out.

Shopkeeper

For the next several years Ebenezer would struggle as a small-time shopkeeper, importing household goods from England. He also bought imports from John and sold them retail, with John keeping a tight leash on his brother.

During the American Revolution, John helped his brother again by getting him a job as deputy paymaster. Soldiers would queue up to get their pay at Ebenezer’s store at 10 Marshall St. in Boston.

If he was jealous of John, Ebenezer would get some satisfaction. He outlived his sometimes imperious brother by more than 25 years. When John died without a will in 1783, Ebenezer inherited one-third of his estate. And while John’s mansion on Beacon Hill was sold to the state and demolished, Ebenezer’s storefront and home still stands. The house was bought and restored by a law firm in 1976.

This story about Ebenezer Hancock was updated in 2022.

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The 1965 Drought, New England’s Worst Ever

It will probably be several centuries before the Northeast United States again suffers anything like the 1965 drought. It was the driest year of a 10-year dry spell that devastated farms and sent municipal leaders into a panic over the drinking supply.

There were actually two droughts: The agricultural drought, and the water-supply drought. Farmers tried to save their crops and fed their livestock in barns, while suburbanites were told not to wash their cars or take long showers.

There was a high pollen count, high fire danger and high prices for produce. Wells dried up. Rivers, ponds and reservoirs became stinking mud holes. The air was so dry foggy mornings disappeared along the coast.

According to climatologist W.C. Palmer, the 1965 drought was “such a rare event that we should ordinarily expect it to occur in this region only about once in a couple of centuries.”

The 1965 Drought

The 1965 drought actually occurred during 1961-69, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It began in 1960 in western Massachusetts, where precipitation was below average. Then in 1962 eastern Massachusetts dried up. The rest of the Northeast got little rain or snow.

From 1962 to 1966, 34 out of 46 months had below-average precipitation. The summer of 1964 was very dry. Overdrawn reservoirs weren’t replenished.

Then 1965 was the driest year on record since the late 19th century. The 1965 drought was most severe in northeastern Pennsylvania and southeastern New York. That year, Connecticut got only 29.45 inches of precipitation, far below the average of 46.15 inches. Maine was drier than in 1947, when fires destroyed nine communities and a quarter-million parched acres.

By July, communities were declaring water emergencies. Towns banned water use outside, but police and water departments were besieged by people calling to report neighbors who watered their lawns or washed their cars.

Sahara

Golf courses dug wells and dredged ponds. Fairways burnt up as watering was restricted to greens and tees. Brae Burn in Newton, Mass., “may as well be on the Sahara,” reported the Boston Globe. Brae Burn dug 20 test holes to find water. All were dry.

Part of the reservoir in Cambridge, Mass., oozed muck. In Norfolk, Mass., the 20-acre Kingsbury Pond was a stinking sea of mud. Commuters from the western suburbs in Boston rolled up their windows in summer to avoid smelling the stench of the Charles River. Usually water was discharged into the river to dampen the smell of the raw sewage that flowed into it. Not during the drought.

Herring couldn’t swim from the sea to fresh water to spawn. The Town of Pembroke, Mass., banned herring fishing and helped the fish upstream by carrying them in barrels. By fall, millions of herring spawned in fresh water couldn’t make it back to the sea in the dried-up streams. Trapped in ponds, the seagulls feasted on them.

Pastures, hayfields and cornfields were burned out by the 1965 drought. Dairy farms in Fairfield County, Conn., lost most of their pasture grass, and wells went dry for a third of them.

The honey crop in Vermont was smaller than usual. So was the blueberry crop in Maine. Shade trees, such as the Norway and sugar maple, were damaged. Along Rte. 2 between Concord and Cambridge, Mass., Red Pine needles turned brown.

Emergency

In July 1965, President Lyndon Johnson ordered a study to find out what the federal government could do to help New England. Cities and towns got loans of pumps and pipes to access the deepest arts of reservoirs. Some Massachusetts towns borrowed vintage World War II pipes from Fort Devens and Romulus Air Force Base to reach water beyond normal sources. It didn’t work. The pipe was too expensive to transport.

President Johnson

Rockport, Mass., got approval to use water from a quarry, so long as it was treated twice with chlorine. Also in Massachusetts, Randolph, Holbrook and Braintree banded together to get water from a gravel pit. Fitchburg hired a rainmaker.

The next month, 11 Massachusetts counties were declared drought disaster areas. More than a hundred Massachusetts towns restricted water. Hanover considered a moratorium on building permits. Sandy Pond beach was closed in Ayer after hundreds of dead fish floated to the surface, deprived of oxygen.

Scattered Relief

By September, some parts of New England got rain. In western Massachusetts, rain changed brown pastures to green and grass and alfalfa returning to some farms. Cranberry growers were skating by. Some reservoirs filled to capacity.

The 1965 drought eased in Northern New England except for coastal Maine. In Grand Isle County, Vermont, too much rain left standing water in fields.

Then temperatures dropped.

The water problem worsened in November because the cold locked precipitation above ground. In southeastern Massachusetts, a cold snap destroyed a quarter of the cranberry crop. Cranberry growers didn’t have enough water to flood their bogs and prevent the berries from freezing.

Test wells throughout New England reached record lows and nearly a dozen towns along the coast had to draw down their emergency supplies. On Nov. 1, 1965, the Quabbin Reservoir fell to 59 percent of capacity, a drop of 17 percent in 12 months.

Car washes, service stations and ski areas couldn’t get water.

The 1965 Drought Continues

Quabbin Reservoir after the 1965 drought

By April 1966, the rainfall shortage increased to nearly 37 inches since the drought started in 1963, reported the Boston Globe. That almost equaled a year’s supply of rain.

People thought the drought ended with heavy rain in July and persistent fog along the coast. A dry August ended that hope.

A Boston College scientist suggested detonating dynamite, creating tiny earthquakes, could end the 1965 drought. The disturbed soils would the presence of water and suggest areas for drilling, he said.

By October 1966, farmers said the drought had ended. But the water-supply drought had not. There wasn’t enough water in wells, water tables and reservoirs.

A wet spring in 1967 ended the drought. Above normal rain and snow from February to May filled the reservoirs. On April 25, 1967, Malcolm E. Graf, Massachusetts Water Resources Commissioner, stated the four-year drought, worst in New England history, was over.

Photo: Quabbin Reservoir By Solarapex at en.wikipedia, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11535183. Cracked mud By Rosser1954 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=90076337. This story about the 1965 drought was updated in 2022.

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How Boston’s South Shore Became the Irish Riviera

Visit the South Shore of Massachusetts and you won’t have much doubt about why people call it the Irish Riviera. Orange-and-green flags fly from many a home, and the region is filled with Roman Catholic churches and schools, Irish dance schools and Irish pubs, restaurants and bakeries.

Nantasket Beach along the Irish Riviera

You may conclude the Irish Riviera resulted from suburban flight from the working-class neighborhoods of Boston, that most Irish of American cities. But well before the exodus to Braintree, Hull and Marshfield, well-heeled Irish families had built seaside Victorian mansions along the coast south of Boston. And even before that, the Irish gained a toehold in what is now the most Irish town in America: Scituate, Mass. They did it by engaging in the now-lost industry of Irish mossing.

Mossing

Irish immigrants began arriving in Boston during the Irish potato famine starting in 1845. Daniel Ward, an Irish immigrant, headed south and started collecting seaweed, or mossing, in the 1850s in Scituate.

Irish moss

Irish moss is a red algae used as a thickener and stabilizer in ice cream, beer, wine, medicine and in calico dye manufacturing. Mossers hauled the slimy stuff from the sea floor with heavy rakes at low tide. Those who mossed at both low tides could gather as much as 1,000 pounds a day. Others made money spreading the seaweed on the beach to dry and packing it into crates.

It was a full-time job for Irish immigrants during the mid-19^th century. But it didn’t make Daniel Ward rich. The salvage rights to the Forest Queen in 1854 did. The wrecked vessel from London had carried a load of silver bars, and Daniel Ward got the rights to them.

Scituate Harbor

He built a big house on a cliff and offered it for use as the first Catholic Mass. Starting in 1856, priests said Mass there four times a year.

In 1942, an anonymous mosser told American Magazine, “It’s a great farm we have out there. We don’t have to plow it or plant it, but it gives us four crops a season.” By the end of World War II, it was a lucrative summer job for young people. It died out, a victim of cheap labor overseas. Lucien Rousseau, the last commercial sea mosser, died in 1983.

But Scituate’s Irish mossers left a legacy: the Irish Riviera. Once they established an Irish-Catholic enclave in the town, Quincy and Randolph built parishes in 1848 and 1850.

The Irish Riviera

John F. Kennedy and others sitting on the deck of the Kennedy family home in Hyannis, Mass. Left to right: Ethel Skakel Kennedy, Jean Kennedy, an unidentified man, an unidentified woman, John F. Kennedy, K. LeMoyne (“Lem”) Billings, and an unidentified woman. (Photographer unknown. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

As the Boston Irish began to acquire wealth and power, they began to move to large houses on the South Shore, to Marshfield, Scituate and Cohasset, according to historian Thomas O’Connor. Boston’s rogue mayor, James Michael Curley, spent summers in Scituate. In hot weather, Irish families visited Nantasket, Wollaston and Hough’s Neck beaches.

Nantasket Beach in Hull was a fashionable vacation spot for the well-off Irish. Rose Fitzgerald’s family had a place on Nantasket Beach in Hull. Fenian John Boyle O’Reilly died at his summer home there.

After World War II the migration accelerated as returning GIs from South Boston, Hyde Park and Dorchester moved to the South Shore suburbs. It continued through the 1950s and 1960s.

By The Numbers

Today, Scituate and Marshfield are the epicenter of the Irish Riviera, which some consider the stretch from Weymouth to Kingston. Others consider the Irish Riviera to comprise Milton and Quincy outside of Boston to Cape Cod, where the Kennedy family still maintains a compound. The late Speaker of the House Thomas P. ‘Tip’ O’Neill retired to Harwich Port on the Cape.

Nearly 50 percent of Scituate residents have Irish ancestry. The Fieldston neighborhood of Marshfield is the most Irish-American section of the second-most Irish-American town in the United States. At least 44 percent of the population in Marshfield, Braintree, Hull, Avon, Pembroke and Milton have Irish ancestry.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2005-2009 American Community Survey, 19 of the top-20 most Irish communities in Massachusetts are south of Boston. Here they are by the percentage of residents who claim Irish ancestry:

47.5 Scituate
46.5 Braintree
45.8 Hull
45.6 Marshfield
44.9 Avon
44.9 Pembroke
44.6 Milton
44.5 Abington
44.3 Whitman
44.2 Hanover
43.4 Weymouth
43.0 Walpole
42.2 Holbrook
41.4 Duxbury
41.2 Norwell
40.8 Hanson
17.4 Boston

This story about the Irish Riviera was updated in 2022.

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When Abigail Adams Vented to Mercy Otis Warren About John

In the spring of 1776, Mercy Otis Warren received a letter from her good friend Abigail Adams vented about her husband John.

Though she loved John, Abigail resented her subordinate position to him. She had included her now-famous reminder, “Remember the ladies,” in a letter to him. Perhaps she expected a sympathetic response. Instead, John Adams made fun of her.

Mercy Otis Warren by John Singleton Copley. Courtesy Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Abigail shared her hurt with her friend Mercy Otis Warren.

Though 16 years younger than Mercy, she had much in common with her. Both witnessed and recorded the American Revolution. They both made passionate commitments to the cause. And both lived on the South Shore of Massachusetts: Abigail in Braintree, Mercy in Plymouth.

Abigail Adams Vented to Mercy Warren

Mercy Otis Warren was born Sept. 25, 1728 in Barnstable, Mass., where a statue of her now stands in front of the Barnstable County Courthouse. Her parents educated her with her Harvard-bound brother James Otis. When she married James Warren, her brother and her husband encouraged her to write poetry and essays satirizing the colonial government. That she then did.

The Warren home frequently attracted such patriot leaders as Sam Adams, his cousin John and Mercy’s brother-in-law, Joseph Warren.

Abigail Adams met Mercy Otis Warren in the spring of 1773, when she accompanied John to a court session in Plymouth. Like Abigail, the elegant and erudite Mercy had five children. Abigail and Mercy hit it off, and the Adamses and Warrens would meet often in the coming years.

Abigail Adams

At that first meeting, Abigail was 28 and Mercy was 44. Mercy then wrote to Abigail afterward, which flattered her and began a long friendship and correspondence.

Correspondence

In 1776, John Adams represented Massachusetts in the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Abigail wrote to him on March 31, eager to hear about the new code of laws she presumed he worked on. She then urged him to remember the ladies.

I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If perticuliar care and attention is not paid to the Laidies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.

“That your Sex are Naturally Tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute,” she wrote. But, she added, those of you who wish to be happy can give up the “harsh title of Master” for the “more tender and endearing one of Friend.”

“‘Remember the ladies,” Abigail Adams’ most famous comment, didn’t impress her husband. Not one little bit.

‘I Cannot But Laugh’

In his reply on April 14, 1776, he mocked her plea for women’s rights:

As to your extraordinary Code of Laws, I cannot but laugh. We have been told that our Struggle has loosened the bands of Government every where. That Children and Apprentices were disobedient — that schools and Colledges were grown turbulent — that Indians slighted their Guardians and Negroes grew insolent to their Masters. But your Letter was the first Intimation that another Tribe more numerous and powerfull than all the rest were grown discontented.–This is rather too coarse a Compliment but you are so saucy, I won’t blot it out.

Bronze sculpture of Mercy Otis Warren in front of the Barnstable County Courthouse

Sausy John

Abigail didn’t think much of her husband’s reply. On April 27, 1776, Abigail vented her frustration about John to Mercy Otis Warren.

“He is very sausy to me,” she wrote. “I think I will get you to join me in a petition to Congress.”

She indignantly repeated his comments, then wrote,

I will tell him I have only been making trial of the Disintersstedness of his Virtue, and when weigh’d in the balance have found it wanting.

Her friend’s reply — if she did reply — disappeared.

Abigail waited 10 days after she wrote to Mercy Otis Warren to compose her reply to her husband:

I can not say that I think you very generous to all the Ladies, for whilst you are proclaiming peace and good will to Men, Emancipating all Nations, you insist upon retaining and absolute power over Wives.

And then she reminded him that arbitrary power, like most other very hard things, can be broken.

…notwithstanding all your wise Laws and Maxims we have it in our power not only to free ourselves but to subdue our Masters, and without violence throw both your natural and legal authority at our feet –

This story about Mercy Otis Warren and Abigail Adams was updated in 2023. Image of Mercy Otis Warren statue By Kenneth C. Zirkel – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32733257.

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Battle of Bunker Hill Distressed Abigail Adams, 10 Miles Away

Decades after the Battle of Bunker Hill, it still distressed Abigail Adams. Her son, who watched it with her, could still get overwrought when he remembered it.

Abigail just had to see the battle for herself, despite her husband’s warnings that she and the children must “fly to the woods” in the face of danger. Instead, she took seven-year-old John Quincy to the top of Penn’s Hill near their home in Braintree. From a granite outcropping they watched the smoke rise from Charlestown 10 miles away as the cannon thundered in their ears.

Abigail Adams, 1766 (Benjamin Blythe)

John Adams was away, journeying to Philadelphia to meet with the Continental Congress. Abigail wrote to him the next day as the cannon still roared. “My bursting heart must find vent at my pen,” she wrote.

Charlstown is laid in ashes. The Battle began upon our intrenchments upon Bunkers Hill, a Saturday morning about 3 oclock & has not ceased yet & tis now 3 o’clock Sabbeth afternoon. Tis expected they will come out over the Neck to night, & a dreadful Battle must ensue.

Bunker Hill Distressed Abigail Adams

John Quincy Adams recalled the Battle of Bunker Hill in a letter. It was as overwrought 71 years after the event as his mother’s was the next day. In March 1846, he wrote to English abolitionist Joseph Sturge that his mother was “liable every hour of the day and of the night to be butchered in cold blood, or taken and carried into Boston as hostages, by any foraging or marauding detachment of men.”

During those early months of the war, he wrote, she lived in,

…unintermitted danger of being consumed with them all in a conflagration kindled by a torch in the same hands which on the 17th. Of June lighted the fires of Charlestown — I saw with my own eyes those fires, and heard Britannia’s thunders in the Battle of Bunker’s hill.

Even on the day after the battle, Abigail Adams couldn’t eat, drink or sleep because of the noise of the cannon. In her letter, she promised her husband she’d take refuge at his brother’s if their friends warned her of danger.

Two days later she picked up her pen again.

I have been so much agitated that I have not been able to write since Sabbeth day. When I say that ten thousand reports are passing vague & uncertain as the wind I believe I speak the Truth.

She had another reason for getting upset by the battle. The family’s dear friend Dr. Joseph Warren perished in the fight. John Quincy Adams remembered his mother crying.

…witnessed the tears of my mother and mingled with them my own, at the fall of Warren a dear friend of my father, and a beloved Physician to me. He had been our family physician and surgeon, and had saved my fore finger from amputation under a very bad fracture.

* * *

Years later, Abigail Adams would show remarkable fortitude and resourcefulness during her difficult time in the White House. Read about her sorrows and joys in Eat Like a President. You’ll also learn about life in the White House both upstairs and downstairs during five other presidencies.

Click on the image to buy from Amazon.

With thanks to John Adams by David McCullough. This story updated in 2023.

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