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John Singleton Copley

Sam Adams Walked Into a Tavern and Started a Revolution

Sam Adams was a devout Puritan who brought his religious convictions to the fight for American liberty. That did not mean he stayed out of taverns or shunned his family’s malt business.

Samuel Adams by John Singleton Copley.

Far from it. He embraced both.

By the time Sam Adams was born on Sept. 16, 1722 (Old Style) beer brewing was a well-established and protected commercial activity in Boston. Brewers and maltsters earned good wages and positions of respect. Many wealthy and prominent colonists started out as brewers or maltsters. (Maltsters make the malt that gets brewed into beer.)

If it hadn’t been for beer, Sam Adams might not have started a revolution.

Boston Beer

Puritans were anything but Puritanical about beer. Among the Pilgrims’ many vexations was the shortage of beer on the Mayflower.

Common breweries sprang up in Boston shortly after the Puritans arrived. Soon the General Court regulated the price of beer at 2-1/2 cents per quart.

In the mid-17^th century, England imposed a tariff on malt in order to encourage the domestic beer industry. In 1705, Massachusetts began to export beer. By 1731, Massachusetts was exporting malt to New York and Philadelphia.

Ethelbert Stewart, commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, wrote in his Beer Brewing in the New England Colonies, that Massachusetts discouraged noncommercial beer brewing. Anyone who wanted to make beer had to prove they had “sufficient skill in the art or mystery of a brewer.”

Sam’s Hops Receipt

Massachusetts also fined people for trying to sell improperly cleansed malt. Malt cleansing could only be properly done at the regular malt houses.

There were advantages to regulation, however, as the public gained a better quality of beer, the trade of maltsters and brewers became recognized as such, and the business became settled. … (Patriot Samuel Adams was probably the most famous maltster in history, though there remains debate about whether he ever engaged in actual brewing of beer.)

Ira Stoll, author of Samuel Adams: A Life, writes in a footnote “The founder and chairman of the Boston Beer Company, parent of today’s Samuel Adams beer, James Koch, told me in an interview that he was once offered for sale a receipt for hops signed by the patriot Samuel Adams, proving that Samuel Adams was a brewer and not just a maltster.”

Sam Adams, Maltster

Sam’s Adams’ father, Deacon Samuel Adams, was a man of wealth and reputation. He made his living selling malt to beer makers from a malt house in his backyard. Deacon Adams led the populist political party known as the Boston Caucus, whose members met in taverns.

Young Sam Adams entered Harvard in 1736 at 14, graduated in 1740 and received a master’s degree in 1743. He didn’t want to be a lawyer or a minister, so he tried working in Thomas Cushing’s counting house. Adams hated it. He ended up living at home on the income from his father’s malt house.

Green Dragon tavern, a favorite of the Sons of Liberty

He haunted the taverns of Boston, honing his political skills and making his political connections. His cousin John Adams noted taverns were where “bastards, and legislators, are frequently begotten.”

Sam Adams didn’t become a legislator, at least not at first. He won election to clerk of the market, then town scavenger and then tax collector, a position he held for nearly a decade. Later he became clerk of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, delegate to the Continental Congress and president of the Massachusetts Senate. Finally, he won election as John Hancock’s lieutenant governor and then governor.

When Sam was 24, his father died. The next year, British naval officers kidnapped 50 men on the Boston waterfront to impress them into service. A riot ensued, the prisoners were released and Sam Adams became a journalist. He started a newspaper, The Independent Advertiser. In it, he portrayed the rioters as an assembly of people defending their natural right to life and liberty.

Caricature of a British press gang

Sentiments of Liberty

He also organized the Sons of Liberty, which flourished in Boston’s tavern-based political culture.

In 1769, Sam Adams, James Otis, Paul Revere, John Hancock, Benjamin Edes and 350 Sons of Liberty celebrated the fourth anniversary of resistance to the Stamp Act at the Liberty Tree Tavern in Dorchester. They dined in a tent set up for the occasion and drank 45 toasts. John Adams, who attended, noted that no one got drunk (beer could be pretty weak). The future president grudgingly approved of the affair.

“Otis and Adams are politick, in promoting these Festivals, for they tinge the Minds of the People, they impregnate them with the sentiments of Liberty,” he wrote.

Samuel Adams Beer

In 1984, James Koch, then a management consultant, decided to start his own brewery in Boston using his great-great-grandfather’s beer recipe. He called it Samuel Adams. Koch explained he did it because “he shared a similar spirit in leading the fight for independence and the opportunity for all Americans to pursue happiness and follow their dreams.”

This story about Sam Adams was updated in 2022.

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The Heroic Last-Minute Rescue of the Old South Meeting House

Of all the dramatic events that took place at Boston’s Old South Meeting House, the battle to save it from destruction in 1876 was one of the hardest fought.

The Old South Meeting House in its early days as a museum. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library.

The odds against saving the revered building seemed impossible. The very concept of historic preservation hadn’t taken hold in New England yet. Old South sat on very valuable land, though it had fallen into a shabby artifact, the sidewalk in front of it crowded with peddlers and hawkers.

And time ran very short.

At the last minute, Boston’s 19^th century leaders stepped in to save the legacy of their 18^th century forbears. They used the same tools to save the Old South Meeting House as those that had made it historic: rhetoric, organization, patriotism and civic action. And they couldn’t have done it without the ladies.

It was the first successful effort to preserve a historic building in New England – and one of the first in the United States.

Old South Meeting House

The Puritans built Old South Meeting House in 1729. Judge Samuel Sewall publicly apologized for taking part in the Salem Witch Trials there. Benjamin Franklin was baptized on the site. Phyllis Wheatley thought about freedom while attending services at Old South.

Samuel Adams by John Singleton Copley.

In the run-up to the American Revolution, colonists often gathered at the Old South Meeting House to protest British rule. At a time when only 20,000 people lived in Boston, overflowing crowds came to hear James Otis, Joseph Warren, John Hancock and Samuel Adams denounce the tea tax, impressment and the Boston Massacre.

On Dec. 16, 1773, 4,000 angry colonists showed up at Faneuil Hall to discuss the tea crisis. Faneuil Hall couldn’t hold them all, so as many as 6,000 gathered at Old South. Then they adjourned to Griffin’s Wharf for the Boston Tea Party.

Samuel Adams understood the historical importance of the old Puritan meeting house. “The transactions at Liberty Tree were treated with scorn and ridicule,” he wrote, “but when they heard of the resolutions in the Old South Meeting-house, the place whence the orders issued for the removal of the troops in 1770, they put on grave countenances.”

The British Got It

The British understood its importance, too. During the Siege of Boston, the British vandalized symbols of the patriotic cause. They stole William Bradford‘s 1620 manuscript Of Plymouth Plantation, hidden in Old South’s tower. And they turned the Old South Meeting House into a riding school for Gen. John Burgoyne. They gutted the interior, burned the pews and dumped loads of dirt and gravel on the floor. It took eight years to restore the building.

Lowell Warren, once president of the Old South Association, said, “My wife swears she can still smell the British horses in the stairwell.”

Old South Meeting House, American Revolution interior in Boston. Licensed under PD-US via Wikipedia.

A century later the Old South Meeting House narrowly escaped destruction when the Great Fire of 1872 swept through Boston. The conflagration burned 65 acres of the city, destroyed 776 buildings and killed 30 people.

“I heard the Old South clock strike,” said an eyewitness. “I don’t know what hour, and I know the thought came into my mind that perhaps it would never strike again.” Only the timely arrival of a fire engine from Portsmouth, N.H., saved the old building.

Old South Meeting House Sold

After the Great Fire. The Old South Meeting House is in the background. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library.

Snobbery almost destroyed what a raging inferno could not. By 1877, the neighborhood had grown crowded and noisy. The congregation decided to build a new church in the fashionable new Back Bay neighborhood. They moved historic artifacts, including the bell, into the New Old South Meeting House and put up the land under Old South for sale.

The building itself sold at auction on June 8, 1876 for $1,350 – the value of its parts. The spire was covered with copper, and the building contained a lot of lead. Removal was to be completed within 60 days.

All seemed lost. The clock had been removed, the masonry was under attack and copper was being taken from the building. Then George W. Simmons & Son, prominent Boston businessmen, stepped in and bought the right to hold the building uninjured for seven days. Simmons posted these words on the clock tower:

The Eleventh Hour!

Men and Women of Massachusetts!

Does Boston desire the humiliation which is to-day a part of her history since she has allowed the memorial to be sold under the hammer”

Shall the Old South Be Saved?

Simmons bought just enough time so others could organize the fight. On the sixth day, his son helped arrange an extraordinary public gathering at the old meeting house. Every seat was filled, and in the gallery sat the ladies of Boston.

They had a daunting challenge. They needed to raise $400,000, an enormous sum, to buy the land on which the meeting house stood.

Wendell Phillips

Several people spoke, and then abolitionist crusader Wendell Phillips took the platform and gave the speech of his lifetime. An eyewitness reported on the remarkable oration:

Wendell Phillips, by Matthew Brady

The memories of the past crowded to his mind, and he spoke as if pleading for the life of one condemned unjustly. The mantle of the Revolution seemed to have fallen upon him, and he appeared to be the natural successor of Samuel Adams.

(Read the speech here.)

Then and there, the people of Boston started a fund to save the Old South Meeting House and collected several thousand dollars on the spot.

20 Ladies of Boston

On July 13, 1876, the congregation’s leaders agreed to postpone the sale of Old South for two months, but the buyers had to come up with $420,000 and ask for no further delay.

It seemed an impossible task, as Boston’s wealthy citizens were in the country or at the seashore during the summer. What’s more, there was no precedent. No historic building had ever been saved from destruction in New England.

Then the ladies stepped in.

Twenty wealthy Boston women bought the building for $3,500, more than twice what the owner had paid for its scrap value. They proposed to restore Old South, and to move it somewhere if the land couldn’t be purchased.

The Old South Meeting House in 1898

For a while nothing seemed to happen. Then one summer day the fire department put the old clock back in the tower, but the public couldn’t understand how or why. Then on Oct. 18, 1876, the papers passed for the preservationists to buy the Old South Meeting House. They paid a down payment of $100,000, and took a first mortgage of $225,000 and a second mortgage of $75,000.

Eventually the donor of the $100,000 down payment was revealed: Mary Tileston Hemenway, the wealthiest woman in Boston. Her husband had died in July on a trip to Cuba.

A Look at History

“American history is to us the most interesting and the most important history in the world, if we would only open our eyes to it and look at it in the right way,” she said. “I will help people to look at it in the right way.”

Still, the hawkers and peddlers had to be thrown out and the building had to be cleaned and restored. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes,Sr., and Louisa May Alcott took to the meeting house stage to plead for support. Others plunged into a frenzy of meetings, crafts fairs, balls and poetry-writing to raise money.

Membership on a committee to restore the Old South Meeting House became a status symbol. “Not to have been a member of some committee, proves you to be of the common people,” commented a newspaper writer.

Mary Sawyer Tyler, then living in Somerville, sold bits of wool for the cause. Sixty years earlier she had been a Massachusetts farm girl whose little lamb followed her to school one day. Mary Had A Little Lamb was by then a well-known poem. Mary still had two pairs of stockings knit from the lamb’s fleece. So she unraveled them, cut them into short pieces, attached them to cards with her autograph on them and sold them.

Old South Meeting House Saved

On April 9, 1877, a great ball was held in the Boston Music Hall. It was ‘one of the most extensive and elegant balls ever given in Massachusetts,’ and it raised $2,500.

The Old South Association formed and opened the Old South Meeting House as a museum in 1877. It then launched an educational program in American history and citizenship. It also published primary documents from American history as Old South Leaflets. Students from all over the country and the world came to “Children’s Hour” activities, Young People’s Lectures and essay contests.

Old South clock being painted, early 20th century. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Painting the Old South clock, early 20th century. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

They’re still coming. The Old South Meeting House is open daily from 9:30 am to 5:00 pm. For more information click here.

With thanks to History of the Old South Meeting-house in Boston, Volume 50; Volume 282, By Everett Watson Burdett. This story about Old South Meeting House was updated in 2022.

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

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The Heartbreakingly Lovely Art of Ammi Phillips

Ammi Phillips, a masterful folk artist, was forgotten for decades until his work came to light in a Kent, Conn., antique show in 1924.

Girl in Red Dress with Cat and Dog

Today, Ammi Phillips’ most famous painting, Girl in Red Dress With Cat and Dog, highlights the American Folk Art Museum collection.

A New York Times art critic called it ‘one of the most beautiful paintings made by any American artist ever.’ He also called it ‘heartbreakingly lovely.’ Many people have reproduced it, the U.S. postal service featured it on a stamp and a novelist wrote a book about it.

Ammi Phillips

Ammi (pronounced AM-eye) Phillips was born on April 24, 1788 in Colebrook, Conn. As a young man in 1809 he advertised in the Berkshire Record his ability to paint ‘correct likenesses’ with ‘perfect shadows and elegantly dressed in the prevailing fashions of the day.’

Unlike contemporaries like John Singleton Copley of Boston, Phillips worked on the sparsely populated frontier. He roamed the countryside with his family to find customers. Apparently, he found it a romantic and satisfying way to live.

People then viewed portraits as status symbols, and Phillips soon earned commissions from influential people in Berkshire County, Mass. He painted for the next 50 years. That meant moving to western Massachusetts, Connecticut and the Hudson River Valley in search of new customers.

He painted Girl in Red Dress With Cat and Dog in Dutchess County, N.Y., in 1830.

And he probably influenced a younger itinerant painter in the region, Erastus Salisbury Field.

The Kent Limner

Ammi Phillips died on July 11, 1865, in Curtisville (now Interlaken), Mass., near Stockbridge. For the next 60 years people forgot about him. Then came the antique show in 1924. It displayed a group of 1830s-era portraits of women in dark dresses. The unknown painter of the strongly colored works got the nickname ‘The Kent Limner.’

Ammi Phillips, ‘Portrait of a Lady in an Elaborate Lace Bonnet’

Finding Ammi

About 15 years later, another group of folk portraits came to light near the border of New York and Connecticut. These were painted earlier, with pastel coloring and tentative rendering. The unknown artist of those works was called the “Border Limner.”

Ammi Phillips, ‘Mrs. Wilbur Sherman and Daughter Sarah’

Two folk art collectors, Barbara and Larry Holdridge, bought one of the few paintings Ammi Phillips signed, “George Sunderland,” in 1958. They believed the Kent Limner and the Border Limner had painted it.

For decades they searched for his work, pored over Census records and interviewed Phillips’ still-living relatives and subjects. In 1965, the Holdridges organized an exhibit of 219 Ammi Phillips’ paintings. Three years later, art historians established that Ammi Phillips had painted both groups.

By 1976, art historians identified more than 400 paintings as his work.

Blond Boy with Primer, Peach, and Dog

In 1985, an anonymous donor paid more than $1 million for Girl in Red Dress With Cat and Dog. The secret benefactor then gave it to the American Folk Art Museum.

Hilton Kramer, the starchy New York Times art critic, called Phillips “amazing” in a 1970 review of an exhibit of Phillips’ work. The portrait of Mrs. Isaac Cox, he wrote, was of “superb quality.”

To the modern eye, the portrait of Mrs. Cox particularly speaks with a clarity, precision, and sympathy that places it considerably nearer to our own standards of artistic probity than anything to be found in the common run of ‘serious’ painting at the time. If this is ‘innocent’ painting, it is innocent only of those flatulent academic pretensions which remained the curse of so much of our art in the 19th century.

Mrs. Isaac Cox by Ammi Phillips

This story about Ammi Phillips was updated in 2022.

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The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, In His Own Words

Paul Revere gave a deposition to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress about the most famous midnight ride in history. The Congress wanted to establish that the British had fired the first shots in the Battle of Lexington and Concord. Paul Revere couldn’t help them with that, but he told a great story.

Going to Lexington

I, Paul Revere, of Boston, in the colony of the Massachusetts Bay in New England; of lawful age, do testify and say; that I was sent for by Dr. Joseph Warren, of said Boston, on the evening of the 18th of April, about 10 o’clock; when he desired me, ”to go to Lexington, and inform Mr. Samuel Adams, and the Hon. John Hancock Esq. that there was a number of soldiers, composed of light troops, and grenadiers, marching to the bottom of the common, where there was a number of boats to receive them; it was supposed that they were going to Lexington, by the way of Cambridge River, to take them, or go to Concord, to destroy the colony stores.”

I proceeded immediately, and was put across Charles River and landed near Charlestown Battery; went in town, and there got a horse. While in Charlestown, I was informed by Richard Devens Esq. that he met that evening, after sunset, nine officers of the ministerial army, mounted on good horses, and armed, going towards Concord.

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

I set off, it was then about 11 o’clock, the moon shone bright. I had got almost over Charlestown Common, towards Cambridge, when I saw two officers on horse-back, standing under the shade of a tree, in a narrow part of the road. I was near enough to see their holsters and cockades. One of them started his horse towards me, the other up the road, as I supposed, to head me, should I escape the first. I turned my horse short about, and rode upon a full gallop for Mistick Road. He followed me about 300 yards, and finding he could not catch me, returned. I proceeded to Lexington, through Mistick, and alarmed Mr. Adams and Col. Hancock.

Sam Adams, warned by Paul Revere. Also painted by John Singleton Copley.

‘My name is Revere’

After I had been there about half an hour Mr. Daws arrived, who came from Boston, over the Neck.

We set off for Concord, and were overtaken by a young gentleman named Prescot, who belonged to Concord, and was going home. When we had got about half way from Lexington to Concord, the other two stopped at a house to awake the men, I kept along. When I had got about 200 yards ahead of them, I saw two officers as before. I called to my company to come up, saying here was two of them, (for I had told them what Mr. Devens told me, and of my being stopped). In an instant I saw four of them, who rode up to me with their pistols in their bands, said ”G—d d—n you, stop. If you go an inch further, you are a dead man.” Immediately Mr. Prescot came up. We attempted to get through them, but they kept before us, and swore if we did not turn in to that pasture, they would blow our brains out, (they had placed themselves opposite to a pair of bars, and had taken the bars down). They forced us in. When we had got in, Mr. Prescot said ”Put on!” He took to the left, I to the right towards a wood at the bottom of the pasture, intending, when I gained that, to jump my horse and run afoot. Just as I reached it, out started six officers, seized my bridle, put their pistols to my breast, ordered me to dismount, which I did. One of them, who appeared to have the command there, and much of a gentleman, asked me where I came from; I told him. He asked what time I left . I told him, he seemed surprised, said ”Sir, may I crave your name?” I answered ”My name is Revere. ”What” said he, ”Paul Revere”? I answered ”Yes.” The others abused much; but he told me not to be afraid, no one should hurt me. I told him they would miss their aim. He said they should not, they were only waiting for some deserters they expected down the road. I told him I knew better, I knew what they were after; that I had alarmed the country all the way up, that their boats were caught aground, and I should have 500 men there soon. One of them said they had 1500 coming; he seemed surprised and rode off into the road, and informed them who took me, they came down immediately on a full gallop.

Grant_Wood_The_Midnight_Ride_of_Paul_Revere_1931

The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere by Grant Wood

Prisoner

One of them (whom I since learned was Major Mitchel of the 5th Reg.) clapped his pistol to my head, and said he was going to ask me some questions, and if I did not tell the truth, he would blow my brains out. I told him I esteemed myself a man of truth, that he had stopped me on the highway, and made me a prisoner, I knew not by what right; I would tell him the truth; I was not afraid. He then asked me the same questions that the other did, and many more, but was more particular; I gave him much the same answers. He then ordered me to mount my horse, they first searched me for pistols. When I was mounted, the Major took the reins out of my hand, and said ”By G—d Sir, you are not to ride with reins I assure you”; and gave them to an officer on my right, to lead me. He then ordered 4 men out of the bushes, and to mount their horses; they were country men which they had stopped who were going home; then ordered us to march. He said to me, ”We are now going towards your friends, and if you attempt to run, or we are insulted, we will blow your brains out.” When we had got into the road they formed a circle, and ordered the prisoners in the center, and to lead me in the front. We rode towards Lexington at a quick pace; they very often insulted me calling me rebel, etc., etc. After we had got about a mile, I was given to the sergeant to lead, he was ordered to take out his pistol, (he rode with a hanger,) and if I ran, to execute the major’s sentence.

William Dawes

Alarms

When we got within about half a mile of the Meeting House we heard a gun fired. The Major asked me what it was for, I told him to alarm the country; he ordered the four prisoners to dismount, they did, then one of the officers dismounted and cut the bridles and saddles off the horses, and drove them away, and told the men they might go about their business. I asked the Major to dismiss me, he said he would carry me, let the consequence be what it will. He then ordered us to march.

When we got within sight of the Meeting House, we heard a volley of guns fired, as I supposed at the tavern, as an alarm; the Major ordered us to halt, he asked me how far it was to Cambridge, and many more questions, which I answered. He then asked the sergeant, if his horse was tired, he said yes; he ordered him to take my horse. I dismounted, and the sergeant mounted my horse; they cut the bridle and saddle of the sergeant’s horse, and rode off down the road. I then went to the house were I left Messrs. Adams and Hancock, and told them what had happened; their friends advised them to go out of the way; I went with them, about two miles across road.

The Shot

After resting myself, I set off with another man to go back to the tavern, to inquire the news; when we got there, we were told the troops were within two miles. We went into the tavern to get a trunk of papers belonging to Col. Hancock. Before we left the house, I saw the ministerial troops from the chamber window. We made haste, and had to pass through our militia, who were on a green behind the Meeting House, to the number as I supposed, about 50 or 60, I went through them; as I passed I heard the commanding officer speak to his men to this purpose; ”Let the troops pass by, and don’t molest them, without they begin first.”

Paul Revere, DDS

I had to go across road; but had not got half gunshot off, when the ministerial troops appeared in sight, behind the Meeting House. They made a short halt, when one gun was fired. I heard the report, turned my head, and saw the smoke in front of the troops. They immediately gave a great shout, ran a few paces, and then the whole fired. I could first distinguish irregular firing, which I supposed was the advance guard, and then platoons; at this time I could not see our militia, for they were covered from me by a house at the bottom of the street.

Signed Paul Revere.

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