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Notorious Tom Bell – Minister, Teacher, Pirate, Thief . . .

In 1742 Tom Bell was probably the most well known product of Harvard College in America. Everyone knew how he dressed, what he looked like, where he traveled and how he lived. Because he was one of the most wanted criminals in the North American British colonies.

Bell was born in 1713 to a shipowner, Capt. Thomas Bell, and his wife, Joanna. They lived in Boston’s North End. The family sent the precocious Thomas to Boston Latin School, where he received a classical education. He was headed toward Harvard when, in 1729, his father died. The family found itself in debt, but it struggled to pay for Thomas to attend Harvard as planned.

Tom Bell entered the college in the fall of 1730, but by 1733 his college career reached an unceremonious ending. Sanctioned for stealing letters and lying, the final straw came when he stole a chocolate cake from a fellow student. Far behind in his studies, the college had grown tired of his promises to reform and pitched him out in the street.

Colonial engraving, Harvard College

Hearing the news that Harvard expelled Bell, his creditors pounced on him for unpaid bills. They sued him, winning judgments against him for unpaid debts, including 30 pounds to his tailor for silk suits. With his name dragged through the mud, Bell followed in his father’s footsteps and went to sea. He boarded a ship bound for England.

A Stroller is Born

For the next several years Bell would work at sea, returning to America from time to time. He gradually realized his education and exposure to the wealthier classes at Harvard had not gone to waste. Bell could speak Latin and read Greek, which put his education well ahead of most people in the colonies. He could pass himself off as a gentleman, and no one would suspect he wasn’t.

So Tom Bell simply became Francis Partridge Hutchinson or Thomas Wentworth Bell or Gilbert Burnet or John Rowland or William Bowdoin or whatever name suited him as he traveled up and down the colonies from New England to North Carolina. He gained notoriety as the Boston “Stroller” — a con man who strives to stay one step ahead of the law.

He was not terribly successful, however. In 1738 he was sentenced to be whipped in New York City for defrauding a merchant of 50 pounds. The next year in Philadelphia, he was spotted by a man from North Carolina who he had robbed years earlier. That episode landed him in prison. But Bell also gained some expertise in breaking out of jail — a skill that would serve him well.

Travels in Barbados

With his names and description widely circulating in North America, in 1739 Bell left for the Caribbean. In Speightstown, Barbados he undertook one of his more notorious escapades.

He had passed himself off as Gilbert Burnet, son of Massachusetts’ former governor.

A Jewish family invited the well-spoken governor’s son to a family wedding. But when Bell stole some of the wedding gifts, the young men of the family beat him up. This incensed the Christian residents of Speightstown, and they retaliated by destroying the Jewish synagogue and driving out the Jewish families.

Lord Fairfax

Bell nearly escaped Barbados unscathed. However, a merchant came forward and charged Bell with impersonating the brother of Virginia’s Lord Fairfax and running up an extensive tab. Again Bell was sentenced to a public whipping, but the governor of the island suspended a second sentence to brand Bell with an R on each cheek.

Tom Bell Becomes Rev. Rowland

In 1741 Bell returned to America and made his way to Princeton, N.J. Here a local man stopped Bell in the street and inquired if he wasn’t the Rev. John Rowland, a Presbyterian minister arriving from New England to preach. Bell corrected the man, who still insisted he looked exactly like Rev. Rowland. This presented Tom Bell with a golden opportunity. He proceeded to the next town and introduced himself as the Rev. Rowland. A local family invited Bell/Rowland to their home and offered him a horse to accompany them to the nearby church, where he was to preach.

The grateful “minister” accepted the use of the horse. But after traveling a ways toward the church he announced that he had left his notes behind at the house. He would return to collect them, and he asked the family to ride ahead and explain the delay. Naturally, Bell ransacked the house for any valuables and rode off, stealing the family’s horse.

Horse theft was a serious crime in 1741. Unfortunately for the real Rev. John Rowland, he was in Pennsylvania at the time delivering fiery sermons at religious revival meetings. When Rowland crossed into New Jersey he went to jail, accused of horse stealing. Rowland was eventually cleared of the charges, but the case was another prize for Tom Bell’s trophy case.

Tom Bell, Author

By 1742 Bell had returned to New England, this time to Newport, R.I. But by now the list of victims he had duped was a long one. No sooner had he arrived in the city than he got thrown into jail again, accused by a man he had swindled on a previous visit.

Painting of Newport, R.I. in 1818

From jail in Newport, Bell issued a public plea for forgiveness. He pledged to reform and promised to write a memoir to help others avoid his criminal path. It was yet another con. By 1743 he had returned to Philadelphia and was thrown in jail again for theft. By now his name was notorious and newspapers from New Hampshire to Virginia carried warnings that Tom Bell might be traveling again, looking for his next victim.

Bell continued his crimes and his sentences got more severe. A Massachusetts court convicted him of theft and sentenced him to be whipped and sold into servitude. Yet Bell always managed to escape. In one case he joined the militia, probably in lieu of jail, but he soon fled. A New Jersey court convicted him of counterfeiting. And later he was sentenced to death in Massachusetts. But he managed to escape the gallows.

Final Chapters

In between legal scrapes, Bell made a living as a schoolmaster or tutor. In 1752 he again announced, this time in Virginia and South Carolina, that he planned to publish “The Travels and Adventures of the Famous Tom Bell,” but he never did. Instead, Tom Bell returned to the Caribbean and took up piracy.

The final chapter of Bell’s life came in 1771 in Kingston, Jamaica. Bell had served as chief mate on a pirate ship that had attacked a Spanish schooner, robbing it of $14,000. Bell was arrested and convicted, along with the ship’s captain, and sentenced to hang. Tom Bell repented one last time and killed himself before he went to the gallows.

Thanks to Early Americans by Carl Bridenbaugh.

If you enjoyed this article, you might like: Stephen Burroughs Counterfeiter – A Revolutionary Success Story. This story was updated in 2022.

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How a Slave and a Counterfeiter Made the Fugio Cent, the 1st U.S. Money

A convicted counterfeiter and a Connecticut slave made the first U.S. coin, called the fugio cent, in fulfillment of a government contract obtained through a bribe.

A fugio cent

As a young man, Abel Buell got caught counterfeiting five pound notes. As punishment, authorities cut off the top of his ear and branded his forehead with the letter ‘C.’

Buell later made the first map of the United States, sold at auction to the Library of Congress for $2 million in 2010.

Far less is known about the enslaved man, known only as Aaron. He was only recently discovered to be one of the workers who made the first coins of the United States, along with a freed black man, white workers and children, according to numismatist and historian Christopher McDowell.

Abel Buell, Aaron and the others didn’t make the first fugio coins at a U.S. mint. Instead, the U.S. government gave a contract to make the fugio cents at the Connecticut mint. That early effort at outsourcing didn’t go well.

“It was a fiasco,” said McDowell, who uncovered the story of the Connecticut mint. The tale underscores the early fragility of the United States, the genius of the first Connecticut Yankee and the struggles of the people who actually worked to build the country.

The Connecticut Mint

In 1785, Connecticut opened the first state mint in New Haven. One building stood on the current Eli Whitney Museum and Workshop (formerly his gun factory) in Hamden.

Painting of Eli Whitney’s gun factory

In 1787, the infant U.S. government asked for bids to produce the first official U.S. coins. One of the Connecticut mint’s owners, James Jarvis, bribed the assistant U.S. Treasurer, William Duer, to get the contract.

Under the contract, the Connecticut mint had to produce 300 tons of copper coins. But there wasn’t anywhere near that much copper in the United States. Jarvis went to England to find a partner who would supply more copper, but he returned empty handed.

The mint produced only 1200 pounds of coins before it failed for lack of copper. That failure revealed William Duer’s dishonesty. Jarvis had given Duer a note for $10,000 on the condition he collect on it if the mint failed. Duer, however, had sold the note to two men, who came to Jarvis to collect.

Jarvis refused to pay, saying the note had no value because the conditions hadn’t been met. And that, said McDowell in an interview, is how we know about the bribe.

The Fugio Coin

Today there are many low -grade fugio cents, but collectors will pay $10,000 or more for a rare example in excellent condition.

The fugio cent earned its name from the caption ‘fugio’ above an image of the sun shining on a sundial. Fugio, Latin for ‘I flee/fly,’ and the words ‘mind your business’ below the sundial form a rebus meaning ‘time flies, do your work.’ The reverse side includes thirteen chain links and the captions, ‘we are one’ and ‘United States.’

Ben Franklin originally came up with the fugio design for Pennsylvania notes he printed.

Thomas Jefferson later remembered the disaster of the Connecticut mint. In 1792, a debate broke out about whether the U.S. government should build its own mint or not. Jefferson successfully argued in favor of a national mint.

Abel Buell

Buell’s ingenuity rivaled that of Sam Slater, who built the first textile mill in Rhode Island.

William Duer

He joined the Connecticut mint after the owners got the contract to make the fugio coin. William Duer may have been dishonest, but it would have looked bad to include a convicted counterfeiter on a proposal to mint money.

As a young man, Buell used his skill at engraving to alter the plates for five-pound notes to plates for larger denominations. Then he printed them.

No one detected the alterations, but his neighbors suspected something odd was going on because Buell’s kept his lights on late at night. A neighbor climbed a ladder one night to peer into Buell’s second floor and caught him printing money on a homemade press.

Historian John Warner Barber in 1836 described the rest of his punishment:

The tip only of Buell’s ear was cropped off: it was held on his tongue to keep it warm till it was put on the ear again, where it grew on. He was branded on the forehead as high up as possible. This was usually done by a hot iron in the form of a letter designating the crime, which was held on the forehead of the criminal till he could say the words “God save the king.”

The Ingenious Fugio Cent Maker

The mint owners, however, needed Abel Buell. He knew metallurgy at a time in America when very few people had the skill. Buell could work with steel, needed to make dies for coins. He had the refined ability to do intaglio engraving.

Buell designed the press and the rolling machines for the mint. Then he served as mint master, melting copper, refining copper and making copper into sheets.

“He was one of the few people who could do it,” said McDowell.

Aaron

But Buell didn’t do it all.

Several years ago, ledgers from the Connecticut and federal mint were rediscovered in the New Haven Museum archives.

McDowell studied those ledgers. He learned that 33 workers in addition to Aaron made the first fugio coins: children, indentured apprentices, white unskilled laborers, white craftsmen and a free black man.

Aaron worked the press, taking copper blanks and stamping the fugio image onto it.

For that work, Aaron’s wages of four shillings a day went to his master, a man named Levi Hubbard. But Aaron had a side deal: If he worked extra hours, he could keep his overtime wages.

Aaron worked a lot of overtime, said McDowell.

Fiasco

Abel Buell traveled to England in 1790 after the mint failed. People have long thought he left the United States to avoid the long arm of the law, McDowell said. However, subsequent research shows he went to learn the secrets of the British textile industry.

Like Sam Slater, Abel Buell memorized the secrets of large-scale cotton manufacturing and brought them back to America.

In New Haven, Buell established one of the country’s first cotton mills. He printed the first map of the United States, and he created the first movable type made in America.

The first map, by Abel Buell.

But Abel Buell died penniless in a New Haven an almshouse in 1822. The man responsible for minting the fugio cent was buried in a pauper’s grave.

His problem, said McDowell, was that he always came too early to the party. “He made movable type 20 years too soon, he built a cotton mill 20 years too soon.

“Abel Buell was Eli Whitney before there was an Eli Whitney,” McDowell said. “He was the first Connecticut Yankee.”

McDowell wrote the 2015 book, Abel Buell and the History of the Connecticut and Fugio Coinages This story last updated in 2022.

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Stephen Burroughs, Counterfeiter – A Revolutionary Success Story

Shortly after the end of the Revolutionary War the new American country needed currency, and Stephen Burroughs was happy to oblige. He printed more different banknotes than anyone in his day. Unfortunately, they were all counterfeits.

Stephen Burroughs

The story of Stephen Burroughs starts out conventionally enough. Burroughs grew up in the small town of Coventry, N.H. He was born in 1765, the son of a prominent Presbyterian minister.

Like many minister’s kids he liked mischief. For example, stealing watermelons was a common tradition in Burroughs’ day. But he embellished on the tradition. When one of his neighbors grew tired of having his produce pilfered, the angry farmer decided to stake out his field one night. Burroughs made use of this bit of intelligence and approached the farmer’s son. He had just seen, he told him, someone slipping into the family watermelon patch. The young man hurried off to catch the “thief” and hilarity ensued.

Stephen Burroughs faces off against his angry congregation. (Illustration, Memoirs of Stephen Burroughs).

Most of Burroughs’ story is derived from his memoirs, which he published first at age 33 and polished and republished repeatedly for decades. Historians believe Burroughs’ memoirs contain a lot of truth, and some embellishment. But with a life as dramatic as his, he didn’t really need embellishment.

At age 14 he ran off to join the Continental Army, but couldn’t manage to convince the enlisting officers that he was old enough to serve. So instead he joined up on the crew of a privateer in Newburyport, Mass. While on board he assisted the medic/doctor on the ship and learned some rudimentary medicine.

Revolutionary-era privateer.

Dropout and Fraud

His father sent him to Dartmouth College, but he lasted only a short while – his penchant for pranks landed him afoul of the college leaders. Burroughs next tried his hand at medicine, passing himself off unsuccessfully as a doctor. Following that he turned to the ministry. Though untrained, Burroughs had access to his father’s sermons. Armed with a few of these, he headed to Massachusetts to sell himself as a minister.

Landing in Pelham, Mass. – home to rabble-rouser Daniel Shays — Burroughs was soon outed as a fraud and chased out of town by a hostile congregation. Though he failed in his pursuit of the ministry, his time in Massachusetts shaped his thinking. While there he encountered a con man who sold shares in his alchemy process, which he claimed could turn copper into gold. When the con man collected all the investors he could, he fled town.

The appeal of alchemy was partially rooted in the extreme shortage of hard currency following the Revolutionary War. Congress had notoriously printed worthless paper money, and people did not view bank notes as reliable. They craved hard currency. Lacking that, however, Burroughs observed that private banks were building successful followings for their own bank notes and coins.

Counterfeit coin mold

More Trouble

The only reason paper money had value, Burroughs concluded, was because people agreed that it did. So did it matter if it was counterfeit or not? Counterfeiting was illegal, though fairly common in America both before and after the Revolution. Though many paper notes bore the legend: “Tis Death to Counterfeit,” actual punishments were much more lenient – and of course the counterfeiter had to get caught, which clever counterfeiters could avoid. Burroughs was not clever – at least not yet.

Burroughs acquired some counterfeit coins from a colleague and attempted to pass them at an apothecary in Springfield, Mass. He was arrested on the spot. At his trial, Burroughs past efforts at impersonating a minister helped seal his fate. He was sentenced to jail at Boston’s Castle Island prison. In 1788, Burroughs emerged from jail a wiser, though not reformed, man. His fascination with currency had taken root.

Bursting Bubble

Burroughs next tried his hand at school teaching, but was accused of seducing his students He made off to Long Island and then to Georgia, where land speculation was reaching a mania pitch. Burroughs passed himself off as a surveyor and gained the confidence of none other than Robert Morris, the millionaire who financed much of the American Revolution. When the land bubble burst, Morris and his many investors, including Burroughs, were left broke.

Robert Morris

Burroughs headed back north, but this time he decided that his notoriety, and the presence of ample law enforcement, worked against him in New England. He didn’t stop at Massachusetts. He traveled first through Vermont and then over the border into Canada. Here, with his wife and children, he established a mill and set himself up as a proper counterfeiter.

Of course, Burroughs had only himself to thank for his notoriety. He first published his memoirs at the age of 33, and they remained in print into the late 1900s. In Canada Burroughs found a perfect opportunity. The border with Canada was loosely policed despite the smuggling that had gone on for decades. Most of the activity involved goods from the United States flowing to the loyalists who had relocated to Canada after the Revolution.

Canada

Burroughs set up shop in two Canadian locations: Shipton and Stanstead. He became a prolific counterfeiter. Paper money was, at the time, generated by individual banks. During Burroughs’ time in prison, paper money had grown much more acceptable. Burroughs became a master at reproducing bills from a variety of sources. His fame brought criminal partners flocking to him. He generated a steady flow of counterfeit money heading down from Canada to all the states.

Counterfeit warning printed on the reverse of a 4 shilling Colonial currency in 1776

From time to time his partners would come to grief, arrested and tried for passing counterfeit bills. In the course of their trials it would come out that the men were merely pawns, employed by Burroughs, to pass the counterfeit.

Cat and Mouse

Meanwhile, relations between the United States and Canada were strained. Canada had little interest in chasing down the American counterfeiter.

Detectives and bounty hunters dispatched by American banks were often thwarted by Burroughs’ neighbors. He had befriended and provided his neighbors with both cash and amateur medical assistance. As the bank men grew more aggressive, they managed to push Burroughs farther north into Canada. But his bills, drawn on banks from all the New England states and beyond, continued pouring south.

Hired men from the banks would harass Burroughs’ operations and confiscate his money from time to time, but he simply printed more. All the while, his legend grew. From his northern outpost, Burroughs enjoyed his game of cat and mouse. When the banking firm Gilbert & Dean announced they had created a counterfeit-proof bill, Burroughs mailed down a taunting letter and a counterfeited version of their currency.

Boston’s Old Statehouse, where Gilbert & Dean kept their offices.

End of an Era

Finally, in 1808, authorities on both sides of the border agreed to crack down on the counterfeiting with tough new laws. Burroughs, aware that he had lost the last of his friends in high places, announced he would counterfeit no longer. Though eventually arrested in Canada, he won a pardon.

Evidence suggests that Burroughs did finally go straight. He converted to Catholicism and became prominent in the church around 1810. His critics suggested he was probably in the business of selling Papal pardons.

Burroughs died in 1840 in Canada, a free and wealthy man.

Thanks to The Alchemy of the Self: Stephen Burroughs and the Counterfeit Economy of the Early Republic by Stephen Mihm and Memoirs of Stephen Burroughs, by Stephen Burroughs.

Images: Coin molds By Original author unknown – The outlaws of Cave-in-Rock : historical accounts of the famous highwaymen and river pirates who operated in pioneer days upon the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and over the old Natchez trace, PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56779619.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Connecticut’s Mysterious Dave Mather: The Law of the Old West

Mysterious Dave Mather came to be a lawman in the old West pretty much by chance. The taciturn son of a Connecticut sea captain, he plied his violent trade on both sides of the law.

He was born on Aug. 10, 1851, in Saybrook, Conn., the eldest son of Ulysses and Lydia Mather. He called Cotton Mather and Increase Mather ancestors, an incorrect assertion that would have had the old Puritans rolling in their graves.

Mysterious Dave Mather

Mather’s father and mother had died by the time he reached 16. Ulysses, a sea captain in the China trade, died in Shanghai after the Chinese cook stabbed him.

Dave and his brother Josiah tried following in their father’s footsteps once. They signed on as crew on a ship that took them to New Orleans, but that ended their seafaring days. From there the two looked to the rapidly growing West for their future.

Mysterious Dave Heads West

The two Mathers turned to buffalo hunting for a time, and by 1879, then in his late 20s, Mather joined up with famed western lawman and writer Bat Masterson. Masterson assembled a posse to enforce a lawsuit over ownership of the Royal Gorge Route Railroad.

In the 1880s, there was sometimes little difference between lawmen and outlaws. But people considered Masterson somewhat progressive because would give an outlaw a chance to surrender before opening fire.

Bat Masterson

Not so with Mather, who earned the nickname Mysterious Dave because he didn’t speak much. Louis L’Amour wrote, “Dave Mather didn’t wait for you. If you came to town talkin’ loud about what you intended to do, Dave would find you and shoot you before you even got started.”

Mather led a violent career, even by the standards of the day. He had been charged in several schemes, including counterfeiting and attempting to sell phony gold bricks in Texas. He was also an on-again, off-again cattle rustler and horse thief. But in 1880 his career as a lawman started in East Las Vegas, N.M., where he took the job of assistant marshal.

The Legend of Mysterious Dave

The Mather legend began in January of that year when he and the marshal got caught in a gunfight with a gang of drunks. The marshal died and Mather became acting marshal. He killed one of the gang and shot another. The two remaining men escaped.

Mather then did a short stint as marshal in El Paso, Texas. He took up with the madam of a brothel for a time, but that ended badly when she accused Mather of stealing from her.

Mather then returned to Dodge City, where he had lived earlier. In 1882 he got a job as assistant marshal and developed a rivalry with a man named Tom Nixon.

Stagecoach outside of a Dodge City home

Dodge City was trying to control its saloons and brothels at the time. According to legend, Mysterious Dave would sit on the porch at the marshal’s office daring anyone to make trouble. One night, after a gang killed the marshal, Dave supposedly proceeded to the saloon where the seven-man gang had retreated and single-handedly killed them all in a wild gunfight.

When Nixon managed to replace Mather as assistant marshal, their feud escalated. In 1884, Nixon took a shot at Mather, slightly injuring him. Three days later, Mather ended matters by shooting and killing Nixon. He was tried and exonerated of any wrongdoing under the theory he was simply defending himself.

Leaving Dodge

Mather and his brother didn’t stay out of trouble for long. In 1885 they were accused of killing a gambler in a Dodge City saloon. When they were released on bail, the two men left town. Mysterious Dave disappeared from history.

In his absence, Mysterious Dave’s legend grew. One colorful anecdote involved his drinking at a Dodge City saloon. Mather was said to occasionally ask the bartender to hand him a pistol so that Mysterious Dave could take a shot at a bell outside. If he missed the bell, he concluded he was drunk and needed to go home.

One night, fed up with Dave, the bartender loaded the gun with blanks. Dave took his shot, missed the bell and headed off into the night. When he encountered a coyote, the drunk marshal reached for his gun and fired. Mystified, Dave concluded the animal possessed supernatural powers because he was unable to hit it – with the blanks in his gun.

The final days of Mysterious Dave are, naturally, a mystery. Some said he joined up with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Others said he went to Texas. His brother said that he simply never knew what happened to Dave after they left Dodge.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Connecticut’s King Tut Ticket Scam of 1979

Once the Metropolitan Museum of Art discovered the King Tut ticket scam in 1979, museum officials easily detected the fakes. That’s because a careless counterfeiter misspelled the name of the Egyptian pharaoh.

The traveling King Tut exhibit drew more than 8 million people in the United States to see relics from the pharaoh’s tomb.

One of the first blockbuster museum shows ever, it featured funerary items such as a gold coffin, death mask, thrones, wine, clothing and fresh linen underwear.

Tickets to The Treasures of Tutankhamun were hard to get. The Metropolitan Museum of Art sold 1.3 million tickets in six days. After that, the only way to get them was from Ticketron or scalpers.

The King Tut Ticket Scam

On April 7, 1979, a busload of museumgoers from central Connecticut were turned away from the show. They held counterfeit tickets.

Joanne Perloff had organized the tour for the Dattco Bus company of New Britain. She went to the museum to see what went wrong. She seemed stunned, but would have no comment for the press.

Then the museum turned away more museumgoers. The counterfeit Connecticut tickets were easy to spot because they spelled Tutankhamun with ‘an’ at the end of this name instead of ‘un.’

Police soon learned blank tickets had been stolen from the G. Fox department store in downtown Hartford.

On the morning of Tuesday, April 10, a 38-year-old woman from West Hartford led police on a high-speed chase along 18 miles of I-684 in Harrison, N.Y. She was going as fast as 96 mph.

It was Joanne Perloff.

Joanne Perloff

Joanne Perloff had taught in various school systems before she went to work for the Dattco Bus Company, and she had two children. She had grown up in New Britain, graduated from Emerson College and earned a master’s degree in Education from Central Connecticut State University.

Why did the 38-year-old mother and former teacher turn to counterfeiting? Perhaps she just needed the money.

Police found 2,700 tickets in her car. Some of them were real. Perloff had been speeding to beat a Dattco bus full of people headed to the King Tut exhibit – presumably to distribute the real tickets before the counterfeits were spotted.

She was charged with possession of forged instruments, possession of stolen property, resisting arrest and motor vehicle violations.

On Friday, the Hartford Courant broke the story of the King Tut ticket scam. Hundreds of Connecticut residents couldn’t get into the exhibit because they had phony tickets.

Dattco Bus canceled the rest of the trips to the exhibit.

Joanne Perloff died in 2017 at the age of 77. Her obituary makes no mention of her criminal past.

Photo of King Tut’s death mask By Carsten Frenzl from Obernburg, Derutschland – TUT-Ausstellung_FFM_2012_47, CC BY 2.0 via Wikipedia. With thanks to On This Day in Connecticut History by Greg Mangan. This story about the King Tut ticket scam was updated in 2022.

Featured image by By Jon Bodsworth – http://www.egyptarchive.co.uk/html/cairo_museum_52.html, Copyrighted free use, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3803726.

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The Colonial Slade Mill Starts a Spice Empire in Revere, Mass.

When David and Levi Slade went into business with their father at his Slade mill in 1837, they had an idea. In addition to grinding corn and tobacco, why not grind spices – which were mainly sold in bulk and had to be processed at home?

The boys ground a test batch – a half a barrel of cinnamon – and carried it to the markets in Boston. Turned out people liked the labor saving convenience of having spices preground and delivered in small amounts, and the Slades were in a new business.

David and Levi came to the spice business via their father Henry. The Slade’s Mill was on the border of Chelsea and Revere, and it was the surviving portion of the original mill built in 1735 at the request of the citizens of Chelsea. Over the years, the mill changed hands several times and was destroyed by fire, but it always fulfilled its initial mission of standing ready to grind the corn of any citizen of Chelsea. In exchange for grinding the corn, the mill owner received a “Miller’s Dole” – a percentage of the corn he ground.

The Slade Mill

The mill was one of several tide mills dotting the New England coast – an innovation that some say originated in the area. Tide mills worked by using a set of flood gates. When the tide surged in, the flood gates swung open to allow the ocean water to fill the marsh and mill pond. When the tide turned and began to exit the marsh, the gates closed, trapping the water. From this impounded water the mill drew off a steady stream to turn its machinery – similar to the way a mill on a river used the flow to drive its works.

David Slade

In 1775 the mill provided a footnote to the American Revolution. One of the earliest naval engagements of the war took place near the mill, and its gates prevented the British from sailing up Mill Creek and coming within firing range of Chelsea.

Henry Slade had bought into the mill in 1827, and the innovation introduced in his time was the grinding of tobacco into snuff to supplement corn. As Henry’s children David, Levi and Charles took an interest in the business, they – especially David – wanted to let their new ideas and ambition increase the business.

For one year, Henry turned the mill over to the hard-working David, who increased the mill’s profits to $500 until the older generation stepped back in. But soon David took charge again, creating the D & L Slade Co. with brother Levi. It would for more than 100 years turn out spices for New England home and professional kitchens.

Counterfeiting

In popularizing the grinding of spices, Slade actually introduced into the spice trade an expanded opportunity for crooks to begin selling fake spices. Counterfeiting was long a problem with spices, as the legend of the Connecticut nutmeg highlights, because they commanded such handsome prices.

Spices already ground afforded counterfeiters an easier way to profit. Rather than having to fake an actual spice, the counterfeiters could simply adulterate the spice with a filler or other substance when they processed it and boost profits this way.

Slade, with his insistence on purity, turned this practice to his advantage. He used the dependability of his mill and his family’s reputation for honesty as a marketing tool to set the company apart from competitors. From 1850 to the mid-1900s Slade became the largest spice company in New England with trading partners around the world and a factory and offices in Boston.

And Then, Bell’s

In 1918 Slade would make the investment that keeps its legacy alive today. It bought out the Bell’s Seasoning Company. In 1867, William Bell had begun selling his blend of poultry seasoning through his market in Boston. Bell had started as a grocer in Lowell, Mass. before moving south to Boston where he could buy spices directly off the ships arriving in port.

Over the next 40 years Bell continually expanded the popularity of his Bell’s Seasoning – a blend of rosemary, ginger, oregano, sage and marjoram – until his sudden death at age 76. Sensing opportunity, Slade purchased the brand, but wisely did nothing to change the name or formula. Instead, he incorporated Bell’s into his own lineup, which had expanded to baking powders, cumin, pepper and a wide range of spices. The company promoted them in its own cookbook.

The Slade name finally disappeared from the grocery shelves in the 1970s when the Slade family sold the company. Only the Bell’s brand name remains today – touted by a wide range of cooks as still the best poultry seasoning for a Thanksgiving turkey.

The Slade Mill, though, still lives on. Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972, its owners converted it to apartments in 2004.

Hat tip to: The Spice Mill on the Marsh by Thomas P. Smith. This story was updated in 2022.

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