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Glorious Revolution

Easy Money: How New England Puritans Invented Our Currency

Easy money is perhaps New England’s least famous contribution to humanity. Around the world, currency is still mostly in the form of legal tender paper money. It’s a special type of paper money. Unlike numerous types of paper money in history, it is not convertible to gold upon demand. Nor is its quantity “backed” or restricted in any way by its issuer’s gold stock. In general, it is not forced on sellers in private spot transactions. It is just a pure legal tender money.

This means that creditors cannot reject payments of obligations in that object. Most critically, these creditors include the tax authority, and no other object has this status. Every taxpayer must obtain legal tender money in order to pay taxes. This legal status distinguishes the dollar from bitcoin, both of which have no intrinsic value and no relation to gold. It is a major reason why bitcoin hasn’t and probably couldn’t replace the dollar. And it is a major reason why governments can inflate their money at will. Taxpayers still have to obtain it, typically by selling goods and services for it. For the government, it is easy money.

This device, of flimsy appearance but enormous power, was invented in the colony of Massachusetts Bay in the period 1690-1692. From there it spread to other colonies. Because of the Revolutionary War, the idea spread to Europe. Monetary history would never be the same. No country ever again manipulated the content of its gold coins, as they had for two millennia, in order to finance a war. The printing press took over war finance.

Why Massachusetts Puritans?

Why and how did the Massachusetts Puritans invent this new type of money? They numbered 50,000 people at the edge of Western civilization, far less numerous and far less sophisticated than the great financial centers of Amsterdam and London. The first step to answering this question is to recognize that the innovative legal tender paper money was not born in a normal economy. Its invention did not simply replace precious metal coins. The items eligible for use as tax payments in 1690 Massachusetts, just before the invention of legal tender paper money, didn’t just include coins. They also included wheat, barley, barley malt, rye, maize, peas, oats, beef and pork.

It was a very odd monetary economy that saw its roots in the beginning of the English colonization of America. Let’s then take a journey further back in time – and space – all the way to Pocahontas.

An 1850s painting of John Rolfe and Pocahontas

Pocahontas’ husband, John Rolfe, started tobacco planting in Jamestown in the 1610s. Quickly everyone who could became a tobacco planter. The planters desperately needed European goods and food. And so when European ships came for their tobacco the planters exchanged all their tobacco – but also most of their coins – for European products. As a result, very few coins remained for domestic circulation. Tobacco quickly emerged as the alternative to coins. By 1624, even the colony’s budget was expressed in pounds of tobacco.

A Pattern of Easy Money

The pattern repeated itself in all the non-Iberian colonies: maize in Plymouth, sugar in Barbados, boards in Maine, beaver furs in Canada and whalebones in Long Island. Each colony adopted its main product as money. As a matter of course, in 1630 the young colony of Massachusetts Bay adopted three official currencies: English silver coins, grains and beaver furs.

But Massachusetts soon became different because its people were different. Relatively affluent, highly educated and commercially oriented, the Massachusetts Puritans were not content with using commodities as money. They also had the means and the expertise to try something better. An unusual period of experimentation began. In 1635, lead bullets were adopted as small change. Bullets served in their traditional role in the 1637 Pequot War, which gave Massachusetts access to Long Island shores. That was the production center of wampum – the seashell jewelry/money of Native Americans. So in 1637, Massachusetts made wampum legal tender for small debts.

Pilgrims Going to Church by George Henry Boughton

In 1639, the colony legalized bullion brought by privateers for tax payments. In 1642, Massachusetts was the first colony to recognize foreign (Spanish and Dutch) coins and to encourage their imports. The abolition of monarchy in England annulled the royal minting prerogative, leading Massachusetts to be the only colony to open a mint (in 1652).

Charles II

But royalty returned in 1660, and in the late 1670s King Charles II pressed Massachusetts on the issue of the independent mint, which was seen as nothing short of treason. It was shut down in 1682. At the same time, a private bank started operations in Boston. It issued banknotes awkwardly backed by land titles rather than coins. The bank ceased operations shortly thereafter, perhaps because England threatened to abolish all land titles in Massachusetts.

Charles II

In 1684, the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company was annulled in England, and in 1686 a new regime was imposed by the new king, James II. This Dominion of New England was a pure dictatorship, unlike the colony’s General Court, which was a democracy among male church members. Another attempt at a land bank was made, but it was aborted as soon as the English dictator, Sir Edmund Andros, invalidated all land titles.

With local coins gone and bank projects in ruin, in 1688 Massachusetts was not much better, in terms of its existing currency, than when it was founded in 1630. Some English coins and grains still facilitated daily transactions within the colony. But the monetary laboratory that operated there during these six decades was not entirely in vain. It was powered by English America’s largest merchants, concentrated in Boston, and by graduates of English America’s only college (Harvard). As a merchant republic, Massachusetts was similar to previous hubs of financial innovation – Venice and Amsterdam. The shocks of both the new environment and England’s constitutional upheavals caused Massachusetts to replicate humanity’s monetary history in 60 years: seashell jewelry, grains, uncoined precious metal, coins and banknotes.

Glorious Revolution

Then came the Glorious Revolution in England. It soon inspired a revolution in Boston, which dismantled the Dominion and restored the charter government de facto. The Glorious Revolution also dragged the English colonies into their first war with French Canada. The revolutionary Massachusetts government lobbied the monarchs William and Mary to restore their charter at the same time that they launched expensive attacks on distant Canada. In the fall of 1690, these two tasks collided on the beaches below Quebec City. Massachusetts tried to occupy the French colony, counting on God to provide a Puritan victory over Catholics. The expected plunder was supposed to pay the soldiers. But it was not to be. The soldiers returned defeated in November, ravaged by smallpox, frozen and hungry, and demanded pay for their horrible three-month journey.

The batteries of Quebec bombard the New England fleet

The government promptly increased taxes enormously, but it would have taken too much time to collect them (in coin, grains, and other goods). The soldiers were “mutinous,” reported Boston pastor Cotton Mather. Mather and the elite knew that the very same place they tried to occupy (Quebec) was in the habit of issuing paper money (manually, from playing cards!). The Canadian money was in the Old World style: It was forced on all sellers under penalty and the government committed to exchange it for incoming French silver coins. As the intellectual capital of English America, Massachusetts had printing presses and thus had the technical ability to easily pull off a paper money issue. The problem was a constitutional one: William and Mary, considering restoration of the colony’s charter, would not have been happy seeing Massachusetts once again violating the royal monopoly on money creation. What to do?

A Solution

The government, experienced in monetary innovation, figured out a solution: There will not be “paper money” but only “bills.” No private party will be forced to accept them – no sellers in the markets, not even the soldiers. The soldiers will be informed that they can receive the “bills” if they want, instead of waiting for tax proceeds to be collected, and taxpayers will be informed that they can discharge their enormous tax obligations with these “bills.” That is, only tax collectors will be forced to accept the bills.

In modern parlance, the bills were only legal tender for taxes. Officially, it was not money at all, and thus England should not care. I call it “easy money” because it was money that was easy to issue – no need for precious metal and a mint – and it was made in a dishonest way to fool England.

Easy Money

The bills were enacted into law on December 24, 1690. Printing soon began. The issue of the bills was handed to a committee of five bay merchants,. They included Elisha Hutchinson, grandson of the religious dissident, Anne, and grandfather of the governor and historian, Thomas; Treasurer John Phillips, Mather’s father-in-law; and Adam Winthrop – the first Harvard graduate of that famous name.

In January 1691, the bills were given to soldiers but the public was reluctant to accept the bills. Members of the elite rushed to save the new experiment. Among them were Cotton Mather, who wrote a fiery pamphlet, and the rich Sir William Phips (leader of the Quebec expedition). Phips reputedly exchanged some of his own coins for bills to establish their credit. It worked.

William Phips

England, as planned, did not care about this experiment. In October 1691, William and Mary granted a new charter to the Province of Massachusetts Bay. Upon the charter’s arrival in 1692, the new government understood that it no longer had to fear England’s reaction regarding its money-issuing activities. In the summer it decided that the “bills of credit” (as they came to be known) will be legal tender not only for taxes but for any monetary obligation. In this step, the bills became identical in legal status to England’s silver coins. However, since they were not made of precious metal, they were identical to our modern currency. Ironically, this time of brilliant innovation was also the summer of Salem witch trials.

The Expedient of Easy Money

Mather later summarized his people’s ingenuity.

“In this extremity they presently found out an expedient, which may serve as an example, for any people in other parts of the world, whose distresses may call for a sudden supply of money to carry them through any important expedition.”

Mather, the mad genius of Boston, was right. Founder John Winthrop did not think of paper money when he said in 1630: “We shall be a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.” But in the context of money that was what eventually happened.

Cotton Mather

Of course, silver and later gold made a comeback, again and again, to prevent inflation, only to be discarded during wars. Gold coins disappeared from American shops and homes in the Great Depression. Gold remained behind the scenes until 1971, loosely “backing” an ever-increasing amount of paper dollars. Only foreign central banks had the legal right to convert the dollars they held into U.S. gold. But the system came under pressure of increasing government expenditures: The Vietnam War, President Johnson’s War on Poverty and the war on gravity (the Space Program) cost so much money that the dollar’s relation to gold lost its credibility. In 1971 President Richard Nixon “suspended” the convertibility promise, and in fact, took the entire world off gold.

Massachusetts Money

Since then, our currency is Massachusetts currency. If and when it a digital version replaces it, its legal status will remain the same. Even if it disappears from shops in favor of electronic payments of various sorts, it still forms the foundation of the monetary and financial systems. These systems consist mostly of promises to pay “dollars” – the paper money and token coins issued by the federal government.

And it all started in a futile attempt of New Englanders to occupy Quebec.

Dror Goldberg is the author of Easy Money: American Puritans and the Invention of Modern Currency, to be published by the University of Chicago Press in April 2023.

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Boston Riots Once Every 3 Years — for Centuries

Boston riots during the 18^th century happened so often you could have called the town Riot City.

Between 1700 and 1764, 28 riots broke out in Boston. During the same time, New York had only four, and Philadelphia had just six, according to historian Jack Tager.

Police try to quell a Boston riot after the Red Sox World Series victory in 2007.

The Boston riots encompassed all classes. Gentlemen and college students rioted, as did the poor. Women and children rioted for bread and meat. Bostonians protested against customs regulations, brothels and the impressment of sailors. Several Pope Day riots targeted Catholicism and led to the Stamp Act riot. Other Boston rioters attacked immigrants and union organizers. Sometimes the police rioted, but at least one rioted erupted when the police went on strike.

Michael Hindus studied Boston riots and reached a conclusion in a 1971 essay, A City of Mobocrats and Tyrants: Mob Violence in Boston, 1747-1863.

My study of rioting in Boston over an extended period has convinced me that too many types of people took to the streets for too many different reasons for any single formula to apply.

In other words, everyone seemed to riot in Boston.

The Boston Revolt

Tager counted 103 Boston riots from 1700 to 1976, or one riot every 2.76 years. But one man’s riot is another man’s revolt. In 1689, Bostonians engaged in actions the British government almost certainly viewed as a riot. Boston, however, called it a revolt.

King James II gave Bostonians a convenient target for their ire. He consolidated the northern colonies into the Dominion of New England and sent Sir Edmund Andros to rein them in. Andros cracked down on the forbidden activities of smuggling and trading with the French and Dutch. He also infuriated the Puritan elders by holding an Anglican service in a Puritan meeting house. The papist had to go!

Andros is taken prisoner during the Boston Riot, er, Revolt.

So armed Bostonians and militiamen from nearby towns seized Andros and his people and threw him in jail. The Protestant William of Orange, meanwhile, seized power in England, and Boston got away with it. Andros went back to the United Kingdom.

Boston Riots Over Food

In the 18^th century war and economic stagnation created chronic food shortages.

Boston riots first kicked into gear during Queen Anne’s War, which lasted from 1702 to 1713. The costs of the war fell heavily on Boston’s poor, who had to fight it in the north and cope with grain shortages at home. War profiteers hoarded grain to raise prices and gouge their customers, or else they shipped it to the Caribbean to feed the slaves on sugar plantations.

In 1707, poor women dumped out chamber pots on the heads of soldiers marching home from war. Then in 1710, Boston men tried to sabotage a grain-filled ship owned by war profiteer Andrew Belcher. The ship lay at anchor, about to depart Boston Harbor for the West Indies. One man rowed out and smashed the rudder; the next day 50 men rowed out and tried to force the captain to come ashore. Authorities had some rabble-rousers arrested, but didn’t charge them with anything because they had so much public support.

Riots and looting broke out the next year when a fire left 100 families homeless.

Then in 1713, Belcher once again shipped Indian corn to the Caribbean. Boston selectmen warned him against it, but Belcher refused.

Two hundred poor men broke in to Belcher’s warehouse, trashed it and wounded the lieutenant governor. Boston selectmen responded by passing a law that said grain could not be exported in times of food shortage. Grain also had to be sold at a set price to one of a group of 15 people. In 1714 the town established a granary where the poor could buy grain at below-market prices.

Another Boston riot over food broke out in 1737, when the price of meat skyrocketed. Rioters, including many volunteer firefighters, tore down butchers’ stalls.

More Food Riots

Merchant hoarding inspired 14 food riots in Boston during the American Revolution, including some led by women. Abigail Adams witnessed one and described it to her husband in a letter. “There has been much rout and Noise in the Town for several weeks,” she wrote.

Abigail Adams, 1766 (Benjamin Blythe)

During the Kosher Meat Riot of 1902, Jewish men, women and children led the battle against local butchers in the city’s poor neighborhoods. They were angry because the price of kosher beef suddenly rose to 18 cents a pound from 12 cents a pound.

The butchers blamed the Beef Trust in Chicago. Hundreds of Jews didn’t buy it or didn’t care. They formed picket lines outside the butcher shops, first in the North End, then a few days later in the West End. They smashed windows, threw rotten food at the shops and destroyed the product. Ten years later, history repeated itself with another meat riot.

Press Gang Riots

Bostonians rioted for three days against British press gangs in 1747. They’d had plenty of practice: they’d rioted twice in 1741 and once in 1746 against the press gangs.

Caricature of a British press gang

The British Royal Navy had a predilection for capturing — or ‘impressing’ — random American seamen and forcing them to work aboard his royal majesty’s warships. King George’s War was on in 1747, and mariners knew life aboard ship in wartime was harsh and dangerous.

So it did not go over well when, on Nov. 16 and 17, British press gangs rounded up 46 shocked sailors and tradesmen along the waterfront. About 300 men retaliated by capturing a British navy lieutenant. The riot escalated when Gov. William Shirley tried to call out the militia, who refused to respond. Shirley characterized the rioters as “seamen and a great number of lewd and profligate persons.” In reality, the respectable upper-class militiamen supported them. Shirley called them “ill-minded.”

The impressment riot helped set the stage for the American Revolution. It taught Boston that authorities couldn’t do much to suppress large-scale uprisings, wrote Hindus.

Draft Riots

Then in 1863, the Boston draft riot earned less notice than the draft riot in New York. The main actors were working-class white men who couldn’t afford the $300 to get out of the draft. They attacked an armory with women and children helping supply paving stones and ammunition. The women, fearing the poverty they’d suffer if the breadwinner went off to war, held up their children and dared militia to shoot them.

A century later, on April 9, 1969 Harvard police rioted. Thirty students protesting the Vietnam War took over University Hall, driving out the office workers ‘under duress.’ One student physically carried a dean out of the building. Hundreds more joined them, until police stormed the building. They handled the students roughly and injured many of them.

In 1970, a protest against the draft and the Vietnam War at Northeastern University erupted into a riot.

Stamp Act Riot

Annual Pope Night brawls between North and South End gangs in Boston had escalated up until then. They began with raucous parades making fun of the Roman Catholic pope, then turned into brawls—or riots, if you prefer–and a celebratory bonfire.

Attack on Gov. Hutchinson’s house

John Hancock and Sam Adams wanted to stir up trouble, and they found a reliable ally in Ebenezer Mackintosh, the leader of the South End gang.

During the Stamp Act Riot of Aug. 26, 1765, a mob ransacked the mansion of Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson. Gov. Francis Bernard feared more violence a few months later on Pope Night, so he called out the militia from October 31 to November 6—the day before the Stamp Act took effect and the day after Pope Night. The militia stayed home.

That ushered in a penchant for riots that included the Liberty Affair in 1765, the Boston Massacre in 1770 and the Boston Tea Party of 1773.

Boston Riots Over Race and Slavery

In 1819 came a new wave of Boston riots, sparked by immigration, class-conflict and slavery.

Sixty African-Americans carrying clubs, knives and hatchets in 1819 confronted a group of white people who had captured a runaway slave. The whites fought off the rescuers and arrested 15, but not before one of them was injured.

During the 1829 Gentleman’s Riot, 1,500 members of Boston’s elite class, along with their clerks, rioted against abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. Many had made fortunes in textile manufacturing, which gobbled up cotton harvested by slaves in the south.

When the gentlemen assembled, Mayor Theodore Lyman stood on a chair and asked them to desist. They didn’t, but marched to the Female Anti-Slavery Society to break it up, then went for Garrison. They tied him up and started to drag him through the streets, but two men rescued him. He holed up in the old statehouse. Then a coach provided by authorities took Garrison to jail and charged him with disturbing the peace. In the end, they let him go.

A smaller confrontation developed in 1843. “In Boston on August 27, 1843, sailors beat four blacks. When the victims defended themselves, a larger crowd gathered and assaulted every black person in sight,” wrote Paul A. Gilje in Rioting in America.

More Slavery Riots

During the Boston Slave riot of 1854, abolitionists led by Brahmin Thomas Wentworth Higginson armed themselves with axes. They attacked a courthouse in which fugitive slave Anthony Burns was held. They failed to free him, and the governor placed Boston under martial law.

Anthony Burns

Then in 1903, a speech by Booker T. Washington to the Business League at the African Methodist Episcopal Church turned into a battle between his African-American followers and those of William Monroe Trotter. Trotter thought Washington too much of an Uncle Tom, and his followers hissed and shouted during Washington’s speech. A melee erupted as Washington spoke. His followers provoked a melee in which someone threw red pepper and stink bombs. Twenty-five police showed up and arrested Trotter.

Anti-Irish Riots

Many ethnic riots, but not all, started because the Yankee laboring poor feared losing their livelihoods to the cheap workforce arriving from Ireland. The Yankees developed a predilection for beating up the Irish and trashing their homes.

In 1823, Yankee workmen rioted against Irish immigrants, throwing stones through the windows of their homes.

That was only a prelude to the Brothel Riots of 1825, when Yankee firefighters, teamsters and mechanics tore down two notorious West End brothels, the Beehive and the Tin Pot. Michael Hindus notes that the teamsters, or truckmen, had become the ‘fellows to call when any game was on foot in those days.’ They seemed to like fighting for its own sake, sometimes rioting, sometimes suppressing riots.

The mood that generated the growth of the Know Nothing Party of the mid-1800s showed up early in Massachusetts. This cartoon, "Uncle Sam's Boarding House" from Puck Magazine, highlights the party's anti-immigrant platform.

The mood that generated the growth of the Know Nothing Party of the mid-1800s showed up early in Massachusetts. This cartoon, “Uncle Sam’s Lodging House” from Puck Magazine, highlights the party’s anti-immigrant platform.

During three days of rioting in July 1826, Yankee laborers nearly destroyed the Irish section of Boston. Hindus speculates the deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson on July 4 may have inspired a torrent of nativist feeling. The clear meaning of the Revolution was getting muddied by immigrants and their strange Catholic symbols and rituals.

In 1834, a group of anti-Irish Know Nothings burned down an Ursuline convent in Charlestown.

In 1837 came the Broad Street riot. That year, a financial panic caused hard times throughout the country and economic uncertainty for Yankee laborers. Irish immigrants fought mostly volunteer Yankee firefighters on Broad Street. Ten thousand spectators egged on the 800 combatants, and the melee didn’t end until Mayor Samuel Eliot called in the state militia.

1917 Anti-Union Riot

On July 1, 1917, union members and socialists organized a peaceful parade of men, women and babies through the streets to a mass meeting on Boston Common. Mother’s League, Amalgamated Clothing Workers, Labor League 20 and the Lithuanians of Boston. Soldiers and sailors attacked the marchers, trampled their banners and burned their pamphlets in the street. After an hour and a half of fighting, the police intervened.

A fight also broke out in Scollay Square, after the police superintendent revoked a peace advocate’s permit to speak.

Ghetto Riots of 1967-68

Boston had a relatively small African-American population until the 1950s, when many migrated north for better jobs and opportunity. But Boston grew increasingly inhospitable to its black population. Urban renewal destroyed neighborhoods and the local government offered little economic or political advancement.

In June 1967, a dozen women calling themselves Mothers for Adequate welfare locked themselves into a welfare office in the Grove Hall section of Roxbury. Police tried to eject them, and a fight broke out. The fight escalated into a large scale riot, as angry young people stoned police cars, smashed windows and set fires. Police arrested 30 rioters, while dozens of on both sides went to hospital with injuries.

That Boston riot mirrored African-American uprisings throughout the United States, riots that continued after an assassin killed Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4.

Immediately after King’s death, James Brown agreed to let his concert at Boston Garden be televised to keep young African-Americans at home. The hardest working man in show biz did keep many young African Americans rooted to their TV sets. But others stoned cars on Blue Hill Avenue, looted liquor stores, burned a furniture store and beat up some white people. The Boston riot, however, was more contained than those in Washington or Chicago or Detroit.

1972 Puerto Rican Riots

New England’s Puerto Rican riots have been largely forgotten. But three days of Boston riots erupted in the South End in July 1972 during a Puerto Rican Day celebration.

The Boston Globe reported the fight grew into a confrontation between bystanders and more than 100 policemen. Mostly young Puerto Ricans set buildings on fire, damaged police cruisers and stoned passing cars. The police were criticized for aggravating the situation.

Luis Palmarin, a South End resident, told the Globe: “The cop arrested me when I tried to stop him from beating a man who was bleeding badly. He threw me in the car, grabbed a soda bottle from the floor, called me a spic and hit me in the face with the bottle.”

Boston City Councilman Albert “Dapper” O’Neil made the situation worse by ordering the police to “club those maggots and leeches out of the park.”

Police Riots

Economic hardship followed the boom years of World War I and unions ramped up their organizing efforts. On May Day, a day to celebrate international labor solidarity, socialists held a meeting in Roxbury at the Dudley Street Opera House.

Boston’s Roman Catholic churches had railed against socialists to their Irish parishioners. The Opera House meeting erupted into a brawl between the socialists on one side and police and weapon-wielding onlookers, including soldiers and sailors, on the other. When the hourlong brawl ended, police arrested 113 people and put them in crowded cells, their walls splashed with blood. Two police officers and a civilian were shot and dozens injured. In the end, two died.

Coolidge called up the militia to quell violence during the Boston police strike

Four months later, the police themselves went on strike for better wages and shorter hours. Young men ran wild, smashing shop windows and looting the merchandise, throwing rocks at streetcars and overturning street vendors’ carts. Gov. Calvin Coolidge called out the militia, who, along with Harvard students and upper-class volunteers, tried to quell the violence. The militia restored peace at the cost of eight lives, and Coolidge replaced the striking police with strikebreakers.

Anti-Busing Riots of 1974-76

Nearly everyone knows about the Boston riots against school desegregation from 1974 to 1976. The ferocity of opposition to busing set Boston apart as the Little Rock of the North.

In 1974, U.S. District Court Judge Arthur Garrity, Jr., came up with a plan to bus schoolchildren between black and white neighborhoods in order to comply with the Racial Imbalance Act of 1965. In response, Boston School Committee Chair Louise Day Hicks formed Restore Our Alienated Rights, and the group led demonstrations, prayer vigils, marches and sit-ins.

Sporadic violence broke out on both sides. A white youth tried to beat a black lawyer with an American flag, and a black teenager stabbed a white teenager in South Boston High school. The school closed down for a month, and Garrity fired the principal and took control himself. Five hundred police officers guarded South Boston High every day in 1975.

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

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The Dutch in New England: More Than Sinterklaas and Koekjes

Today the remnants of the colonial Dutch in New England are pretty much limited to the region’s outer rim: At Smith’s Castle in North Kingstown, R.I., in Vermont’s oldest house in Pownal, on Leyden Street in Plymouth, Mass. and on a historic sign in Castine, Maine.

But the Dutch had more of a presence in early New England than along the perimeter, and far more than commonly acknowledged. The Dutch claimed much of Connecticut, for example, before English settlers crowded them out. The early Plymouth and Massachusetts colonists might not have survived had the Dutch not brought trade goods like tools and cheese, cannon and livestock. Rhode Islanders had an especially cozy relationship with Dutch traders, and the Dutch claimed part of Downeast Maine.

Don’t forget King William III was also a Dutch staedtholder.

When thinking about the history of British North America It’s easy to forget that William of Orange seized the English throne in 1688 with the help of Dutch troops. King Williams was not only a French prince but also a staedtholder – a Dutch earl or a duke — of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Guelders and Overijssel in the Dutch Republic.

Decades later, the English Parliament decided to tax tea to discourage the Dutch from smuggling the stuff into the colonies – hence the Boston Tea Party. The Dutch were also the first to salute the American flag and, therefore, the first to acknowledge the independence of the United States on November 16, 1776.

The Dutch in New England

In early 17^th century New England, colonists depended on Dutch traders because they had to. England was still recovering from Henry VIII’s shenanigans and had some catching up to do. Amsterdam, not London, had grown into the European capital of shipping, banking and finance.

“The British government and the British commercial world had not yet got their colonial act together,” wrote Charlotte Wilcoxen. The country ‘was still inexperienced at coordinating the production and distribution of goods,’ she wrote. “Her American colonies, victims of this ineptitude, were forced to look to the Dutch for supplies.”

A Dutch trading vessel, known as a fluyt.

In the 16^th and first half of the 17^th centuries, the Dutch were leading traders in the world, with outposts in Thailand, Brazil, Africa, Indonesia and the Caribbean.

Dutch merchants may have traded on the coast of New England as early as 1598. And they didn’t differ from the other European powers in wanting to expand in North America. One big reason: soft gold, otherwise known as beaver.

Beavers

From about 1550, all the best people in Europe had to have a beaver hat. They were soft, attractive, durable and expensive. The beaver hat craze nearly drove the Eurasian beaver to extinction, and sent trappers and traders to North America from Europe.

Nice hat. The Laughing Cavalier by Franz Hals.

Dutch traders set up trading posts along the coast from Maryland to Maine, and up the Hudson, Connecticut and Delaware rivers. They bought beaver furs from Indians in exchange for trade goods. They learned from the Pequot how to use wampum, or zewant, and then taught the Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony how to do it.

In 1621, the Dutch government chartered the West India Company to, among other things, exploit the beaver trade and colonize North America. Three years later the Netherlands sent colonists to try to settle a wide swath Northeast territory.

In addition to New Amsterdam (New York) and Fort Nassau (Albany) the Dutch in New England eventually had a fort in Hartford, called Fort Hope. They also built a fort called Roduins, or Red Dunes, at the mouth of the Housatonic River. They had a trading post on Quetenis, what is now Dutch Island in Jamestown, R.I., and briefly set up a fort and a warehouse in Old Saybrook, Conn. The Dutch may also have settled along the coast of Maine.

Traces of the Dutch presence in the eastern part of upper New York State can be found in the Mooar-Wright House. Built around 1762, it has a Dutch frame around a typically English layout.

Mooar-Wright House

Bye-Bye Beaver

If beaver mortality is any indication, New England and Europe kept up a brisk trade during the first half of the 17^th century.

Europe’s insatiable appetite for beaver fur kept New England’s Indians busy trapping the creatures. The Dutch in New England tried to keep up with their demand for knives, axes, glassware and wool. From 1626 to 1632, the Dutch sent 52,584 beaver pelts back to the Netherlands.

It only got worse for the beaver. By 1650, trappers and traders were sending 80,000 beaver pelts a year to England and the Netherlands. Fifty years later, the once-plentiful beaver had disappeared completely from Massachusetts, and soon after vanished from Vermont and Connecticut.

Massachusetts

In 1635, a Dutch vessel stopped in Marblehead with 140 tons of salt and 10,000 pounds of tobacco. They probably sold salt to Marblehead’s cod fishermen before sailing back to Europe to unload their tobacco.

Dutch merchants also bought tobacco from Plymouth Colony. The Pilgrims, after all, had lived for about a dozen years in Leiden, about 30 miles southwest of Amsterdam, and undoubtedly spoke at least some Dutch. When they arrived in Plymouth they built houses on Leyden Street in 1620. It’s still there.

Leyden Street in the 1800s

Plymouth Gov. William Bradford reported ‘profitable commerce’ with the New Amsterdam Dutch for ‘diverse years.’ Plymouth colonist Isaac Allerton brokered the sale of a Dutch ship from two Dutchmen in New Amsterdam.

Next door in Massachusetts, Gov. John Winthrop noted in his journal that the two colonies often traded with the ‘Dutch at Hudson’s River’ for sheep, beaver, cannon, sugar, wine and linen. Massachusetts, in fact, did so much trade with the Dutch that the colony used Dutch currency and passed a law in 1643 regulating its use.

One reason Massachusetts had to use Dutch currency was that the English Civil War, which started in 1642, pretty much ended trade between England and the colonies for a while. Colonists who needed supplies had to go Dutch — or perhaps Venetian or Spanish.

Today The Dutch House in Brookline, Mass., serves as a memorial of sorts to the Dutch in New England. Built as a pavilion in the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, Brookline resident Charles Brooks Appleton saw it, bought it and had it moved to his hometown.

Rhode Island, aka Roode Eylandt

On the shore of Mill Cove off Narragansett Bay stands a large, plain, wooden house in a clearing. A Rhode Island merchant named Richard Smith, Jr., built it in 1678, after Narragansett Indians burned down the previous house during King Philip’s War. Smith fortified the big old colonial with two small cannons, thus earning the name “Smith’s Castle.” Today it’s a house museum, which in 2019 scheduled a holiday event, Christmas at the Castle, celebrating ‘Dutch influence on colonial life.’

Rhode Islanders like Smith got rich trading with the Dutch in New England. Dutch explorer Adriaen Block had explored Rhode Island and the interior of Connecticut in 1614, naming Block Island after himself and probably naming Rhode Island “Roode Eylandt.” The Dutch even tried to claim Rhode Island as a colony.

Smith Castle

Trading With the Dutch in New England

Nevertheless, Rhode Island probably had the most sustained and cordial trade relations with the Dutch in New England, according to Charlotte Wilcoxen. Rhode Islanders who did business with the Dutch included William Coddington, William Brenton, John Underhill, John Throgmorton and the father and son pair of Richard Smith.

Richard Smith, Sr., had set up a trading post in a place they called Cocumscussoc, now North Kingstown, with his business partner, Roger Williams. In 1651, he built a house there, 20 miles from the nearest settlement. Smith also had trading posts in Taunton, Mass., and in New Amsterdam, where he lived part time. He sent fish, beaver and salt to Europe in exchange for manufactured goods. Slaves and sugar came from the Dutch in the West Indies.

After Richard Smith died in 1666, his son Richard took over the business. Today the Smith Castle docents will tell you his family incorporated Dutch holiday traditions – such as Sinterklaas and koekjes — into their daily life.

Anglo-Dutch Wars

In the mid-17^th century the English began to block Dutch shipping in the English Channel and along other trade routes. That caused three Anglo-Dutch Wars, fought primarily at sea. The first broke out in 1652 and ended in 1654. The second lasted from 1664-67, and the third from 1672-74.

The New England colonies kept up commerce and correspondence with the Dutch during the wars. Rhode Islanders especially honored bans on Dutch trade more in the breach than in the observance.

Huys de Hoop, Connecticut

Connecticut probably had the testiest relations with the Dutch in New England, perhaps because familiarity bred contempt. Connecticut, after all, was cheek-by-jowl with New Amsterdam, and the Dutch early on claimed both the Connecticut and New Haven colonies.

Dutch settlements

The Dutch called the Connecticut River the Versche, or Fresh, River, and the Dutch made good use of it in the early 17^th century. They traded beaver for trade goods with the Indians. In 1633, they built a fort called Huys de Hoop, or House of Hope, on a tributary of the Versche in what is now Hartford. Today Huyshope Avenue connects the Connecticut Probation Department at one end with Aetna Ambulance Services at the other.

The Dutch intended the House of Hope to serve as the capital of Dutch Connecticut, which had amounted to a few tiny, scattered settlements – in Branford, Old Saybrook and New Haven. But they couldn’t keep up with the influx of English immigrants fleeing the Puritans in Massachusetts.

Groenwits

One exception was Greenwich, in the far southwestern corner of Connecticut. Today it’s called the Entryway to New England. In 1640, the Dutch considered it the westernmost settlement of New Amsterdam.

That year, two Massachusetts families, the Feakes and the Patricks, bought land from the Indians and called it Elizabeth’s Neck. Massachusetts had banished them for their support of the heretical Anne Hutchinson. The Feakes later built a house, the Feake-Ferris House, in what is now Old Greenwich.

Three months after their arrival, armed Dutch soldiers from New Amsterdam showed up in Elizabeth’s Neck. They gave the Feakes and the Patricks a choice: submit to Dutch rule or leave. They submitted. The Dutch then changed the settlement’s name to Groenwits and held it for the next 16 years.

Coincidentally, Greenwich was one of the first Connecticut towns to suffer Dutch Elm Disease in 1934.

Squabbling

The Dutch and the ever-increasing English squabbled constantly over their borders in Connecticut. It didn’t take long for English settlers from Massachusetts to surround the House of Hope in Windsor, Wethersfield and Hartford. Finally in 1650 the English and Dutch settled their boundary 50 miles west of the Connecticut River. Greenwich stayed with the Dutch.

The Dutch relinquished those claims at the end of the Second Anglo-Dutch War in 1667. In exchange, they got concessions on the Indonesian spice trade including, ironically, nutmeg.

The Dutch eventually realized they couldn’t compete with the exploding English population in Connecticut. So they decided to consolidate their North American colony at the tip of Manhattan in New Amsterdam.

New Amsterdam

But even the retreat to New Amsterdam was fraught. The leadership in England, kings and Cromwell alike, dearly wanted to oust the Dutch from the North American colonies.

During the first Anglo-Dutch War, Oliver Cromwell outfitted an invasion force under Robert Sedgwick to take over New Amsterdam. New Amsterdam stayed in Dutch hands only because the two nations declared peace. Sedgwick turned north and captured Acadia instead.

Then after Charles II got his throne back he decided he wanted New Amsterdam for his brother, the Duke of York. On Aug. 27, 1664, four English frigates under the command of Richard Nicholl sailed into the harbor. The Dutch, with few supplies, quickly surrendered.

New Amsterdam in 1884

As a Dutch minister, Samuel Drisius, wrote, “No relief or assistance could be expected while daily great numbers of Englishmen arrived from New England both on foot and on horseback hotly bent upon plundering this place.”

The city, now New York, stayed in English hands until July 1673, when it reverted to the Dutch. The Dutch held it until the end of the Third Anglo-Dutch War, when they gave it up in exchange for Surinam.

The Dutch influence in the region can still be seen in the region, from architecture to place names to New York Mets uniforms. The blue, white and orange colors go back to the 17^th-century Prinsenvlag, or Prince’s Flag, the naval flag of the States-General of the Dutch Republic.

Maine

In 1857, a military historian named Maj. Gen. J. Watts De Peyster read a paper before the New York Historical Society about Dutch settlement and exploration 250 years earlier.

“There never was a good piece of land that the Devil did not open his bag and shake out some Dutchman upon it,” he said. That land included ‘the rich lumber districts of Maine.’ The Dutch, he said, made several attempts to settle Maine to ‘share the prolific fisheries; the unsurpassed masting and lumbering facilities; and, at that time, the rich fur trade.’

Though Maine was, in the early 17^th century, the Province of Acadie, the Dutch planted the flag at least on the shores of Muscongus Bay at what is now Bremen. De Peyster said the Dutch language was perpetrated in the town by a steady stream of Germans who followed in the footsteps of those early settlers.

He also claimed a Dutch settlement had existed at one time on the Sheepscot River a mile above Wiscasset, and at Pemaquid.

For a century, de Peysters argument was neither proven nor disproven. But by the end of the 20^th century, archaeologists found extensive Dutch artifacts along the coast from Maine to Maryland.

The Flying Horse

Historians have not disputed the Dutch conquest of Castine. In August of 1674, the Flying Horse, a Dutch frigate, sailed into Penobscot Bay. The fighting force of 110 men easily overtook the 30 French soldiers at the fort of Pentagoet.

Marker showing the Dutch in New England

The Dutch commander, Capt. Jurriaen Aernoutsz, viewed Pentagoet as fair game. The French had allied with the English during the third Anglo-Dutch War. Though the English had settled with the Dutch, the French had not.

Aernoutsz then captured another French fort at Jemseg, and in both places he buried a bottle with a message in it. The message said Acadia belonged to the Dutch and was to be known as ‘New Holland.’ But he sailed away, the Dutch couldn’t hang on to Acadia and soon the French recovered the territory. They gave Pentagoet a new name, Bagaduce, but today it is known as Castine.

Dutch-American Heritage Day

Fast forward a century. On Nov. 16, 1776, an American warship, the Andrew Doria, sailed into the harbor of the Dutch Caribbean island Sint Eustatius. The Dutch governor ordered a friendly cannon salute. That angered the British, and they took control of the island a few years later. The Dutch got it back in 1784. In 1990, that day was proclaimed “Dutch-American Heritage Day.”

The Andrew Doria in Sint Eustatius

With thanks to Dutch Trade and Ceramics in America in the Seventeenth Century by Charlotte Wilcoxen and The New Netherlands Institute.

Images: Castine sign By No machine-readable author provided. Masonbarge assumed (based on copyright claims). – No machine-readable source provided. Own work assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=696875. Smith’s Castle By Mlanni98 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=77139260. This story was updated in 2022.

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Cotton Mather and Joseph Dudley: Allies and Enemies in 1695

Our story of Cotton Mather and Joseph Dudley begins in 1686. Cotton Mather has just assumed leadership of the Second Church of Boston, lifting the burden from his father, Increase, just named president of Harvard College.

Cotton Mather

Increase Mather was one of the most powerful Puritan ministers of his day. Cotton wanted to make a name for himself and rise to the level of influence of his famous father. He also had prominent grandfathers, Richard Mather and John Cotton.

King James II had thrown the colony into turmoil that year. He had revoked its charter, which had allowed the colony to choose its own leaders and largely govern itself. James replaced the government with his hand-picked appointee, Edmund Andros. Andros had a second in command, Joseph Dudley. Dudley governed on an interim basis in 1685 while Andros awaited finalization of his appointment.

Portrait believed to portray Joseph Dudley

Andros issued offensive new rules. He banned town meetings, levied new taxes and tried to give away public lands. Dudley enforced his decisions as judge.

Joseph Dudley

Dudley was the son of Thomas Dudley, a devout Puritan who arrived in the new world in 1630 and served four terms as governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Dudley, like his father, embraced Puritan beliefs.

Andros did not like the Puritans . Not only did he curtail the functions of local government, but he also began extending protections to people of other churches.

Sir Edmond Andros, bigoted papist

Dudley believed in the legitimacy of royal power. Even if he disagreed with Andros, as an agent of the king he would not have challenged his authority.

As Andros tried to establish his power, the colonists began to rebel. The Rev. John Wise of Ipswich led a group of men who declared increased taxes could not be collected without town meeting. The men were arrested and hauled before Dudley, determined to show the colonists once and for all that they no longer had the power to set policy on tax issues. When Wise objected, the high-handed Dudley replied: “Mr. Wise, you have no more privileges left you than not to be sold as slaves.”

The remark would haunt Dudley.

Witch Trials and Strange Bedfellows

Against this backdrop, in 1688, Cotton Mather was called upon to pray for the health of the children of one of his parishioners, John Goodwin. Goodwin employed a cleaning woman, Ann “Goody” Glover. Originally from Ireland, she had come to the United States via Barbados. She and her family belonged to the thousands of Irish that the English government forcibly deported to the West Indies as indentured servants in the 1640s.

By 1688, she was an elderly cleaning woman, widowed and living in Boston. She had an altercation with one of the Goodwin children over some missing cloth. Shortly thereafter the children began feeling ill.

A doctor came to see the children, and he diagnosed them as suffering from witchcraft. Cotton Mather and Joseph Dudley served as accuser and judge, respectively. The two oversaw Glover’s conviction. She was hanged for witchcraft, but her real sin was her Catholicism. Had she renounced her Catholicism, they likely would have spared her.

The case foreshadowed the 1692 witch hysteria in Salem, in which the Mathers played a role. Cotton Mather famously, in the Salem case, wrote that spectral evidence could be used, but should not be the sole reason for convicting someone.

The Overthrow of Andros

The alliance between Cotton Mather and Joseph Dudley didn’t last long. In 1689, news of the overthrow of King James II reached Boston. Angry colonists then arrested Andros, Dudley and other appointees of the King. The colonists shipped them off to London to answer charges of 119 illegal acts. Those included attempted theft of public lands, stolen customs payments and arbitrary exercise of power..

Andros is taken prisoner during the Boston Riot, er, Revolt.

Andros was replaced with the previously elected government. The Puritans then began lobbying for a permanent return of democratic government.

Dudley denied the charges levied against him by Cotton Mather and blamed Andros. Though seven colonists had leveled charges, they had no agent in London to prosecute. And so Dudley went free, a loose cannon.

Soon Dudley was back in America, this time serving as judge in New York. Here, support for James II was stronger and democracy not well established. Colonists, led by Jacob Leisler, revolted against the colonial governor, but they didn’t have unanimous support.

When the new king, William, sent his instructions to the colony, Leisler was arrested. Dudley won a judgeship in New York and presided over the trial that sentenced Leisler to death. Mather then charged Dudley with being bloodthirsty and high handed in advocating the death penalty, though Dudley disputed that.

William of Orange

In 1693, Dudley – universally unpopular – returned to England. He began building a case for his appointment as governor of all of New England. The idea that Cotton Mather would become his most important ally in regaining power might seem preposterous, but that is exactly what happened.

Dudley’s Return to Power

Increase Mather had served as Massachusetts’ envoy to England in 1690i. He had tried to lobby the new king to restore the original colonial charter that allowed Massachusetts citizens to elect their own governments. He lost support back home when he acquiesced to a replacement charter that reserved more rights for the king.

Increase lobbied his friends to return him to London, but he was blocked. Dudley, meanwhile, living in England and acting as deputy-governor for the Isle of Wight, pulled every string he could to win his way back to New England.

William Phips

He succeeded in having the Mathers’ hand-picked governor, William Phips, arrested and brought to England to face dubious corruption charges. Phips died before he could clear his name. But still Dudley’s reputation was so blackened that he could not win the king’s appointment to govern New England. Richard Coote, 1st Earl of Bellomont won the appointment in 1695.

Dudley chanced on an idea, however. Hearing of Increase Mather’s difficulties in returning to London, he reached out to Cotton Mather with a promise to advocate for his father’s return. The Mathers both desperately wanted this and thought Dudley was now an ally and controllable. Cotton Mather wrote a letter in support of Dudley’s return to Massachusetts as governor.

With Lord Belomont’s death in 1701, and the Mathers now in his pocket, Dudley sought and received the appointment he coveted – a return to New England as its governor.

Cotton Mather and Joseph Dudley Feud Again

It would not take long before Cotton Mather recognized his mistake. Almost immediately Dudley double-crossed the Puritan minister. Mather had advised Dudley who he should take advice from and who he should not trust. Dudley immediately passed on Mather’s opinions to his enemies, infuriating all involved.

John Leverett

Mather also sought appointment as president of Harvard to replace his father. But Dudley declined to give it to him and chose John Leverett instead.

The high-handed treatment of Mather was completely in character for Dudley. But whatever joy he found in the double cross was certainly tempered by the storm of controversy he brought down upon himself.

Both Mathers now took up their pens and pulpits and began railing against Dudley. He was a murderer (in the case of Leisler), they charged. A thief of public funds. He illegally traded with France, they alleged. He smuggled and usurped fishing rights from the colonists. The list of grievances was enormous.

Many of the charges against him were flat out fabrications and exaggerations, but Dudley spent considerable time in rebutting them. He ended up traveling to England for a hearing with the Board of Trade.

Dudley Undone

Dudley would retain his post until 1715. Finally, however, Dudley was undone. A group of businessmen wanted to print money to back a bank proposal, and Dudley thwarted them. Instead he argued the colony should fund the proposal by borrowing and thus protecting the value of currency already in circulation.

This decision added too many people to the list of enemies who hated Dudley and, with much lobbying, he was replaced as governor. The animosity between Dudley and the people would set the tone for relations with the government in New England for the next 50 years, long after Dudley died in 1720 at his Roxbury home.

Images: Joseph Dudley By Attributed to Peter Lely – http://www.eldreds.com/sales/detail.php?itemID=97915, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14855236.

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